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I'm Frustrated with the Band I'm in.

#21
51PRI said:
"When the Clowns come Home" - Widespread Panic
"Desert High" - Billy F. Gibbons
And then, when those were shot down, and I saw the oldies trend,
"In the Summertime" - Mungo Jerry
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I could imagine Mungo Jerry would go over. The other two are songs that are recent but sound like they're old, and no one would know them. Sad reality of the cover band scene - the crowd is not interested in getting introduced to music they don't already know. If you're getting gigs to entertain a crowd, you've got to meet them where they are. That's not saying your band ISN'T lazy and using the play-what's-familiar mantra to excuse their laziness, but I wouldn't expect those other tunes to work for any band (other than the original artists when they play for a crowd of their own fans).

I like to allow for each band member to get one "vanity" pick, whatever obscure tune or deep cut they want to play just because they want to play them, precisely for morale reasons so they don't wind up feeling... like you're feeling. But no more than one.
 
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#25
It's always a balance between what you want to play as a musician and what bar band audiences want to hear. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, your typical audience just wants to hear stuff they know by heart and can dance to. Nothing wrong with that, but if it drives you nuts maybe being in a bar band is not for you.

My band deals with this by selecting contemporary stuff (from 2000 forward) that sounds old. Think Nathaniel Rateliff, KT Tunstall, Keith Urban, Sheryl Crow, Bruno Mars, etc. There's plenty of good contemporary stuff that audiences will like.
 
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#27
I am a metal guy I listen to metal and hard rock that being said I play in a Classic Rock cover band.
Most of the songs when we first started back in 2003 I had never heard or never listened to, including some major acts.
But I started this band to play what people want to hear and what at the time was the music scene in my area.
I have the mind set now that I play for the people who keep coming out to hear us. I play bass, so since I enjoy playing bass to me a bass line is a bass line. I bang on 4 strings for 2.5 hours and some one opens their wallet :)
 
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#29
Not sure how good your vocalists are and whether you can pull this off or not - I was in a band that started out the way yours did, played mostly bluesey stuff and some rock ( think Jesus Just Left Chicago),and a few of us were getting bored with it. We convinced the band leader (singer) to try moving more towards Motown stuff, including some contemporary versions (Bruno Mars, Trombone Shorty, Jamie Lidell) and some old (Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Michael Jackson) and the audiences LOVED it. It also motivated the band - we started rehearsing weekly to learn the new material. We kept the older stuff but alot of it got phased out as we added new material. I moved across the state, or I'd still be in that band!
 
#32
51PRI said:
The band I'm in is a blues band for festival gigs and a "play everything" band for bar gigs. All of the music we play is old. "Maybe Baby" and "Margaretaville" are standards on our bar set list, which also includes gems like "Brick House", "Brown Eyed Girl", "The House is Rockin'", and "Evil Ways."

The band leader called a rehearsal and these are the songs to be learned:
"Soulshine", "Stuck in the Middle with You" and "It's 5 O'clock Somewhere."

The songs I recommended got shut down. One wasn't well known enough for people to dance to it. Another one was just not well known. The third "was like 'Margaretaville' (it isn't).

I'm frustrated because the guitar players in the band don't seem to want to spend any time learning anything "new" that they have to actually learn. It's okay if it's an old song that they can just play off the cuff or jam through, but they don't seem to want to learn anything that have parts that need to be played for the song to sound right.

We have a lot of gigs booked (I really don't know why) but I wish we were tighter, spent time working out parts, learned new, not just new to us, songs, and were generally a lot better than we seem to be satisfied to be.

It's frustrating.
Click to expand...

QUIT.

been there and done that.

here's how that plays out:

1) you get more frustrated
2) you actually learn stuff but then can't play it that way because they don't and now you have to half ass what you would be nailing
3) you don't invite anyone to shows or talk about the band
4) you stop caring
5) you question why your even playing music
6) life sucks

be in a band that will hold themselves to the same standards you do. I took a pay cut when I made the jump but I was so much happier doing so and now I'm making more and gigging more than ever (plus now people know I don't suck)
 
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#33
ThudThudThud said:
Dancers are going to dance if they hear something like the beat of.
I once debuted an original song at a bar gig, and everyone got up and danced.
It's not whether they know it or not. It's about the music.
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This used to happen to my band a lot, too. But it's also about the kind of audience. The places we played in my pre-Covid band brought in audiences expecting to hear original music, so if the music was good and danceable, they would dance.

People will dance to familiar stuff, too, even if it's not the usual list. Not every band is primarly a dance band, though, so there's also that.
 
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#34
I go by the Tarzan principle. As you swing from vine to vine (band to band) you need to keep your eye on the next vine and sometimes (if the next vine is a little too far away) you need to make a leap of faith and be confident that you'll make it to the next vine. Stay in your current band until you find (or start) a band you can live with. Like Del Paxton says " You gotta keep on playin' no matter with who".
 
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#37
Integrity or money? You choose. I pretty much hate 99% of the song we play and we have one player out of the three of us that is well behind the capabilities of the other two. Sounds depressing huh? This year make four years of working in this configuration. No band is perfect for every one of the members. I'm sure not saying that bailing wouldn't be in your best interest, but don't bite your nose off to spite your face. The reasons I hang on are-
*We are as busy as I like to be
*easy money
*super easy set-up
*no rehearsals
*I genuinely like the cats I play with (even the drummer).
 
#39
Sounds like you need a new band unless you rely on the money and there aren't any other projects in your area. Even then I would probably quit. Life is way too short to being playing songs like BEG and Margaritaville.
 
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