Are we stretching too far?

[oniman7]

So, I've been in an original band since January. We've changed members a couple of times, and are looking to have a new singer audition Friday. I've heard him sing, and he's pretty good. Says he can scream too, which is a plus for some of the music we might play. He sent me an MP3 of a vocal cover of his and it sounded pretty tight.

We have two gigs booked, on in July, and one in early August. Both of them are supporting a national or international act. We got these purely through connections.

Through the same connections, I learned that a rival band of ours dropped a gig and pissed of some management at the same venue. It's a 15 minute set opening, and he told us we could literally do anything (instrumental, acoustic, whatever we needed to) if we could get those 15 minutes down. Sent the covers home with the singer, that should be enough, and we can add an original or two. If he can pull it off, I'm going to say yes to that.

Now the venue owner just posted a Facebook status asking for any bands interested in playing with another band June 25th. I said we were interested in playing, but needed details. Our set is only so long.



Anyways, I know a lot of it depends on this new singer being able to work, but I'd like to really start promoting ourselves. I want to be known as a professional band willing to jump at opportunities. All our potentially paying gigs, a plus. However, I don't know if I'm getting ahead of our abilities. I'm also worried I'm badgering the owner, always popping up on any opportunity to play that venue. He's not heard us play yet, but we're booked their twice already this summer, as well as a potential third and fourth.


Also, we're a high school band, and it's summer, so we have multiple weekly practice times scheduled for writing and rehearsing.

[Schizoid75]

Without knowing anything about you guys, I think you have to be careful. You may know what you're capable of learning and doing, but you haven't even worked with this singer yet. What if you commit to something and then after a week or two of rehearsals with this singer, a problem develops? Now you have to cancel and possibly burn a bridge.

I'm not saying you shouldn't take risks, but try and take calculated risks. I wouldn't be comfortable booking a gig relying on a singer that I've never worked with.

[oniman7]

Good point. Our guitarist can sing, but we wanted to bring in a dedicated singer to replace the old one and add some lead vocals to the band.

I'll definitely try to keep that in mind.

[Joe Nerve]

I dated a girl for a few years that ran a successful heath food business. She had a coach when she was building the business. He told here to always say "yes", and then worry about the details later. I did that for a lot of years, and it worked. Only catch is it doesn't guarantee you're going to be happy. I look at things a little differently now. So what am I saying? I don't know. If you really want to do a gig, just say yes, and you can and will work out the details if you're comitted to it. Is that always the right thing to do, not necesarily so.

I'm sure that helped a lot.

[Sharky1450]

Don't if I'd call it stretching too far...
It seems like it depends on the calibre and commitment of this new singer tbh, otherwise you're on the right track - there's no way of knowing how good you can be as a musician/band until you're put under pressure to deliver. Doesn't really matter about this "bugging the owner" bit - because if you deliver you're going to be invited back to play, if not, he/she (owner) might replace you unless you've signed a contract to play the future gigs.
Other than that, good on you for getting busy. Good luck to you

[skwee]

The fact that you are asking leads me to believe you'll be just fine. You know what you ate getting into and you will prepare

[cchorney]

I've been playing a side project from my gigging band, just a bunch of guys my age that like jamming. After a while, they wanted to do a gig. I said "fine, but we need to practice and not just jam, and we need to sound like musicians, not hacks.". Well we had 2 months to go from a bunch of guys jamming once a week to a band with about 40 songs that we could all play tightly and without paper notes in front of us. We did it, but it took a lot of work, and sadly more so, it took a lot of nagging and bitching from me to keep the project sufficiently focused.

Point being, look around you - does everyone in the bank have the ability to focus enough to practice both together and individually regularly and pull it together by gig day?