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Band Member Bio Question and Answer

electracoyote

electracoyote

Jan 2, 2009
16,390
13,852
Purple Mountain Majesties
#1
Sheesh, do I have to ask ALL my band-management questions on TB? I researched this and the results were every bit as lame as the actual "band bios" I read on band websites.

So once again I turn to the under-appreciated wisdom of the bass players of the world.

I want to post up some biographies of my band members on our website. But I am determined to make it a little more fun and interesting, maybe even more insightful, than the tripe I see on most band websites. I can get all the obligatory basics on one line, but then I want my mates to answer some fun, funny, and insightful questions.

Ideas? Maybe a few example questionnaires I can peek at?
 
#2
My only suggestion is to be careful with humor. Especially on a website. If it's not done well it can backfire. And if it does, you can easily come across as just being a bunch of unprofessional bozos with flip attitudes and snappy answers. Going into an interview situation with the deliberate intent to be funny seldom works. (Look at some of those cringe-worthy early interviews with the Beatles where John Lennon tried too hard to be amusing and just came across as being a royal ass.) And feeding each other straight lines to give funny answers to is kinda 'vaudeville' IMO. But if that's the vibe you're shooting for, give it a shot and see what happens.

I generally prefer to leave being funny to the professionals and The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. YMMV.

Invalid Link Removed an example of a non-band related website that uses a light touch of humor and successfully pulls it off.

Here's a band related one that doesn't use any humor and is also excellent.
 
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#3
Keep it short.

This is the hardest thing to get all the band members to adhere to. I realize ours are way too long; and I really hate our bios page on our website. Trying to keep everybody from writing another edition of Harry Potter, and then having to whittle it down to 5 sentences if not an easy task.

I think my next edit to my bio is going to be:

Favorite food: Steak
Favorite Victory beer: Uncle Teddy's
Favorite sunglasses: Oakley's


I am convinced that nobody really cares about our life story, marital status, music on my iPod, where I went to school or how I make a living. The only bio that needs more than 3 complete sentences is the front man/woman: then it should be no more than 10 sentences.
 
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#4
electracoyote said:
Sheesh, do I have to ask ALL my band-management questions on TB? I researched this and the results were every bit as lame as the actual "band bios" I read on band websites.

So once again I turn to the under-appreciated wisdom of the bass players of the world.

I want to post up some biographies of my band members on our website. But I am determined to make it a little more fun and interesting, maybe even more insightful, than the tripe I see on most band websites. I can get all the obligatory basics on one line, but then I want my mates to answer some fun, funny, and insightful questions.

Ideas? Maybe a few example questionnaires I can peek at?
Click to expand...

I agree with 40hz, be careful with intentional humor, but an interview might be a good idea. Just take some questions that one might see in an interview from a music mag, and have your members answer them. Once you have their answers, you might need to ask some follow-up questions for some of their answers, and that should be more than enough for a website.

Personally, I like to leave bio stuff to a general band bio rather than individual member bios. It gives the band members some air of mystery.
 
#5
Good points above.

As for brevity, I think the main reason people don't read bio pages is because they are so predictable and unimaginative. The same stale questions, the same boring answers.

I wouldn't want it to look like we're trying too hard to be funny, but I don't want to come across as lame either. There's a balance in there, and in the process people who visit the site can learn something interesting or unique about band members.

And this is very important: I am not really concerned with the too cool above-it-all reactions from musicians, I'm much more concerned about general public and mainstream audience perception. We're a Top 40 party cover band, and my target clients are the better dance floor clubs and upscale private events.
 
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#6
Speaking as an audience member or a fan rather than a too-cool-above-it-all musician, I've generally discovered the less personal information I know about a musician or band I'm following, the more I tend to like them and their music. Most of my non-musician friends have told me they feel the same way.

I think if you want to get the "personal touch" thing to work, you need to skip static bios and approach it like Snarky Puppy, who have a whole philosophy and set of ongoing projects they're working on to talk about. Or alternatively, do it like Dana Fuchs or Amanda Palmer do with their hyper-personal approach. These two ladies have a very active Twitter/Fbook presence, and maintain a high level of contact with their fans, often reporting on their professional doings and sharing their personal thoughts. Which they can probably do more easily than most bands can - because they're also actively touring or working on projects.

For people in groups who only do it part-time (like most of us here), and who are mostly playing the area club scene, it's fairly easy to run out of interesting things to talk about - even if we happen to be very good storytellers.

So I'm not trying to sound above it all. I'm just saying if you want to do bios, be sure they're actually interesting - and more importantly, they contain things your fans may actually care about learning. Because most fans (in my experience) are mostly interested in what you're currently doing. Not who you are or what you're thinking about.

Talk about what you're doing, people tend to listen. Talk about past accomplishments (or yourself) too much and eyes start to glaze over. Or at least that's the way it seems to work from my experience. YMMV. :)
 
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#7
i would only be humorous on bios if the entire site were humorous, and then i'd stick the same type of humor. if your band site isn't humorous, it would seem weird to have just one section out of step with the rest.

btw, i often do read band bios - go figure.
 
#9
pcake said:
btw, i often do read band bios - go figure.
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I do too. I think a lot of people in my target audience would. We're not original, we're not avant-garde, we're a variety cover band that plays "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Uptown Funk." We don't want or need a mystique or street cred from bohemians. We want to connect with our target audience, which is made up of people going out to dance on a Friday night or booking a corporate party. We bring a fun party atmosphere and we don't take ourselves that seriously outside of the execution of the material.

The problem with the band member bios I read is they all start to sound alike. Same boring details, like a resume stapled to a job application. I think lightening it up would be more interesting. I'm not sure what's so bad about a little humor like this:

buldog5151bass said:
We've made up obviously phony bios. I think I was raised by a pack of street bulldogs outside Liverpool, where I was mesmerized by the sounds coming from the Cavern Club, or something like that, when I was in a band that did a lot of Beatles' tunes.
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You'd have to be a pretty stuffed shirt not to appreciate the intent behind something like that.
 
#11
Joe Nerve said:
I don't think I've ever read a bio that didn't make me cringe. I've just accepted that it's a necessary evil, and never go to the band bio pages of any bands I play in :). I haven't been a BL in a while, so thankfully I haven't had to work these out.
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Thanks Joe. So you see the dilemma.

I'm either going to put a curve on it and risk sounding dorky to the humorless, or can it altogether and not list any personal information, and we can have a "mystique" instead. "We play 'Mustang Sally,' and we're mysterious..."
 
#12
electracoyote said:
Thanks Joe. So you see the dilemma.

I'm either going to put a curve on it and risk sounding dorky to the humorless, or can it altogether and not list any personal information, and we can have a "mystique" instead. "We play 'Mustang Sally,' and we're mysterious..."
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That is actually the way I'd go. Take the risk and get creative, in as funny or bizarre a way as possible.

The only other things I think are important are to not pad the individual bios in any way. If someone has previously done nothing, all the adjectives in the world for that "nothing" aren't going to make it interesting, nor impressive. Best to just state what they've done or not done as succinctly as possible. John Doe (drums). Played triangle in HS band. This is his first band since. He likes Led Zeppelin and Taylor Swift. And if someone in the band HAS some notable credits, simply include that without a paragraph to describe it. And something I think applies to all this is "Show, don't tell". John previously played for 6 years with Aggribus Aggreegabus. Not John was the pulsating rhythmic foundation for the immensely popular Aggribus Aggreegabus throughout their melodic and prolific 6 years of world dominance as one of the top acoustic punk/pop/gospel bands in the lower regions of North Dakota.

Just my opinion, of course :).

I just checked out the bio on one of the bands I currently play in, that I didn't write. It starts with this: Bassist, Joe, a pro in high demand has performed and toured with...

That literally hurts when I read it.
 
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#14
Joe Nerve said:
John previously played for 6 years with Aggribus Aggreegabus. Not John was the pulsating rhythmic foundation for the immensely popular Aggribus Aggreegabus throughout their melodic and prolific 6 years of world dominance as one of the top acoustic punk/pop/gospel bands in the lower regions of North Dakota.
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LOL , that made me spew my morning coffee joe.. Hilarious and so, so true for many bios.
One of my favs was the bio of the BL/frontman in one of my former bands.. it listed all these credits from 12yrs old (singing at such-and-such event) to opening for a whole list of national acts! WOW!! I thought ... totally cool! Right?
I did some research... turns out that his idea of "opening for a National Act" amounted to his band playing in the parking lot at "warmer" events when the National Act was the headliner INSIDE the building/hotel/Casino!! He'd never actually been on the same stage with any of them!
"technically" one could view the bio as "accurate"... but...
THAT was some serious padding.. OP wants to avoid that sort of thing!

On the flip side.. "played at the parking lot party for XXXX College baseball season home game opener" doesn't do much either!
 
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#15
Thrust Meatnozl said:
(I mean seriously, do cover bands even have 'fans'?)
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Yes, indeed!
We have four of these type on stage at every gig!!
U12100beauty.png

But ours are "professional" fans.. all black/grey.. LOL :thumbsup:
 
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#16
My friend's band has fans. Actually, more like geriatric groupies. The band plays classic rock and they have a following of people that come out to their shows and dance, even if the show is a ways out of the city in some other smaller burg, the groupies show up and dance their wrinkly patooties off.
 
#17
sometimes sarcasm / humor can be easily lost when in writing ... !!! probably why i have a Warning from the TB police on my permanent record .. !?

maybe interesting and insightful might be more useful .. ?

why do you like ' blank ' kind of music .. ? why did you start on whatever instrument .? are your folks musical .... why do you like to perform for strangers ... what's your day job ... what do you wanna be when you grow up . ? why did you quit college and go on the road to play music .. ?? these questions pertain more to me , myself and I ... !!! please don't take offense as non is intended to anyone but myself or me ... !! YMMV ...
 
#18
nobody who wants to hire your band gives a rat's patootie about favorite foods, colors, the names of their kids, their doctorates in music from xx university, years spent in an ashram, etc.. They come to the site to check out the band as a unit - what kind of music they play, what they look like, band history and music samples. Focus your band site on that.
 
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#19
40Hz said:
Speaking as an audience member or a fan rather than a too-cool-above-it-all musician, I've generally discovered the less personal information I know about a musician or band I'm following, the more I tend to like them and their music.
:)
Click to expand...

+100000000 I think most people don't read them because they don't care but I'm old so that may taint my opinion a bit. I say keep some mystery.
 
#20
I really don't want to get into details but, yes be very careful with humor. I made a slightly crude joke for my senior profile in highschool about a certain.....fringegroup and forgot about it. A few weeks later that group was all over the papers. After that another person did something very bad and said it was connected to the fringe group.

A while after that, my profile comes out in the local paper with that once harmless now downright HORRIBLE joke in it. There were more than a few explanations required.

Be careful with humor
 

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