Casey and I continued working together for several days. I ended up crashing at his place, totally neglecting my own place. It was amazing how quickly I’d grown accustomed to living out of a suitcase. I had all my clothes and toiletries in the suitcase, and my bag had all my fun stuff, like books and Sudoku.
I tried getting Casey into Sudoku, but he just wasn’t feeling it. Yet the man could sit there and work one of those Sunday crosswords like nobody’s business.
We figured out the melodies for our songs and let our bandmates know we would have some work cut out for us once we got back into the studio.
Early on the Saturday before we were set to record in Nashville, I woke up to my phone ringing.
“Mmm?”
“Nick? It’s Omar.”
“Oh, hey. What’s up?”
He laughed. “You sound like you’re just
