The suggestions are just minor changes to parts and effects and efforts to make the songs sound different. My frustration is that I show it to the rest of the band and they dig it, but the singer literally doesn't even want to hear it. He says, "just play it how you always do", or "play it how I said it". I'd be totally fine with rejection, but the principle that he doesn't care about any potential changes really irks me. I'm more or less subjugated to being a live bassist in the singer's eyes. I know that's fine for some bassists, but I would much rather be in a band as I know it than an entourage.
At the end of the day, I just need to weigh whether or not I'm getting anything out of this band besides frustration. It may just be the timing, and it may get better as time goes along, but my life is ridiculously hectic right now and I'm not sure where this should fall on the priorities list.
The overall tone of your comments rings familiar to me in many ways.
I have been working with a singer/song writer for many years now, but I started with his band as a replacement for their original bass player who left to join another band. When I was auditioning, I was handed very raw-sounding live cassette tape recordings. The recording quality was awful - but I could hear the band's intent - learned the tunes and in my own head, I was already collaborating with them working on the things I thought would make these songs even better.
I wasn't even in the band yet - but I opted to hop on the phone and call the guitar player/song writer to discuss my ideas. In my mind I thought this was what real musicians did. They discussed their creative ideas objectively with a shared idea that it's all about making the songs as good as they can be.
When he politely said, "Um, yeah... Thanks for your enthusiasm, but we still haven't even made up our minds about who is going to replace Charles yet..."
Long story short-ish; I did get the gig and I also heard loudly and clearly that I was the new guy, the guy responsible for learning the parts as-is, and not a collaborating partner. If I wanted the gig, that was the gig. While I could hear all kinds of things that we could do with these songs, the people who wrote those songs already did what they wanted with them and were not all that interested in the millions of other things we could do with them.
I loved the music the band was making and even though I had my own ideas of what we could do with the songs, I also liked them as they were and it was easy for me to simply focus on delivering my part as well as I could. As I said at the beginning of this post, I am still working with that singer/song writer. All that early stuff happened in 1995. I played with them as a group for about 3 years with moderate local success and a little bit of indie attention before the band imploded due to non-band things.
Since then I have been a full-blown collaborator with my now long time friend. It took a long time to figure out how to communicate my ideas about his songs to him without trampling on his feelings about his songs. At first my feedback was being received as criticism - not as 'ideas'. Once I realized that, we were able to talk about it and come to an understanding that creative discussions were not about "him" or his ability to create songs, it was about the millions of potentially great things that could be done to bring out the brilliance of his songs. From that point on I've been his first stop for collaborative input.
It takes time. If you like the core elements of the music, the songs and the people who make them and you are simply waiting for your opportunity to be considered a collaborator, I'd recommend biding your time, embracing your current role and creating a genuine place for yourself in the group.
If you don't find value in the core elements you should probably move on. Just be sure you don't walk into the next situation with the same desire to be a collaborator unless you are invited in as a collaborator.
