Long Cold Winter: Seasons Of Life, Book One

By Jaysen True Blood

Matt Morrow has seen it all in his career. Blood sucking gold diggers. One night stands with groupies. Models. Porn queens. And true love.

He has seen the heights of success and the depths of loss. He has raised both his siblings and his own children. Now, he wallows in drunken self-pity wishing for death. 

But his daughter has other plans. She has conspired with friends and family to drag him kicking and screaming out of his drunken stupor...and she has enlisted the help of her friend Amanda. The object is to get Matt to love again...and to stop drinking.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jaysen True Blood
• Release date: Jul 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393738763

Jaysen True Blood

Jaysen True Blood was born and raised in the Midwest where he currently resides. His first taste of writing came early in grade school with a class assignment. a few years later, his love for writing would return as he found himself with another class assignment, this time a poetry unit. through junior high, he would write a series of novels, many poems, and begin his long interest in writing song lyrics as well. In high school, he would learn the value of tall tales, myths and other kinds of stories as he continued to build his store of stories. upon graduation, he went for a semester at a university, where he would write two stories, one of which would become a serial online for about six months. Returning home, he worked at just about anything he could find, but never strayed far from his love of the story. After his first marriage, he signed on with Keep It Coming, an e-zine, where he wrote two serials, "Tales From The Renge" and "Breed's Command" (the same characters appear with Fancy Marsh in several subsequent westerns. The serial was taken from a manuscript written for a class assignment while in high school). H also wrote writing and music related articles for the print version of KIC that came out for just three issues. When KIC went under, Jay was once again forced to work at different jobs just to make ends meet. between 2007 and 2010, Jay would release "Seven By Jay: Seven Short Stories", "The Price Of Lust: Book One Of Faces In The Crowd" and "So Here's To Twilight And Other Poems".

Book preview

1

Burnout. It was the sign of having been on one too many tours and in one too many rehearsal halls and recording studios. Too much booze and too many drugs had a lot to do with it as well. As did one too many women.

He’d been married more times than should be allowed, but long years on the road always won. And women need more than five days out of 365 to feel loved. Not that he hadn’t loved them, but the road was a demanding mistress and the fans always came before his love life. Always.

Though some married him for the fame, the fame got old. And for those who’d married him for money, money couldn’t buy love and was an empty bed partner. The new soon wore off and loneliness crept in when he wasn’t there to fill the empty spot in the full-sized bed.

In the end, they took with them only what they brought into the relationship. And the clothes. Not that he didn’t know a few cross-dressing performers or have any gay friends. He did.

He just never had the time or the inclination to hold a fitting for any of them. Besides, most were extremely picky and probably would have taken hours just to settle on a dozen outfits. Hell. He rarely had the time, then, to spend by himself.

But then, he was Matt Morrow. And he was in high demand. He was too versatile for his own good. The Super Voice they called him.

He could country. Hell. That was where he got his start! It had also been where he started smoking. And light drinking. His choice, then, was beer. And lots of it.

He could sing jazz. Smooth and soft, he was almost as good as the greats. He’d been compared to Sinatra, Crosby, Martin, and even Nat King Cole. He bet that, had he been able to play a trumpet or saxophone, he would have even been compared to Armstrong or Prima. Or any of the others who could play an instrument and sang their own songs.

As a jazz singer, he learned to love his mixed drinks. The Black Russians. The Martinis. The Tom Collins. The Long Island Iced Teas. The list was endless.

He could sing the blues. That was where he began to drink straight whiskey. Of course, it was where he also discovered his depression. He had learned to live the blues.

It was not a far stretch for him to go into R&B. And he learned a deep appreciation of women there. And he met his first wife. It only lasted a year, like his stint as an R&B singer.

From R&B, he entered pop. And there were even more women to enjoy. And another marriage to last only a year. Sex and money. He had to laugh. But he hadn’t burned out yet.

From pop, he made a temporary foray into rap. Here, he noticed the diversity of women. But a woman was still only a woman. It didn’t matter what color.

Techno, like rap, was only temporary. It gave him headaches. Migraines. The high pitched tones did a number on his equilibrium. So he left it like he had entered, through the proverbial door.

But during his pop, rap and techno gigs, he began noticing strippers. They were the perfect eye candy for a rising star, just as the porn queens were. Though their beauty was manufactured with implants, for the most part, he didn’t care.

But he excelled at rock. Metal. Blues-metal. Hard rock. Classic. Thrash. New Wave.

With his progression through these, he began to learn of the excesses. Pot. Cocaine. Heroin. Speed.

And women. Super models. Famous actresses. Aspiring starlets.

Even those obscure has-beens who had a career, but were dumped by Hollywood for one supposed reason or another. But they returned to fame as his girlfriends and temporary wives. He considered them temporary because he knew that they would leave. Sooner or later, they would tire of it and go.

Still, super models and porn queens remained a major addiction. Even though neither relationship was a healthy one, he could not shake them. On the one hand, he was afraid that he would walk in and find the woman either puking her guts up or half starved, trying to remain super skinny for their career while being afraid-on the other-of catching some sexually transmitted disease. He didn’t want that.

When he decided to settle, he had decided that he wanted someone outside fame. Someone who didn’t come from money. Someone who didn’t care about money or fame. Someone who would love him for who he was, not what he had.

He’d done his two decades of decadence, though the first was barely what he would call decadent. By the middle of the second, he was ready to clean up. What he’d started in the 70s, he wound down in the 80s. And he spent the 90s as clean as he would ever be. Still, he couldn’t give up the booze or the cigarettes.

He did, however, ease up on the drinking. He sang at every show sober, only getting drunk at the after parties. When he was married and happy, he remained sober at home while off the road as well. But he drank heavily when he was alone. And he was alone often.

It was lonely at the top. The only company you had were the others who had made it to the pinnacles of their success. But it was a known fact that you could easily be pushed off. And many found themselves spiraling into obscurity in the 90s. But he remained. The Golden Boy.

He was an institution. A legend. Once he got away from the drugs, he found a clarity. But never peace. And peace was what he yearned for the most.

An end to the road he’d been on for so long. A road he’d forgotten why he had started in the first place. A road he was tired of. He wanted off.

HE WAS NOW FACED WITH reality. He was getting old. Too old for this life he’d chosen so long ago. But reality had been something he had run from for so long. Too long.

He’d started running in his younger years, before he even began. During his wasted youth. And he had to admit it had all been wasted. Wasted on running. Wasted on hiding. And on this ride he’d called a career.

Even booze couldn’t hide him from the fact he had wasted too many years. Even though his legacy would likely go on, he would not live forever. Not that he wanted to, but his lifestyle had seen to it that he would only live a possible twenty years more. Not that he cared.

When he started, he had wanted to make his mark. Somewhere along the way, he’d stopped caring. It had become more work and less fun. By the time it all snowballed, it was too late to stop.

And he felt as if the mark had faded to a mere smudge. To him, that smudge no longer mattered. Why even worry about it? Why even care?

Gold and platinum records lined his halls. Records he’d been a part of. But they didn’t mean a thing. They were just memories. And memories, sometimes, needed to be forgotten.

But damned if some memories didn’t refuse to be forgotten. And these refused to go away. No matter how hard he tried to drink them away, they were still there. Even the drugs had failed to get rid of them.

Sometimes, suicide sounded so good. He had to admit it, but damn if it didn’t take too much effort. He must be getting lazy. Out of shape. Everything seemed like too much effort.

Sitting at the piano, He smiled. He may be drunk, but he was still sober enough to play. He thought back. It had been the first instrument he had learned. It had been insisted upon by his mother. Not that his father had cared.

He began going through the scales. One by one, he pounded them out. Picking up speed, he slid into Chopsticks and slowly transitioned into Fur Elise. From there, he easily slid into a jazzy improv.

Too bad there was no one there to hear him. Maybe he was in the wrong place. Maybe he needed to go to The Rainbow Room. They’d enjoy his jazz improv.

He struck a chord and suddenly found himself drifting away. Time seemed to stop, then reverse. Space seemed to swallow him. Everything went black. The world around him vanished.

2

1967 . Monterey Pop Festival . Matt was ten. His mother and father were hippies. Free love. Free sex. Free drugs. It was a prelude of things to come.

He didn’t know if the man who called himself ‘dad’ was the real deal. Mama seemed less worried about being faithful than she was about spreading the love. Not that Matt cared. At this rate, as long as ‘dad’ didn’t find out, he could get away with almost anything.

But, then, ‘dad’ wasn’t concerned with faithfulness either. The marriage, if you could call it that, for all intents and purposes, was open and communal. Nightly orgies were commonplace. And Matt had grown accustomed to the events, though hated them more than anything.

Vietnam was in full swing and many soldiers were headed to a country that had not really had any importance before. It was a jungle. He had been curious enough to look it up. And every word that he didn’t know.

He also knew that it was becoming less popular with the people mama hung out with. The hippies hated war. And anything to do with it. They burned their draft cards and held protests. And those protests had become more prevalent.

He was thankful that mama had insisted on piano lessons at the earliest possible age. By five, he was good enough to compete with kids twice his age, and now he was considered good enough to be a concert pianist. His brilliant mind had picked up the theory and the execution of music rather quickly. And it was just natural that he began experimenting with teaming words with music in attempts to write his own songs.

Now, at ten, he was basically on his own. With mama and ‘dad’ off doing their thing, the free sex and free drug thing, he was left to his own devises. He started, at nine, with sitting in on jam sessions with whatever bands came around. Then, he moved on to the studio.

He was the youngest working musician, aside from Michael Jackson of the Jackson Five, in the industry. And he was the most in demand as well. Even those who’d taught him to play marveled at his skill and marketability. He was the latest and greatest pianist in L.A. and all of California.

He felt awkward, though. He related more to these adults than to children his own age. And out of what he earned, he paid for voice lessons. And songwriting lessons. He even paid to sit in and learn how to be a sound engineer and producer.

Over time, he would learn guitar, bass and drums. But for now, he was content with piano. And collaborating with the biggest names in music. The experience would be good for him.

He did everything from jazz to rock-n-roll. Everyone from Jefferson Airplane to Miles Davis asked for him by name. Even the waning rock-a-billy, folk, and surf-not to mention the now growing number of country-artists sought him out. But only if they were on the coast.

And L.A. was kind to him. So was San Francisco and the rest of California. But like all things and places, California would prove temporary. He would return, though. Long after he had left.

Although it wasn’t officially the Summer Of Love, it was a prelude of things to come. The hippie movement had begun in full force two years before. He had been eight. Mama had been seventeen and he’d had another ‘daddy’ then. But that ‘daddy’ had gone to war, and mama had gone to search for new adventures.

He had never known his grandparents. They had disowned mama when she became pregnant and so it had always been just him and mama. They had been on their own whether they wanted to or not. She had told him that his real daddy had also been a military man but he didn’t care. It seemed like the men in their lives always left.

Mama continued to carry papers stating that someone, two someones to be exact, had been killed in action. He assumed that had been the reason mama had gone looking for another man, but it didn’t matter. Men came and went. To mama, they were like a drug.

She could get high just off of being with them. The equivalent of an OD was when the men got violent. Or when mama and her current fling were fighting. Then, it was like what others called a bad acid trip. It was a real nightmare.

Mama had been beaten pretty badly only twice. Both men had been thrown out of the commune, but the scars still remained. The current ‘daddy’ had been one of those who’d come to mama’s rescue. But she’d slept with both.

She continued to do so. But she slept with others as well. Too many to keep track of. And Matt didn’t care.

The papers were why mama was against the war. He supposed that the loss of two loved ones would be enough, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about the war. He didn’t care that mama and her friends were against it. He only cared about his music.

Though he lent his high tenor to some songs as a backing vocalist, it was rare. Especially since he was ten and his voice nearly always cracked at the most inopportune time. So he remained entrenched in the life of a session player.

It was a life he loved. It wasn’t totally unlike that of the hippies, but it wasn’t rife with the peripherals. Or, at least, he didn’t see as much. Sure, there were drugs. But the sex and love parts were less abundant. And he could deal with the drugs.

He saw that all the time anyway. But the studio was his haven. So was the stage. He could leave his world behind, just for a little while, while he was there.

And most respected him enough to keep themselves under control. He was off limits to all, and drugs were kept to a minimum as well. They wanted their piano player to be clean and sober. They didn’t want him to follow their bad examples. At least not as young as he was.

3

1969 . Woodstock. Mama’s whole commune had picked up and went east. The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, known simply as the Woodstock Festival, was happening on Yasgur’s farm. It had gained enough interest among those who’d gone to the Monterey Pop Festival that they simply picked up and headed east. It was billed as three days of peace and music. It became legendary for its outward peace and music context, but there was always the sex and drugs. It was part of the counterculture.

Woodstock would also become synonymous with free love, free sex, and free drugs. And the hippie movement. But it should have been seen as much more. And much less.

Besides. The Grateful Dead was going to play there. And mama loved The Grateful Dead. Daddy had become someone new, the old one long gone. Possibly due to a bad trip on acid or an overdose on some other drug.

Of course, mama had given birth to Rainbow and Starshine-his new sisters-and now had less time for Matt...not that she’d had all that much to begin with. But he didn’t care. He had a second family in the studio and on stage.

He was twelve. He’d become a studio legend in two years. He could be heard on nearly every record put out. He was a written condition in contracts.

He had to laugh. Even the Jacksons had crossed his path briefly. He felt privileged to know everyone in the business. It made his resume look incredible.

He knew that many would never believe. But, then, they would be the ones who’d not grown up during the sixties. Or had the luck he’d had. But he’d answered when opportunity had knocked.

And he had never looked back. He hadn’t wanted to. Or needed to. Life was too short.

He was wise beyond his years. And well read. Worldly. The streets and the studio were his classrooms.

He made himself a promise to teach what he could to his sisters. Mama sure as hell wouldn’t. And the long line of ‘dads’ that were sure to come would only see them as possible sex objects like mama. And he would not allow that. Not while he had the means to prevent it.

But they were babies at the present. He could only watch over them as a protective big brother. With every passing day, he became more of a parent to them than their own mother.

During the festival, he