FlashDrive is officially in a rebuilding season. I tossed that term out there yesterday and got nods all around. Wait, let me back up.
The Festival Showcase was Friday. The band did not play, but that turned out to be maybe a better thing after all. Last Saturday after practice, we sat and stuffed press kits, 50 of them. Nice shiny black folder, logo (custom decal) on the front. Open it up, 8x10 glossy of the band on the left side, song list and cover letter on the right. Pretty slick-looking package. John called them this week and turned the $100 audition fee into a booth fee, a kiosk with electricity. He sat there all day Friday with the kits and a laptop playing video of FlashDrive playing live, ready to fellate prospective clients. Good stuff.
Friday I had the day off, so I was being a bum at home and decided Oh yeah, I should revoke Anne's Editor privs on the band's Facebook page. While I was in there, I took the opportunity to clean up some things, standardize Album Titles, add Descriptions to pictures, make sure everything looks nice if/when prospective talent folks go there for a look. One of the pictures from our last gig is JT and Amy. Amy is the girl who was going to fill in for Jessica as backup singer, since Jessica is a teacher and couldn't just take the day off. Anne had added most of the pictures in the last two albums, but didn't add Descriptions, so I added them. Mostly serious, some silly. It was easy to tag Amy because we became Facebook Friends this week, yay.
I get a Facebook message from Amy, thanking me for the tag. She remembered that picture being taken, but didn't get a copy. By the way, her and JT have had a falling out and she doesn't think they'll be friends any more. Um, okay. So she removed the tag but downloaded the picture. Then it occurs to me that Amy was really only brought in to fill in this one gig, Anne took her under her wing, we didn't do the gig, Anne is gone, her only connection to the band was JT, and I wonder if anyone actually told her that we weren't doing the gig.
Turns out Amy called Anne to talk about practicing one more time this week, and Anne told her the gig was off. John assumed JT would tell her, JT saw the group email saying that we weren't doing it, but didn't notice that Amy wasn't on the To: list (it was just regular band members) and thought she knew. Meanwhile, she found out from Anne, who was already pissed about being let go and had quickly become best friends forever with Amy so Amy called JT and says What the fuck, you didn't even tell me? and JT has no idea what she's talking about so they get into an argument and let's just say JT isn't fucking Amy anymore. Too bad, she was cute. Amy and JT aren't Facebook Friends anymore, but she and I still are.
Also, Anne unFriended Jerry and JT, but not me, and I can't believe I'm relating Friending and unFriending drama like it's the 90's and we're in high school but that's just how ridiculous this all is. Bring on the fucking drama. Jerry sends a text to me, JT, and John just laughing about the fact that Anne has unFriended him ("Good riddance!") but wondering why. I said it's because she traces her exit from the band back to his comments at the round table, about him being 50-50 on quitting the band because of all the drama, and she knows she brings the drama, so it's "his fault". Ah, wisdom!
John's email is just to me, JT, Jerry, and Jessica, the only people still officially in the band. I'm the only one left whose name doesn't start with J. It states that Anne is officially out of the band, and that Larry has left as well. Larry was on his third strike with him (John) anyway, so John didn't actually try that hard to keep him. So the search is now on for a new lead guitarist as well as a singer. John goes on to question his leadership of the band, and now understands why many band leaders prefer a more Authoritarian model than the more Democratic model he's been using. He does not say so, but he seems to be looking for feedback.
So I give him some. First, I ask for clarification on Larry's "three strikes". Then I go on to say that I actually like the way the band has been led thus far. No leadership model is perfect for all situations; it depends heavily on the individuals involved. If someone's not good with the way the band is run, they're not a good fit for the band, and that's going to be true of any model. The band has been through some serious setbacks recently, the lows which always seem to follow the highs, and it's natural and expected for him to reexamine things, but I'm telling him that things couldn't really have gone any other way. Anne was consistently putting herself ahead of the band, and was practically the definition of "not a good fit". But we've replaced band members before. I'm still in.
He thanks me for the "calming words". Larry's three strikes were: 1 Telling John that he was okay waiting until after the showcase to tell Anne and otherwise deal with band personnel issues. The personnel issues are separate from the gigs we have to play. 2 Turning around and insisting that Anne be told, or he's not going to play the showcase. But don't worry, he's not quitting the band or anything; he just thinks it's not cool using Anne like this. 3 Quitting the band anyway after Anne says she's not doing the showcase.
Saturday (yesterday) I get there, ready to audition a new lead singer named Cheryl. Her Soundcloud is good. She's also pretty, but it's just a head shot. She sings Jazz, but that's just her Soundcloud profile. She sang in Rock and Roll bands for eight years out in Colorado. Okay.
I get there, and Jerry is already there. I ask him point blank: Are you still in? He's like What? The band, Are you still in? He's like Yeah, of course I'm still in! JT shows up, and I ask him: Are you still in? and he's like Fuck yeah, I'm still in!
Wait, this stack of promo packs that we stuffed last week, it looks like most of them are still here. John fills us in on the showcase thing Friday. It was "a learning experience". Promoted as a showcase to 40 or 50 local vendors, representatives from three counties, folks looking to sign bands to their local events and bands looking to play them, John says there were maybe 12 or 15 vendors there
all day. It wasn't a continuous crowd, lots of folks all checking out the local talent. There were two or three people there at a time, at the most, they'd listen to a few bands and leave, and sometimes they'd go a while with no vendors actually there. The first band, right at 9:00, played to an empty room. No one was there yet. They just kinda wandered in and out all day. John handed out 15 packets altogether, but probably only 12 to vendors. The other three went to other bands. They were wandering around, too, and saw our kits and went "Whoa, can I take one?" So now they know how to make a professional-looking press kit. So anyway, if we'd played, it would've been for the maybe one or two reps there at the time. This way, 12 vendors out there have our info. The band that they sign will not be the same people as in the picture, but so what? We show and play, we have a new singer, or a new guitarist. It happens.
Cheryl is just going to audition with the four of us, the "core" of the band. We have just established that we are in fact the core and are all still in, and we've replaced singers and guitarists before, and what the hell else are we gonna do on weekends? And we're all here, and we all sit down for a second and have some snacks (John always has snacks and drinks; he's an excellent host) and reassure ourselves and each other that we're the core of the band and we're all still in. We ponder whether being "the core" means that the new guitarist and new singer will
not by definition be part of "the core". That depends. Pat never felt like he tried to fit in. Larry seemed like he would have, everything seemed so cool, but then he went psycho on us the same way Anne did. So you never know.
Cheryl arrives, along with her husband Neal. She hopes it's okay that he came along (of course it is) and she jokes that you never know, she thought she was auditioning for a band, but she might have been driving out to some house to get gang-raped or something. Neal is maybe 5'7" with glasses and kinda nerdy-looking, and he immediately points out that he would have been no help at all if this had turned out to be the case. Okay, so these two have a wacky sense of humor and don't feel the need to hold back.
Cheryl sings pretty well. We go through four songs, "What's Up?" by 4 Non Blondes, "Higher Ground" by a cross between Stevie Wonder and Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" by Pat Benatar, and "Some Kind of Wonderful" not by Grand Funk Railroad, but Joss Stone's version. We've never heard her version. Jerry has never heard of Joss Stone. Loser. The rest of us have. John plugs Cheryl's iPhone into the board and we listen to it. It's funky, cool, and does not suck. So we try that version. She's like What, do you know this version? and we're like No but we just listened to it so let's try it and she seems impressed but hey, we are professional musicians here, baby.
So we rocked it. We couldn't remember how to get to the ending thing, so it kinda crashed at the end, but we did it, a funky, cool version we'd never even heard before.
Cheryl and Neal leave, just the core four of us again. Thoughts? Decent singer, a bit thin in the upper range, though. Alto, not a Soprano. Anne was stronger in the upper range, so it didn't matter so much that Jessica wasn't, but we don't know how it'll work with Jessica and Cheryl. They might be able to support each other, or they might suffer because neither are really that strong up there.
JT points out an uncomfortable truth. This is show business, and talent definitely matters, but image also matters. Cheryl is pretty, but she's not tall, and nearly as wide as she is tall. She's like, round. You can get away with mediocre looks if you have massive talent and presence. You can get away with mediocre talent if you're hot and have great presence. You can even get away with lousy stage presence if you're hot and talented. But you have to have at least two of the three. She was a decent singer, had no presence, and is not strong in the "image" department. Hmm. John says, Well, we keep her in mind and we keep looking. Somewhere in here, I threw out my line about this being a rebuilding season.
In sports, a team occasionally has a period where it's a given that they're not realistically even thinking about the pennant. They've lost some key guys and/or have a lot of new talent coming up and in need of seasoning, etc. With us, it always seems to be winters. Two years ago, we'd lost Karen and Mike, and had to replace a singer and a bassist, then we had to build up enough songs to play gigs. We rebuilt over spring and summer, and by fall we played out for actual money. Then Steve quit. We got Pat in and by spring we were gigging again. We gigged all summer, had some fun, played a major local venue, then lost both Pat and Anne. Larry never even played a gig with us, so fuck him. We got the holidays coming up again, I'm always busy with other musical things this time of year, and there's no gigs anyway, so whatever. We rebuild, and keep on rocking, because what's the alternative? Not rocking? Sorry, but that's just not an option. We must rock!
FlashDrive updates will likely be lesser over the upcoming months, as we enter the off-season and audition folks. Hopefully, we'll be back to a full lineup and gigging again before too long. I might take the time to create a separate thread for all these band updates, because in terms of total content, there's a fuckton of it and I feel like it dominates this thread too much. I know some of you guys are fine with that, but hey, you can follow the updates in the new thread, too, and this way guys like Kotowboy and TheLordOfTheStrings and their projects don't get bombed out by me.
Topic: All musicians unite! - The Musicians Chat Thread (Read 302769 times)
