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Is Your Band Family Friendly?

#41
We're 50-55, and having a bit of band drama, as "M", the BL (daughter and son with second wife) wants to gig constantly, but "C" (wife, grown kids) is getting burned out, and wants to spend more time with his wife on weekends, even if just chilling at home watching TV.

(I don't have any family obligations, but really don't care much either way… P is unemployed and likes the money, but goes with the flow… D would also gig as much as possible)

C was distressed, as some had apparently laid a guilt trip on him that he was holding them back, so I told him that I'm totally supporting him, and whatever he wants, will be what I want.

We'll see how it works out.
 
#43
I'm lucky to be in a family-friendly band, and a band-friendly family. The band is a 19-piece big band that holds a couple of 2-hour rehearsals and one gig per month. Each band member is responsible for practicing the charts on their own. The "overhead" is minimal in terms of things like gear, setup time, travel, and so forth. There are a few subs in the band every month. And I get many of my side gigs by subbing for other bassists.

Long ago I decided not to be too ambitious about artistic or commercial success, or even popularity. If a band gets too successful, then they probably have to find a different bassist. I'd be happy to play classical or chamber music on upright if the jazz thing stopped happening. I'd even start a living-room band. I'm musically flexible. Just playing music and improving myself as a musician are more important than what genre I play.
 
#44
My band is family friendly. We're all in our 50's, and married (although I'm soon to be single....again). We play about once a month, sometimes not even that much. We practice when we can. Our keyboard/guitarist is the owner of a funeral home, and a practicing mortician, our drummer is on the road selling steel buildings and building supplies, our other guitarist works for the local school system, and I travel (when there's work) installing self-checkout lanes in grocery stores and Walmarts for NCR Corp. The band has been together in one form or another since 1979, I've been with them since 2004. We've known each other longer than that. We mainly play Classic Rock, but our practices, range from Country to Jazz to writing original stuff, along with learning songs for our songlist. On occasion, we've gotten together with the wives (and in my case girlfriend, if I have one) and gone out to dinner, or just gotten together at one of our houses and hung out. This is the dream band I wanted to play in back in the early 80's when I first saw them, and we get along very well, lots of laughs, good-natured ribbing, funny stories, and similar senses of humor. None of us drinks to excess, or does drugs (we all went through that phase much earlier in our lives), and we have a large fan base in our home base of Shelby, OH. In fact, after my divorce I'm moving there to be closer to the band.

I don't anticipate this ending any time soon, as we love to play, and play very well together. We make decent money when we do play, and every so often we get a plum gig someplace that pays really well. I'm happy, and blessed to be with a great group of guys.

Link Removed
 
#46
Good lord.

We play rock and roll.

We're called Dirty Lixx.

We're not trying TO be family friendly, and we're not trying NOT TO be family friendly.

Our daughter is older than our guitar player.

Our guitar player likes to sing songs by "modern rock" acts that use all kinds of foul language, and if we do get a "family friendly" gig, he replaces those words with stupid words like "motherlovin'" or some such nonsense, unless my wife is singing backup vocals, and she still sings the real word.

I have my "Whole Lotta Love" orgasm every night, and she has her "Peach" orgasm every night. So two orgasms; a bunch of dirty words from Arthur, and the kind of innuendo I enjoy from seventies rock like "Big Ten Inch Record" (yes I know it's not originally a seventies song,) and we are not family friendly as an act.

We are not family friendly in the context of the OP, because we would go anywhere, and play any time. Normally, when someone offers a gig, whoever is booking says, "I'll get right back to you," and then checks with the rest of the band. Once the gig is booked, you WILL play.

As I said, we aren't trying NOT TO be family friendly.

But it IS rock and roll.

And we are not really concerned with such things.
 
#48
mellowinman said:
Good lord.

We play rock and roll.

We're called Dirty Lixx.

We're not trying TO be family friendly, and we're not trying NOT TO be family friendly.

Our daughter is older than our guitar player.

Our guitar player likes to sing songs by "modern rock" acts that use all kinds of foul language, and if we do get a "family friendly" gig, he replaces those words with stupid words like "motherlovin'" or some such nonsense, unless my wife is singing backup vocals, and she still sings the real word.

I have my "Whole Lotta Love" orgasm every night, and she has her "Peach" orgasm every night. So two orgasms; a bunch of dirty words from Arthur, and the kind of innuendo I enjoy from seventies rock like "Big Ten Inch Record" (yes I know it's not originally a seventies song,) and we are not family friendly as an act.

We are not family friendly in the context of the OP, because we would go anywhere, and play any time. Normally, when someone offers a gig, whoever is booking says, "I'll get right back to you," and then checks with the rest of the band. Once the gig is booked, you WILL play.

As I said, we aren't trying NOT TO be family friendly.

But it IS rock and roll.

And we are not really concerned with such things.
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you sound so proud of yourself. :rolleyes:
 
#49
bluewine said:
Are we talking about how PC the band is on terms of the audience or how sensitive the band is to band issues and how they impact a members family responsibilities?
Click to expand...

The original post makes it very clear that it is the latter:

jive1 said:
How family friendly is your band? I'm not talking about your shows, but your stance on family members of your bandmates.
Click to expand...
 
#51
Phalex said:
- Not too many practices, so that you don't cut too much into family time.
They like to do once a week with the goal of adding 2 new songs every time. I play pretty much every Fri/Sat and I'm useless come Sunday, so another night away from home really doesn't work for me and mine.

- Paying gigs, so that it can help out the family budget. Every Fri/Sat

- A deep bench of available subs, so if you need to take a gig off, you can without it being a huge deal. Nope, My sub from last year is busy with his band this year and availability is not good.


- Little to no touring. IME, travel for any type of job is hard on a relationship or family. We pretty much play within 30 miles of home


- Reasonable behavior on the gig and afterwards. Are you kidding?? The singer has been known to disappear between the 3rd and forth sets to take girls out to his car in the parking lot. One time he got busted in the broom closet of the bar with a chick in flagrante delicto. Other members (myself included) have had instances where we've imbibed a little too much. We also say **** a lot. I mean a LOT!
Click to expand...

i wanna party with this dude!

we're pretty family friendly i guess. expectations are spelled out in advance, professionalism is expected and delivered by all parties. what you do when the work is done is your business.
 
#54
I think it's a matter of respect.. IMO we should all respect each others' lives outside any band situation no matter what type of band. Even a 20 year old that wants to tour the world and is without kids, a full-time job, girlfriend, etc. still will have some family or other obligations outside the band. That's just life and you gotta respect each others' lives...

I've played in a multitude of different bands covering styles from Metal to Salsa in my time.. I wouldn't have stayed in any situation if there wasn't respect for life outside the band. I would guess that should apply at every level.. Case in point, when Blackwell's daughter tragically died while he was in the middle of touring the world with Prince, Prince gave him time to go home to his family..
 
#55
Our band is very family friendly, and was intended to be that way from the start. It was something we all talked through in some detail in the beginning. My kids are 8 and 10, but when we started they were 4 and 6. Having the youngest kids in the group, I made it abundantly clear from the beginning that they were my top priority, by a long stretch.

We get together once a week, primarily just to get some dude time. We use the time productively, work up new songs and such, but we've been together almost 5 years now and have no real need to rehearse, so it is as much about the social as anything. As such, if family stuff comes up, it gets the axe.

We gig locally only, unless the travel aspect is family friendly. We also try to book gigs that are family friendly (eg-day time festivals and such), and limit our number of late night bar gigs (usually no more than one a month). I'd say reasonable behavior on gigs, before and after, but as much out of a family need as out of a desire to be professional at what we do.

Our drummer has school age kids, and is in the same boat. Our fearless leader's kids are grown, but he's in graduate school and has his own commitments. We are heavy on the communication, and keeping a calendar with family black out dates, and just have a general respect for everyone's priorities and where the band fits in.

I think importantly, my family knows that there is no question that their needs will always be deferred to when it comes to scheduling and commitments, but once a commitment is made, my family knows that they must accept it and live with it. None of us have ever committed to something, then backed out on it because a family situation came up. We've had to scramble a few times, and we've learned some hard lessons about scheduling, but establishing a mutual understanding and working hard to communicate with each other about our busy lives from the beginning has kept this priority from really causing any problems.
 

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