shinksma
What? I get a title?
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2014
- Messages
- 5,318
I guess I'm super lucky when it comes to "bands", in my very limited experiences. I never joined a band or jammed with anyone as a teenager, and only did a couple of lame jams when in college. I really waited until I started out in a "basement band" as an adult with a few coworkers (in Canada garage bands won't work for 6 months out of the year). We weren't serious in any way, but it gave me an outlet for what little musical talents I had - the other members were far better than me. We slowly fell apart as we moved away from a more centralized location, and one of us got married, etc. "Jimmy quit, Jody got married, I should've known, we'd never get far..."
Then my next "band" was almost 15 years later here in Florida - started jamming with a co-worker and his (at the time) girlfriend (now wife). We've been together 10 years now, with my (then) girlfriend (now wife) joining about 7 years ago. It helps we are really close friends (and neighbors).
We played regular weekend gigs for a while, but that dried up over the pandemic. We've recorded 4 CDs (private release), working on our fifth, with another 1.5 albums worth of material already written - could even be more if a couple of us pull from our "back catalog" of older material not yet explored.
So I'm pretty happy with how all that worked out - but we weren't struggling to pay any bills from the gig money - most of the time that didn't even pay for meals and gas on day of gig anyway. We got a few bigger checks from some St Pat's Day gigs etc, but nothing to invest in a Private Stock as a reward, lol. This has been the ultimate "Doctors and Lawyers" band without any of us actually being in those professions, I suppose...
So what I'm saying, @Aahzz , is it can be rewarding from an artistic point of view, but choose carefully. If you can't be friends with the other bandmates, you'll find it hard to stay together, IMHO.
Then my next "band" was almost 15 years later here in Florida - started jamming with a co-worker and his (at the time) girlfriend (now wife). We've been together 10 years now, with my (then) girlfriend (now wife) joining about 7 years ago. It helps we are really close friends (and neighbors).
We played regular weekend gigs for a while, but that dried up over the pandemic. We've recorded 4 CDs (private release), working on our fifth, with another 1.5 albums worth of material already written - could even be more if a couple of us pull from our "back catalog" of older material not yet explored.
So I'm pretty happy with how all that worked out - but we weren't struggling to pay any bills from the gig money - most of the time that didn't even pay for meals and gas on day of gig anyway. We got a few bigger checks from some St Pat's Day gigs etc, but nothing to invest in a Private Stock as a reward, lol. This has been the ultimate "Doctors and Lawyers" band without any of us actually being in those professions, I suppose...
So what I'm saying, @Aahzz , is it can be rewarding from an artistic point of view, but choose carefully. If you can't be friends with the other bandmates, you'll find it hard to stay together, IMHO.
