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Starting a Soul Band


Nicklab

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So, a friend of mine and I are starting a soul band. And we're pretty stoked for this. But first, a little backstory:

 

Throughout my musical career I've largely been working in original bands. Nothing that really took root, but I found that working on original material was a bit more satisfying than playing the cover scene. In that scene I found that I was able to be a bit more creative, and I liked the venues. I had kind of given up on cover scenes because I just wasn't feeling it for the most part. A lot of the cover acts were playing a lot of the same sort of material, and to me it felt like just going through the motions.

 

My last original band gig ran from 2010 to the beginning of 2013. My exit from that act coincided with my wife and I having a beautiful baby girl. And I found that our combined responsibilities for both work and parenting really would not allow for me to keep playing with the original band at the level that I had been. Fast forward to earlier this year, and I got contacted by the band leader from that act. She wanted to see if I would be interested in playing on their new record. The thing is, she and her partner had just had an addition to their family and their schedules were similarly restrictive. I would have to be able to work on their schedule. After some talks we found that just wouldn't work.

 

But I still wanted to play. What to do? So I sat down with a guitar player friend of mine. We've played together on the jam scene for years, including some of the select cover gigs that I've played. The subject of a possible band came up. The focus? Soul music. Notably, paying attention to the Stax/Memphis scene. We both shared a love of Booker T. & The MG's. He loves Steve Cropper's playing, and I've been something of a devotee of Duck Dunn's style. But where to take this?

 

Well, we started trying to figure out who to work with. One drummer in particular came to mind for both of us. He's a guy that we've played with on the jam scene, and he's pretty solid. But what about the rest of the lineup? We got to thinking about vocals, because a soul band just will not fly without a solid singer. So we thought back to our shared gigging experience and the female singer we worked with on those bills. It just so turns out that we take the same train into Manhattan! Maybe it's serendipity, but whatever the case, we sat down on the train to talk through the idea. I told her how we wanted to put together a Soul band, and funny enough she's into it. And DAMN, can she sing!

 

This leads us to now, filling out the lineup. We're pretty much in agreement that a keyboard player and a male vocalist are major needs. The thought there being that with male and female lead vocalists we can cover a lot more material. As much as we would love to have some horn players, I've been a bit apprehensive. We're already leaning towards a 6 piece band, which is larger than anything I've done in a while. But when it comes to hiring horn players, I'd definitely like to get some feedback about bringing on a horn player or section.

 

And then, the concept! I know there are lots of cover bands out there. But what about Soul bands? The idea here is to bring something a little different, but that's going to get people dancing. So the focus of the material is going to be that Stax/Volt scene from Memphis, some of the Atlantic R&B sound as recorded at Muscle Shoals, and some Classic rock that crosses over into some Soul territory (Van Morrison, Stones, etc) but then there's this twist: trying to incorporate some of the modern Soul revival sound from acts like Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Alabama Shakes and St. Paul & The Broken Bones.

 

So if anyone has some feedback regarding lineups, material or what to charge club owners for what may be something of a specialty act, I am all ears! It's been a while since I've served as a band leader and the scheduling aspect alone is a little more challenging than I remember.

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YOu must check out JJ Grey and Mofor, especially the album "This River" but all the others are great, his band has a keyboard and two horns along with teh usual, and the man has soul.

 

Lee Fields and the Expressions; Charles Bradley and the Menahan Street Band, and definitely the Bo-Keys, great bands. Ryan Shaw is good too

 

Good luck, I'd love an opportunity like this.

"Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.'-Hamlet

 

Guitar solos last 30 seconds, the bass line lasts for the whole song.

 

 

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Thanks, guys! I'm really looking forward to this. I was kind of dreading the idea of being a band leader. But I loved this idea. And I really couldn't see it happening quite the way I wanted it to be without taking the lead myself.

 

YOu must check out JJ Grey and Mofor, especially the album "This River" but all the others are great, his band has a keyboard and two horns along with teh usual, and the man has soul.

 

"99 shades of crazy" is actually a tune that I've been hearing since it came out, and I'd really like to give it a shot in this project. It's definitely got some of the vibe that I dig.

 

 

Lee Fields and the Expressions; Charles Bradley and the Menahan Street Band, and definitely the Bo-Keys, great bands. Ryan Shaw is good too

 

Good luck, I'd love an opportunity like this.

 

Charles Bradley is someone I've been meaning to check out. I've been seeing more about him recently. I even saw some posters for him when I saw Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings play a gig a couple of weeks ago.

 

The one thing that I can offer up about this particular project? It came together in large part because of my activity on the jam scene. That's really where I made the contacts for the core of this group. I met pretty much everyone either at a jam or a gig that was the result of my activity on the jam scene. Picking the right people from those experiences was key in trying to make this happen.

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"99 Shades of Crazy" is a great song, this is my fave off that album [video:youtube]

 

This rarity was playing in the house PA before Lake street Dive came on stage [video:youtube]

and this: [video:youtube]

 

This might be a great second set song [video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16GfYMuKxrY

 

The thing about soul songs is that many artists covered pop songs, but gave them the soul treatment, so you can always swap a horn solo for a guitar solo, for example, or use an organ or piano. great creative, and get a groove on, people love songs they can sing along with while they are dancing.

 

 

"Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.'-Hamlet

 

Guitar solos last 30 seconds, the bass line lasts for the whole song.

 

 

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Since you mentioned female vox [video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh-2_kdVcyA and this [video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTLwDh3Dr4E

and this could work, I love this band, and this song would be incredible with horns [video:youtube]

"Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.'-Hamlet

 

Guitar solos last 30 seconds, the bass line lasts for the whole song.

 

 

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Keys are a work in progress. And absolutely necessary for this genre.

 

We got together for the first time as a unit this past Friday. It was a little raw, but we had some good moments. And I saw the reason why I chose to be in the same room with this guitarist, female vocalist and drummer. There are things that click for us pretty easily.

 

On the additional personnel front? I had two prospects lined up for this session: a male vocalist and a keyboard player. I had confirmed the date with everyone 2 weeks in advance of the date. When I followed up with people during the week things took a turn. The singer told us that the cruise ship gig he was originally booked to leave for on Saturday changed to a Friday departure. Really? This cancellation was 2 days in advance of our rehearsal studio booking. The keyboard player was another story, as he cancelled the day of the session. He cited a family illness and needed to go see someone in the hospital.

 

Considering the situation with the singer, we didn't think his excuse was on the up and up. We had gotten some other responses from singers, so I decided to run our Craigslist ad again. Lo and behold, I got some responses to that pretty quickly. I also had another keyboard player in my back pocket that I tried getting as a backup option for the keyboard player who cancelled. Considering the late nature of the cancellation by the one keyboard player, I'm not suprised the other guy didn't step up on the day of the session. But what about auditioning someone with the core 4?

 

Well, one of the singer prospects said that he was located in the town where we practiced. He sent me his phone number, so I called and left a message. I told him that it's totally last minute, but one of the guys we had lined up to audition had to cancel, and if he could come down to jam that would be great. Mind you, this ad was for a male singer. And in that ad I mentioned that if you also play an instrument that's great. Be that as it may, I finally got a call back from one of the guys. It was the singer prospect. And he called as I was just about to get to the studio. I asked if he wanted to come down for a tryout, and he said he could be there in 30 minutes. Great, I thought!

 

The rehearsal room was decent. Not one of the best I've ever been in, but not the worst either. Be that as it may, it was great to have everyone in the same room. We had our rough spots, but there were some good points, too. One thing that I need to keep in mind? Everyone seems to be regarding me as the musical director. I'm not just playing bass, so I gotta step up my game there and know everyone else's parts and define the intros and outros.

 

As for our prospect? Eh. It turns out that I had played with this guy back in the 90's. And that experience was not one of the more memorable ones of my musical career. Oh, and he barely knew any of the material well enough to sing it, but wanted to play crazy guitar over most everything. Considering what I had advertised for, he seemed to want to do something else. And he wasn't well versed enough in soul music to sing songs like "In the midnight hour", "Knock on wood" or "Mystery Train" from memory.

 

I think he picked up on the vibe from us as we packed up. Because he's not getting a callback. I was pretty clear about what we were looking for and he didn't bring it. When the four of us were able to talk after he had left there was no support for him. I didn't like working with him the first time around, and he didn't distinguish himself as a singer. And he was playing way more guitar than contributing vocally. So..... NEXT!

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I am glad that you found some good people already, good luck on the rest.

"Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.'-Hamlet

 

Guitar solos last 30 seconds, the bass line lasts for the whole song.

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

Dusting this one off....

 

So we've had some significant scheduling challenges. And that has been with the core members of the project, not just with prospective members. The summer has been a bit of a bear in terms of finding common time for us all to get together. And I feel like there are varying degrees of motivation between the lot of us.

 

Last week we got together with two prospects: a male singer and a keyboard player. I had cleared the date with everyone in the band, but then there was a bump in the road. Our singer's schedule changed and she was going to be out of town. I talked it over with our guitarist and he felt like we could comfortably audition these guys without the female singer present.

 

So we gave them a list of material and set out to jam with these guys. The songs that we gave them were pretty standard Stax and Atlantic R&B fare. We actually blew through those songs pretty fast and things appeared to go pretty well. To the point where we picked some other tunes that we hadn't even practiced and started playing those. And THOSE SONGS even went pretty well. After we were done the singer asked me about our plans, and I let him know what some of our target clubs were, along with the plan to blend in some modern soul revival tunes from artists like Amy Winehouse, Ray Lamontagne, Joss Stone, St. Paul & The Broken Bones, JJ Grey & Mofro, etc, etc. I had a good time, and at points during the session I saw the smile on our drummer's face. I thought that I had put together the right people.

 

Our guitarist was skeptical. I had tried to poll both him and our drummer for their feelings, but they were pretty mum on the subject. What I did get from the guitarist was noncommittal, but he was wondering if we could get just one of these musicians, or if they came as a package deal.

 

Fast forward to today, and I got an email from the keyboard player. One that looked like it was intended for his friend the singer, because he was asking if it was too harsh of a rejection note. Did he originally intend to send this to the singer? Or is this just a case of this guy being incompetent when it comes to copying and pasting text? The thing is, I feel like I'm more annoyed by the email error than I am by the rejection.

 

The funny thing is this: last week I went to one of my regular blues jams. And in attendance was a solid keyboard player that I've known for a while. Out of nowhere he approached me at the bar and asked what I'm up to. Maybe word got around that I was putting something together? I even let him know that I was auditioning someone for a keyboard position later in the week. He expressed some interest, which I certainly appreciated. And now after this recent round of auditions didn't pan out, I'm definitely going to be reaching out to him. So maybe there's a silver lining here.

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