I maintain an "arms lenght" approach to the internet. Sure, I share a lot about myself. But it's intentionally ambiguous. Honestly, my current project has no web presence currently anyway. We've all been too busy to do it with the holidays and whatnot (even though our guitar player is a webmaster for a major industrial machines company.) We've only done three gigs. We're all former or current members of popular regional bands. The two places we have played we've gotten over $800. We'll likely get both venues to a grand by Spring. That'll do for our goals.... which are few and not very serious.
That's all I want to play unless a good fill-in gig comes along. I never said I want to play every weekend.
But here's what we do.
Nice powered-speakers PA....at least two tops and two subs. Nice Midas digital board. We hire a good sound guy who runs sound via an iPad. We all control our own monitor mixes from our phones. Usually in-ears but we have the wedges to do those too if need be. Three trees of lights (one in back and two in front). If that gig's sound guy doesn't want to mess with lights, I do them with a foot controller.
We have one rule about outward appearance of band members. "Don't look like you belong in the audience." The female singer struggles with this emotionally. There's nothing naturally "edgy" about her. So she has to dress and do her hair in a way that's not "natural" to her. But she does it. Because we have a rule. She's having more fun with it every gig.
One rule about drinking. The rest of the band has the right to cut you off. If you're mad about it, we talk about it later. No exceptions. None of us would drink too much anyway. That's a "just in case" rule.
The music. We do a lot of vocal harmony rock and modern country with a few soul songs sprinkled in. Three part harmonies are dead on. We do more vocal rehearsals than band rehearsal (only three full band rehearsals so far..... but this ain't our first rodeo.... so we chose the set via text... and each of us showed up to the first rehearsal ready to play 42 songs).
We haven't posed for a pic.... not even a casual one at a gig. We aren't trying to get bigger, further, or "more successful".
Success to us is the following.....
Our mission statement "Be the best local bar band. Don't be like the other local bar bands. Try a little harder. Entertain. Play everything perfectly. Don't look like the audience." It's hanging on the wall of the rehearsal room. (Of course, perfection is impossible. And we don't mean it literally. We simply mean play it "right".)
If we can't NAIL a song, we don't play it. There have been two dropped so far for that reason. One had too many horns. The other had too many vocal parts.
Everything we do is/was a radio hit with the exception of one song. Our guitar player nails "Cliffs of Dover" so we open the second set with it as a three peice. Then keys and lady singer join us.
We do half a dozen different songs each show. In other words, 5 or 6 songs get dropped from last show and we replace them. Part of the joy for us is learning challenging songs..... especially challenging three-part vocals.
We show up on time. Zero drama. I'm the only contact for one place. She's the only contact for the other.
We are great friends. Rehearsals involve more laughter than productive work. My one critique of our live performance is that we laugh so much on stage. I can't fuss at them because I'm the guiltiest party. It's always during the song. There is never "silence" on our stage. Never a "pause" while guitars are tuned (and never EVER a stupid joke about guitar tuning.... oy.)
We are professionals. Period.
We take our joyous hobby seriously.
