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CHURCH GIGS FROM HELL STORIES

#101
OK, not exactly a gig from hell, but here's a funny story.

I volunteered to work in the soundbooth during the services while I was in HS. The soundbooth was under the baptismal font, which was located behind the choir loft, behind the pulpit. We would watch the service through a security camera & a 5" monitor, to know when somone was walking to the pulpit, etc. The head soundman was a retired electrical engineer from RCA. He made sure to keep all the levels at a preset value. I was never allowed to run the board.

We had spent a whole saturday once trying to correctly install a new double tape deck for recording each service (this was 1996). In our previous tape deck, we'd wait for a pause in the sermon & manually flip the tape. We actually got pretty good & most often, wouldn't miss more than a word or two. Well, the soundguy had fallen asleep during the sermon, complete with snores, head on chest, headphones on temples, etc. The tape was nearing the end, and I wasn't sure whether the machine would automatically flip it over or whether manual intervention was required. I called the soundman's name loudly to get his attention & asked the question. He popped up out of a deep sleep & started twisting knobs and buttons on almost every piece of equipment in the booth, out of sheer confusion. it turns out the machine flipped automatically, but it was absolutely hilarious to me - I didn't laugh though, since I didn't want to get kicked out my cushy job where I could hang out while being AT church, but not having to listen or participate. (hey, I was in HS!)

ian
 
#102
Out of respect, there will be a positive end to this post.

Ever been fired from a church gig? I was. It had become more and more conflict after a new music minister had been hired. I was an old member of the church band, and had been through a lot of music minister changes over the years. This guy seemed to need control over everything and everyone. Most stayed out of his way, and complained when he wasn't around. I am not that smart, and I questioned some of his decisions. This did not endeer me to our leader. Later I learned that some had begun to call him "My way or No way <insert name here>" behind his back. I continued on, playing nearly every week, out of loyality to the church and my personal commitment. The pastor had started a Saturday night service months before. The plan was to have a complete second team for this service to prevent burning out the Sunday morning team. A second team was not available to volunteer, so we covered the Saturday's as best we could. Except my Saturday availability became limited due to another commitment. Soon I was told that if I didn't play Saturday I wasn't needed on Sunday. The intent was clearly to punish me until I rearranged my commitments the way the music minister wanted - he said so himself. We (my son the drummer and I) were still playing the Sunday night youth services, but after a few weeks of not playing Sunday morning or Saturday night services I was kicked off that Sunday night music team too.

Now the positive spin.

The day after being told I was no longer wanted on the youth music team I received a call from a past music director who was now working at another church. She asked me if I was available for a Sunday service now and then. They have 3 full teams, and a number of subs, but were short of bassists. Of course I said yes since I suddenly had number of free Sundays. I'm still there 4 years later. In the mean time the old church's music team disintigrated after most of the team quit, the music minister went off to a new church, and their new music director has been making great headway at rebuilding the program. The current leader and team are great, but we still have a number of issues of "it's too loud" despite keeping the overall SPL under 90 dB (c scale). There have been weeks when I played "air bass", but most of the sound guys are getting better. Last week's compressor adjustment caused the bass to actually be too loud in section 1, which is a first in this church.
 
#104
OK .. so this may not be very exciting ... but here are my beefs:

First let me set the stage ... our Worship Band consists of:
1 - Lead Singer / Rhythm acoustic guitar ...very very good at both
1 - Drummer / singer ... very good at both , especially the drums
1 - Keyboard .. don't know how good he is because I have never heard him
1 - Guitard ... great equipment ... rarely hear him
4 - singers ... pretty good, I think, barely hear them

As you can guess, our monitoring SUCKS. I hear the drummer fine (thank God) and I pick up just enough of the lead singer and her guitar through the one monitor sitting on the far end of the drummer. That's all that goes through the monitor by the way ... her voice and guitar.

I don't have much of a beef with the keyboard because I don't really know what he's playing anyway.

My biggest beef is with the "guitard". His solos just plain SUCK. He doesn't know how to solo around chord changes at all. I get a few comments from friends in the congregation about him. He's a nice enough guy, so whenever I do hear his all-too-often-off solos and say something ... he usually shrugs his shoulders and says no one really notices anyways.

The lead singer / rhythm guitar is our leader. She never really hears his solo's because of lack of proper monitoring. Her husband is the drummer. I have mentioned it to him and he agrees ... but it never really goes anyplace ...so I just grin and bear it.

Believe it or not we have recorded 3 cd's. Very little keyboard or lead guitar is ever in the final mix. My bass is always prevalent on the recordings ... because I'm a pretty decent player IMO ... not to blow my own whistle. Also because I really listen to and try to compliment the overall dynamics of the song, not just the drums, but a combination of the drums, rhythm (acoustic) guitar, the melody of the singing and the message of the lyrics.

Unfortunately when the "guitard" plays rhythm... it's always the same ... he just doesn't get it.

Well that's my beef ... feels good to get it off my chest.
 
#105
LedBelli Bass said:
This thread is a true testament as to why the worst thing you can do to your playing career outside of church is to let it be known that you play inside a church.
Church = the amateur hour in all its glory
Click to expand...

Really depends on the church. Our contemporary choir has lots of former semi-pro musicians, myself included. Our director does a really good job of mentoring the younger/less experience players. He also makes sure we play as a group so we all sound our best. I have been offered a few jazz gigs based on my church playing. If I was not traveling so much for work.....
 
#106
Long story short,

Church roof was in extremely poor condition and would leak water in massive quantities to the point where they would rapidly fill 50 gallon trash cans, the sermon was running very late that night and the weather forecast was for rain, so I went up on the stage and took my gear off the stage while the guest speaker was still preaching his sermon. I got a big ass chewing for that which subsequently resulted in me being suspended and ultimately making me decide to quit the band.
 
#107
I keep seeing the word "conflicts" in this thread. Truly, as I said in my first post, conflicts are unfortunately a part of many church music settings. Not all, but probably in those, it's just a matter of time until something arises.

Conflicts in church music arise either from people not knowing the best way to do things with that group of people in that venue, but claiming that they do and trying to get their way, or from people being a part of a church who don't need to be there anymore but are not listening to their calling. There are also cases where church discipline needs to be applied, but isn't being.
 
#109
jimmy rocket said:
That's not to say the spirit can't move through non-electric, unamplified music is it ;)
Click to expand...

Not drawing a distinction at all Jimmy (I actually play DB on a Sunday morning at "traditional" church as well, and plenty of spirit there), just commenting on the number of previous posts that had mentioned the whole "bass too loud" thing, which is what I was referring too.

Hopefully no offence caused, certainly none intended.

Cheers,

Gavin
 
#111
We had a music event in our old Lutheran Church, where, back then, you didn't play guitars, and the like, and most of the music, while beautiful, was usually pretty slow; lots of old German hymns. Well our choir group decided to do a upbeat southern gospel type song and I played guitar. After it was done, I seen one of the old elders walking towards me. I figured I was really gonna get yelled at...He had his eyes centered on me, so I braced myself for what surely was gonna be a serious chewing. He got right up to my face and then suddenly, out shot his hand with a handshake, and told me he really enjoyed my playing and the music, and would like to hear me again! I danged near had a heart attack! He treated me like a million dollars after that. Quite a funny experience. You guys and gals that get to play in church....keep on trucking! I am sure God loves hearing you, giving your time and talent. Some folks just have to be knuckle heads, so ya just have to ignore them, and remember why you are doing your music.
Bill on da bass
 
#114
capnsandwich said:
Well, there was this one time where my pastor came up to me and punched my bass. He was upset that someone had taken his seat behind his congas and switched it with the drummer's seat. Both the drummer and I had no idea who did that. Then he asks me," You don't leave you stuff around here so people can mess with it do you?" I said, "No way. This bass was $2000 and stays with me at all times."Then he came up to me and said,"$2000?!?!?!", and proceeded to punch my bass while it was around my neck. It finally came to an end when we sat down with the elders and he apologized for what he did but at the time I was fairly upset, almost to the point of leaving that church.

BTW, I posted this story last year in the P&W thread so this is all water under the bridge now. No need for advice on this since it was already taken care of.
Click to expand...
How was it taken care of? I know what I would have done...church or not!!!
 
#119
This is a great thread. I have experienced many of the things mentioned; I have come to the point now that I just laugh and move on. I attend my church for the excellent expository preaching and teaching; playing on the worship team is just the icing on the cake. Yeah, we are not perfect, make mistakes every week; but it's still fun. Just dont get wrapped up in performance aspect.
The best part of our current worship team lineup -
Not a single person seeks to place themselves 'out front'; we serve one another.
 
#120
I was placed in charge of the musicians at my former church because we couldn't keep MD's due to various conditions placed on them by both the leadership and the "old guards" at the church who were very vocal about what we played and how we played it. The building was a nice size but the acoustics weren't friendly at all to anything louder than a piano or acoustic guitar. Me being the oldest and most seasoned musician leading a bunch of young players was a bit of a challenge as they loved high energy songs from Hillsong, Chris Tomlin, Planetshakers, Israel and New Breed, etc. I cant tell you how many times we were assaulted for playing too loud even though we were turned down to the level where we could barely here ourselves. After playing the first of two services the pastor totally snapped at me that if we don't turn the music down he'd set us down. So we turned each amp down to one with our guitars and bass volumes non existent, the drummer put away his stick on used his hands to play. When we started next service the singers turned around and looked at the band with total confusion on their faces because they standing directly in front of us they couldn't here a note we were playing. You guessed it, we were still rebuked for playing too loud. Can you imagine how devastating that is for youg teen musicians to be told they they only sound good when they can't be heard. Needless to say I left and so did the young guns and they're all playing at churches that appreciate them.
 

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