My band is an interesting mix of ages and proclivities. Our keyboard player is the oldest, in his late forties, and the drummer and I are next at 40 (he's a week older than I am). Our back up singer and BL are in their mid-thirties, and our lead guitar is still in his twenties. We all have careers except for the BL and lead guitard. The BL quit working to pursue music full-time and as far as I know is living off stock from when he worked at Microsoft and elsewhere and hasn't had a day job in close to two years now.
Only the drummer and I are married, he has a two or three year old daughter, and my wife and I hope to be expecting this year. The keyboard player isn't married but has been partnered with his lady for well over ten years. Everyone else is essentially single.
For everyone but our BL this is very much what I would call a committed hobby or high-functioning avocation. We take it seriously but it's not our primary focus in life. For our BL, of course, it's his entire life. On occasion this can lead to conflict, but not very often.
I think the band is a living laboratory in a lot of ways. Some of us have been playing for years, for some it's their first band ever. Some of us have a fair bit of recording experience and some of us, prior to the band, had none at all.
It's been interesting watching the BL come into his own as a songwriter, an ongoing process, and learn how to navigate booking, promoting, and networking. He's pretty much taken to it like a duck to water, fortunately, and he's a networking monster. Fortunately he doesn't come across in a skeezy fashion and I think that has a lot to do with the opportunities we've had. It also helps that when we play we always deliver a good show, whether we're super tight or loose.
We all come from very different musical backgrounds and so our strengths and weaknesses sometimes work well together and sometimes not so much. It's certainly been a learning experience for me, never having played country music before. I had scale my playing way back.
I don't know, I think it's a great group of people and while it's hard for those of us with careers/kids to maintain the level of focus our BL really wants, we've managed to make it work pretty well for going two years now. Well, there have been a number line up changes outside of the rhythm section and BL, but the lineup is steady now.
It's never ending learning process, that's for sure. I don't view them as 'friends', more as my music buddies. The keyboard player is also my neighbor so if any of my bandmates could be considered friends he'd be the only one.
