General Music Chat

After a month or so of inaction musically another good paying gig fell in my lap and all my guys can do it!

So after working in the yard a lot, and riding my dirt bike, time to get the callous's back on my left hand and prep for another gig.

We had a few good offers the last couple of monthes, but one player or another couldnt do them, so it was getting a little frustrating on the gig side of things, but something always seems to fall in our laps these days, plus it looks like about 3 gigs for this fall.

The only bump in the road may be our bass player, he plays in another group and they have some sort of production deal going with a producer all of the sudden, fleshing out songs, and possibly hitting the road for a tour in the fall, so who knows. He talked to me about it. I just said go for it man, you know as long as all 4 of us are alive, we can always get back to gigging, I wouldnt want our ole cover band to hold you back on that front.

So time will tell

Good Luck JW. I know how having band members with other projects can become difficult with scheduling. The best approach I found to keep everyone in sync is constant contact and follow ups. lol Thank god for google calendar where reminder emails can be sent out automatically. Have fun at the gig bro!

After a month or so of inaction musically another good paying gig fell in my lap and all my guys can do it!

So after working in the yard a lot, and riding my dirt bike, time to get the callous's back on my left hand and prep for another gig.

We had a few good offers the last couple of monthes, but one player or another couldnt do them, so it was getting a little frustrating on the gig side of things, but something always seems to fall in our laps these days, plus it looks like about 3 gigs for this fall.

The only bump in the road may be our bass player, he plays in another group and they have some sort of production deal going with a producer all of the sudden, fleshing out songs, and possibly hitting the road for a tour in the fall, so who knows. He talked to me about it. I just said go for it man, you know as long as all 4 of us are alive, we can always get back to gigging, I wouldnt want our ole cover band to hold you back on that front.

So time will tell

You know whats cool about that? AT least he's (The bassist) talked to you about it and didn't do a flakemeister on you about it. That's what real buds are are about and that's what makes for great bands...

Have you looked to other bass players for the Gig?

No Paper, in my mind I hope our bassist makes it big time, Im not so emotionally invested into the band that I worry about my band, weve been together off and on for close to 25 years now, weve all taken breaks and we all seem to come back to it.

He is in for the June 30th gig, cause we fully discussed that, they are in preproduction on structuring songs with this guy.

Toward fall we will see, I have once or twice gotten people to fill in for something, but the only problem is its always up to me as guitarist to get them up to speed on things, one time I did it, the guy just showed up at my house, and we went to a gig, and it went great, of course this guy played almost 5 nights a week, he got paid as well as any gig he did, he took a 40 song list and knew most of them up front.

Another time I enlisted a drummer that I knew, and it was royal cluster f**k to say the least, we practiced a couple of times which went ok, but we do the gig and this guys just couldnt perform under pressure and we had to compromise what we do way more than is acceptable to me, just to get thru the gig.

Just for the record, the guys I play with, we have great communication between us, we are friends outside of the band and none of us would want to hold another person back if something better came along, or even something they just want to do. But when we all talk about it, we all agree that no other situation any of us has been in has the chemistry of Aint Yo Mama. Ive done a lot of things but nothing ever came close, and thru the years this band has generated a lot of money to the people in it.

I left one time, and had a guy replace me for a couple of years, I actually coached him on his guitar parts and played a few extra gigs to make sure he could handle it. He is kinda business oriented like I am, and in conversations with him, we figure the band over a 25 year period has earned somewhere in the $300,000 range over that time period, of course it came 100 to 300 a night to individuals in the band.

One of our old time fans has told me, you guys will keep getting back together and playing until one of the four of you die, and Im at a point in life that I believe that to be true.

Santos I keep a calendat updated with things guys in the band have going on, so if someone does contact me for a gig I can just look at it and say yes or no, as far as availibilty.

It is kinda funny thou, sometimes we might not even talk for 2-3 monthes at a time, but everyone in it is in for the gigs I book.

Unlike a lot of people I know who are just gig whores, want to play anything and everywhere, we are kinda at a point too, to where we dont want to play as much as we used too, which kind of enhances our image, in that I have people all the time contact me to see when we will play, they know we dont do it that much, so it almost guarantees us to have a decent crowd.

While I have my mind on band stuff I will share some other things that have happened with our band over the years.

Ive networked our band outside of musical circles, of course I ask people I know who play to come to gigs and sit in, but a funny thing has started to happen. The church I go too, a bunch of people from that have started coming to see us, this is people in the 40-60 age group, of which we are a part of, so they love to see us so they can relive some of thier old favortie songs of thier youth.

My son shot on a trap team for a few years in HS, and the coach and I started talking about KISS of all groups, he loves them, so I said you need to come to one of my bands gigs, and we will play some KISS songs for you. He didnt even know I was in a band, so finally he and his wife and son came to see us, and they love what we do, they contact me all the time about shows we are doing, plus they have friends that will come and most importantly, they have friends willing to spend money on seeing us.

My son and I raced motorcycles for a number of years, and it became known in those circles that I play music, and my drummer also races dirt bikes, so some of those people like to come out with thier wives and see us play. One of those loves old AC/DC so when they show up we do the old Bon Scott AC/DC stuff, and he has turned into a big promoter of our band.

I guess what Im getting at, is dont overlook any associations you have in your life to promote your band too, in my case I never thought a bunch of people would come from my church, but they love it as a night out with thier husbands and wives, kinda crazy when we do a sat night gig, and the next morning i go to church knowing half the people there have hangovers and crickets in thier ears, because of my band! LOL!

And at this point also, we arent at the mercy of clubs owners anymore, the June gig, we are being paid by the people coming, and they are securing the venue, takes a lot of heat off your back to producing a crowd.

And last but not least, the reason I feel we are able to do this is because we listen to what the people that come see us say they want to hear, do I enjoy playing Sweet Home Alabama for the millioneth time, hell yea, cause I know they will be up and dancing and we are getting paid what we want to get paid!

Have a great show John! We're having our new CD release party this Saturday at Corktown Tavern in Detroit, and then on June 16 at Simon's for our downriver peeps. Send me your address on Facebook and I'll send you one.

JW: I guess what Im getting at, is dont overlook any associations you have in your life to promote your band too, in my case I never thought a bunch of people would come from my church, but they love it as a night out with thier husbands and wives, kinda crazy when we do a sat night gig, and the next morning i go to church knowing half the people there have hangovers and crickets in thier ears, because of my band! LOL!

Xactly! I just learned a very hard lesson a few weeks ago, related to this idea... As you know, i go shootin my mouth off online. This time it was on a local Op-Ed column from our news paper , that is tied into FB... I said some things...and got my ass handed back to me by some very important /key folk in town...(Key because they support musical efforts and are very top caliber amongst each other) Ha ha! Needless to say, it took a virtual team of surgeons to remove my foot from my mouth Ha ha!... Only now, have they acquiesced and decided to forgive me...Whew!
So yeah What you say is dead nuts on... and I'll just add that its really critical not to alienate people... (I'm learning!

Jimmy Cool Beans on the release party, wish I could get up your way for one of your gigs, but I have also gotten back into dirt bike racing which is a bigger committment from me than music, just have to get in shape!

I will send you an address, thanks!

Paper, Ive been involved in music for a very long time in my area, and the active people in music is a very small, tight group, you dont want to piss on one of them, no matter what you think of them, I learned it the hard way 25 years ago, a lesson I wont forget. To me playing music is a gift that I enjoy, and strangely others seem to enjoy it too, Im not taking any of that for granted, life is too short man, dont burn any of it!

Keep on, keeping on JW !!