General Music Chat

I have been doing a monday night duo acoustic sort of thing and monday night after the gig the lady said she wanted to go back solo.

Ive only lost a couple of playing slots before so this shocked me.

This all started this past summer. This lady hosts an open mic deal on Thursdays and I stumbled in there one night and wound up playing all night. She got in touch and pursued me to the point that I told her I would love to do a monday night deal and would commit for an extended period. She calls me back and says we are set. Weve played a few weeks and I thought things were fine.

She at some gigs would go out with her friends and smoke dope while I was playing. A few weeks ago at one of our gigs she told me that she smoked and that she thought pot should be legal. SOunds like another thread I got into on here recently. Well she and her friend had been out and came back into the room. I was in a kidding mood. I told the crowd that I didnt do drugs, or let me rephrase that I quit buying drugs, so in leu of tips just put your drugs in the tip jar. The crazy thing is I dont do drugs, Im way past that. The crowd is laughing at what I said and I meant it as a joke. I was wrong. Some of her family members who were there took it that I was some sort of dope fiend. Ive been clean for 18 yrs. She calls me the next day and goes off on me for saying that and Im like Dorothy, I was kidding with you cause you had just smoked some.

Anyway when she cut me lose she said she had to dissasociate with me because of my lifestyle. I said isnt that like calling the kettle black or some double standard, that you go and get stoned at a gig and I make a joke and now Im the one thats the dopehead. Wow

I know I shouldnt have said what I said in retrospect, but you cant take things back.

Our gigs had evolved anyway. At first I just kinda played along with her. Then she said I want you to bring music in. She wanted me to play on all her stuff, but then she wouldnt take the time to learn some of the stuff I was doing. Now I do play some stuff over her head, but a lot of what I did was for the crowd, Louie Louie, Wild Thing she can play well enough to learn something. Cause I did my homework, plus covered her ass.

This last monday night she was moody and wouldnt play so i wound up playing the whole night basically solo. Then at the end she says Im no longer needed.

In looking back on the whole deal. She got the monday for me, I think the prudent thing for her may have been to step aside and let me have the gig. I dont know Im curious what people think on this.

I guess the moral of this is watch what you say on a microphone, it can come back to haunt you.

The place we play at has offered me tuesdays and there is another place down the road that odesnt have anything going on mondays I may move on down the road and start a solo thing. Well Im pretty sure I will.

Sorry to hear about this JW. I was thinking the same about forums too for a couple of weeks. Hope you get it sorted out soon.

Best.

Chippy.

I guess the moral of this is watch what you say on a microphone, it can come back to haunt you.

Consider it a learning experience and press on. Sounds to me like it was more than that, I know what a good musician you are, you were probably upstaging her, stealing her thunder, and she couldn't handle it. even if that was not your intent, and it probably wasn't, most musicians just can't handle someone else taking the spotlight for a bit. I'm glad I'm over that, I'm sick of being front man and lead singer, I always want someone else to be front man and just let me play guitar. I'll get my time in the limelight, every time I take a solo so I don't care.

Unfortunately too many musicians don't see it that way, they want to be the star of the show and the only one. It's called EGO TRIP...I know cuz I used to have one...had to carry it around in a dump truck.

Maybe she'll learn one day and maybe she won't, but if you got more gigs out of it, grab it and run with it. Don't worry about her, she's just like the guy I played with (similar situation, 2 piece) years ago. Decided he didn't want to sing one night, and he was the country singer, so I had to try and carry it. with a band we had just put together for that one night show, mever played tgether before and it should have worked really well, all 4 were excellent musicians capable of pulling it off.

I screwed up and decided to play "City Of New Orleans", which Willie Nelson had just re-recorded and got a big hit on the country stations. Bass player didn't know it and got lost, we screwed up bad...got fired after the 2nd set.

A couple of weeks later I used my last 5 bucks for gas to get to a regular gig with just the 2 piece, soon as I got there he told me I could go home - and I quote - "nobody wants to see you". At least 8 people had already come up and shook my hand, told me how glad they were to see me and couldn't wait to hear me play sax.

He was -
1. Pissed because I messed up the show a few weeks earlier, which was actually his fault because he wouldn't sing and barely played. I wouldn't let him send the drummer home so he could bring in a drinking buddy at the last minute, the planned drummer had already driven 45 miles to get there, no way I was sending him home.

2. EGO TRIP...I was upstaging him every night, when we would get off stage people would be crowding around me to shake my hand and tell me how good we sounded (even on nioghts when I knew we sucked) and 3 or 4 people would be talking to him, usually his drinking buddies.

I only got upset because I was suddenly an hour from home with no gas to get back and no money to put in the tank, he could have told me that afternoon when I called to tell him I was on my way to the gig.

At least you weren't put in a position like that, I got lucky and the bar owner gave me $20 to get home, plus he told me he had been paying the guy $50 a night for me. I was getting $25 of it..

I think you're better off without her. although I do like a good left handed one now and then, I never touch it onstage, and don't like it when other band members do, it does not improve your playing ability. Booze is worse, it makes you play really sloppy. But to get upset over the comment you made when she was actually the one doing it, that's simply two faced and a definite double standard.

Grab the new gigs and move on, leave her standing in your dust.

One thing, and I'm sure you know this already and probably won't even consider it...don't make derogatory comments about her to the local musicians or club owners, it can only bite you in the a$$ later on. You know that already though I'm pretty sure...

I think that you should do the solo thing at both places. Like what Paleo says, don't say anything about her to anyone.

Onward and upward john.
Water under the bridge.
Dont cry over spilled milk.

Aw crap, I run out of silly sayings.

You know your limitations, and your abilities.
You dont need no potheads screwing up your gig.
I know it hurts and is confounding when people do stupid selfish crap to you.
But in the end they are only hurting themselves.

Yep. Move onward & upward. Ain't no sense in trying to analyze some ppl without a big workbook, & there isn't many of us who have the time or inclination to do so.

Nutcases abound.

what? two people in a band that all of the sudden didn't get along?

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

sorry to hear... but someday you'll look back and laugh.

seems to me like there was likely something else at play here...

the scenario you described doesn't sound like a reason more an excuse.

perhaps it was that you showed that you could play w/o her and that made her jealous/nervous... perhaps it was that you called attention to her pot smokin'... one can't possibly fathom the mind of the angry...

whether she should have given up the gig - doesn't really matter. she didn't. and you'd be a fool to try and take it - who needs the bad mojo?

sounds like you should take these other gigs and move on w/o any anguish in your heart.

time spent being mad, trying to figure it all out... that's just wasted time.

She had undisclosed baggage. Weird story. Sorry bro. Now continue the butt kickin' you always do.

Thanks for the replys, especially to not rag her out in some way. Thats the first thing you feel in these situations, wanting to lash out and tell your side. I was up there last night talking to the club owner where we played. They said they didnt understand and loved having me there. Just come by myself. This lady said that she would just say there was a scheduling problem and Im going to just say that cause it is her hometown, not mine. I know this from experience but it helps to have someone point it out to keep your trap shut and just act like nothings wrong and it doesnt bother you.

I was enjoying this gig for some other reasons. We had 3-4 other musicians coming in and playing some and I leaarn from different folks. I was getting to play some of my new songs in public for the first time. Ive been on a writting binge for the last month and it jsut keeps coming. I am going to play somewhere like this once a week.

Doing acoustic one piece is not new to me but doing it for 4 hours is. When I play songs, you lose all the instrumental parts and a 4 minute song turns into a 2 minute song so I have to pick material in the cover area carefully. I bring an electric and the other night I played a bunch of Zep and sang it with just me. I guess Im asking soem of you that do the one piece acoustic deal how do you stretch your songs so they arent all readers digest forms of the songs.

Once again thanks for the replys, I needed to vent somewhere to people who understand and you guys have my back.

Rock On

Can I be honest?

I think it was a stupid thing to do, but its done. As far as not saying anything about it? Rubbish, it's on here and the Lady in question will get a heap of joy recounting the tale.

JW I think you need to start writing big time. To me this smacked of boredom on the job and I think you need something different. Playing a chord for the sake of it will eventually catch up with us.

Laugh it off if anyone asks about it. Nowt wrong in laughing. Life's way too short.

When I do solo stuff, JW, I do a lot of wordy folky songs like Taxi, Cat's Cradle, etc. I also do the abridged version of Comfortable Numb, or Brain Damage. Full versions of Lucky Man, Closer To Home, or Drift Away are pretty simple, too, depending on how you play, I guess.

Sometimes you can get away with simply playing through a verse/chorus with rhythm, & it'll do. Other options are the endless medly, which I've also used successfully.

NOTHING GOOD HAS EVER COME FOR ME PLAYING WITH ALCOHOLICS AND DRUG ADDICTS.

And then some more......

NOTHING GOOD HAS EVER COME FOR ME PLAYING WITH ALCOHOLICS AND DRUG ADDICTS.

Phil it sounds like you do some of the same stuff I do. Cat's in the Cradle, Lucky Man, Taxi, American Pie, Two Hangmen, several Eagles tunes, America tunes, I even took Elton John's Madman Across the Water and transposed it to guitar a while back and it worked. freaked a lot of people out, they don't expect something like that. Ditto for Eagles' Last Resort, David Gilmour's Out of the Blue, Phil Collins' The Roof is Leaking.

JW, you can try some of those, songs with lots of lyrics and little or no lead, a lot of tom Petty tunes work well too. Dylan songs are good if you can remember all the words. Same for Neil Young, there's several of his that are great. My My Hey Hey, Old Man, Sugar Mountain...and I've done a couple of Zeppelin tunes too, but in open G. Bron Y' Aur Stomp and That's the Way are both cool acoustic tunes.

I've been trying to come up with some newer stuff like Petty's Don't Fade on Me and You Wreck me, You can get by with Keep Your Hands to Yourself, City of New Orleans, Mr Bojangles, and I've always liked doing Jimmy Buffett's Son of A Son of A Sailor too. I avoid Margahootchieville because I'm basically sick of it, but if you listen you can come up with plenty tunes that can be done solo by just leaving out the lead, and sometimes I just strum a short rhythm part in place of the lead, but not too long.

I can't think of much else, but I had a list that would cover four 45 minute sets at one time long ago. Haven't played solo in a while though.

Bill Ive just started building a song book for the lyrics. I never have liked doing this but the other night a gal friend counted my book and I have around 200 songs in there to pick from plus I can probably pull 100 or so out of my head that I can remember the words to.

Ive written 10 new originals in the last couple of weeks, kinda country/singer songwriter type music and they have seemed to get good crowd response. Of course now I will have to start building my own fan base in the area away from what I was doing. But really this gig isnt about money, its about getting out and playing my own music live. Ive got a lot of clubs close to home that I can probably make some extra change a lot easier than the band route if I go the solo route. Haul everything in my truck instead of the big trailer. The first few nights I was roughing up my vocal chords a little but it seems to be getting better. I even pulled off Say Hello To Heaven The Other Night, hitting most of the high notes. Another thing Im learning is if I have one of those monster throat crunching songs follow it up with something easier. Thats the key is to pace yourself. Oddly any off night I have I go and do Karoake on off nights when there arent many people so I can get in the rotation.

Bob, I will add that the lady I played with is not what I would call a drug addict. She is a very talented individual that was a lot of fun for me to play with. Plus her encouragement to do this gig has opened a whole new avenue in music for me. Ive never thought I had much of a voice but a couple of folks up there have raved about my vocals and range. Its always good to get the ego stoked some. But I cant disrespect this lady in any way, she plays hundreds of songs, sounds good, has quite a few of her own songs that are good. I will miss playing with her.

Im not the most spiritual person in the world but I believe this whole situation was preordained in some way. I had already been feeling bad about taking over more and more time at the gigs. So it was a matter of time before I had to walk anyway, so I guess it was just meant to be this way.

Thanks for the replys, they stopped me from making a few phone calls that I would have regretted down the road.

THANK YOU BANDMIX FRIENDS!