Chapter Three - On The Road with Overdrive

Well, this is the third day of this medication. Everyone keeps asking me if I feel any different, but so far it's the same. Maybe tomorrow. I think of all those who are praying and hoping for me - my family, my friends, my band mates; Sam, Puck,Tina, Marley, Artie and Ryder . . .

*****

Quinn Fabray, wife of Noah Puckerman, aka Puck, the lead guitarist for the band Overdrive was an acting coach at the Academy of Arts University and Cooper just so happened to be one of her students. Blaine made it a point to get acquainted with her when attending acting master classes with Cooper every chance he got. Eventually, she began to talk to Puck about Blaine. One day out of the blue, Puck gave Blaine a call and said, "I hear you've got some songs."
"Yeah," Blaine said.
"Are they any good?"
"I don't know."
"You ought to know," Puck said. "You wrote them."
"Um, I think they're good," Blaine replied.
"What about instruments? Do you play?"
"Yes sir, guitars mostly; acoustic, electric, bass. I play the ukulele as well."

That was Blaine's first introduction to how Nashville worked. Puck took Blaine to the studio a week later. He was formally introduced to the band members: Sam Evans, Tina Cohen-Chang, Marley Rose, Artie Abrams and Ryder Lynn. Over the next hour he was asked to play some of his own music, along with his favorite covers from as may styles of music he could think of. Everyone stayed silend while he played. Blaine would finish one song and Puck would say, "All right play me another one...Play me another one...Play me another one." He told Blaine a couple of years later that one line out of one song Blaine did that day told him that Blaine was worth spending time with.

"Someone said it's not what you go through, but what you do with it," Blaine says. "Puck is the one who showed me what to do with it. He'd sit for hours, pull out one album, play one line off it and say, 'Now write me a line like that. See why it's a good line?' He's not a writer himself, but he helped me define my level of what a good song was."

This tutorage continued for months. Puck would listen to songs Blaine had written and it got to be that as soon as Blaine wrote a song, he'd take it straight to Puck. In the months to come, Blaine would write a song, he'd ask himself, "Is this good enough for Puck?"

One day Puck and Quinn came over to Blaine and Cooper's for dinner. Blaine had been asked to lead an inner city Glee Club at a Boys and Girls club fundraiser in two weeks because their director had taken ill. Blaine already taught three of the kids guitar lessons so he was their first choice as a replacement. However, what they didn't realize was that Blaine couldn't read music. He simply understood guitar tabs. So after dinner while Cooper and Puck were in a heated discussion about the Tennessee Titans new Quarterback, he sat down to the piano to write a something that would be easy to teach them. After he had finished the piece, he proceeded to teach it to Quinn. He had barely gotten through the first verse when Puck came running in the room. "Who wrote that?" he asked.
"I did," Blaine Answered.
"How come I never heard it before?"
"Because I just wrote it while you were in the other room."

The song was "Not Alone."

Puck took the song that week to Stephen Brown of StarKid records who later pulled it out of his pocket during a Mercedes Jones concert rehearsal. She performed it on the fly in front of five thousand people at the House of Blues in Anaheim California as her encore the same evening and the crowd were on their feet before the song was over. That night following the concert, Stephen called Blaine and said, "We need to talk about becoming your publisher."

To have an artist that not only he enjoyed and respected, but was a pop icon as well perform one of his songs was a huge thrill to Blaine. But the icing on the cake was when Mercedes recorded the song on her new album and released it as the first single just eight months after she performed for the first time and it went to No. #1 on the Billboard Charts within three days, staying there for a whopping 10 weeks in a row.

During this time, Blaine had also been growing closer to Sam Evans, the lead singer of Overdrive and Puck's band mate. Being that they were both single and closer to the same age, Blaine found himself spending many nights at Sam's apartment writing songs and having impromptu jam sessions. Sometimes the whole band would come and other nights it was just them. So, when Artie Abrams announced that he was leaving and a spot for a new bass player and background vocalist opened up, Blaine was immediately asked to join. He had to audition for their manager and record label, but it was more or less a formality. Two weeks later Blaine was officially announced as the new Bass player for Overdrive.

Also during this time, Blaine's throat was getting worse and, to him, that's what made the invitation from Overdrive so awesome. "They were and still are my very favorite band. The fact that they even know me is overwhelming, forget that I am blessed to call them friends, "Blaine says enthusiastically. "I'm sure they looked at me and said, "Here's a guy who is proficient in many instruments, can write and sing. But the amazing thing is that they knew how sick I was because I spent so much time with them. They knew and they still hired me. Looking back, that is an amazing thing. They often joked with me that I had an account at every pharmacy in the country where I could purchase Xylocaine when I ran out."

The Xylocaine that Blaine was referring to was Viscous Lidocaine, a thick molasses-type liquid containing a local anesthetic. It is much like the same anesthetic that dentists use when they numb a patient's gums, only this was in gel form and would give pain relief for about five minutes. Blaine would take a swig of it, eat a little bit, then it'd wear off so he'd drink some more. It ruined the taste of his food, but he realized that he had to eat, and this liquid - although it carried a warning not to take internally - was the first thing that made it possible for Blaine to swallow without pain. Xylocaine was the only good thing to come out of his visit to Vanderbuilt. It wasn't a permanent answer, but as long as Blaine had that, he would survive.