8 Reasons why being in a band is like being in a Long Term Relationship

Being in band can be intense at times. It's been one of those months, and sometimes I've wondered if life would be easier if we just cut out the middle man and married each other. Yes, it would mean a trip to Utah to legalise a five-way-wedding, but Utah is right next to Vegas - which would make for one hell of a honeymoon! Here's my list of 8 reasons why being in a band can sometimes feel like you're in a long term relationship - with four other people.



1. Borrowing each other's stuff without asking.


If I had a dollar for every time I'd gone in my case to find my tuner, lead, 9 volt, spare string, whatever..... only to find it missing or not how I left it, I would be very rich indeed. But, I give as good as I get and at present, only 75% of the strings on my guitar were paid for with my money. So, that one balances itself out!





2. Knowing where each other is, every day of the week!

Keeping track of each other has it's merits; it's hard to book a gig if you don't know if everyone's available and that expensive rehearsal room won't be free just because you left it to sit empty for a week. Having to put in for your three day trip to visit your family home six months in advance is pushing though - so watch out for control freaks!


3. You have "mutual friends".

If your band gigs regularly, chances are you'll meet each others friends. Meet them often enough and they'll become yours too. I recently went through my Facebook friends list to send out invites to a gig, and discovered to my horror that I knew less than twenty people in my area who weren't mutual friends of "Insert Band Name Here".



Those twenty event invites went a long way to getting the numbers up at our gig - NOT!!!

4. Arguments about money.

The music industry is an industry and it requires an input of cash from somewhere. Whenever it requires a cash injection from you; be it expensive studio fees, band merchandising costs, or top quality CD pressings, try not to argue about it! Like a relationship, it only slows things down and wastes energy.

Unlike a relationship, the making up afterwards is nowhere near as good!

5. Spending way too much time together.

When a group of creative types work well together, it can be hard to switch off and tune out for a while. In my current situation, musical matters get discussed nearly everyday. There's trips to the pub to check out other bands, weekly rehearsals, gigs at least once a week, piling into each others living rooms for an emergency song writing session......a night off just doesn't seem to exist. But if your band are buddies, being in constant demand can be one of the best things! Just watch out if your significant other asks you flat out if you're still in a relationship and feels the needs to add "with just the two of us?"

6.  Meeting the family.

When your band gets to the level where it needs the kind of time commitment a full-time job would, it's only natural your paths will cross with each other's families. This is also a big plus in my book; especially if you're a mixed gender band. Some of my band buddies Mrs's are my best friends and all those late nights and absent weekends won't raise any suspicious eyebrows if partners are kept in the mix.

7. Moving in together - sort of.

If things start to hot up with your musical act, it's only a matter of time until you have to expand your horizons and play gigs outside of your home town. When this happens, you may find yourself sharing a car, a hotel room, or even a tour bus with them. It's these times in the lifespan of a band when you discover just how small a drummers bladder can really be, and wonder whether or not you should just stick your finger up there yourself to see how inflamed that prostate is really getting.








8. Celebrating significant life events together. 

Just like that scene from Guns N' Roses "November Rain", you may find yourself tearing up at the sight of one of your bandies getting married. This has happened to me twice and has been the only two moments in my life when it's been remotely acceptable for me to compare myself to Slash.

For better or worse, for richer or poorer, being in a band is one of life's most awesome adventures and I wouldn't change it for the world!

When Did This Become OK?; Just Shut Up and Take My Money!

Ok, so when did behaviour like this become ok?

On Facebook, I'm clearly marked out as a musician, somebody musical, someone who's worked in and has experience of the music industry, etc., you get the picture. Today I received the following post on my page:

(Identity obscured to protect the poster)

In case you can't see above, it says "I gotta studio I go to every weekend but I need my own equitment so if you would like to help me with the funds inbox me".

Apart from the obvious terrible spelling and grammar, which I'm trying not to judge the person for, what I am judging them for is the terrible motive behind this post! As you can see above, they've tagged myself and 48 other people in this post, then went straight ahead lazily asking for money with a very vague explanation as to why! No please, no thank you, simply putting their hand out for some of my hard earned money.

As my more regular readers may have noticed, I posted about crowd funding initiatives and my conflicting feelings towards these sites a little while ago. Is this the evolution of crowd funding? I can't be bothered to work so I'll just post on a few Facebook pages and keep my fingers crossed?

What on earth is going on???? 

My big question is this. Has this actually worked for this person? Has anyone been generous/stupid enough to inbox this person saying "Hey, I have no idea what you want this for but here's a hundred bucks! Just shut up and take my money!"

In what world is this how we make, market and love each others music? 

Why Douche is the Most Appropriate Phonetic in Fiduciary Matters; the world thinks it’s ok to ask artists to work for free…. and occasionally I kind of agree.

I really can’t tell you the name of the company involved in this, but this is pretty shocking. So let’s begin…

Some time ago, my band were invited to play at a corporate event. We’d just finished a run of festival appearances, were getting a small amount of airplay on commercial radio and receiving weekly press enquiries. We were keen to keep the ball rolling, and happy to play as many shows as possible, we accepted.

The event was for a big corporation who have branches all over the country. They were planning on opening a new branch and requested only a 30 minute set – “just a little something to get the customers pumped up”. At this juncture, our store contact pointed out that they couldn’t actually pay us, but in exchange for our time, they would feature the band on the homepage of their website and on the accompanying press release about the store opening. The fatal words “It’ll be great exposure for you guys” were uttered, and with that, the transaction was considered valid.

 A week before the gig, we were informed that a performance area had been set up in the parking lot with a stage and what we were told was a “full band setup, just bring your instruments and your own guitar and bass amps”. We continued to check the company’s website for our not-so-free advertising, but nothing appeared. It’s pretty poor etiquette to announce an event before the host does, so nothing about the gig went out on our social networks either. To make matters worse, nobody from the store would respond to our enquiries about the sound system setup, so we had no idea if the venue would be able to cater for our technical specifications.

48 hours before the gig and we’d had enough. The issue was passed over to band management, who sent a rather curt email requesting the corporation hold up their end of the deal or we’d be forced to pull the plug. Problem was – there wasn’t even a plug to pull!

The response was astounding. It was put to us that as the band, we were expected to provide our own sound system and should have sorted this by now. If we were unable to provide this at this late stage, perhaps only our singer and guitarist should perform. When we tried to explain that this wasn’t possible, our booking contact just didn’t understand that a microphone actually needs to be plugged into something to get sound out of it. Shouting her way through our songs over the noise of a busy store would not be an option and we just didn’t have a street-busker style setup we could use.

So, as we were:

• 1.       Unwilling/unable to shell out a few hundred bucks for PA system hire.
• 2.       Unwilling/unable to shell out a few hundred bucks for a van to transport the PA system.
• 3.       Unwilling/unable to spend hours setting up and dismantling a PA system for a 30 minute            gig.
• 4.       Not given our advertising; no sign of any press release with our logo, images, web links on        it, no offer of reimbursement for the expense this would incur.
• 5.       Getting nothing 

We had to pull out.

It was shocking to us that a big corporation like this couldn’t flick us a few hundred bucks for our time, or even sort out the necessary setup we’d need to play some music in their store. What made it even worse was that they were a specialist audio visual entertainment company! Shocking or what?

It’s pretty frustrating that 90% of the world seems to think it’s ok to ask artists to work for free. All those years spent learning your craft and coming up with something fresh and original are suddenly worthless and at times it seems implied that anybody pulled in off the street could do it too – so just get on with it and consider yourself lucky it’s you up there.  But sometimes, I occasionally see where they have a point.

The biggest show I ever played, I played for free.

Actually, at a rough estimate, I played this show for -$800 and it was worth every cent it cost me to get organised for it. A long hot summer some time ago, the group I was with were offered to play on one of the side stages of a pretty significant music festival. Somehow, the stars aligned and we managed to land this gig alongside some big name acts. As a relatively unheard of band, we were told straight up we wouldn’t be paid for this show as we needed it more than they needed us. It would have been just as easy for the festival organisers to have had that side stage sitting empty for the 45 minute slot we were offered and they would have lost no income from taking that option. Instead, they offered us a chance and we had no other choice than to jump on that thing like Van Halen instructed.

When I look back on this, if you care enough about something, have thrown thousands of dollars into it over the years, gotten yourself into and out of debt over it multiple times – what’s another $800 to pay for your lucky break? 

A Rough Day at the Studio; Doubt was the friend who came round afterwards, brought the wine and ordered the pizza.

I recently had a really strange experience in the recording studio while putting the finishing touches to my band's EP.

I usually love studio work! It's the time when a song comes to life and you finally get to hear the track the way you imagined it in your head all those months ago. It can be really productive - if you get the right producer. If you're at the stage where you're considering investing your hard earned cash in laying down some tracks professionally, here's a warning for you. Find the right producer!

Sadly, a chance encounter was the only persuasion my band needed to be led into the studio of the producer we're currently using. Needless to say, this is a terrible selection process and he's not the right fit for us at all. Due to the dynamics of my current group, (one incredibly strong personality who gets to call the shots, but doesn't really know what's what) the decision was made to book in with the studio before discussing anything with the band. I really doubted that he was the right guy for us. Looking at the extensive list of past clients, it made for an impressive but mismatched read; none were in the same genre as us, or even anything close. This was mistake number one.

Mistake number two? Don't expect the producer to do anything more than the job of a producer, and certainly don't allow them to either; it's a can of worms you'll never be able to close.

The big problem here was that our producer was invited into the fold of the band, acted as a sixth band member for a while before graduating into the position of band manager. Crazy, eh? Looking back on it, I can see how this situation came about.

This band's career has been like an exploding confetti canon; we each had different skills and levels of experience making a pretty colourful mix, but when we got together it just exploded. Within the first year we wrote over thirty songs, appeared at some pretty big music festivals and experienced a winning streak when we were on commercial radio at least once a week. It was incredible, but commercial success is no substitute for experience.

Half the band have no experience working in studios and so, walked into it completely submissively. The process turned on it's head and instead of the band holding the reigns and walking away with a product true to it's original concept, we've ended up with the producer's interpretation of our work - it's a million miles away from what we wanted and coming from somebody who doesn't work with artists of our genre, what should we have expected?

It all started when he came to one of our gigs, listened to us play and then spent  the rest of the night being asked to comment on what he thought we should change. It all just snowballed from there; one minute he was making a suggestion on how to improve someone's drum pattern (totally acceptable and really helpful), the next he was sitting us all down to mentor us on interpersonal relationships (not really qualified, or even anywhere near appropriate!) and charged us for the time!

The most stark moment for me was when I turned up after a busy day at work to find my guitarist in the booth with the producer having a full on music lesson with him! By the time I arrived, they'd been in there for two hours while the guitarist played and the producer critiqued his right hand technique and the way his wrist moved while he played. Looking at the itemised bill, we could have paid for him to have almost eight hours of lessons with an actual guitar teacher for the same cost! He just didn't realise that this is NOT a routine part of studio work and that these issues really needed to be hammered out before we got to this stage.

I left the studio that day feeling exhausted. I called out for pizza and curled up on the sofa with my doubts spinning round my mind; I doubted he was the right producer for us, I doubted we were ready to even be in the studio just yet and I really doubted we'd come away with a product we were happy with. For fear of being labelled negative, stubborn, oppositionally defiant or a stick in the mud, I kept quiet, ate my pizza and watched reruns of Ink Master until it was time for bed.

Fortunately for me, I know when to pick my battles and keeping quiet was the perfect way to give the situation enough rope to hang itself.

The track was eventually finished and so was the itemised bill - it came in at a devastating three and a half times the original estimate. We had to delay any future recordings until we'd all recovered from the expense. Although it was a set back, it really gave us some time to contemplate the decisions we'd made and think about how to avoid this happening in future.

The good: next time we go into the studio we'll have straightened out the fine details and be really prepared, know what to expect and be able to keep the cost down closer to the original estimate. Every strange experience is a learning experience and I can certainly say that's true in this instance.

The bad: it's given half the band a twisted first experience of studio work. I still hear talk in the rehearsal studio of "running an idea past the producer" or asking the producer if it's ok for us to change this, that and the next thing. It'll take some effort to clear up the misconception that he's somehow in charge of us and get him back behind the sound desk, but I'm confident we'll get there.

A Lesson in Second-Guessing Yourself; how doubt can be like a boner in a strip club.

I thought I'd kick this thing off by sharing my opinions with you on how doubt can be your worst enemy and your best friend in the world of music. Your worst enemy is probably a good place to start; it's something I wish I'd realised much sooner and I'll use some personal experiences to show how deep it can run.

When I was a youngster, one of my first experiences of working on a collaboration with other artists came at university. The lecturer assigned us groups of what I suppose he thought was equal weighting in terms of skill selection. I remember only one person who was assigned to my group that day; a much older student who was twice my age and identified as a "producer". I really didn't know what he meant by this but I soon came to learn it was his misused, glorified label for a DJ. He always carried a laptop on him, although I only ever saw it used for taking notes on Microsoft Word or playing the occasional CD, and he played no instruments or had any knowledge of Pro Tools, Logic, Sibelius, etc. Our task was simple; we were to work on writing a piece of music together, that fitted some shaky guidelines our lecturer had set.

I was really into using Cubase (the digital audio workstation, for those of you who aren't techies)  at the time; I found it quick and easy and the piano sound was realistic enough for me to scam my way through composition assignments. So, the group and I decided the quickest way to get the job done would be to throw together some drum loops for this "producer" to run some "beats" over the top.

The following week, disc in hand, I turned up for class and Mr Producer popped my Cubase export into his infamous laptop. I expected him to at least just give it a listen and then maybe start with the beat-running-over-the-topping - but no. As the other members of the group gathered round (contributing nothing, by the way) he began to mock the track.

"OMG, the drums are flat! Listen to this, those drums are well flat!" His face twisted into a grimace as he tried to show how terribly out of tune these drums- these drums created using a software program set to perfect pitch with not a single live instrument in use - sounded.

"Urgh, listen to that!" He continued, gesturing for the rest of the group to get involved. One by one, they began exchanging looks with each other and nodding. He'd won them all over.

He'd won me over. Much older, much more dominant and much louder than me, I didn't dare question him. The logical part of me was sure it was impossible for this standardised electronic signal to be out of tune. The experienced musician in me knew that a drum kit was not an instrument that required 'tuning' in the conventional sense of the word, but more of a toning process through tightening heads. The band-mate in me was scanning back through images of drum keys and socket wrenches, but failed to find a memory of a tuner or any kind of pitch-measuring device.

But there it was; the smothering feeling of doubt and the constant questioning that popped up every five minutes like a boner in a strip club. Assuming there must be something I just didn't understand, I took back my disc, melted into the peripheries with the onlookers of the group, and let Mr Producer submit his beat track as our collaborative assignment; for which we all scored abysmal marks.

It wasn't until a few years later, when the b*llshit in the music arena finally wore too thin, that I was able to see the truth. I was backstage at a music festival in Australia on a day so hot I could see a bushfire in the distance and was checking my tuning in case my bass strings had expanded in the heat. At this point, another Mr Producer type walked over to me and stated loudly on front of the entire crew that I was doing it wrong. "Don't bother tuning that thing," he said. "It's too hot, you'll go flat. Just open it up." I couldn't figure out what he meant so I said nothing and just looked at him, confused. "It's got something in it, it's called a truss rod," he continued, speaking slower this time. "You'll need to give that a couple of turns".

I thought he was joking and laughed while he stared at me blankly. "Seriously, adjust that thing. I give mine a few turns every time I play it". And with that, he walked off. We can discuss what's wrong with this entire example another time, if need be, but it served a purpose for me. What he said was absolute crap and I knew it. But still, that familiar feeling washed over me and for a split second, my brain went on auto pilot as I felt my hands go to turn the bass over and see what kind of Allen key would take the truss rod cover off.

And at that moment, the foot came crashing down! I just couldn't do it to myself anymore...

Like hell was that a good suggestion! Like hell had I been tuning my bass wrong after nearly thirteen years of playing! Like hell was I supposed to adjust the neck before every time I played my bass since the day I started! And like hell was that drum track flat!

You may or may not have your own moment when you just snap and can't take any more of it. I'm happy I had mine, but wish it had come sooner. After years of second-guessing myself, some of the theories I've entertained have been ridiculous. A particular peach came from another former classmate of mine who had me believing that if I took a guitar on an aeroplane, the air pressure changing in the cabin would snap the guitar neck in half (???????????)

Ultimately, all these silly little things people have had me believing over the years have been counter-productive. There comes a time when you have to accept that you may not know everything, you may not get it right 100% of the time, but that if you've worked hard and earned your stripes chances are you do know your stuff and can stay grounded on that. Hold that ground, you're going to need it in this business for sure.