General Music Chat

Other guitarist in my band just told us he's leaving by the end of March. (The other band he's in is busier and guess he really prefers full-out electric rather than acoustic).

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, wore it out.

Good Luck

Because we're a 'working band', got a ton of CL and FB responses yesterday, but now it looks like the 3rd guy (keyboards/vocals) is hesitant about continuing. Waiting for him to make up his mind.

Sorry man. To me that was always the worst part of playing in bands. And they always seem to wait until you have something good going.

Talbot

And they always seem to wait until you have something good going.

Talbot

Yup. We've got 3 gigs booked (had 4, but the guy who's quitting couldn't make the 4th due to his anniversary). Place we played twice last year wants us for multiple times this year.

The keyboardist is up for continuing this, so now we go through the crap of trying to audition people.
I'm drawing the line, though, this time:
1) Cannot be in another band. I know some folk, like PlanetGuy, can handle this, but when scheduling gigs and rehearsals, its real tough - unless none of the band members have regular jobs, of course!
2) Must have examples of work online/shareable. In this day and age there's no excuse for not having at least some phone-made youtubes.

I'm waiting to hear back from the first guy I know who contacted me, I know he can play and has gear (he owned the music store where we used to have our songwriting meetings), but I think he plays in another band.
2 guys who left replies on FB posts (rather than messaging me) I KNOW are not good fits. personality/style-wise. It's hard to discourage these people 'nicely'.
Auditions always suck - for all parties - but I'll at least give this a try, assuming I can find good possibilities, otherwise by the end of March 'Trilogy' will be no more.

Oh, one add: our of all the messages I got (CL + FB), only two people bothered to include links to their music. Most replies were 'got a song list?' 'what kind of music?' or 'is it only acoustic?'

First meetings are always hard Mike, when I use to audition all the time I really didn't want the band to know anymore about me then I did about them. I use to carry one guitar, one amp, and one pedal to the audition, so that I could walk out with all my stuff at one time, and a few times I had to.

I'm w you, on the pre-audition criteria. In this day and age if a person or a band has no video or even audio avail to share... Thanks, but no thanks.

Mere Mortals, the bluegrass/jazzgrass band I play with lost our bassplayer about a yr ago. Sarah, our fiddler and I have been passing the ol' doghouse back and forth between us in the meantime while we've been auditioning bassplayers.

We've had several out, but haven't found one that can cut it. At this point we'd really like to find a bassplayer who doubles on something else because neither her nor I want to give up playing bass! Yeah, like THAT's not TOO tall an order to fill!

Mike, I'd tell you to move out here to play bass for us, but Jook keeps telling me HE wants the gig now that he's playing upright!

First round of replies have gone out, will see what it brings in. One guy - nothing on line (sorry, you just disqualified yourself); many others have realized this is not what they want or (vice-versa) with quick replies. Anyone already playing other regular gigs (or with bands) is out, too. One guy was a 'regular on-call guitarist' with 6 bands - umm, no, when would you have time for rehearsals and gigs?
There are too many wannabes out there for me to waste more time auditioning them if they don't have anything they can provide online. Been there, done that - too many times in the last 5 years.
I'll give it a month of effort, if we haven't found a good prospect by then, then Trilogy's last gig will be March 31.

Say what?? P-Guy--the guy who knows so many local musicians that he can gig every night of the week--is having problems finding a bass player??

Next thing ya know, the Patriots will lose the Super Bowl. Oh, wait...

oh, no problem FINDING a bass player...it's finding the RIGHT bassplayer. hey, i know, DP.....you can move to Mid MO to play KEYBOARD bass w Mere Mortals!

I can hear the "grassholes" bitching now ..."HEY! That's NOT how Bill Monroe did it!"

Sorry man. To me that was always the worst part of playing in bands. And they always seem to wait until you have something good going.

Talbot

ain't that the truth?

That is exactly why I had to go solo 18 years ago. Hated it at the time, but no other options than to continue failing at the most critical time, as had been done the 15 years previous.


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15-20 replies so far, either form CL or FB. How many included more than a 'got a set list?' or 'what kind of music?' in their replies? 2. I've got a form letter reply I cut-and-paste back to all. Already heard back from a couple of them that didn't have any music online whatsoever - BYE BYE!

15-20 replies so far, either form CL or FB. How many included more than a 'got a set list?' or 'what kind of music?' in their replies? 2. I've got a form letter reply I cut-and-paste back to all. Already heard back from a couple of them that didn't have any music online whatsoever - BYE BYE!

Mike, you might want to consider that someone that may want to play in your group has legitimate questions too. One thing I have learned is you MUST be flexible to be successful and happy playing in a band and that goes for you too. I have asked those very same questions before sending my info/bio/video while answering an ad. You may be passing over a perfect fit by not answering those questions. It really just takes 1 minute to reply with answers.

Jeff - when I reply, I send a song list, info on our upcoming gigs (not names of places, of course), and include links to our youtube and facebook pages.

BTW, whenever I've replied to others' ads, I've always included details like links to my online pages, my working song list, what I'm looking for - why waste the other person's time by not giving good information to start with?