How Did You Start Out Gigging

[pbassnut]

Gigging players - How did you start this craziness?

Please let us know which you chose and whether or not you feel you've continued to grow in the gig world or quit for whatever reason.

I suspect there might be a correlation, though I may be way off.

My bass playing origin story ...

It's kind of embarrassing, but I started out in the early 70's by borrowing a cheap, Japanese Precision knockoff that couldn't be played above the 12th fret from a friend of my brother's so that I could sit in front of a mirror and pretend like I was playing it while listening to my favorite rock songs. The bass ended up being gifted to me and a bass player friend taught me to play Deep Purple's iconic "Smoke on the Water" and the rest, as they say, is history. I played my first gig within six months ... a Bar Mitzvah at the Bethesda, MD Holiday Inn where I made $35 and got a free meal. I was not, I repeat, NOT a prodigy by any means. Bass players were in high demand back then (cuz everybody wanted to play guitar) so if you had a bass and an amp and were willing to learn, you could play with musicians who were WAY more experienced. I eventually ended up playing in busy, full time touring bar bands for most of my twenties followed by a steady "weekend warrior" playing schedule ever since going back to school to get a Computer Science degree and becoming an Oracle Database Administrator and I probably have a good 4000 - 5000 gigs under my belt dating back to the early 70's. I'm not especially talented, but have a fair amount of experience by playing mostly roots music with relatively simple bass grooves, being ultra reliable and easy to get along with. This has enabled me to consistently play with better players than me. Overall ... lotsa good times have been had.

Addendum: My poll choice was B. Jumped into the deep end with players better than me

 

[Smooth_bass88]

I started bass at 12, was gigging by age 15. Prior to those initial gigs, our band practiced like mad, made sure everything was nailed. I guess you could say I've "grown in the gig world" as this is what I've been doing all these years. I consider myself a 'working pro' and have played some incredible gigs. I've done records with Kenny Aronoff, members of the band Boston, Alexander Jenko, and many others. I've been busier than ever these last couple years...hopefully this continues.

 

[Buck_BassMan94]

My gigging journey has been interesting. I voted “worked out all the kinks” but I’m not sure that’s 100% accurate. The first time I played bass was for a church youth band that I ran sound for while I was in high school. The two guitarist (my best friends) asked me to learn a particular song they wanted bass for. I did, and initially just started learning to hold down quarter note roots for their songs so I could help serve. Eventually I got interested enough to buy my own bass and took off teaching myself to play via YouTube.

During those youth band days we played a good number of church style gigs (picnics, revivals, retreats etc). We always talked about how when we were older we’d start a cover band and try to play some of the local fairs/festivals.

Fast forward to the year after we graduated college. We started an 5 piece band and had 2-3 practices to iron out a basic set-list. We picked up a very laid back gig at a restaurant in our small town where we know the owner. They only paid us $200, but we got our first taste of gigging and learned a ton. It was a very valuable experience.

The goal of our band has always been to enjoy our gigs, and make enough money to buy ourselves nice gear. We now do anywhere between 12-15 gigs a year for $1,200-$1,500 a night. This probably seems low to anyone playing in a larger city, but for our small rural community we’re doing respectable business. We focus on weddings, private corporate parties, and local festivals. Our big strength on the music side is that the two guitarist and myself have played together for over 15 years and are very tight now. We’ve picked up a super talented female singer, and a drummer who is the life of the party. It’s just a genuinely fun band to play with.

We’ve had a lot of experience playing and learned a lot when we were young, well before the band was ever created. That being said, diving head first into the cover band world was the best thing we did. Nothing was perfect those first few real gigs, but they gave us the excitement to keep going!

*we still serve at that same church as the main worship musicians and work hard to teach the youth kids how to do the music thing.

 

[BarfanyShart]

In both my (long past) musical career and my current career, I like to say that I "learned from the worst."

 

[Bar Band Bassman]

I'm pretty sure everyone I played with in my first band was better than me. The horn players could READ MUSIC! I was and still am a seat-of-the-pants player. I'm pretty sur the people I play with now are better than me for the most part but if I'm paying attention I can learn something from anyone I play with. I co-hosted an open mic for 18 years and the skill levels in that milieu ran the gamut. I learned a lot about being supportive and offering encouragement. Still trying to improve. NY resolution: ear training and fretless.

BBB

 

[HolmeBass]

We just jumped in, college-aged. We could learn songs, but often we did not bother. We could just sing the words and melody over entirely incorrect chord progressions.

As we’ve aged we lost that ability. Now we MUST learn the tunes, and kind of learn them deeply, inside and out.

The old days of youthful exuberance are gone for good.

 

[grimjim]

A friend of mine asked me to play bass in a band when I was 28, (I'm 60 now). I was a guitar player and never really played bass. I just kind of took to it and progressed pretty quickly. Once we had enough material down, we started doing shows.

 

[Muttleybass]

I had been in a few bands, some with better players, that never managed to get a gig. Finally I said screw it and went to a local Saturday afternoon jam. First time on stage with some killer players. Lasted six songs when most people only got three, so I guess I wasn't so bad. I was 17 with false ID.

 

[spiritbass]

Path B for me. I prepared by learning the neck playing along with records in my bedroom through a janky little open-back 'amp'. When word got around my small town that I'd purchased my first real (3-15 Kustom 200), I was immediately asked to join a keyboardist, guitar player, and drummer who were slightly older and more experienced. Pretty good garage band, but we were just weekend warriors...

 

[Mastermold]

High School was a long time ago for me now, but that’s when we started. More enthusiasm than talent but we had fun. By age 16 we were playing bars, high school dances, and parties.

 

[MegaSwing]

My life in active gigging started relatively late, because I didn't do it in my 20s, when I shoulda been doing it. I started jamming with friends, then gradually migrated out. I made a lot of friends on various scenes, and it kept building. I started with an intuitive feel for theory, which was very helpful, because I could communicate with musicians who were clearly more experienced than I.

I guess the most important things are to decide you want to do it and then make yourself as qualified as possible to make something happen.

But you have to go get it, because it never comes looking for you.

It's good to be the bass player.

 

[dbsfgyd1]

Gigging players - How did you start this craziness?

Please let us know which you chose and whether or not you feel you've continued to grow in the gig world or quit for whatever reason.

I suspect there might be a correlation, though I may be way off.

I started out giving as a guitarist/singer one man act playing in teen “Coffee” houses, mostly for tips. But, my 6th grade teacher recruited me to play bass in his polka band on short notice for my first actual paying gig ($45 for a two hour gig with food in the mid 60’s) not knowing anything other than finding the root by ear, making sure I hit it clean at the beginning and end of each song. What happened in between didn’t matter much. After that experience, our band director had me playing bass. The thing was in his band, if you were not prepared, he would embarrass the crap out of you in front of the whole band.

And that’s not the worst part. My mother’s ( an excellent musician in her own right) barbed critiques at home with dire warnings of being thrown out of the band was a motivating factor as well. Anyway, in my junior year recruited for a band I’m still apart of 52 years later and have been gigging ever since.

 

[LowendG]

I picked B. First real (paying) gig at 14 with a bunch of guys almost 10 years older than me. But, I probably coulda picked C 'cause in retrospect I think they actually kinda sucked!

 

[Wasnex]

The more you play out, the more opportunities you are presented. Of course, for this to work, it helps if you play well and have the necessary skills to do different types of work.

I started in elementary school music programs, which included performing concerts.

Other gigs flowed from relationships, reputation, or participation in jam sessions. Another bass player asked me to sub for him over the summer. This generated a gig at a party. I was also asked to play in other ensembles such as pit orchestras and a university big band by people who had seen me play in school concerts.

Pro musicians tend to play in multiple ensembles, and band member in various concerts I did would ask me to participate in their projects. Also audience members would seek me out after concerts and shows to talk and offer work. Peers and instructors in music school also offered me gigs.

I had to drop out of music school. I took an electronics job in the military, but kept studying and practicing bass. At my first assignment I sought out the opportunity to play bass for the house band in the upcoming talent contest. The house band evolved into an ongoing cover band. Eventually I learned that my service branch had a band program. I won an audition at my second assignment and cross trained to bass. Had plenty of gigs after that.

 

[Altitude]

I started gigging in ‘85 when I was 14. The band director at our middle school wanted to assemble a cover band as a side project to see if he could create the next boy band. He ran all the rehearsals and did all the booking.

I got the bass chair. Our first gig was a talent show at school, but from there we moved into a nice rotation of skating rink and private party gigs and the occasional festival. I was a kid in Austin, which turned out to increase the level of performance opportunity for a group of kids too young to get into bars. Our best gig was on the local music stage at Austin Aqua Festival, which was sort of a precursor to the ACL Festival they do today.

Eventually it became clear that we weren’t going to get signed and the band director moved on to a different side hustle. Insurance sales, I think it was. But for the 4 or 5 years we did that band it was a surprisingly robust and informative experience that helped me a lot in subsequent chapters.

The band was very good. I think all of us are still playing, but the singer became a country/Tejano artist in Austin and later won a Grammy. The drummer is a first call jazz guy in Austin to this day.

So I suppose I played in a situation that was more informed than I was as an individual, though it was the first rock band for all of us.

 

[Pocket Dave]

I find your poll questions confusing...
Does anyone ever jump on stage without at least some rehearsal? [Maybe it has happened...] So for me, [A] is not applicable...
In my first working band, we had a 'seasoned' singer. Turns out he was the biggest drag on progress, because he kept saying 'we're not ready' or 'we're not tight enough' when it was obvious to me that we were at a lever at least as good as other gigging bands. Sure enough, no sooner had we booked a gig than he dropped out... Leaving the guys who were 'as clueless as me.'
And the thing about the music business is that it exists on two axes... There's the music, and then there's the business.
The vector sum of those two factors needs to be above some critical threshold for success.
I've worked with excellent musicians who were clueless about the business side.
And there are plenty of bands who work consistently despite being mediocre musically.
But motivated people can grow on both axes with work and awareness.
As sidemen, this growth is rarely a straight line, IME, because we need to attach ourselves to projects over which we rarely have total control.
I don't see very many projects growing from garage band to headliner with the same lineup and management.

You might be overthinking the pole. Just choose what applies and skip what doesn't. Then let us know how active your musical growth has been since.

 

[Pocket Dave]

Great responses so far, thanks.

Reminder: Please include which of the 3 choices you selected to help correlate with your story.

 

[MYLOWFREQ]

I had a friend who recommended me to a singer who had released his 2nd album and was looking for a bass player. The audition was at a bar and I gigged with him at the same bar that night right after the audition

 

[J-Bass RMR]

I selected "B";
They were older and more experienced than me in the "genre" - but I had more of a "formal" musical background...

I got recruited into a working band when I was 16.
I had played upright for 5 years but had just taken a break, due to changing interests; (girls, skateboarding and Rock & Roll!)

We had built a 16’ half pipe our friends mom let us put in their yard.
At the house across the street, some of the older guys (and girls) “hung out”.
One was pretty a drummer, who played in a local R&R / variety band, and was always pretty cool towards us.

One day, he pops over, and asks me; “you play bass – don’t you?”
I looked at him sort of puzzled, and said “not really”. (I’d never played electric, and was actually a bit intimidated by it)
He says, “well, our bass player just left, and we need a bass player”.
I was reluctant, and basically passed.

Too long a story, (although made for TV!) - but a few weeks later, we had a few rehearsals at the BL’s parents music store - (probably) using a borrowed Hondo bass and some kind of amp… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
They had gigs booked, didn't want to cancel any more than they already had, so next thing I knew, I’m on stage.
I definitely wasn't playing "proper" bass lines at 1st - especially for any 50's covers or country or western (we played both kinds ), but eventually, I got it figure out!

 

[Pocket Dave]

OP here.

I chose B. Jumped into the deep end with players better than me.

First gig was 1974, I was playing guitar, not bass yet. A fellow guitar-owning friend who I met for a couple of afternoon duo-jams got us a paying gig for a private high school's art fair. A couple teachers volunteered their services on bass and drums. First time we played with them was at the fair and they were definitely better than either my friend or I - We played a handful of songs in front of a half-full auditorium.

This was my first experience with a rhythm section and I was hooked.

Since then I've gigged steadily for the most part, some rehearsed bands, some throw-together pickups. The common denominator in most was there were gig(s) on the calendar, or at least last-minute-gigs called for that night.

My growth musically has been reasonably active (though no doubt it would've been less stunted without the alcohol/drugs sidetrack).

My background leading up to guitar and bass was playing piano as a kid. Before then, I was passionately obsessed with music since I was small enough to crawl between the legs of my parent's hi-fi record player.

These days I like coming to gigs prepared, material woodshedded, preferably played a half-dozen times in gigs before. I play bar gigs mostly, so the $100-200/man doesn't motivate many to want to rehearse, especially those who depend on the pay - either supplemental or primary. So I guess I'm still jumping into the deep end. I try to do it with players better than me.