Band is still surviving in this economy, how about you guys?
This has been a real tough economy up where I live. Patronage in the clubs is not very good. Add to that the smoking ban inside the bars and the smokies outside the bar waiting to pounce on the patrons as they leave the parking lot. More than half of the area's venues have closed over the past year. About the same number (half) of the local bands have hung it up too.
Well, my little band is still booking gigs and we currently have gigs June, July and August. So we still have some life in our project throughout the summer. Then the college kids come back and we hope things will pick up more in the fall. We currently have our best lineup ever, and I hope we have a good run with this group. I still play every gig like it might be my last, because, you just never know in this business if your last gig was indeed your \"last\" gig.
Just wondering if anyone around here in the forums is seeing any improvement in the outlook for the small time, weekend gigging bands where you live? Live music used to be lots more popular 10 years ago in my area. And I wonder if live music can survive for the next 10 years. Times change, but I wonder if live music will ever come back?
For those of you still gigging, how do you keep up the interest in your band and/or live music? We are once again planning on a website, or rather webpage on FaceBook or MySpace to social network with friends and fans. But that is something that just never gets off the ground. Fortunately, my band is good enough that we get gigs without having a website, demos, etc.... But we do have good word of mouth and that is what keeps us going.
I'd like to hear from you guys on how it's going and what your band is doing to survive in these times. Or maybe you are working on a startup band and have some good ideas you would like to share. Maybe you just like to play guitar at home, but have some ideas to share about this subject. Would love to hear all your comments. Best wishes.
Well, my little band is still booking gigs and we currently have gigs June, July and August. So we still have some life in our project throughout the summer. Then the college kids come back and we hope things will pick up more in the fall. We currently have our best lineup ever, and I hope we have a good run with this group. I still play every gig like it might be my last, because, you just never know in this business if your last gig was indeed your \"last\" gig.
Just wondering if anyone around here in the forums is seeing any improvement in the outlook for the small time, weekend gigging bands where you live? Live music used to be lots more popular 10 years ago in my area. And I wonder if live music can survive for the next 10 years. Times change, but I wonder if live music will ever come back?
For those of you still gigging, how do you keep up the interest in your band and/or live music? We are once again planning on a website, or rather webpage on FaceBook or MySpace to social network with friends and fans. But that is something that just never gets off the ground. Fortunately, my band is good enough that we get gigs without having a website, demos, etc.... But we do have good word of mouth and that is what keeps us going.
I'd like to hear from you guys on how it's going and what your band is doing to survive in these times. Or maybe you are working on a startup band and have some good ideas you would like to share. Maybe you just like to play guitar at home, but have some ideas to share about this subject. Would love to hear all your comments. Best wishes.
Comments
Facebook and Myspace can work, but not so much for cover bands. It's still best if you get on the clubs to advertise and or your own proactive postings of fliers.
Consider the age of your patronage.... they have kids events, school things, sports, and other recreation especially in the summer months.
Keep at it !
Personally, I don't \"waste\" my time on Facebook or Myspace. I guess I'm not a social butterfly. I know those sites are popular with many of the younger crowd.
Just got an email newsletter from an out of town band that comes to our town about once a year. They now have about 10 different links to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc.... It must be a full time job just updating all those pages. Does anyone have time to practice anymore?
Understand the situation with cover bands. Don't kid myself in thinking that a cover band is ever going to get much of a loyal following. But in a small community like ours, about 12,000 people, you can try to be original and play for free, or maybe get a gig a few times a year. Most bands around here that try to play original music don't make it beyond their first free gig. So, I'm just happy covering some great music written by others and getting paid for my efforts.
We do have one member of our band who does have a side project of originals he has written. But he ends up playing for free or tips to promote his original work and depends on the cover band work to pay his bills. I've also offered up my services to any of the guys if they want to write some original material and want to try to make a go with that under a new band name. But the cover band is still the working band where we all get paid.
It's kinda sad, I know, but playing out all the time keeps me active.
As far as \"making it in this economy\", well... we at least break even each show. One of my bands (the cover band) is currently in the hole financially - not individual members, but the management - and that's because we started just earlier this year and made some up-front investments in promotion. We expect to be in the black by end of summer.
In terms of venues - well, we're in the DC/NoVA/Baltimore area, and I've not heard of many places closing down. Yeah, sometimes the bars/clubs are half-empty, but as long as the bar makes good money and/or we collect at the door, it doesn't affect us, and they usually invite us back.
Around here it seems that original music is dead, and the only way to get into a band is to already have a library of 60+ tunes under your belt, or be willing to do a \"tribute\" band (/ugh, /facePalm, /sadFace).
It's even more difficult if you're over 35 (I'm 45, but don't look it, or so I'm told
I've spent the last year trying to either get something worthwhile built from scratch, or to find an existing band that just needs to plug in a new/additional guitarist for whatever reasons, and I've all but lost hope.
I've stopped actively advertising, but still look around on a daily basis to see who's out there and what they're looking for, but for now I'm just going back to writing/recording/publishing my own stuff.
My hat is off to you guys who are a) in active bands, and b) are working the scene successfully, especially if you're doing original music with only the occasional cover. I haven't reached the stage yet where I'm willing to (or interested in) playing someone else's music just to get paid. I make good enough scratch at my day gig, so music is purely \"for fun\" for me. I don't find playing someone else's music all that fun. Not that I can't. I can assure you I can rip it up even with the youngest cats in these parts. I just prefer playing stuff that I poured my soul into. I want to deliver MY message, and not rehash \"Mustang Sally\" for the bajillionth time.
A year ago when I found the old Leviathan VHS tape and converted it to digital to post on Facebook, my old drummer found me. It inspired him to dust off his kit after 17 years away from playing. He wanted to play NOW, and for $$, so he went the cover band route and is still playing to this day with a semi successful local gig (EthoEvolution). They could actually use another player (guitar & keys, which I'm proficient with both), but I just can't bring myself to go down that path.
I actually find that surprising. For the most part, I see bands with guitarists already in them, looking for other musicians. It's more difficult to find a guitarist, than say, a drummer or bassist.
I put out an ad for myself about a year ago, just out of curiosity to see what kind of responses I get - my bass player was doing the same thing, so I figured I'd try it. In a nutshell, the ad said: \"Guitarist, 15 years of experience live and in the studio, lead/rhythm, covers and originals, just about any genre, read music/know theory, looking for projects\". I got a gazillion responses - many useless, but definitely shows that guitarists are in demand. You should move to DC, EJ
Man, it's just the opposite around here. Guitarists in this town are a dime-a-dozen. It's everything else that's hard to find.
It might actually be close to that in your area. The reason you see so many bands with \"guitarists already in them\" is because there are so many of \"them\" (guitarists), and not enough of everything else, so \"they\" gave up and started their own thing from scratch and are now going through the same grind we guitarists go through here in Dallas when trying to fill out the other spots.
Moving to DC was an option recently when the wife thought she was getting transferred. Never know what the cards have in store for us, so we might just be neighbors in the future.
I don't know if that's comparable to y'all's experience (what your pay requirements are per night), but that's certainly something I can live with.
My ego trip days are way behind me and I could never play like Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen. I am perfectly happy providing the foundation for the group, singing backup vocals, and now I even sing lead vocal on a couple of songs. And when I'm firing on all 4 strings, the drummer and I can keep everything going without any guitarists playing at all. That's a great feeling. Over the past few years I have grown more in appreciation of what the bass guitar brings to the band. As I get better, I enjoy playing bass more and more.
At home, I still play and sing with my guitars. But on stage, I'm perfectly happy playing bass and keeping it real for the guys. Playing bass has definitely made me a better musician, and that is something I would not have considered even 3 or 4 years ago.
Drummers are in real shortage around here. Our drummer also plays in two other bands and fills in for others if he is available. If you play drums around here, you could probably make some decent hobby money from the gigs you pick up.
I bought myself a portable drum pad kit, the Yamaha YDD-60, thinking I would bring it to some open mic nights to jam with guys who don't have a drummer. But I have not had the time to sit down and really learn how to play the drums where I feel confident enough to hit the road with the drum pad. A drummer friend of mine played an older version of the Yamaha YDD-60 at a jam and he made it sound pretty good. Well, it was a whole lot better than no drums, but it can't compare to a full kit I'm sure. On the other hand, with the drum pad, he was able to dial down the volume and mix well with the acoustic jam that was going on. So that was a plus.
As far as original music, you can still find it around here, but usually at coffeeshop type venues. The artists typically don't get paid anything than what they take in tips - and the tips here are not good. So local musicians work in cover bands to support their original efforts. Some cover bands try to work in a few originals and that meets with mixed results. I think people who go to hear original music are more open to new ideas than people who just want to hear good cover songs.
Anyway, I've been told by more experieced musicians around here that if you really want to do originals, you need to get into a bigger population where you have a chance in finding your niche. Here, you are either a Country or Rock cover band if you want to gig and get paid.
It's interesting to hear the stories from you other guys in bigger cities. Sounds like it's a different scene from one town to the next.
Interesting. I do appreciate what bass guitar brings to the group, but personally I couldn't do it as a permanent thing. My original band recently went through about one month period of no bassist, but we still had gigs scheduled. So... instead of lead guitar I was playing bass lines with an octave-down effect. Most boring thing I've ever done in my life - it is beyond me how good bass players make it look like so much fun. But on some songs, it was cool to switch off from bass to lead and then back; in one song, there's actually a bass/guitar solo tradeoff, so I was essentially dueling with myself.
Thankfully we found a permanent replacement - I can wail away once again 8)
I'm now wishing I'd just hung on to that bass rig.
That whole hindsight thing really sucks sometimes.
I may sell some of my guitar rig (HD147 and some effects that I don't need anymore) and reinvest in another bass setup. Might get me back out playing again anyway.
I own a really terrific bass - a Peavey Cirrus - and while I really love playing git'r, I'd gladly play bass if it meant finding a group, getting gigs, and the attention of adoring groupies (do groupies pay any attention to bass players? :P ).
Of course, it would depend on the material...there's stuff that's really fun to play bass on, and stuff that's really boring.
I know a coupla guys who are holy terrors on a bass, including one guy who's an \"improv king\", and one guy who's in a RUSH tribute band and has been playing Geddy riffs since he was about 14. He's a jaw-dropper. If I could play git'r 1/3 as good as these guys play bass, I'd be headlining arenas and filtering Shania's calls to me.
This is my bass player (from the cover band):
http://www.reverbnation.com/juiceonbass
Check out Aeroplane, Fly Away, or even the 44lbs song (sick bass solo in the middle). Play like that, and you'll get plenty of groupies.
All it requires is a large, foil wrapped cucumber. Really.
When I first switched from guitar to bass, I played the bass much like my guitar, or at least with the same idea of how it should be played. But as I played bass more, I started to think and play like a bass player. I've still got a lot to learn, but I know I have made lots of improvement over the past three years.
Do I miss the guitar? Absolutely. If we were doing a typical jam tune where the bass is locked into a groove with the drummer and you don't break out of the pattern, yeah, it can get repetitive and not so exciting to play. Especially when you hear yet another guitar player take yet another 8 bar solo.... But sometimes, the lead players just don't have much to say and that is really what is bringing out the boredom in the song. Anyway, over time, we replaced all our jam tunes.
Most of the songs we now play on our setlist are both more challenging for me on bass, and also more fun to play. Some of the most current songs the guys have picked out are actually more fun on bass than the guitar parts. One song we are working on the guitars are just chunking away on power chords while it's the bass that carries the melody line in the song! Wow, you gotta love that as a bass player.
And although I personally don't have any groupies from my bass playing, I can tell you we play a number of songs where the guitars start and the bass comes in later. You don't see people getting off their seat until they hear the bass kick in and move their booty.
Also, the better I get at playing bass, the more I find myself simplifing the bass line to let the lead and rhythm guitarists shine. I just look for whatever makes the song sound better, and sometimes less is more. Actually, on bass, often times less is more. It's more of a challenge to play a simple part very well than play an active part half-cocked, if you know where I'm coming from.
Maybe us bass players make it look like so much fun because we are actually listening to the other bandmembers and working hard to support them on their solo efforts. When when my guitarists are playing well, it's just fun to be on stage and supporting them. It's only Rock 'n' Roll and if you can't have fun playing that, then it's time to get off the stage.
Yeah, what was the main topic? How is your band surviving these days? Well, it's fun to hear how musicians move in and out of positions in bands and what we all do to stay on stage. It's hard to keep a thread on topic very long, and I don't even let it bother me anymore if the thread takes a turn off-road.
Would still love to hear more from you guys on what keeps you going. Haven't heard anything from the guys playing in church groups. I'd love to hear what keeps them going - besides their faith. I know they must have good stories to tell as church musicians.
Ha ha ha .. everything I know and hear about worship bands... Is musically musicianly it is the same as any band cept they get the added bonus of church politics thrown in! :roll: X amount of members/pastors/ leaders etc complaining, it's to loud, don't have the expense for that new pa or just won't provide it old ones working etc etc ... Drums are to sparkly make me feel like I'm in a bar! ha ha Then also my understanding is alot of PWB members feel for whatever reason they don't have to pratice or show up for practice ...
So ya that's a good one gtaus .. What's happening with you PWB dudes/dudettes!! ..
I was puzzled once when I saw a top end Roland VS kit with mesh heads with an acrylic shield surround and they had regular amps and an Ampeg SVT bass rig with an 8X10. Really scratched my head on this one when the guys said \"yeah, people said we're loud so we got a drum shield\" :roll:
But I was only one voice in 60 in the choir. I'm just wondering what kind of challenges some of the guys here playing in church bands deal with. At my local church, it's pretty much just an organist playing the songs and the small congregation singing. That's OK with me. But I'm curious to hear something about playing in a church band and how it goes for those guys. I don't imagine there are too many stories about the church drummer showing up drunk for the service gig....but they must have some stories to share.