Babies and Bands

[carl h.]

Walked away from playing full time and teaching music at a private music school and a college. Handed off $4000 worth of gigs to a friend and moved to a different state. I kept contacts and would do about 4 gigs a year back where I came from. Eventually the money wasn't enough to get me to commit to anything out of the county. The late nights and early mornings don't work for a stay at home dad, kids need attention and a fully conscious parent. I turned down some great paying gigs and ended up being taken off of the lists, which kind of sucks, but there is more to life than gigs and the quest for more money.

I'd post more but I have a gig in 50 minutes and need to shower and load up. Corporate day holiday gigs are awesome. Done by 3:00 and home for the night!

BTW, my kids are 8 & 12. I currently have 6 gigging bands with light schedules and one is a new group I started this summer. We wrote out 3 hours of charts so finding a sub is fairly painless and we can cover a very broad range of styles. Stopping isn't the same as quitting.

 

[bassstrangler]

I respect any parent willing to spend as much time as they can with their kids. I'm glad to see parents taking an active roll. A lot of parents don't IMHO. Parking a kid in front of an electronic flashing box is what some do and others don't do anything but let the kids raise themselves.

Kudos to those who care! I myself was always too selfish to raise kids so I chose not to have any. Now it's something I sort of regret being 44 years of age.

 

[DavC]

back when my son was born , i played 6 nights a week ... as 'that' was my job .. ! i was Mr. Mom during the day , when the wife worked ... when he got old enough for pre-school , i went back to work in the daytime also ... do what you gotta do ... kids should be more important than any hobbies ... sadly we do need to grow up, now and again, and give up our hobbies for a while ...

after playing pretty much Full Time from the age of 14-40 ... i now play/practice/record in my home studio , ... I am definitely , not even slightly , removed from reality ... !!??!! since i am doing what makes ME happy, at this time in my life ... !

dealing with " change " is a hard thing to adapt to ... but without Change , life can't more forward ... !

 

[Tim817]

Its like anything else if you want it you'll find time to do it .Even if is at the expense of sleep or something else. Take it day by day and see how the chips fall and adjust along the way.

 

[Ric5]

Hey guys.
I've got an 8 month old daughter at home. She's great but as you'd expect being a parent has really squashed my hobby time. It is only by my wife's good graces that I've been able to continue on with my cover band. We gig 2-3x a month and practice about as much.

While not an overly demanding band by any standard, it is enough of a job that it eats ALL of my limited fun time. Thus it's the only thing I get to do. That's been tough for me. In the past I've always had secondary music projects and had a multitude of other hobbies.

So I got to thinking, what if I dropped the cover band?

It would certainly open up my time. I could just do casual original/recording projects as my music gig and see about dipping back into my other hobbies as well. It would be nice to have some variety again.

However, I've also been gigging consistently for 10+ years. It would be hard to suddenly not have a gig coming up. I'd feel incomplete! One of my biggest fears is becoming a bedroom musician whose endeavors never see the light of day. No offense to anyone but I've always found those people disconnected from reality.

I'd love to hear from anyone who had kids and how you adapted your music career as a result! If you dialed it down to a casual thing, how did that work out? Was it like quitting heroin??

Music pays so badly and spending time in bars sucks so I find it hard to justify putting much time into playing music.

 

[sonicblue62]

Kids are awesome. So is music. My wife is currently expecting our 10th (yes, 10th) child. There was definitely a period where I didn't do a lot of gigging, or even practicing for that matter. But the truth is I can usually fit in whatever I choose to fit in. This often means going to bed early instead of watching Netflix so I can get in that 5 AM practice session. My kids are starting to get into music as well, and I find that teaching them brings me more joy than playing in another band.

Another thought: Find people to play with who are cool with your "family-friendly" lifestyle. I am currently in two cover bands who understand that I can't practice all that often, but when we have a gig I make sure I am ready. I also get quite a few calls to play jazz gigs, and in all, I've been able to play about 50 gigs this year without missing out on too much family stuff. Occasionally there is a conflict, but communication with both family and music friends goes a long way to keep both happy.

 

[Mike Wilson]

What about hosting a jam night at your local club? You could cut gigs down to 1 a month or less but the jam weekly. You can make the jams closed, as in you decide who plays and then invite your band mates to jam with you making it an erstwhile practice session weekly. Maybe bring in a local artist as a "special guest" each week. You could jam weekdays early, say 7-9 or 8-10 and not have to worry about having late nights. Then, as the kids get older, you can expand as you see fit but this should keep your hand in things without being overburdensome.

OTOH, I have no kids so I might have no idea what I'm talking about but it's a scenario that seems doable to me.

 

[DrayMiles]

I didn't adapt years ago when my daughter was younger. I just kept at it thinking I'll have time. Well 30 years later and I wish I would have taken the time then. She loves her dad (me) and doesn't hold it against me. Wish I could go back and change my decision so I wouldn't beat myself up over it now. Gigs will always be there. The time won't. Just thought I'd share.

I'm not so sure that "gigs will always be there..." You should have said "crap, non-paying gigs will always be there." Things are changing... If you decide that it's not worth it, that's a decision you have to make... But to quit playing to me, regardless of kids is ridiculous. If this kind of stuff makes you quit, you weren't that serious in the first place IMO... If you're a hobbyist, I completely understand, but if you're a passionate professional, this discussion wouldn't even take place I believe...

Sacrifices are part and parcel of the game...

Discern between amateur, professional, weekend warrior, and savant...

Take your pick!

Consequences and all... No matter which choice you go with.

It all gives pause for reflection...

BUT, if I chose to do the family thing, it would be a disservice to them to not take them into consideration... and I applaud anyone that considers their family and kids in what they do. I'll even go out on a limb and say as an African American (or whatever Black folks call themselves these days ), I wish more dads in our culture would have historically thought to take their families into consideration... Outside of music!

I'm just throwing thoughts around, so take my musings with a grain of salt and some cous-cous!

 

[DrayMiles]

Music pays so badly and spending time in bars sucks so I find it hard to justify putting much time into playing music.

Sometimes music can pay very well indeed... As I said once before:

"You don't break into the music biz, you get invited in..."

Those who get the invite, get good money...

Although, the invite CAN be revoked!

 

[kevteop]

What I did was concentrate on not having kids, so I can spend all my free time writing songs that I never gig and generally being disconnected from reality. Never been happier.

 

[KevInDaBassment]

The 2nd half of what you talked about is exactly what I'd hope to achieve in leaving the cover band. That is, produce my own music, get it out there, promote it, and hopefully find some traction somewhere, anywhere... with anyone! If 10 people in rural Eastern Europe like my music, I can say I created something and someone liked it. I'm happy. That would make up for sacrifices made. But it's a risk. There's a huge possibility that NO ONE will care. In these days of constant stimulation it's hard to get even a small group to give you a click and 2 minutes of time/consideration. Then it'd be like "Why did I bother?"

I think you'd be surprised, I've had random people (with NO marketing, mind you) like scratch tracks that I placed on SoundCloud. Use plenty of tags so it comes up in searches or random playlists and you could get some listeners/viewers faster than you may think. I had people in Indonesia liking my grunge rock stuff...leaving comments too! They liked the bass tone and also the guitar riffs I wrote. With a little legwork you could get some momentum

 

[s0c9]

and here I was thinking the topic was "babes and bands"!!!

 

[Pilgrim]

With small kids, I can't see any justification for gigging 2-3 times a month unless the family is desperate for money, and I'm not sure that most musicians make enough that it's a factor. I was working on my PhD when we had little kids, and I had to force myself to concentrate on the degree - and even then it took me an extra few years to complete it. In fact, I hung up my bass for a while. Not that I'd recommend that. One gig a month seems like plenty if you're really going to be involved with the kids.

Kids are the priority.

 

[bfields]

Some people I've known, it seemed that their partners used that baby rap as a weight. Something to hold over their heads in order to get them to do what they wanted.

Maybe, but what they want might just be time to take a nap, or a shower, or talk to an adult for a few minutes. In a lot of cases taking care of a baby is a lonely, exhausting, 90-hour-plus-a-week job. (But it varies depending on the baby and the parents and whatever family or other resources there are around to help. And, hey, I don't know the people you do, maybe you're right about them.)

I believe that music is the one thing that is off the table when negotiating a future (Something to be explained up front! ). If it's a part of you, how can that be negotiated?

That's fine, but if that's really the case then, yes, you have to be *really* clear about it up front. Don't just say "I need to play music" if, for example, you're still expecting to make regular late-night gigs even when your spouse is exhausted to the point of tears with a baby that's been screaming for 3 hours straight.

If you mean, "I understand I'll have to cut back, I just don't want to drop music from my life completely", ok, that's easier to work out.

 

[DrayMiles]

"Kids are the priority."


For you...

 

[Duder]

Don't just say "I need to play music" if, for example, you're still expecting to make regular late-night gigs even when your spouse is exhausted to the point of tears with a baby that's been screaming for 3 hours straight.

If you mean, "I understand I'll have to cut back, I just don't want to drop music from my life completely", ok, that's easier to work out.

I took a month off of rehearsal to make sure my wife was ready to be alone with the baby. There were still plenty of times she called me in tears and I said "sorry guys, gotta go". They totally understood and never gave me any trouble about it.

 

[Ric5]

Sometimes music can pay very well indeed... As I said once before:

"You don't break into the music biz, you get invited in..."

Those who get the invite, get good money...

Although, the invite CAN be revoked!

Getting good pay for music is as hard as getting good pay for acting ...

 

[alembicguy]

I'm not so sure that "gigs will always be there..." You should have said "crap, non-paying gigs will always be there." Things are changing... If you decide that it's not worth it, that's a decision you have to make... But to quit playing to me, regardless of kids is ridiculous. If this kind of stuff makes you quit, you weren't that serious in the first place IMO... If you're a hobbyist, I completely understand, but if you're a passionate professional, this discussion wouldn't even take place I believe...

Sacrifices are part and parcel of the game...

Discern between amateur, professional, weekend warrior, and savant...

Take your pick!

Consequences and all... No matter which choice you go with.

It all gives pause for reflection...

BUT, if I chose to do the family thing, it would be a disservice to them to not take them into consideration... and I applaud anyone that considers their family and kids in what they do. I'll even go out on a limb and say as an African American (or whatever Black folks call themselves these days ), I wish more dads in our culture would have historically thought to take their families into consideration... Outside of music!

I'm just throwing thoughts around, so take my musings with a grain of salt and some cous-cous!

I didn't say non paying crap gigs cause I've never done one nor will I ever. Not sure of your "gig" situation but I've never had trouble finding or being found for gigs.
People make their own decisions based on their life choices at that given moment. If your good at what you do you can make it both work. 30 years ago I was much younger,dumber and a bit selfish. I've changed since then and spend much more time with loved ones while still gigging non crap gigs.

 

[MVE]

I'm childless, my only responsibility is to spoil my nieces and nephews as much as possible. So I'm really not qualified to comment, except to repeat something a shrink once told me: "You come first. Then your family. Then everything else." Easier, of course, to say than to do.

Dude, a shrink told you, 'you come first"... Before your own children??? If you hypothetically had some???
Wow, I would put my daughter's happiness, health, wellbeing, life.... Before my own every single time without even the tiniest quantum of hesitation.
And as for the rest of my family, I put my wife's happiness before my own pretty much every time as well, all married guys do, pretty much the definition of being married.

 

[Eric_71]

Dude, a shrink told you, 'you come first"... Before your own children??? If you hypothetically had some???
Wow, I would put my daughter's happiness, health, wellbeing, life.... Before my own every single time without even the tiniest quantum of hesitation.
And as for the rest of my family, I put my wife's happiness before my own pretty much every time as well, all married guys do, pretty much the definition of being married.

I imagine the point is kind of like the airplane put-on-your-own-mask-before-helping-others thing. If you are not in a healthy state / position of strength, you cannot properly serve those who depend on you and about whom you care.