Practice Pays Off
One of my recent posts was on the Importance Of Practice because I recently had to step up my game and learn some new songs that were just beyond my skill level. I hit the woodshed for about 2 weeks and came out a better player. That concentrated effort felt good knowing that I had broken through some personal barriers and plateaus.
The real payoff came to us last night. We played an out of town gig and blew the patrons and management away. We had added 6 new songs to our set lists, first time ever playing them live, and we just nailed them. I'm not just patting myself on the back here. My brother-in-law, a former studio musician in his earlier days, was in the audience last night watching my band and he told me that we just blew him away with our new songs. He especially like our vocals as we now have the entire band singing backup harmonies as required. We are not CSN&Y, but we have come a long way in our vocals and we know it. We practice it. And it is really paying off.
During one of our set breaks, I overhead the club manager talking to the owner. The manager of the club wanted to know if they had a signed contract with a band from Minneapolis they hired for their annual town celebration because she said that our band just blew them away. To put it in perspective, we live in a small town of about 13,000 and Minneapolis is about 5 hours drive away. So I'm sure that any band coming north to our area from Minneapolis is going to require alot of money just for travel, lodging and time spent on the road. To be compared to touring bands is great. To hear that us local boys blow them away, well, that's just sweet.
It just goes to show that you can live out in the middle of nowhere and still, with the right group of guys and lots of dedicated practice, you can make some good music and put on a good show. The management wants to book us again in June, but that might be difficult because we only have one weekend night free. So I guess we will have to compare books and see what works. We had lots of fun at the club last night and it would be great to go back there maybe every 2-3 months for a gig.
It's really exciting to have worked so hard for weeks on learning these new songs and to see the rewards our first night out with the new material. Like my lead singer said to me after the show, it's just a great feeling to know that our new material is pushing our former \"A\" lists songs down to the \"B\" list and our \"B\" list songs are being pushed off the set list entirely.
For any guys out there just starting up a band, all I can say is to give it your best shot, pour yourself into concentrated practice at home and with the band, and then get those paying live gigs where you can have fun. And treat every gig like it might be your last one. A couple friends of mine in another successful local band just went through a band break-up a day or two before a two night weekend gig. Their lead singer/lead player up and quit on them without any advance notice. So they had to call in our lead guitarist to fill, rethink their entire set lists, and reform and rename their new band. They pulled it off, largely because our lead guitarist was able to carry them for the weekend, but it just goes to show that any gig might be your last one. So give it all you got. Rock on!
The real payoff came to us last night. We played an out of town gig and blew the patrons and management away. We had added 6 new songs to our set lists, first time ever playing them live, and we just nailed them. I'm not just patting myself on the back here. My brother-in-law, a former studio musician in his earlier days, was in the audience last night watching my band and he told me that we just blew him away with our new songs. He especially like our vocals as we now have the entire band singing backup harmonies as required. We are not CSN&Y, but we have come a long way in our vocals and we know it. We practice it. And it is really paying off.
During one of our set breaks, I overhead the club manager talking to the owner. The manager of the club wanted to know if they had a signed contract with a band from Minneapolis they hired for their annual town celebration because she said that our band just blew them away. To put it in perspective, we live in a small town of about 13,000 and Minneapolis is about 5 hours drive away. So I'm sure that any band coming north to our area from Minneapolis is going to require alot of money just for travel, lodging and time spent on the road. To be compared to touring bands is great. To hear that us local boys blow them away, well, that's just sweet.
It just goes to show that you can live out in the middle of nowhere and still, with the right group of guys and lots of dedicated practice, you can make some good music and put on a good show. The management wants to book us again in June, but that might be difficult because we only have one weekend night free. So I guess we will have to compare books and see what works. We had lots of fun at the club last night and it would be great to go back there maybe every 2-3 months for a gig.
It's really exciting to have worked so hard for weeks on learning these new songs and to see the rewards our first night out with the new material. Like my lead singer said to me after the show, it's just a great feeling to know that our new material is pushing our former \"A\" lists songs down to the \"B\" list and our \"B\" list songs are being pushed off the set list entirely.
For any guys out there just starting up a band, all I can say is to give it your best shot, pour yourself into concentrated practice at home and with the band, and then get those paying live gigs where you can have fun. And treat every gig like it might be your last one. A couple friends of mine in another successful local band just went through a band break-up a day or two before a two night weekend gig. Their lead singer/lead player up and quit on them without any advance notice. So they had to call in our lead guitarist to fill, rethink their entire set lists, and reform and rename their new band. They pulled it off, largely because our lead guitarist was able to carry them for the weekend, but it just goes to show that any gig might be your last one. So give it all you got. Rock on!
Comments
Particularly inspiring for me, as I live about 60 miles outside of the middle of nowhere. :?
We just took on a new drummer over the last few months and have been extremely active getting him caught up. After 75 songs he learned, we just added another 15 for this next few gigs where we have standard rotation. At first he was upset, but realized you can't play the same things over and over.
We base our new material on feedback and requests in our mailing lists. We're always learning new and old material and for those instances when you see a pattern of songs working on the floor, you don't want to switch up and lose that momentum.
The one thing I always told myself is...\"the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. It definitly sounds like you guys put alot into it. I know you did from your last post on this subject.
Speaking of set lists, when one of my bands was first starting out-I went to the owner of the bar we frequented(is that a word?) and asked him what songs were being played on the juke box the most. The way I did it then was I took the top ten songs and what those bands were-wrote down couple other big hits that they might of had. That got things started. What also really helpe us get our first 50 songs was--the local radio station was counting down the top 101 songs of all time which was compiled by requests, people sending in their top 5 of all time and maybe couple other factors...so I wrote them all down and we all(band members) picked from that list as well. It was very successful, because the first time we played-everybody seem to love the songs we were doing--well...think about it, they probably picked them.
Anyway, WTG gtaus--Great to hear stories like that.
So I understand the importance of picking songs people already love. We used to have one band member that thought if we played an obscure song really well that people would love it. Or if we played a country or folk tune really well that the Rock 'n Roll crowd would dig it. Never happened that way for us. We used to just nail some of those songs and get absolutely no response from the crowd. Sure, some people enjoyed the music but not enough to pay the bills.
Now we look for songs that people love to hear. I think most experienced musicians know that people will forgive a modest performance on one of their favorite songs before they will ever thank you for an excellent performance of some song or genre they don't like. The most requested song remains \"Mustang Sally\" which we only play on request. And usually we get the person who requests the song to come up and sing it for us and we back him/her. That's more fun for them and the band.
Anyway, there are lots of great songs for us to cover and we are trying out a bunch of new songs for us. Fortunately, they are going over well. And that is what keeps things fresh for the band.