ChrisofDoom's band thread UPDATE I still have a drummer and maybe a good vocalist

[ChrisOfDoom]

Uhg.

 

8 months ago a good drummer friend of mine told me he was trying to get a band together, and needed a bass player, so I happily started playing with him, and we had our 3piece hard rock band going in no time. Well, now we have decided that we have enough going together that we can try to get a gig or 2. Well, now my close friend, the drummer, has decided he hates living here, and is moving to Salem, Oregon at the end of the Month. So, now he is talking lie "well if you got gigs on weekends I could drive up ant play with you, it just sucks that we can't practice anymore." Obviously, this will not work, and I have to tell him we are just going to find a new drummer.

 

But alas, the plot thickens.

 

Apperantly the drummer and guitar player are fueding over something, and the drummer does not want to play with the guitar player for a while. So now, I am in the position of having to try to smooth out issues with these two, and if that doesn't work out, since the drummer is leaving town anyways, it makes more sense to stick with my guitar player, I will have to be an asshole to my good friend the drummer.

 

Hopefully they will work it out so I can replace my friend in the band without it looking like I am siding against him. Uhg.

[Gruuve]

Tough spot. If he's really your friend, then he should want what's best for you after he's gone. Sounds like that would be keeping the guitarist. Explain this to him...if he takes it the wrong way, then question whether he's really a "true friend" or not. Just my 2 cents...!

 

Dave

[musicfiend]

so THIS is why you don't start bands with close friends

 

Yes. Be a friend before you are a band member. Usually you fins a band through recycler, but you find a friend through good times, bad times, and shared experences.

[HiRoller]

Hope it all works out but yeah, you need a new drummer. I don't really agree with the notion that playing in a band with your close friends is bad as long as everybody is honest and realistic.

[bruiser_dup2]

I would stay out of the position of trying to smooth things out between them-- one of them will probably end up hating you, either way. Just say (either to them or to yourself), "I don't know what this is about, but it's not my problem."

 

And if the drummer is moving away, he's obviously out of the picture as far as the band goes, so he can stay your friend at a distance while you find someone who wants to drum with the band. So what's the problem?

 

I quit trying to understand people back about the time Nixon was re-elected. . .

 

Bruiser

[Tom Capasso]

Too bad about this. My question would be to understand what the other guys are feuding about. Not to fix anything for them - it was rightly mentioned that you'll end up loosing in the long run. More to understand the guitarist better. If you see things like the drummer does, you won't last long with this guitar player.

 

My 3000-mile-away thought is that you are done with both these people. Time to do something completely different.

 

Best of luck whatever you decide.

Tom

[ChrisOfDoom]

Ok, so the fued has been resolved, and now this thing has reached a different level of stupidity. They want to try to make this thing work with the same lineup after the drummer moves. So, at the end of January my band has a drummer that lives about 3 hours away, and I am the only one who realizes how stupid this is. Inevitably everyone else will realize it, but in the meantime we are not going to be getting anywhere. So in an effort to save the band, I am just going to keep inviting other drummers to jam with us after my friend leaves, and we can just work from there.

 

Uhg.

[Edendude]

Oh the joys of group dynamics.

 

[coyote]

I've always treated jamming with friends as a different thing than being in a band. Even if the band gigs only infrequently, to make it work there has to be a semblance of 'business' in the approach. I've made friends via the common musical connection, but never taken a friend and put him in my band.

[Base]

Would it not just be simplest for you to call it a day with this band, citing you don't want to fall out with either of them but this isn't going work, and go find yourself some new band buddies to play with??

[Lee Flier]

Well this is a problem that a lot of bands have, and it really has nothing to do with whether they're your close friends or not. My closest friends are my bandmates and I'm very happy about that. We find it helps the band, not hurts it.

 

If anything I would try to look at your drummer friend's desire to stay as a positive thing. Obviously he doesn't want to give up the band or your friendship and you can't blame him for wanting to try and hold it together. But I think it will become obvious over time that it won't work, so you should just be patient and let everybody figure that out on their own. That will make the separation easier.

 

My second band had this same problem when their drummer moved to a town an hour away... he'd been in the band a long time and was/is a REALLY good friend of everybody, and he just couldn't see quitting. So he tried to make it work for a year, driving back to Atlanta once a week for practice, etc., but in the end he was less and less available and there was really no way he could take it badly when the band's frontman told him they'd found another drummer. So now we have a new drummer and everybody's still friends and it's all cool. The old and new lineup of the band even did a gig with all of us playing together!

 

So I know you're bummed that your friend is moving. But try to look at it in the big picture and hopefully it will all work itself out over time.

[bc_dup1]

The first time I formed a band we asked a guy who'd been my closest friend for years to be the singer. We stupidly assumed anyone could sing: he was a pal, he was good-looking in a way that appealed to girls and his parents were relatively well off and generous, so when the time came he would be able to stump up for a pa. He was also learning guitar so by the time we played he would be able to chip in some rhythm guitar. An ideal candidate, we thought.

 

Of course, you've guessed, he couldn't sing very well. Too embarrassed to actually sack him, we pretended the band had folded because the drummer had decided he wanted to be a keyboard player - therefore we no longer had a drummer. What we in fact did was recruit a new drummer and singer and press on with the same guitarist (me), bass player and the old drummer on keys. This was supposed to be a different band, but my friend wasn't fooled. We drifted apart as a result of his feeling excluded and although I still bump into him very occasionally and we are perfectly polite to one another we were never again close friends. One story of a friendship ruined by playing together in bands.

[coyote]

If I may correct you on two points:

a) You drifted apart as a result of you deceiving him. Exclusion was most likely secondary.

b) The friendship was not ruined by playing together in a band. It was ruined by the deceit. Who can truly remain friends with someone who willfully deceives them?

 

And I don't mean to be a moralist here. It's just what is.

Originally posted by bc:

Too embarrassed to actually sack him, we pretended the band had folded... but my friend wasn't fooled. We drifted apart as a result of his feeling excluded... One story of a friendship ruined by playing together in bands.[/QB]

[Bender69]

Have to agree with Coyote. Years ago we had this guy Mike offer to roadie for us basically for free to meet girls, free beer, etc. After awhile he became a great friend with all of us. Then all of a sudden he decided he knew how to sing. He started to sing along with the tapes we would play in the car, and we all sang along so we never thought much about it. So our singer splits to another band and Mike wants to audition. We knew what we were in for, so we allowed him to audition and we taped it on an 8 track unit, seperating his voice. Afterwards we played it back to him and we were honest with him about his voice. He was a little upset at first (busted dreams and all) but he got over it and we went back to being friends again. They say honesty is the best policy, and it's true. It's all in how you approach it.

[ChrisOfDoom]

Originally posted by Base:

Would it not just be simplest for you to call it a day with this band, citing you don't want to fall out with either of them but this isn't going work, and go find yourself some new band buddies to play with??

I want to see how this all works out, we were getting so close to having it together I would hate to fold now, besides, I am not nearly talented enough to get into another band.

 

Well this is a problem that a lot of bands have, and it really has nothing to do with whether they're your close friends or not. My closest friends are my bandmates and I'm very happy about that. We find it helps the band, not hurts it.

If he wa not a good friend prior to being a bandmate, it seems it would be a lot easier to tell him that it just can't work. I should only be a matter of time before people realize that anways, so I think I will just wait out the stupidity of this situation.

 

Thanks for the advice all!

[EddiePlaysBass]

Originally posted by ChrisOfDoom:

I am not nearly talented enough to get into another band.

NONSENSE !!!! When I auditioned for my first 'real' band (real as in they even had a drummer ...) I could only play quarter notes (anything faster was a challenge), I only knew the notes on the first seven frets of the E and A string and the notion 'locking in with a drummer' was a complete novelty. And I made the audition.

 

Side note : these guys did know how to play, they were just in dire need of a bass player

[ChrisOfDoom]

I thought I would bump this back up with an update. My friend the drummer decided not to move. Now that is over with, I told him that if he ever changed his mind and wanted to move, there was no way the band would work ot with him in it, thus preventing this from happening again.

 

NOW. This brings me back to what I was working on before all this stupidity occured, finding a vocalist who can do something besides scream. Me and the guitar player have been just doing violent screaming vocals, and we need to do better then that, so we need a new member. This should be..... educational.

 

I'll update this thread later with whatever happens.

[ChrisOfDoom]

Soooooooooo...

 

We auditioned our first vocalist tonight, and I was really impressed with the guy. He is older then all of us (hes 27, were all 20-21), but he was getting tired of playing with stubborn older musicians, and the idea of working with some younger talent appealed to him. He is definitely talented, he is better on guitar then our current guitar player, he is competent on the drums to boot, so that gives us some flexibility, since our drummer actually has somewhat of a voice himself. His voice seems like a solid good sounding rock voice, and has no problem playing and singing at the same time. He has free access to a nice recording studio for free, is financially secure, and seems like a good guy to be around.

 

So he showed up today, we showed him a few of our originals, he showed off some of his songs, and we all hung out afterwards and got to know him. Even more importantly, he seems to like our music, and actually complimented my chops, so that was a nice ego boost. We invited him to our next practice on Saturday, and gave him some recordings and lyrics to learn.

 

So considering how rough it can be to find a decent vocalist, I think we may have seriously lucked out and hit a winner on our first try.

[EddiePlaysBass]

So Chris, how did it go? Is he still in the band?

[ChrisOfDoom]

Originally posted by EddiePlaysBass:

So Chris, how did it go? Is he still in the band?

Yeah, he never moved, deep down I didn't think he would. So yeah, and read my last two replies on here, we are hunting vocalists now.

[EddiePlaysBass]

Originally posted by ChrisOfDoom:

Yeah, he never moved, deep down I didn't think he would. So yeah, and read my last two replies on here, we are hunting vocalists now.

*LOL* My bad: I was referring to the vocalist