Don’t join bands. Find people and start a band.

Took twenty years to figure that out.

ErikG wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:48 pm Don’t join bands. Find people and start a band.

Took twenty years to figure that out.

I'm stealing that. Well put.

ErikG wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:48 pm Don’t join bands. Find people and start a band.

Took twenty years to figure that out.

Yeah, I'd concur. The two best bands I've played in were the ones in which I recruited everyone or in which myself and one other person recruited everyone. I've joined bands that already existed and whilst they both started well they didn't end well.

HeavenIsInYrBeard wrote: Sun Jul 25, 2021 8:06 am

ErikG wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:48 pm Don’t join bands. Find people and start a band.

Took twenty years to figure that out.

Yeah, I'd concur. The two best bands I've played in were the ones in which I recruited everyone or in which myself and one other person recruited everyone. I've joined bands that already existed and whilst they both started well they didn't end well.

It can be good as a musical challenge, and sort of a relief to have some of the groundwork established (the first 'not my band' I joined was booked to open for Cave In and Isis in a month.. eep), but in the long run unsatisfying unless they're willing to let you be an equal. Otherwise it can make you feel like a human subwoofer or drum machine there to facilitate some other dick's 'vision'..

I've only been in two bands in the 20+ years I've been doing music, I never made it past a few rehearsals with them. The first one we just couldn't find time to get together again, and the second one I felt like the 4th wheel to three guys who seemed to be more musically locked in with each other, so I excused myself.

I'm not a social butterfly, I've just been doing the solo thing. I would like to play with a band on stage someday. But I'm not a gear head like most of you all are, I don't know shit about different kinds of guitars, drums, pedals, cables, etc. I also have a lot of self-doubt and personal bullshit I won't go in to.

But I still practice guitar and drums alone, and I'm on a bill with some other people coming up next weekend, so that's good.

Ah, I have been thinking about this a LOT coming out of the pandemic. Between turning 47 and spending the last year afraid of a deadly virus, I have been contemplating my mortality and how I have spent my life quite a bit.

At one point I really did have pipe dreams of being able to play original music for a living, carving it out like Poster Children did, being smart with money and touring and leaning into the hustle. But as the years went on and I realized exactly what would have been needed to accomplish that in the 2000s/2010s, I realized that it was never for me. In order to get to a point where you can sustain yourself with original music, you need to:

A) live in squalor and barely get by, while somehow touring nonstop, literally becoming a nomad that keeps their worldly possessions in a shack or storage space somewhere;
B) have rich parents to underwrite your dream so that you're not sleeping with roaches every night.

I didn't have rich parents, and living in squalor was right out, so we toured two weeks out of the year with our vacation time and did what we could. Two week tours are NOT how you build a following. "Hi Seattle! Great to be back! Oh, no one remembers us from the last time we came through four years ago? Dang..."

Add the fact that our band is noisy and weird and appeals to a niche audience, making a living at this band was never in the cards.

But do I regret not going harder at it, to lean more into the hustle on the off chance that it could have worked out? Nah. As I've gotten older and known more people in the biz, I know that life isn't for me, because the music biz is fucking gross. Plus, since we/I haven't had the ability to do music 24/7 over the years, we've been able to kind of improve slowly and steadily over the years and not burn out. The most recent records I've put out with both my bands are probably the best records I've been a part of in my life, and HiFi is now a 21 year old band and not sick of each other. So I call that a win. It's really kind of awesome to think that we might be doing our best work as we push 50 because we didn't burn out in our 30s.

As the pandemic hopefully settles we have to think a lot about how we're going to keep approaching things now. I expect that my bands are going to be even more chill, or at least, I will be about them. I already see other bands throwing themselves back into show promotion and "hey, come to this gig!" and it all seems very trite in the wake of what we've just gone through. Like, yo, I'm still pretty scarred by the last year; telling people to come see my band play is pretty fucking low on my priorities list. Other people have other shit to worry about than whatever the hell my bands are doing. So we'll see how that all plays out.

DrAwkward wrote: As the pandemic hopefully settles we have to think a lot about how we're going to keep approaching things now. I expect that my bands are going to be even more chill, or at least, I will be about them. I already see other bands throwing themselves back into show promotion and "hey, come to this gig!" and it all seems very trite in the wake of what we've just gone through. Like, yo, I'm still pretty scarred by the last year; telling people to come see my band play is pretty fucking low on my priorities list. Other people have other shit to worry about than whatever the hell my bands are doing. So we'll see how that all plays out.

Yeah.. I've been sort of starting what might become a new band and have been thinking about my expectations going forward:

A) have something fun and productive to look forward to once or maybe twice on a good week. Thankfully with safe and trustworthy people.

B) record the stuff at least partially in a cool studio, some self-recording/mixing too as I've gotten a lot better after being stuck in a fuckin' basement all winter. Be content with the likelihood that it'll make the most sense as a digital only release (small run of cassettes too, sure.. fine whatever)

C) maybe a show or two down the line? I would prefer an outdoorsy setting or at least in the company of a tight knit group I trust. Seeing packed shows at the Cactus Club right now is still too much for me..

A combo of A & B is mostly all I ever wanted anyway.

I've never been comfortable playing in front of crowds and it has made me apprehensive about going after being in bands and when I am in bands, I don't really try as hard as I should/could. As I've gotten older (43 now) it bothers me less than ever but logistically being in bands just doesn't really work out very well. I do kind of wish I would have gone for it a bit more. Still been fun though.

What a great thread!

I suppose I'm fairly typical age-wise on this forum (45-55?). I'm 50 next year and having stopped music about 20 years ago, have been active again for 18 months.

Inactivity was due to music-related heartbreak, mostly born from bad decisions and naivety; for some reason I thought I was was going to be a full time rocker, which in retrospect was fantasy. I couldn't stand making music in the open any more and stopped. Never stopped playing and writing, just didn't do anything with it.

As above; dwelling on this stuff is counterproductive.

Very, very excited to be involved again. That's really the only important thing to me.

DrAwkward wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 12:23 pm At one point I really did have pipe dreams of being able to play original music for a living, carving it out like Poster Children did, being smart with money and touring and leaning into the hustle. But as the years went on and I realized exactly what would have been needed to accomplish that in the 2000s/2010s, I realized that it was never for me. In order to get to a point where you can sustain yourself with original music, you need to:

A) live in squalor and barely get by, while somehow touring nonstop, literally becoming a nomad that keeps their worldly possessions in a shack or storage space somewhere;
B) have rich parents to underwrite your dream so that you're not sleeping with roaches every night.

I didn't have rich parents, and living in squalor was right out, so we toured two weeks out of the year with our vacation time and did what we could. Two week tours are NOT how you build a following. "Hi Seattle! Great to be back! Oh, no one remembers us from the last time we came through four years ago? Dang..."

Add the fact that our band is noisy and weird and appeals to a niche audience, making a living at this band was never in the cards.

Your entire post is great but this section especially is really poignant. There's some area where a band needs to commit, to a certain level, in order to build some kind of momentum. And whatever that level is, it's well into the realm where you can't also keep a decent apartment and pursue a parallel career.

So yeah it's either rich parents (which you can't ever admit to!) or Get in the Van type squalor. I appreciate any band that can really get out there and live it hard, but I don't think that level of commitment makes one's music or character better.

I don't know where I'm going here, but wanted to say I relate to this feeling of being forever an amateur. Not that it's bad! But I think in that kind of situation you have to accept you're doing music on a small scale, but hopefully on your own terms, and that has to be the satisfaction you reap from it.