It's gratifying to read that some have found some helpful stuff in my long post. I thought I should address one thing that frustrates a lot of people when they first come here. It's about "insiders."
I mentioned in my long post that the drummer you did a freebie with last week might think of you when someone he's playing with suddenly needs a bass player. That does happen. But you'll undoubtedly also see that drummer calling or recommending another basser - one of his "friends." This can look like a clique-ish thing. A LOT of newbies complain that "Nashville's all about cliques, and if your not in the clique, they won't call."
Not true. But it can look that way. Here's what's really going on (I'll use a personal anecdote).
Shortly after I moved here (as a guitar player, in the dark ages), I ran into a bass player at a music store, struck up a conversation, and was invited to a little freebie club gig he was doing. "Bring your guitar, man," he said, and I felt a rush. Wow - I get to sit in in Nashville! (I was pretty young and green.) I went, and the guitar player had some kind of emergency or something, and rushed out the door. He asked me to cover it, and use his amp & stuff. Wow again! I did great (for some reason). Everyone was really nice, complimentary, wanted my number, etc. I thought I was on my way. Drove home grinning and pounding on the steering wheel. The door had opened!
So, a couple weeks later, this bass player calls & says he's playing with a really good songwriter. I might like to hear the set, he says. So I go out, and there's yet another guitar player setting up. Good player. Solid. Not amazing though, and probably not as good as me on some things (that was my thought, anyhow). After the set I introduce myself to him, ask how long he's been playing with the writer. "I just got called a couple days ago," he says. He'd never met the writer before that. The bass player called him (my music store, cover-for-the-emergency buddy - that bass player).
Aha, I thought. I get it. It's a clique thing. Clearly, I'm not hip enough for them. I'm an outsider. He coulda called me, but he called his bud. It's an inside thing. I was crushed. The drive home that night was substantially different. For some weeks, my attitude turned really negative. The bass player called me to come hear a couple other things, but I didn't go to check them out. Why do I want to sit there, nursing the single coke that I could barely afford all night, and watch the insiders flaunt their status?
Some years later I worked as a writer & editor for a major guitar magazine. For that reason ONLY, a lot of people just moving to town were familiar with my name, and they'd look me up when they got here. One guy was very nice, and asked if he could buy me coffee or lunch sometime & pick my brain about getting going in town (not that there was all that much to pick, but... well...). We met. We hung. He played well... knew all the current style things that were all the rage. I talked to him on the phone every week or so. Tried to keep his spirits up & all. At some point, he met a singer who was doing a showcase for a label, and the singer told him that I was putting the band together. Ha! He figured he was in! So he calls, and I tell him I'd already booked a guitar player (I was playing bass by then). And this guy actually starts reading me the riot act. Rails about how I'm a snob, and it's all a clique thing, and who's ass does he have to kiss, anyway, and on and on.
And I said, "hold it, pal. This other guitar player came to town a little before I did. When my car went boobies-up, he loaned me an old beater to get around in. We rode in tiny, stinky vans all over the South to play gigs for a bunch of wannabees who never amounted to anything, usually for really, really lame money. When I went through a divorce, he & his wife made sure I had someplace to go for Thanksgiving & Easter dinner. And when he was out of town & his wife went into early labor with their first kid, I'm the one who took her to the hospital. And ASIDE from all that, I've done a couple dozen of these showcases and a bunch of sessions with this guy. I KNOW what I'll get. I KNOW he'll come up with the goods, even if things get crazy or whatever. THAT'S why I called him. All that. Now, would I rather field this call from you, and explain that, or would I rather explain to him that I called someone I just met? Which would you do?"
I'm pretty sure the bassist in the first story had a similar history with the guy he called. Think of it this way; anyone who can give you a leg up has probably been here long enough to build some relationships. He wants to call people who've called him, people who've worked awful gigs with him, struggled alongside him, done successful gigs with him (he knows what they'll bring). Of COURSE he's gonna call people from that circle first, and you would too.
There are two kinds of players that I can almost guarantee won't "stick" here: One is the person who thinks it's a six-month deal. You have to BE here. People get used to you, get to know you, learn to trust you. That can take a while. Believe it or not, there just aren't a lot of folks sitting around all over town with gigs thinking, "Gee, I sure wish some decent bass player would move here!" If you can play, and get along and add to almost any situation you're in, you'll probably have some things to do before long. But you're simply not going to knock anyone out of a solid circle he's spent years cultivating a few weeks after you hit town. Could take a year to get a toe hold. Could take two. Or three. And it may simply never work out for you. (Don't mean to go all negative... it's just reality.)
The other guy I've almost never seen "stick" here is what I call the "browser." He wants real badly to be a Nashville session player, or tour with artists or whatever. But he's got a pretty cushy life in some other town, and he's not willing to give that up. So he comes here a couple times a year. Maybe more often. And he spends a lot of energy making the rounds, meeting people, talking things up, trying to sit in or whatever. And then he goes home to his good job and his paid vacation and his medical insurance and all that. Fine. But when someone says, "hey, there's a songwriter thing next Thursday. We're rehearsing Wednesday night. Pays fifty for the rehearsal, and a hundred for the gig," he just kind of snickers; he's not coming all that way for peanuts!
Actually, I kind of resent those guys, I have to admit. Everyone I know who's established here paid some dues. Free gigs. Lousy living conditions. Long stretches of dead space. Bad gigs, rip-offs by low-life club owners & producers & artists. You fight through it. You outlast it. You figure out a way, in spite of it all, to bring that good, helpful, "community" attitude to the next thing, and the next, and the next. And eventually, you really ARE a member of a community. There are people you count on, who can count on you. You've proven it to each other. You know what you're going to get from each other in terms of attitude AND playing, no matter what the situation.
And at some point, someone will probably think you should have called them - should have tried to help them out - instead of calling one of those snobs in your "clique."
If you want to do the Nashville thing, COME here. BE here. COMMIT to it. Come humble but confident. Come to learn, and to contribute. I believe there will always be room for people like that.
Rusty Russell
I mentioned in my long post that the drummer you did a freebie with last week might think of you when someone he's playing with suddenly needs a bass player. That does happen. But you'll undoubtedly also see that drummer calling or recommending another basser - one of his "friends." This can look like a clique-ish thing. A LOT of newbies complain that "Nashville's all about cliques, and if your not in the clique, they won't call."
Not true. But it can look that way. Here's what's really going on (I'll use a personal anecdote).
Shortly after I moved here (as a guitar player, in the dark ages), I ran into a bass player at a music store, struck up a conversation, and was invited to a little freebie club gig he was doing. "Bring your guitar, man," he said, and I felt a rush. Wow - I get to sit in in Nashville! (I was pretty young and green.) I went, and the guitar player had some kind of emergency or something, and rushed out the door. He asked me to cover it, and use his amp & stuff. Wow again! I did great (for some reason). Everyone was really nice, complimentary, wanted my number, etc. I thought I was on my way. Drove home grinning and pounding on the steering wheel. The door had opened!
So, a couple weeks later, this bass player calls & says he's playing with a really good songwriter. I might like to hear the set, he says. So I go out, and there's yet another guitar player setting up. Good player. Solid. Not amazing though, and probably not as good as me on some things (that was my thought, anyhow). After the set I introduce myself to him, ask how long he's been playing with the writer. "I just got called a couple days ago," he says. He'd never met the writer before that. The bass player called him (my music store, cover-for-the-emergency buddy - that bass player).
Aha, I thought. I get it. It's a clique thing. Clearly, I'm not hip enough for them. I'm an outsider. He coulda called me, but he called his bud. It's an inside thing. I was crushed. The drive home that night was substantially different. For some weeks, my attitude turned really negative. The bass player called me to come hear a couple other things, but I didn't go to check them out. Why do I want to sit there, nursing the single coke that I could barely afford all night, and watch the insiders flaunt their status?
Some years later I worked as a writer & editor for a major guitar magazine. For that reason ONLY, a lot of people just moving to town were familiar with my name, and they'd look me up when they got here. One guy was very nice, and asked if he could buy me coffee or lunch sometime & pick my brain about getting going in town (not that there was all that much to pick, but... well...). We met. We hung. He played well... knew all the current style things that were all the rage. I talked to him on the phone every week or so. Tried to keep his spirits up & all. At some point, he met a singer who was doing a showcase for a label, and the singer told him that I was putting the band together. Ha! He figured he was in! So he calls, and I tell him I'd already booked a guitar player (I was playing bass by then). And this guy actually starts reading me the riot act. Rails about how I'm a snob, and it's all a clique thing, and who's ass does he have to kiss, anyway, and on and on.
And I said, "hold it, pal. This other guitar player came to town a little before I did. When my car went boobies-up, he loaned me an old beater to get around in. We rode in tiny, stinky vans all over the South to play gigs for a bunch of wannabees who never amounted to anything, usually for really, really lame money. When I went through a divorce, he & his wife made sure I had someplace to go for Thanksgiving & Easter dinner. And when he was out of town & his wife went into early labor with their first kid, I'm the one who took her to the hospital. And ASIDE from all that, I've done a couple dozen of these showcases and a bunch of sessions with this guy. I KNOW what I'll get. I KNOW he'll come up with the goods, even if things get crazy or whatever. THAT'S why I called him. All that. Now, would I rather field this call from you, and explain that, or would I rather explain to him that I called someone I just met? Which would you do?"
I'm pretty sure the bassist in the first story had a similar history with the guy he called. Think of it this way; anyone who can give you a leg up has probably been here long enough to build some relationships. He wants to call people who've called him, people who've worked awful gigs with him, struggled alongside him, done successful gigs with him (he knows what they'll bring). Of COURSE he's gonna call people from that circle first, and you would too.
There are two kinds of players that I can almost guarantee won't "stick" here: One is the person who thinks it's a six-month deal. You have to BE here. People get used to you, get to know you, learn to trust you. That can take a while. Believe it or not, there just aren't a lot of folks sitting around all over town with gigs thinking, "Gee, I sure wish some decent bass player would move here!" If you can play, and get along and add to almost any situation you're in, you'll probably have some things to do before long. But you're simply not going to knock anyone out of a solid circle he's spent years cultivating a few weeks after you hit town. Could take a year to get a toe hold. Could take two. Or three. And it may simply never work out for you. (Don't mean to go all negative... it's just reality.)
The other guy I've almost never seen "stick" here is what I call the "browser." He wants real badly to be a Nashville session player, or tour with artists or whatever. But he's got a pretty cushy life in some other town, and he's not willing to give that up. So he comes here a couple times a year. Maybe more often. And he spends a lot of energy making the rounds, meeting people, talking things up, trying to sit in or whatever. And then he goes home to his good job and his paid vacation and his medical insurance and all that. Fine. But when someone says, "hey, there's a songwriter thing next Thursday. We're rehearsing Wednesday night. Pays fifty for the rehearsal, and a hundred for the gig," he just kind of snickers; he's not coming all that way for peanuts!
Actually, I kind of resent those guys, I have to admit. Everyone I know who's established here paid some dues. Free gigs. Lousy living conditions. Long stretches of dead space. Bad gigs, rip-offs by low-life club owners & producers & artists. You fight through it. You outlast it. You figure out a way, in spite of it all, to bring that good, helpful, "community" attitude to the next thing, and the next, and the next. And eventually, you really ARE a member of a community. There are people you count on, who can count on you. You've proven it to each other. You know what you're going to get from each other in terms of attitude AND playing, no matter what the situation.
And at some point, someone will probably think you should have called them - should have tried to help them out - instead of calling one of those snobs in your "clique."
If you want to do the Nashville thing, COME here. BE here. COMMIT to it. Come humble but confident. Come to learn, and to contribute. I believe there will always be room for people like that.
Rusty Russell
I used to really dislike country but I played in a modern-country cover act a few years ago and I really enjoyed it. 
JK...it's a great community and great hang.
