How did your band form?

[Mike N]

First bands were just high school kids getting together to make noise.

Next few bands were with people I had met from the first bands I was in back then and some other people I met along the way, including parents of my daughter's friends.

Current band goes like this- I went to see a friend and former bandmate's new band play one night and during a break he tells me the Bass player is bailing after tonight and would I like to audition? I said yes, got a song list and went to work. Three days later he calls and says there's a change of plans.... the singer wants to bail too, but he (my friend) is going to go with her. So now if I still want in, I'm in but we need a drummer. I call one I was in a band with 20 years ago to see what he's doing and his response was "looking for something new, tired of the basement." Works for me.

 

[Shimmi]

I feel I've mentioned this story so much I'm just going to go with my new bands story.

I was jamming with a friend of a friend who was playing Hey Hey My MY(out of the black) by Neil Young. He was also playing a bunch of other songs so I went ahead and started asking him about what he plays usually and every single song he told me was a song I suggested to my old band but they shot down. So right away we had that similarity of taste in music and what we like, so after a few little jams I asked if he wanted to start up a acoustic band, I told him I could easily get us to open for my band(back when we were together)

Well not sure if it's related but shortly after my band broke up.

Another friend who is an insanely talented drummer came by and we ended up playing some songs(he was playing my guitar) I had no idea he even played, I heard around that he was a really good drummer but that was from my non musician friends so no idea how good he was.

I told him about my band breaking up and asked if he had any free time.

He was like hell yeah

Boom new trio.

There was a girl for a bit and although pleasing to the eyes we decided she wasn't right, was by no means good at singing, kept trying to turn every practice into a guitar lesson, and she was kind of ...well... "easy" so pretty much every girl in town did not like her and I realized I'd rather bring in 5 girls than 50 horny dudes to a show.

I suppose someone should tell her shes out of the band...

Anyway we're keeping the original band name(cant let an 8 foot banner go to waste) and recycling tee shirts and posters.

And that is the true story of the band and I'm probably going to change the details and make it more epic because its kinda lame reading it now... but either way glad to be jamming with people who are cool and click with me and my barely passing bass tunes lol

 

[bassbully]

I got back to playing music at almost 40. I will be 54 this winter (God Willing) I did not play in a band or live one of those almost 15 years. All the best bands were formed 100% by craigslist including my current band. Believe it or not.

 

[willbassyeah]

first band formed during middle school we sucks badly, i have no idea how to play bass and guitarist couldnt even play a F Chord.
I then go took lesson from a bass teacher and my bass playing start to progress and the guitarist still could not play a F Chord.

I decided to go look for band on a local music forum where i form my second band, it was a alt rock band with originals. I learn a lot from this band being mostly our songwritting consist of us just jamming random tunes and everyone else are better musicians then me, however it just seemed to not meant to be. Drummer getting married and the band slowly just die. i become a good friend with the guitarist from this band and i learn a lot from him.

Third band, i am still with the guitarist from my second band and we found new members ... but new members are doing too many substance over music, singer went to study abroad.

Fourth band (my current band) i received a message from a guy who saw my ad that i posted like a year before. We are progressing much better in terms of live gigging and all that. Pretty content with the band. My good friend guitarist also now have his own band and his band is also progressing much better, i still keep in contact with him and we do jam sometimes. The funny thing is we both are doing so well and are going to play a festival together but at a different band.

 

[crlujan]

Here's an excerpt from an interview I did recently for a Russian site called Groove's...

4) Groove`s: How was “The M-Tet” formed? It seems that you've played with some of The M-Tet musicians in other projects before, correct?

I had put together a group of musicians for some local restaurant gigs. I was trying to do more soul-jazz or r&b type tunes instead of playing all of those jazz standards that we've all heard a million times. On the gig, I had a really great guitarist named Nick Diaz. I tried to call out some Meters tunes. But, none of our Meters tunes lined up. The tunes I knew, Nick didn't know. The tunes Nick knew, I didn't know. We probably both knew Cissy Strut but that falls under the you've already heard it a million times thing.

This got me thinking. I've listened to The Meters forever but never really dug into the music and tried to learn this stuff. I figured, what better way to really get into all of their songs but to put a band together kind of as a study in The Meters tunes.

I put a call out and Gary Pitman (Hammond organ), who was in Majestic Soul, got in touch and said that he was game. Then we asked Michael Reed (drums), who had played on the Majestic Soul record but was never really part of Majestic Soul. In fact, I met him the day before the Majestic Soul recording session to rehearse the tunes for the next day's session. I had been in touch with Mike off and on since then but we hadn't found the right project until now. We found Joe Baer Magnant (guitar) through a local website. He fit in perfect and we were off and running. We actually started by learning The Meters first album front to back. In fact, for our first ever live show, we played that album, in order.

There's a four or five song demo somewhere of us playing those Meters tunes. We did that on a Tascam Portastudio. It's been analog ever since that Incredible Say Whats! date. Since then, we've concentrated on writing original tunes. We still do some covers when a song sticks out to us. But, we're really concentrating on originals at this point.

 

[podiumboy]

When I was a freshman in high school, so about 1996-97, myself and a friend learned how to play guitar together. We each took lessons, and then taught each other everything we knew. We eventually developed quite a good musical connection. I was a little more ambitious, so I kind of became the lead guitarist, while he played rhythm. Then we realized we wanted to form a band. We had a friend who owned a drum seat, but couldn't play it to save his life... HE WAS IN! We then needed a bassist; we had a friend who's parents were rich and would pretty much buy him anything he wanted. We told him to get a bass and an amp... he did. He had no idea how to play it at all, and he never really learned. Me and my rhythm guitarist friend then realized we were both to shy and not good enough to be lead singers, so we just told another friend of ours to be a singer, not knowing if he could sing at all. He couldn't... but he got the gig because he was the only one willing to do it. We were absolutely awful! We played 1 high school party, and 1 talent show. But I learned a lot from that band.

Later, when around about 2000-2001 myself and the lead singer and rhythm guitarist from that high school band eventually found a bassist and drummer that were good. The singer learned to sing, and we started writing songs and playing gigs. We played maybe 100 gigs between New Years Eve 2000-2001 and Thanksgiving Eve 2009, when a big blowout between the singer and the drummer effectively ended the band then and there. There have been attempts in the last couple years to try and rekindle the magic, but we're all in our 30s now, careers, marriages, kids, etc. It just isn't happening. Where I go from here, musically, is still unknown.

 

[Dogbertday]

It was immaculate.

 

[Zodion]

When I was a freshman in high school, so about 1996-97, myself and a friend learned how to play guitar together. We each took lessons, and then taught each other everything we knew. We eventually developed quite a good musical connection. I was a little more ambitious, so I kind of became the lead guitarist, while he played rhythm. Then we realized we wanted to form a band. We had a friend who owned a drum seat, but couldn't play it to save his life... HE WAS IN! We then needed a bassist; we had a friend who's parents were rich and would pretty much buy him anything he wanted. We told him to get a bass and an amp... he did. He had no idea how to play it at all, and he never really learned. Me and my rhythm guitarist friend then realized we were both to shy and not good enough to be lead singers, so we just told another friend of ours to be a singer, not knowing if he could sing at all. He couldn't... but he got the gig because he was the only one willing to do it. We were absolutely awful! We played 1 high school party, and 1 talent show. But I learned a lot from that band.

Later, when around about 2000-2001 myself and the lead singer and rhythm guitarist from that high school band eventually found a bassist and drummer that were good. The singer learned to sing, and we started writing songs and playing gigs. We played maybe 100 gigs between New Years Eve 2000-2001 and Thanksgiving Eve 2009, when a big blowout between the singer and the drummer effectively ended the band then and there. There have been attempts in the last couple years to try and rekindle the magic, but we're all in our 30s now, careers, marriages, kids, etc. It just isn't happening. Where I go from here, musically, is still unknown.

If you played guitar when did you go to bass?

 

[podiumboy]

If you played guitar when did you go to bass?

I can't say that I ever "went to bass". Through learning guitar, I learned bass. Then about 10 years ago, I really started taking bass seriously. I had the bass player in my band give me some lessons on how to play bass like a bassist, not like a guitarist. Some people think just because you know the notes on the neck, you can be a bass player. It's an entirely different skill set! These days I would consider myself a guitarist and bassist equally. I'm current without a band, but I have done a bit of sub-work as both guitarist and bassist. The Rhythm Guitarist from my old band, the one I've been playing with since high school, recently recorded a "solo album" at a small time local studio, and I played some lead guitar and some bass on it.

If the opportunity arose to join the right band, I would happily play guitar or bass. I feel like if I can market myself as a guitarist or bassist, I'll have an easier time finding a good band... whenever that time comes.

 

[Zodion]

I can't say that I ever "went to bass". Through learning guitar, I learned bass. Then about 10 years ago, I really started taking bass seriously. I had the bass player in my band give me some lessons on how to play bass like a bassist, not like a guitarist. Some people think just because you know the notes on the neck, you can be a bass player. It's an entirely different skill set! These days I would consider myself a guitarist and bassist equally. I'm current without a band, but I have done a bit of sub-work as both guitarist and bassist. The Rhythm Guitarist from my old band, the one I've been playing with since high school, recently recorded a "solo album" at a small time local studio, and I played some lead guitar and some bass on it.

If the opportunity arose to join the right band, I would happily play guitar or bass. I feel like if I can market myself as a guitarist or bassist, I'll have an easier time finding a good band... whenever that time comes.

Definitely better to be a multi instrumentalist today. I played drums for two years and I'm rusty now obviously as all my time goes to bass. But If I wanted to I could get b acknowledge into it, but I love bass how it's rhythmic, melodic, and percussive all at the same time