First Gig (and last, with that band) Debacle

[bassbully]

Wow! thats some crazy stuff. I must say it sounds like the whole gig was overboard for the get- go. Pre paid tics for a first show in a small bar? Multi channel PA? soundman? miced drums? My band does most of its own sound thru a simple effective PA at outdoor and indoor shows with no soundmen to crowds as big and or bigger than yours was. The key is KISS and know your equipment. I am convinced the more stuff you add the more issues and problems you will have.

I used to play in a country band that did 2-300 person shows weekly and he had a ton of equipment way overboard and always had issues running it with a soundman at that. He like you would of been better off with a simple setup and it would of cut the issues.

The club sounded like a mess and its system was also . This is part of the biz we all hate but it happens. The guitarist sounds like he is clueless but The whole gig sounds like it was doomed to start. Good luck with the keyboard player, she sounds like there might be worth investing time with.

 

[Lincoln]

Bottom line. You're an amateur and you're squawking about a paid gig when top class guys are struggling.

Bad things happen when you gig. You learn to anticipate most, circumvent some and to flat out deal with others. It's called professionalism.

Sounds like the OP was rather professional on the gig. He didn't walk out in the middle of the fiasco or curse out anyone or punch anyone in the face....He played the gig and went home.

Venting about it now, doesn't make the OP unprofessional. Also, the only reason the band got paid was because they sold tickets themselves...

What exactly did the venue provide in this "paid gig"? No sound man, shoddy PA equipment, no regular customers of their own and no money.

All they did was provide a building with electricity.

I have serious questions about any venue hiring me when they ask, "How many people do you bring"? For starters my trio gigs 3-8 times a month. I don't care how much people like us— they aren't coming to every gig. Further, the venues that we play are often wineries or restaurants or bistros...if they don't have it together in their business to draw customers that's not our fault! Now we can augment their normal clientele, but we're not going to stand in for them if the venue can't find a way to bring in people on a Friday or Saturday evening.

Our job in partnering with the venue is to keep the audience at the venue buying food and drinks and keep them tipping their servers well.
The perk is we get to entertain and play the type of music that we want and sell CD's. Oh and then we get PAID the agreed upon amount of money from the venue.

It is a business partnership. That's professional.

 

[bassbully]

Sounds like the OP was rather professional on the gig. He didn't walk out in the middle of the fiasco or curse out anyone or punch anyone in the face....He played the gig and went home.

Venting about it now, doesn't make the OP unprofessional. Also, the only reason the band got paid was because they sold tickets themselves...

What exactly did the venue provide in this "paid gig"? No sound man, shoddy PA equipment, no regular customers of their own and no money.

All they did was provide a building with electricity.

I have serious questions about any venue hiring me when they ask, "How many people do you bring"? For starters my trio gigs 3-8 times a month. I don't care how much people like us— they aren't coming to every gig. Further, the venues that we play are often wineries or restaurants or bistros...if they don't have it together in their business to draw customers that's not our fault! Now we can augment their normal clientele, but we're not going to stand in for them if the venue can't find a way to bring in people on a Friday or Saturday evening.

Our job in partnering with the venue is to keep the audience at the venue buying food and drinks and keep them tipping their servers well.
The perk is we get to entertain and play the type of music that we want and sell CD's. Oh and then we get PAID the agreed upon amount of money from the venue.

It is a business partnership. That's professional.

I feel the same way. Your gigs sound allot like my bands and we dont need allot of big amps or PA equipment. If the venue is not supporting itself before we come in with its food/drink etc then we cant help it no matter how good we play.

 

[Lincoln]

I feel the same way. Your gigs sound allot like my bands and we dont need allot of big amps or PA equipment. If the venue is not supporting itself before we come in with its food/drink etc then we cant help it no matter how good we play.

Pretty much.

What I find is more true than anything else is that struggling venues believe that they can, for one night, cover their operating costs if they bring in a band that needs a break and has a lot of family and friends that are just happy they're out of the basement finally...

These are not venues worth playing for me...

And I'm long past the days where I can afford to be on 3 band bills getting paid $7 for the night ( which of course was the amount left over after splitting the door and alcohol sales between 3 bands and giving the house it's 50% cut...) Good times. :scowl:

 

[eSmith]

For the record I kind like the longer posts wioth this kind of detail. Better to get it all in the first post rather than leave it all out and make us pull details out of you one at a time.

I was playing with some guys recently and I have played out many times in the past but these guys had not and VERY much wanted to get out and play. Anyway, I sure didn't feel they were ready but they did. So I left, they got a new guy and jumped at the first chance they got. Then posted it on the internet... I was embarrased for them.

So, I understand what it's like to be on completely different levels with people. They are completely happy to play Big Sugar songs badly and emulate Nickleback. Me? That is not so much my goal. No hard feelings.

I do agree with the others that it could have gone a lot worse for you so try to go easy on the guy. Tell it to him like it is and be honest and then go do what makes you happy. By being honest you will give this guy a chance to improve himself. Sit and listen to the recording with him and point out to him what is good and bad so he can hear it for himself. Maybe nobody ever taught him to listen critically.

-eSmith.

 

[PurpleDrank]

All I can add here is that I played that joint that is down below the seafood place a couple of times maybe 7-8 years ago. Complete anarchy then, and ain't a thing changed. Worked for us though because we were complete stage nihilists and we got our free food and drink on to complete excess.

The ceiling is so low, you can really only go vocals in the PA and everybody else has to have their own support and play around the drums. So yeah, you overdid it and overthought it a bit, but hey you went through the trouble of selling all those tickets so I probably would too. They aren't real professionals in there to begin with, so don't be too hard on your bandmates. I'm pretty sure if the sound guy was the only bartender on when they knew you had 100+ coming in, chances are they were dodging your guitarists questions whenever he asked about the sound to keep you guys from dropping the show.

Just my $0.02

 

[StuartV]

The bartender / sound guy was quick to point out to us several times that he has a Bachelors degree in Sound Management and that he owned his own studio.

So, when he put a couple of mics on the drum kit, a DI line from my rig, and a mic on the guitar cab (plus vocals and keys into the PA), it didn't really seem like something I should tell him not to do.

Plus, like I said, by the time the opening band finished and we went on, the sound guy had taken the bass and the kick drum out of the PA. When we played it was only vocals, keys, guitar, and possibly snare (not sure about that one).

 

[StuartV]

Regarding the guitard and trying to point out to him the problems, etc., there's more to the backstory.

He's almost as old as me. I think right around 40. He's been doing this for a long time. When he recruited me, he already had recordings of all his songs that we learned for the show that he gave us on CDs, so we could learn them at home. The recordings were all what I would call scratch tracks or live recordings done using his handheld Zoom digital recorder. Nothing remotely approaching studio quality. And I could tell by listening to them that they were done at different times and places, with different musicians.

When he recruited me, I had already been seeing has ads for band members for a year on CL.

NOW I know where he got those recordings. He's been going through this cycle for who knows how long of recruiting musicians and having them stick with him long enough that he gets some scratch tracks recorded before they figure out that they don't want to work with him and bail.

I sent him a long resignation email last night and detailed SOME of the issues. It would be great if he "got" any of what I said and it helped him avoid those same mistakes in the future. But, based on what I now believe to be his long history, I really don't expect that to happen. He's a nice guy and, in my opinion, a very talented singer, guitarist, and songwriter. I wish him the best. But I'm done trying to work him.

 

[PurpleDrank]

Cool man, I'm glad you're getting everything sorted and you are moving on. It sounds like the issues were deeper than the one horrible venue. I wouldn't want to see that joint be solely responsible for slowing somebody down.

Take care.

 

[eSmith]

What do they say Stu? "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink...."

You did what you could. If he gets it or not doesn't change that. Under the circumstances, I think you played yourself well.

Good luck finding a better situatition.

-eSmith.

 

[StuartV]

Thanks again to all you guys. Being able to talk it out with some objective, non-involved people has definitely helped me throw off the post-gig depression and start to get up some motivation for starting on whatever's next.

TalkBass really does rock!

 

[jim777]

I think you'll look back on this in the future, and laugh a lot while telling the story It reminded me of a gig we played sometime in the mid 90's, and we had a smoke machine for some song (I don't remember which, maybe 'Home By the Sea' by Genesis?).
Anyway, some drunk girl in the audience ran up and TOOK the smoke machine controller because she had seen the singer touching it, and set it off It was during a song, we were playing loudly, and in about 30 seconds you couldn't see your hand in front of your face anywhere in this medium sized bar in the the Bronx. We finished the song and stopped, the bartenders were trying to get the doors open to clear out the place, beer bottles were smashing all over the place because folks couldn't see the bar or their tables, and the stage area turned into a sticky wet glass covered puddle. It was a nightmare then, but funny as heck now And it was 'Pina Colada' scented smoke to boot, as that was the only kind Sam Ash had that week! Ah...good times

 

[bassbully]

Pretty much.

What I find is more true than anything else is that struggling venues believe that they can, for one night, cover their operating costs if they bring in a band that needs a break and has a lot of family and friends that are just happy they're out of the basement finally...

These are not venues worth playing for me...

And I'm long past the days where I can afford to be on 3 band bills getting paid $7 for the night ( which of course was the amount left over after splitting the door and alcohol sales between 3 bands and giving the house it's 50% cut...) Good times. :scowl:

I agree that if the venue is only trying to use you and your family,fans ,friends to pay their bills to not book those clubs. 95% of the time I have seen this done the venue went belly up quickly. I have never done the multi band bills and never will. I see this with heavy metal hard rock and I never have done that scene. I have done multi billed gigs at festivals but we were paid an set amount by contract before we hit the stage.
Some clubs in my area pay by the door and even that isnt as bad as some make it sound. If you have a decent following and the venue is a known music club that has regulars who go there to see good local music that is.

 

[BritPicker]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. Or maybe I bored you to death and you slept through some of the details.

I brought my SVT, a 210 cab, a 115 cab, and a backup amp (which proved to be a good thing). And I brought a handheld digital recorder and cable to run off the board. Doesn't sound overly complicated to me. And, as it worked out, we gave up on running the recorder during the opening band's set. By the end of the opening band's set, the sound guy had taken the bass guitar and the kick drum out of the FOH PA because the extra current draw from having the PA try to reproduce those instruments was making it cut out even more often. So, for our part, the bass and kick weren't in the PA and the attempt to get a recording wasn't a factor.

The singer brought her wireless mic that she's been using for years because she wanted to. And because she's the kind of performer that gets up and moves around the stage and even out into the audience. That wasn't anything I had anything to do with, really.

The sound guy mic'ed the drums the way he always does. I didn't have anything to do with that.

The sound guy mic'ed the guitar cab and I don't know whether the guitard requested that or the sound guy did it on his own. Either way, it obviously needed to be done, since it couldn't be heard at all without PA support, even when it was turned all the way up.

My posts about micing up all the drums, etc, was referring to when I play drums with my cover band and we use my PA. And, for the record, I have never had any significant problems whatsoever when running my own PA - even with the guitar and bass both runnning DI through the board and no amplifiers in use beyond the 3 PA amps in my rack. And I record all those shows using my digital recorder coming from the board. And I manage all that by myself.

How did I make this gig (with my now former originals band) too complicated?

Well clearly stuff was going wrong as you say and to me it seems like you (in the sense of everyone involved, not just yourself) were doing a lot of things that were not really neccessary. I think that most gigging musicians would agree that simple is good when it comes to these little shows especially.

I was just trying to give some constructive thoughts on what you might do in future.

 

[Munjibunga]

The only bright spot is that the singer/keys player wants to continue to work with me and we're going to stick together and start working on selecting some of her originals and some others that she has access to from other writers, and writing some new stuff together, and then assemble our own band to record the material and start performing it.


Well, that and I got to rock my black holo-flake Peavey G-V (and my MPG Level 5) in public and should have some good pics of that.

See? It did go great!

 

[baron665]

LOL! No, it wasn't that.

I suppose I'll probably never know now, but I suspect that the real problem is that the guitard thought his rig was turned up all the way when it really wasn't. He probably had the Master dimed, but was plugged into the Active jack (or had the Active pad turned on, or whatever his amp has), and had the gain turned way, way down. If that was it, it's still just another example of why I cannot handle being in a band with him any more.

Yeah, He probably dimed the master, but had the gain, or whatever control could have been almost, if not all, the way down. Or he could have had the gain dimed, but had the master all the way down. Or, his guitar might not have been turned up that much. It could have been any, or a combination of them. Well, Good Luck with your next/current/other/future project(s).

Oh yeah, if I ever play your neck of the woods, can I use your rig. LOL just kidding.

 

[DaLoCo]

Thanks again to all you guys. Being able to talk it out with some objective, non-involved people has definitely helped me throw off the post-gig depression and start to get up some motivation for starting on whatever's next.

TalkBass really does rock!

Having read some of the additions and your response to me, I have to agree with your decision to quit. You did make an extra effort. You have also shown good nature through everything, and I am sure that quality will be a strength in th the musical quagmire

Rock on

 

[kcole4001]

Doesn't sound overboard to me, our band uses a full PA and mics/DIs everything unless it's a really small venue. Much easier to maintain a good balance overall.
Sounded like you and the keys/singer are two of a kind, good luck that you met and hooked up. Both very professional with similar standards, things should go well. Best of luck.

I'd just look at it as a learning experience of sorts, even if it just eliminates a couple of unknown factors for the future (you now know what the basement club setup/limitations is/are, and how flaky that guy is).

Alls well that ends well.

 

[StuartV]

See? It did go great!

LMAO! Good point, sir!

The G-V on the gig:

Me and my MPG:

Next time, I'm going to try adding smiling to my performance...

 

[totallyfrozen]

Next time, I'm going to try adding smiling to my performance...

LOL!