Tenney in the Key of Friendship

In a Jam

Logan settles behind Zane’s drum kit for their first jam session. Tenney can hardly believe this is happening. She briefly considers sabotaging it to prove they’re a bad match, but she can’t risk Zane doubting she’s ready for the City Music Festival brunch. She swallows her nerves and slings her guitar over her shoulder.

Zane has Tenney play her song solo, as she wrote it, and tells Logan to just listen. Before she finishes the first verse, Logan calls it “pretty sleepy” with an exaggerated yawn. Anger shoots through Tenney, but she insists she’s fine. Portia and Zane retreat to the control booth to watch through the intercom.

Logan sets his own tempo, shouts “C’mon!,” and launches into a brisk rock beat before Tenney can prepare. She counts herself in and manages until his triplets turn the song into a runaway train, grinding it to a halt. When she asks why he changed the beat without warning, he shrugs it off as experimenting. He adds that his dad taught him to just keep going when things change. Furious but calm, she tells him the triplets confuse the melody and asks for something simpler.

They start over. Logan holds steady until the second chorus, when he layers in cymbal hits. Then his beat drifts out of sync, and he won’t adjust. Their argument spills through the intercom until Zane calls them both right and wrong at the same time. He tells them to work it out. This time, Logan pounds harder, Tenney sings louder to match him, and he follows her lead. The song is rough, but no longer a disaster.

Called up to the booth, Tenney braces for criticism, but Zane calls it a great start, and Portia agrees they sounded great together. Logan blinks at Zane as if he’d grown a purple polka-dotted beard. Tenney still prefers the song her own way, and admits as much when Zane notices her hesitation.

Before wrapping up, Zane tells them to learn each other’s musical influences before Monday’s session. Logan claims there are too many to list and offers to text her some instead. Tenney starts naming her favorites, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Taylor Swift among them, but Logan’s already checking his phone. He cuts things short when a banged-up station wagon pulls into the lot. They swap numbers at Zane’s request, say goodbye to Portia, and head out.

On the drive home, Tenney vents to Mom about performing with “that kid,” and Mom reminds her it’s just one performance. Near their street, her phone buzzes with Logan’s promised MP3s. Scrolling past a few songs she already knows, Tenney clicks on “Tough as Nails” by the Rusty Hammers. Its crashing percussion makes her jump, and she turns it down, complaining it sounds like a musical accident. Mom, delighted, explains the band mixed punk, ska, and bluegrass, and reminds Tenney that staying open to different music can teach her something.

Parked in the driveway, Tenney asks Mom whether this feels like when a producer once pushed her to dye her hair. Mom clarifies that this is very different. Nobody is trying to control who Tenney is and how she sounds. She adds that collaborating with someone else usually makes a song better, citing Dad’s song, “Carolina Highway,” as an example. Tenney always assumed it was written as the slow ballad she knows, but Mom clarifies that it was originally written as an upbeat bluegrass tune. Mom and Dad reworked it together.

Mom smiles gently, climbs out of the truck, and asks Tenney to give Logan a real chance. Tenney knows she should, but she’s still scared of what might happen to her music if she does.