After trying to contact (phone/text/email) the BL for a week, the drummer and myself met outside the BL's residence yesterday after I got out of work and visited the BL. He was there, playing his guitar in a lit part of the rehearsal space. I asked, did you get any of my attempts to contact you? Yes, he replied. He asked, what did you want to talk about? I've been emailing him and the other band members about my grievances listed in the above posts. I advised him I think the time to talk is over due to your non-communication with any of of us and I'm leaving the band as well as the drummer and singer. He ranted on a little bit about how "I can't believe you're doing this to me". He advised me that he felt "I" was trying to take over the band. This is because we had ALL agreed at our last rehearsal to take four of the songs from our set list and work on them exclusively. After we had left he replied to an email (two weeks) ago that he wanted to do three songs and work on an original that was to be created from scratch. I replied that we agreed to do four songs and that we needed to get an hour and a half of our set list DONE and ready to warm up for another band as we have been discussing doing from the beginning of this project. Yesterday the BL ranted "I have bills to pay, warming up for another band doesn't pay". He has been saying he wanted us to warm up for other bands ASAP for a year now in order to get exposure to local bar owners. It was one of those conversations that went: BL rants about something and I reply calmly about the reality of situation pertaining to his rant and he replies "oh yeah, okay bro"........... Pathetic. I have known this person since I was in elementary school and I'm now 48. The statement he made a few times during the non-confrontation argument was "we were doing this to him". The drummer sold him a set of gorgeous PA speaks which the BL was to pay $200 month for 4 months. This turned out to $200 under the normal arrangement and dude I'm broke I'll pay you $100 in two months and blah blah blah blah. He's paid a total of $400 towards the speakers when they should have been paid in full $800 over a month ago. So, when the drummer and I pick up the PA speakers to remove them along with our equipment he goes ballistic. Drummer writes him a check for $200 and says you'll get the rest when I sell them to someone else so you'll have to wait for your othere $200. Drummer recently lost his job and is on unemployment with a family to support. His wife works. BL says you're ruining MY OTHER BAND by taking those PA speakers as he sold his other beat up PA speakers months ago for cash. BL also says "you just wait, this isn't over", the drummer is doing some sound for local bands to try and fill the $$$ gap of being unemployed. I'm assuming the BL is going to bad mouth the drummer to others to try and impact his sound gig.
We are all (myself, drummer, singer) glad to be away from this BL. We are planning on continuing onward with a new guitarist whom we've already had discussions with. I appreciate having this forum to vent, discuss, absorb everything others have written in the posts above. Bottom line is communication. Now, more than ever I realize it's the most important thing in a band. If you feel it, you better get it out in the open and see where it goes because it's going to crash your band in the end. I walked away saying to myself I can't blame myself for not trying to communicate. ROCK ON!!!
