Your Longest Musical Relationship

[Moonglow]

The saxophone player, lead singer, and I have been playing together in the same band, without any breaks, for 44 years (1980-present). The sax player and I met in kindergarten, so he’s also my oldest friend.

 

Anyone have a consistent, lasting, musical relationship?

[Old No7]

58+ year love affair with the Hammond Organ -- the KING of instruments!

 

Old No7

[Leroy C]

Back in '92, I met a drummer and I married her.

[stoken6]

Coming up 30 years with the guitarist/singer and bassist from my current band. Consistently working together.

 

And close to 22 years (20 of those married) with the cute cellist my musical-theatre friend introduced me to after a difficult breakup.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[harmonizer]

The solo guitarist and I have been playing together in our Covers band since 2003.

[D. Gauss]

let's see... my band (all original) is about to hit our 30th anniversary this month.  The other guitar player and me have been there from the beginning. However, we were together in 2 bands before that...since 1984, so 40 years.   40 years, 1000's of gigs in multiple countries, 15 albums, and maybe $300 dollars between us.   

[BenWaB3]

52 years with the same guitar player. We don't get to play as often as before these days but did get to tonight (03/01).

[marino]

I'm still in contact with 'some' of my bandmates from the 80s. In recent years I have even made a record with the drummer who played on my very first record in 1985. But these are rather occasional frequentations.

The instrument that I have owned for the longest time is my Oberheim Matrix-12. Still the king of my rig, working perfectly.

[rogs]

I still get to play together with an old guitarist friend, who I first met in the 1960s. We played together in our first 'rock' band in 1964.

Mind you, here was a gap of almost 50 years in the middle where we had lost touch we each other!  

Still playing some of the same tunes actually...  🙂

[Reezekeys]

This is an easy one for me. I've known Adam Nussbaum since we were nine years old. We're in our late 60s now. We started playing in bands together when we were in junior high school, continuing through high school, then college - both of us went to Emerson College in Boston, then City College of New York. That was around 1978. It was around that time Adam started playing in the house band of a weekly jam session with the great pianist Albert Dailey, and his career took off. Mine... not so much! We still play together occasionally. Below is a pic of him at 13 years old playing at a mutual friend's house, and the other pic is us with the great bass player Gene Perla in 2022, playing at a jam session in Easton Pennsylvania Adam runs every few weeks - he calls it the "no paper" jam: no charts allowed!

 

[Brad Kaenel]

The jazz/fusion septet I helped to form in 1980 still gigs once a month to this day with four of the original members. I gave up the keyboard chair 20 years ago, but they still let me sit in occasionally.   We are still great friends.

 

I have one even-longer connection to a talented flutist I first met in high school, in 1976, and was their competition accompanist until I graduated. We still communicate regularly and talk much about music, though we haven’t played together since then.

[Coker]

I’ve been playing with the same saxophonist, drummer, and bassist since 1972 (52 years).  When people ask me how we stayed together, my response is, “low standards.”  

[Brad Kaenel]

1 hour ago, Coker said:

When people ask me how we stayed together, my response is, “low standards.”  

I know that's a josh of endearment , but it's still a good question.  There are many responses here of bandmates sticking together after literally decades -- I submit that the absence of financial pressure is a significant factor in a band's longevity.  When we started our band, we all agreed from Day 1 that any money we made from gigging would be banked (our drummer was the treasurer!) and used only for recording studio costs, should we ever get the opportunity/desire to make a record (we made two, eventually).  And as we introduced replacement players through the years, that was our principal stipulation. I firmly believe we're still playing, and still friends, today because we never had to stress about money, or making a living.  (Which is, admittedly, easier when your bandmates come from a polytechnic university, and everybody is an engineer. ) 

[mcgoo]

I've been gigging with the same drummer in multiple bands since 1982. I think we're to the point that we breathe in sync... We tend to hit things together naturally, and better yet, leave space together. What's been interesting over the last 10 years or so, is also playing with other drummers. It's good to have someone I'm deeply bonded with musically (he's also my best friend), but I also enjoy getting to build that connection with someone I don't know as well. 

[eric]

GREAT TOPIC!!!!

 

I joined an original ska/reggae/pop band called Fighting Gravity in 1987 as I was wrapping up my high school years. We toured significantly for well over a decade and recorded 10+ original albums. We were "almost famous" and disbanded in the mid '00s. The band was known well enough to attract crowds for big reunion shows 3-4x per years over the last 7-8 years. I am still very close to these guys after 35+ years and consider them my musical brothers. Something magical happens when we get on stage together.

 

Early photo from about 1989 and recent photo from 2023. We have several shows we are prepping for 2024. It's really good for the soul.

 

 

[JamPro]

My brother plays drums.  He started as a kid in the '60s.  I started piano as a teen-ager, and we have played together ever since; sometimes in bands, mostly casual with friends, and sometimes just the two of us.

[mauriziodececco]

19 minutes ago, JamPro said:

My brother plays drums.  He started as a kid in the '60s.  I started piano as a teen-ager, and we have played together ever since; sometimes in bands, mostly casual with friends, and sometimes just the two of us.

 

Eh eh, i was about to write the same thing, my brother is also a drummer, and we do the same thing, sometimes in band, sometimes alone just for fun. It just started a few years later (around 75).

 

[El Lobo]

Hmm. I hadn't thought of it that way but I've played with my younger brother off and on for 60 years.

I've had my main band for 22 years. All of the other members have turned over, I'm the only original member, but I've had the same harp player/vocalist for 20 years. 

[1203]

The bassist of my current main band is a friend of mine, since we‘ve been 9 or 10 years old in 1979/80. 44 years of friendship and making music, so many reahearsals and gigs together - we both are grateful for that. 

[RABid]

I have a friend who has played in the same band (singer/bassist) with the same drummer for about 50 years. My longest run is 3 years. I was riding a wave that went from my small town in the hills and eventually landed in a city. I never quit on a band, but when they fell apart I did not stick around. There was always someone bigger and more popular that needed a keyboardist. After a few years of trying to start a band and make it a success I found that being a keyboardist with a nice rig let me step into situations where the band was already rolling.

[DJkeys]

My longest run was 8 years with my touring cover band, the Favorites.  We spend more time with each other than we did with our families.  We played 5-6 nights a week for the entire time.  

 

-dj

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Wow, what a sweet, heartwarming thread this turned out to be! Some of you older folks are really giving me something to aspire to.

 

I just celebrated ten years (in various overlapping projects) with my guitar player of choice, and of course my wife and I (together 13 years total) have been playing music together since early on in our relationship. I have a few other ongoing collaborations with musician friends from the past decade, give or take, though they're not usually uninterrupted.

 

I am still very, very close with my three dear friends and bandmates from growing up, two of which I met and started playing music with over 20 years ago (the third, the drummer, is coming up on that second decade in a year or two). The musical part of our relationship hasn't been consistent since I settled in central New York in the early 2010s, but we still like to find opportunities to play together every few years.

 

I would feel truly blessed if 20, 30, 40 years on, like some of you folks, I am still celebrating these creative relationships. A musical connection is like a marriage in so many ways -- sometimes it burns out violently, sometimes it winds down and runs its course, and sometimes, whether through circumstance or hard work or both, it sustains and grows. It's definitely something worth appreciating when that happens.

[NewImprov]

Great thread! I love reading stuff like this.

 

My longest running continuous music relationship has been with a bassist and a drummer, the three of us have played together for 25 years as of this summer. What's cool is that we actually have a recording of the first time we played together as a trio. You can find it here:

 

https://stocksyndrome.bandcamp.com/track/whos-making-that-sound

 

The long version: A local drummer/teacher ran an ongoing weekly improvised music series at a variety of coffeeshops here in town. I'd played on some of his sessions, and through these had met Page, the bass player. When the drummer who ran the series was unavailable one week, he offered the night to Page and I. There was a younger local drummer I'd known since he was a kid, and in 1999, he was playing with a killer local funk band. He'd also recently gotten into turntables, inspired by DJ Shadow and DJ Spooky, etc. He and I worked together at a record store, so I invited him to play with Page and I at this coffee house gig.

 

A few days before the gig, we got together at my place and listened to records together, I remember I played Squarepusher's Music is Rotten One Note, which I was really digging at the time, and some electric Miles, Weather Report, Aphex Twin, etc. This was all the preparation we did for the show.

I took my Rhodes, which I'd only had for a year or so at the time (I still have it), Nord Lead, and a bunch of stomp boxes. I also thought to bring my DAT deck and a couple mics. The link above is literally the first thing the three of us ever played together.

 

We are still playing as the rhythm section of a funk/afro-beat band, and we still do the improv trio stuff, we actually have a trio gig this weekend opening for a prog-metal band. They are some of my best friends in the world, and some of the coolest people I know.