More Drama!
In the Chicago suburbs, every suburb has their own festival and celebration every year. They range in size, but in general are the biggest local event of the year. The Village Green or whatever the big park downtown is gets converted into a fair. Rides, games, and of course live music. This is known as "the festival circuit". Bands can make anywhere from $800 to $2000 for that one night, and if you manage to get on the circuit, you go around and play six or eight (or more) of these during the spring and summer months.
Two weeks from Friday is a big thing at one of the big hotels, it's a showcase for the local festivals. Reps will be there to decide what bands to hire for next year's festivals. Bands will be there to basically do mass auditions. 15 minutes, show them what you've got, maybe score big. This is a very big deal. We weren't ready for the festival circuit this year; we would've had to have been ready last fall and appear at this showcase. We're ready now.
So the thing is coming up, and the organizer contacted John with some tips: Don't play individual songs, put together a medley of 7-8 songs which show your versatility, variety, musicianship, and vocal strength. That's the only one that caught us by surprise. We'd decided which three songs to play, killer songs, but what the hell, we can put together a 15-minute medley of songs. I volunteered to do it, and "Festival Medley v3.mp3" was eventually emailed out to everyone, along with a breakdown of how it's all put together. Saturday was our first practice of two to nail this thing down. We worked on it for three hours. It's coming together really well.
Some things didn't work quite as well as I'd thought, but whatever; I knew this was only a draft. Some transitions worked better if we left in four or eight bars to give someone time to switch guitars or stomp on pedals. Some things flowed better if we cut this out part out, but left this part of this other song in. That kind of thing. I remember that there was an one eight-bar section we cut that Anne felt very strongly against cutting, but it was basically a throwaway section. It's in "Separate Ways" right near the end where Perry is ad-libbing "I still love you I really love you blah blah blah" while Neil plays the same solo he'd played before, then the big ending. We cut that. Anne thought it made more sense lyrically to keep it because the next thing is "Noooooooo!!!!" over the synth hook and it would sound like she's telling him No, as opposed to No, please don't go. Whatever, it's bits and pieces of songs. The buyers will not be critiquing the lyrics.
I get up from my Sunday afternoon nap yesterday to a missed call, a voicemail, and a text, all from John, all asking me to call him. This will not be good.
He got an email from Anne Saturday night at 11:00 PM (after he'd gone to bed; he didn't see it until Sunday) which he presumes came about after several glasses of wine, but as he puts it "alcohol is the best truth serum" and he's right.
Anne can't deal with this. The way we disrepect her (what?), the way we're always talking about her behind her back (which she's never seen but she knows we do it), the way she never has any input into the decisions we make, blah blah blah, whine whine whine (and probably more wine wine wine). This thing with cutting the vocal ad-lib part was just the last straw, the one that broke the camel's back. She's so tired of having to put up with all the shit she gets from us (seriously, WTF?) and the way we gang up on her if she dares to open her mouth.
Uh... no. This is a band. Every one of us has compromised, for the good of the band. Every one of us puts the band first, because without the band, we don't get to be rock stars on the weekends. Every one of us, except her. John says that this has been going on for a while, most of the summer at least (I had no idea) and her emails are always full of "I thought... " and "But I wanted..." It's always about her, it's never what's better for the band. He's spent the last few months trying to smooth over the hurt feelings regarding adding Jessica as a support singer, which a bigger person would be able to see objectively makes us a better band. Our vocals now are as kickass as our instrumentals. We did it. We are now a fucking top-shelf cover band, really for the festival circuit, the big bucks as far as this level of entertainment goes. So of course it's now time for someone to get fucking butthurt about something and want to quit.
John's telling me all this, and I'm thinking maybe it's time for a different approach. Mediation? That would be weird. How about we just ask her what the fuck it is that she wants us to do? Does she want full control of the set list? Not gonna happen. Does she want final say on all vocal decisions? She has the most say, but the final word still comes down to the band. No one has 100% control over anything. It's called compromise, putting the needs of the many ahead of the needs of your own selfish ass. Given that, what does she want? Have we ever really asked her that, point blank.
John says that he suspects she'd never be able to articulate that. And unfortunately, it really doesn't matter at this point because there's more. First, this has been going on for a while (that's when he shared that bit about it going on all summer) and Anne is beyond pessimistic, beyond paranoid; she's full-blown delusional. The accusations of us colluding against her, the objectively wrong perception that she has no input into the decisions, the way we brought in another singer without her approval (approval?)... But most of all, there's another thing. Jerry, who at our last band meeting said he was 50-50 on staying and putting up with this shit, had also sent John an email after Saturday's practice. He's decided. He'll play this showcase thing with us, but after that he's gone. He won't be as dramatic as Steve was ("either she goes or I go") but basically he's tired of dealing with Anne and her shit. Again, I'm totally caught off guard by this. I had never perceived anything negative between those two. Never. When we're playing, for three hours, everything in the world is great. I'm playing rock and roll. I'm playing good rock and roll with a good band with good singers and it sounds good and we are good. As far as I knew, everything was great. Maybe I'm the naive one.
But there it is. We either find another singer or we find another bass player. Steve left because of Anne, Pat had numerous reasons for leaving but #1 was Anne, and Jessica isn't available for the showcase thing (she teaches vocal music, and that is the day of her school concert) but has intimated to John that she's having second thoughts about being in the band and working with Anne.
There are other bass players, and yeah, I'm sure it's easier to find a good-enough bass player than a good singer. But from Day One, the basis of this band has been that it is not our day job, and we may never make any money doing it, therefore it has to be about fun, and playing music isn't fun if you don't get along with the rest of the band. It's about "fit". John has cut people he didn't think were a good fit, and right now, if there's one person who's causing the most problems, giving him the most headaches, not "fitting" with the rest of the band, it's our prima-donna lead singer Anne. He's made the executive decision and she's got to go, for the sake of the band. The band is not the lead singer. Actually, he sees the core of the band as JT, Jerry, myself, and him. We've seen lead guitarists come and go. We've seen singers come and now probably go. These are key positions in the band, no question. But if the person in that position places their wants above the needs of the band -- that is, considers themself more important than the other five members combined -- then that person is the problem.
My phone says that John and I talked for 46 minutes, 11 seconds. I basically agreed with him on everything we discussed. I like Anne, he likes Anne, but we both like the band more, and the band is not going to bend over or bow to the wishes of the lead singer. Some bands do that. This is his band, and this band will not do that. I'm perfectly fine with that.
Next steps: Somehow keep it together for two more weeks. Get this festival showcase done, wow a bunch of people, line up some big gigs for next year. Then replace our lead singer and, by next summer, get another one and get her up to speed. When we hit the festival circuit next year, and live out our dream of playing for thousands of people at a time, we will not be the same band that auditioned; we will be better.
Two steps forward, one step back. That's been the pattern, every single time. We finally had a full set list together and were ready to start playing gigs when we lost Karen. We finally got to actually playing live when we lost Steve. We finally got to playing some decent venues and not $10 shitholes when we lost Pat. We are on the edge of playing the festival circuit, and it looks like we're losing Anne. John says that there's one thing that could change the outcome of this, and it's that Anne has to convince him that she's turned herself around, realized how out-of-touch with reality she's been, make amends with the rest of the band, and show that she's ready to place the needs of the band ahead of her own. He seriously doubts that this will happen. But he has to keep her compliant until after the showcase. Placate her, tell her Let's just get through this thing and then we can take a serious look at her issues and what we can do about them. It would not exactly be untrue.