Touring.
Unless you've actually been touring, it's hard to explain – stuck on a cramped bus with three smelly boys playing a different city every night.
But maybe, it's a cozy bus with three incredibly cute (but still smelly) boys, who happen to bring out a different creative side to you, getting to play in a new place all the time.
Touring is hard. Not like a chem test you haven't studied for, not like a large rock.
It's hard.
Tiny bathroom, single bunk with no floor space, 80 miles every day, 4 hours of stage shows every night, and ladies and gentlemen, Hannah Montana needs more than 3 minutes to shower.
No telling the Jonas Brothers that, though.
Kevin's hair is never sitting right, or Nick's dropped his lucky pick down the toilet again as we drove over another dead cat, or Joe wants to lock the door just to keep me from my hairbrush.
I tell you, Joe Jonas is more vain than I am!
At least, even if Joe's's personal hygiene needs work, Kevin's vanity needs work, and Nick's people skills need serious work, they're great for my music.
Joe loves to talk. He's always bursting out with anything he wants to say any time of the day. It doesn't really matter what it is – an observation on the colour of the grass as opposed to what it was twelve miles ago, or the fact that Frankie had just tossed half a twinkee out the side of the car in front, there was always something for Joe to talk about. I don't know how many times we've been sitting around the table in the "cabin common" writing random songs that Joe makes up from things he's noticed throughout the day – Kevin writes each line on his laptop (permanently glued to his left hand), Joe searches around the "cabin" for inspiration, Nick leans back on his chair (swaying because of the movement of the bus) and writes the riffs, and it's my job to make the lyrics rhyme. I get most of my fast, upbeat, random and usually rejected songs from Joe's observations of Albuquerque. And while Joe should use more soap, he drowns himself in cologne, so he always smells okay, except when it wears off, or when he's just put it on.
Kevin's the cute romantic one for a reason. He finds a different beautiful girl in each city to compare to the stars, or strawberry icecream. At least once a week, Kevin stares out the tiny window as I sit on the kitchen sink eating Milo out of the tin as he describes his latest crush. He's where I get a lot of my inspiration for the inspirational songs – making girls feel better about themselves can often come from the words of… oddly enough… boys.
But my favourite person to go to for inspiration is Nick. He's so much better than my dad, even. My ballads spring from Nick. I don't know why he's so shy around girls, but whenever he's around someone he doesn't know so well (including my dad, who is now their on-road producer), he retreats. Around his brothers and I, he's fine – as long as it's just us. And he's better if there's two of us. He still retreats a little when it's just me.
The best time to find Nick is at night – after the high from Joe's random inspiration making us all pee ourselves laughing has worn off, after Kevin's finished venting about Maria or Fiona or whats-her-name-miss-Virginia. When it's quiet, and Kevin's gone to sleep on the top bunk, Joe has gone to his late night binge of string cheese in the kitchen in the cabin common, and, even from down on the other side of the (okay, very small) tour bus, you can hear the light strains of genius that is Nick Jonas thinking up his masterpiece.
Three or four times a week, at about eleven o clock, Nick and I will be on the bottom bunk on the boys' side of the bus, sitting back's against the long part of the wall, because there is just not room to house to bodies lying the correct way on a bed, as Nick strums along to whatever tune I've badly sung for him, as I have a notebook spread over my knees, writing whatever we might come up with.
Midnight rolls around, though and Joe returns, wiping the remains of toothpaste from his mouth, and we say goodnight, often leaving songs half finished.
I have a lot of notebooks. 12, to be precise. I have a Miley notebook, for inspiration that just comes, a Hannah notebook, for inspiration that comes from being famous, a touring notebook, that comes from being on tour, a Kevin notebook, that come from those many evenings spent perched on the cabin common's kitchen sink, a Joe notebook, from the random inspiration that is the hard copy of Joe's random songs, and a Nick notebook, in which no song is ever completed, but they only ever become half way decent anyway. I have a Robbie Ray notebook, from inspiration from my dad, one for my friends, one for my enemies, and ones to record what I see, to go back on, and remember, to try and complete feelings at a later date.
The Nick notebook is my favourite, though.
In an hour, a lot of people insist they could write two songs.
But for musicians? An hour will buy you an intro, a verse, maybe a bridge, and normally a half assed chorus. You can't go back, either, with Nick's songs. You have to be in the moment to write it.
Which is why I was so surprised to hear a gentle knock on my door one night.
Getting up shakily – I'd never noticed how hard the highways were until half past one in the morning – and opening the door, I could only be happy to see the mass of shaggy hair that was distinguishable, even in the dark.
Daddy's rule is: being in the same bus as the boys means no closing the door when alone together. We've never broken it, until this evening.
The bus… yes… it is cramped, but it's perfect for what we need. The bunks are small, but they have the option of closing off a 'wall' that's mainly soundproof, so that late night inspiration (which plagues all of us, except Kevin) will not wake anyone else.
Up on the top bunk, we both had our guitars out, considering we didn't want to turn on a light to write when we could play in the dark.
Now, I am not the guitar genius that Nick is, and playing guitar during the day, when it's light is not the easiest thing for me to do. Of course, Nick can play blindfolded with the guitar behind his back with his toes, I'm sure, but I have no such talent with the guitar.
"You wanna play melody or harmonics?" he asked. Seeing my glare in the half light, he knew I could not play half as well as he could.
"So, that riff I was working on earlier," he said. "I don't like it."
"I do," I said. "But you're playing it too low. Go up an octave or two…"
He did so, then switched to a different riff we had worked on.
"Okay, sorry, I'm good now," he grinned.
"No, no I like it," I said after a moment. "Just… there's something wrong with one of those… doesn't go with the first one now it's high. Could you switch the G with… say… an A?"
Playing the riff again, he muttered and changed the note again, twice, and then decided on it.
"Okay… intro, bridge to verse. Now, we need verse."
"Well spotted," I muttered. "Okay, play it again."
He added in a couple of "Ooh's" before the first thought for a verse reached my brain.
"Everybody's got something they had to leave behind," I started
"One regret from yesterday," he continued.
"… That just seems to grow with time?" I tried. He nodded along, continuing with a basic chord variation.
"There's no use looking back or wondering," I tried.
"How it could be now or might a been," he sang.
"All this I know," I continued in an upper register.
"But still I can't find ways," he also came up rather falsetto.
"To let you go," we sang together, in a different tune, but still, the same lyrics.
"I never had a dream come true," he sang, much lower.
"Til the day that I found you."
"Even
though I pretend that I've
moved on, You'll always be my baby," he sang, the word 'baby'
sounding strange in his sweet deep voice against the gentle strains
of harmonics that seemingly came from the guitars, or our fingers
already knew the chords themselves.
"I never found the words to
say, You're the one I think about each day," I gave.
"And I
know no matter where love takes me to… A part of me will always be
with you"
His eyes were so deep in the song, he fluttered them closed every now and then, and I shifted closer when he wasn't looking.
"A part of me will always be… with you," we ended together after a few more minutes of verses that seemed to write themselves.
"Wow," a voice said, and clapped.
"Joe?" Nick asked. I could feel him go completely red with embarrassment beside me.
"Now that was beautiful, little brother," he said. "You too, little sister."
"Oh, that was… we don't… No we were just… We couldn't do it again," we stuttered over one another.
"I think we've found a new song for tomorrow night," Joe said.
"Oh, Joe we couldn't do that again," I said quickly.
"It's okay, I got most of it on tape," he revealed.
"You what?" Nick and I both said.
"Well, little brother Nickie was slipping out in the middle of the night to Miley's bunk… I needed to make sure my little sister's honour was kept firmly intact!" he defended.
"How much is my dad paying you to spy on us?" I asked, deadpan.
"Twenty bucks a night. It pays for the string cheese."
"I should have known…" I muttered. "Joe never does anything unless there's cheese in it for him."
"Joe has only one ally – the cheese," Nick continued.
"Alright, alright. I'm gunna play this for Robbie-Ray in the mornin', boys and girls, and we'll see if he likes it."
"He won't," Nick and I said together.
"Can you two stop that? It's creeping me out!" Joe exclaimed.
"SH!" he said. "Kevin!"
"Kevin'll sleep through an earthquake," I said, rolling my eyes.
"Oh, I've just had a deliciously evil brainwave," Joe announced. "What if Robbie-Ray were to find out about this late night gathering… Of course… I could keep it secret… For a price…"
"What do you want?" Nick asked.
"Twenty five bucks," Joe said. "You gotta beat his price."
"Deal."
"Fine. You've got twenty minutes with this tape. You can either rip it to tiny, tiny pieces, or come up with a cover story and write down the chords you can remember."
The next evening, Austin, Texas.
"Alright guys, next up Hannah and Nick have a song they just finished, and we think you're gunna love it. It's called 'Never had a Dream Come True'," Joe announced, backing away so Nick and Miley could take centre stage alone.
"Hey guys," Miley said as the crowd went absolutely nuts. "This isn't your usual Hannah slash Jonas boys stuff… no… this is something Nick and I wrote in the middle of the night, and… I think it was the easiest song I've ever had to write, and the hardest song I ever had to learn."
Taking a deep breath, Miley perched on the stool she'd been provided with and fixed her guitar on her knee as Nick started the song with a slight smile at Miley.
Never had a dream come true… it's true. Miley was living someone else's dream… that was, until she met Nick Jonas.
Woah, mama, this touring stuff was gunna be fun.