Tell me about your band life: your history, how are your band practices going, how much do you gig? How many gigs have you played? What's the scene like? Something other, what?

At the end we will have a raffle and the winner gets an eternal life and a golden statue.

I cannot imagine my band's story to be remotely interesting to anyone else on here.

So I'll keep it short:

We've been on hiatus since the end of 2021.

jfv wrote: Fri Mar 28, 2025 10:01 am I cannot imagine my band's story to be remotely interesting to anyone else on here.

So I'll keep it short:

We've been on hiatus since the end of 2021.

I've watched every Bismarck tour diary and enjoyed the Idaho tour mini doc, where it's mostly people being silent in different places, so believe me, I find your band's story interesting.

Shananiganz wrote: Fri Mar 28, 2025 10:30 am I've watched every Bismarck tour diary and enjoyed the Idaho tour mini doc, where it's mostly people being silent in different places, so believe me, I find your band's story interesting.

Okay, I'll play.

Give me a few hours (when I'm not supposed to be working) and I'll post back later.

We started playing when the band the guitarist and I were in from 2017 fell apart in the fall of 2021. We reached out to an old buddy who's a great drummer, and started playing together really quickly, but it took about a year before we were ready to start playing shows. We were able to play a bunch of shows right off the bat, but then I was having issues with my foot and had a surgery that took two months of recovery, and then after playing some more shows that late summer/early fall we took a chunk of time off once my kid was born. We've started playing shows more regularly, but certainly aren't hitting it as hard as our prior bands since we're all balancing families/work/other bands.

We practice once a week, give or take if someone is sick or another band has a show, or life shit just comes up. We're not trying to make it big at this point in our lives, and just getting together and playing once a week for a couple of hours feels great.

I invited former FM bfields to my birthday party and it was there where I brought the subject up of starting a band, or so I thought. When he tells the story he approached me at the first PRFBBQ at Union Rock Yards and asked about starting a band. Tbh I trust his memory more than my own (though I could've sworn it was at my bday party) but whatever the case it was Electrical Audio who brought us together. We've played a lot of shows with a lot of bands and did some touring during our initial run. Favorite jaunt was an east coast tour with Minutes. I'm a practice-twice-a-week guy because I love to play and have a lot of ideas. Everyone wrote and contributed and shaped the songs, but as for admin work it was all me. I'm an odd duck and love all that shit: talking to venues, journalists, setting up tours, etc. Love it. I guess our scene was this community and loved the camaraderie but I always jumped at the chance to broaden our audience. Being told your music hits from people who don't know you from a zygote is a very nice thing to hear

I'm trying to get the band back together for one more record but life keeps happening. I can't go solo. Need friends and collaborators to reign in my peculiarities.

tallchris wrote: We're not trying to make it big at this point in our lives, and just getting together and playing once a week for a couple of hours feels great.

This is the root of where my band is coming from. We're 100% middle aged, and 2/3's dads so it's been all about slow and steady. It turned out slow and steady and gray around the edges was way less combustible than our youthful projects. We've been doing it for 12-13 years now and put out three LPs. Age and wisdom have made us better at playing music and being productive.

As a Denver band we deal with the good and bad of playing music in a boom town. There are quite a few venues and a lot going on, but there's so much going on that everything gets kind of silo'd into microscenes. Ours is kind of the aging punk rocker guy scene by default of our friend network. There's about a dozen loosely affiliated bands who can hustle and play in front of 20-50 people at any given show (weekends only please), usually at a bar. There's a vibrant DIY scene but it's almost exclusively 80's hardcore, 70's punk and some grind bands in their 20's. As much as we'd love to jump into the mix, they don't really fuck with dudes in their 40's who play rock and roll inspired by Bob Mould.

This is where the zen (or maybe the Tao?) of the local artist has to come in. If you want anyone to come you probably have to do the social media stuff which for me, and most people I know, is kind of a chore. It also seems to have a ceiling. Short of some uncommon breakthrough in local popularity, most of our ilk stays with that modest turnout I was talking about. And the thing about it is that's 100% fine. An appreciative audience of 30 in a small venue can feel pretty amazing. One just needs to forget the tempting notions of "growing things" through mundane, and potentially obnoxious efforts that don't often work anyway. It can sometimes be hard when you feel your artistic abilities have been on a gradual climb, but your audience engagement is a flat line. I have my way of keeping that in perspective, but everyone has that friend that's kind of the cautionary tale that moans about how long they've been doing it and how no one cares. When someone out in the world mail orders an LP, or a stranger picks up a t-shirt from the merch table, I have to see that as some kind of miracle. The idea that in our attention-addled society, that anyone would invest time in willingly participating in your art is pretty precious. I like to feel gratitude for such small miracles.

The other middle aged part of this is our circle has started to see those folks who've passed away. There's a certain carpe diem tinge to it now. I always figured one day we'd get out of our comfortable studio and invest the time and cash in working with one of the geniuses out there. As things have gone I started to realize you start hitting things on the bucket list, or you maybe never will. We recently booked time to go record what will probably be an EP with J. Robbins out at his place in Baltimore this summer. Like how it was with Steve, or Kurt Ballou or a handful of other folks out there, we know they're not some mystic wizard working in a secret palace, but a normal guy whose job it is help underground bands make good recordings. There's still something cool about getting on the phone with someone you've looked up to to for ages to iron out the details.

I've effectively only been in one (rock & roll) band in my entire life. Band name and lineup has changed a few times but always centered around my prolific guitarist friend and me. We met in the West Chicago High School band.

First version of the band started in 1994. Started out mainly playing originals because we didn't know how to play and couldn't effectively cover anyone else's songs. I got a four-track as a graduation present, resulting in a bunch of self-released cassettes and two CDs between 1996-2004.

After that, I moved to the north suburbs, started a family, and stopped writing songs. The band continued to exist, but primarily as a bar band playing approximately 75% covers and 25% originals. From about 2006 through 2019, we were on again, off again, playing an average of once every few months in local bars in the western suburbs.

After my Dad died in 2021, I got the itch to do a recording project of some of our "unreleased" songs at EA (see here: https://premierrockforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=69933). We did a record release party shortly after that, but as mentioned in my earlier post, we haven't done anything since then.

In the early years, I jumped around from instrument to instrument. I started on rhythm guitar and vocals. Played drums and sang for about a year. Had a short stint as just the vocalist. Moved back to rhythm guitar and vocals. And then our bass player stopped showing up at rehearsal. I've been playing bass and singing ever since.

That's the slightly condensed but probably still rambling band history.

Directly answering your other questions:

Shananiganz wrote: how are your band practices going

I was usually the most motivated to practice, but even then I was fairly laid back, even when we were preparing to record at EA. I don't recall having any major fights or anything. Doing things because it's fun and with friends is priceless, and I tried to keep our rehearsals fun. If things weren't going so well, I didn't mind letting it devolve into a noise jam or just calling it quits for the day and go for a drink instead.

I think things would start to suck really quickly if you were relying on this for income.

Shananiganz wrote: how much do you gig? How many gigs have you played?

Even when we were at our busiest, never more than once per month. Usually much less frequent. My best guess at the number of gigs we've played since 1994? Somewhere between 75 and 100.

Shananiganz wrote: What's the scene like?

There's no scene in the places we played at. Playing at bars can suck. Our key was to build a rapport with one or two places where your friends and family are likely to show up and stick with those places, and that worked pretty well. There were very few gigs that left me disappointed.

losthighway wrote: Fri Mar 28, 2025 3:29 pm An appreciative audience of 30 in a small venue can feel pretty amazing. One just needs to forget the tempting notions of "growing things" through mundane, and potentially obnoxious efforts that don't often work anyway.

This 100%.

I think I stopped being delusional about making it "big" right around when I graduated from college ~ 2000.

After that, just put me in a room playing in front of 20-40 of our friends and family and I'm very, very happy.

jfv wrote: Fri Mar 28, 2025 4:39 pm

losthighway wrote: Fri Mar 28, 2025 3:29 pm An appreciative audience of 30 in a small venue can feel pretty amazing. One just needs to forget the tempting notions of "growing things" through mundane, and potentially obnoxious efforts that don't often work anyway.

This 100%.

I think I stopped being delusional about making it "big" right around when I graduated from college ~ 2000.

After that, just put me in a room playing in front of 20-40 of our friends and family and I'm very, very happy.

I've been kicking myself lately for not trying harder - not to making it big, but just... Being something. We had a great band with great songs and nobody cared. We came from a place where if you're not belittling yourself you are considered a diva and a prick, so we didn't try. We all could've toured more, play more and not belittle our music. We poured so much effort into it, practicing 8 hours a day, multiple times a week.

Other than that I've played in numerous bands, ranging from post punk to 14 piece stage band, playing latin stuff with my dad and my uncle.
We had our first child in 2017 and since then it has kinda fizzled out. We also moved south, so even though this is a lot more vibrant city, it's hard to find like-minded players here. My old city has a strong DIY mentality and a lot of weird, independent music happening. It's also that much smaller, so you kind of have to try to get along with the weirdos.
I'm in a free jazz/free impro group and in a group that just jams once a month and we can never remember our one song and it frustrates me. Tomorrow I'm having the first session with a new group and next week I'm auditioning to a band I'm not really keen on joining, based on the audition songs. The guitarist was the composer of a band that was selected to present Finland in Eurovision Song Contest once, so I'm curious.
Wow, that turned into even more incoherent rambling than usual! Sorry!