Ever work with a bad but enthusiastic musician?

[hrodbert696]

If his enthusiasm translates into major stage charisma, it just... might.... work. Especially if the crowd has been drinking a lot and he can rev them up.

Otherwise - tell him like it is. He's got to either get on pitch and hit correct notes, or the band needs to find a singer who can. Audiences really do notice a crappy vocal much sooner than they'll notice a crappy bass line.

 

[Zooberwerx]

If he can't hit a note, how did he pass the audition?

Riis

 

[jaywa]

David Lee Roth comes to mind...

 

[kmqu601]

I am in a cover band that recently had to let a guy go because of this exact situation. Really tough to do since he was *very* enthusiastic, but his vocals were seriously causing problems. His enthusiasm also had the side effect of pushing practices at a frenetic pace, along with a zillion music related emails per week. He was an incredibly nice guy (and good guitarist) too which made the "firing" extremely hard.

 

[pjmuck]

The world is littered with great musicians who have crappy attitudes and enthusiastic people who have no talent. In my experience, neither is worth the aggravation, as sooner or later it will wear on you.

Consider this: are there songs he performs much better than others? Maybe you're picking songs out of his range, so if you like the guy enough and he's good on lower register stuff then consider tweaking your set to include songs better suited for him. But if he's an all-round liability in any key, he's not worth keeping around...unless you need someone to help move amps.