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Shaking things up a bit


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My band has been going pretty well over the past year. We've had steady gigs for a while now. However, lately I feel like things are getting a little stale, so I've decided to do some things to shake things up a bit.

Since the places we play have audiences that want to hear classic rock and country/country-rock, I purposely eliminated the heavier songs we do from our setlist (Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motorhead). We can still play them if somebody requests them, but otherwise, we'll leave them out. Last night, no one requested the heavy stuff anyway (they were asking for OLD country instead lol), so I guess that was the right move to make.

Another thing I'm going to try at tonight's gig is to move spots around. For years, I have set up my stuff on Stage Left, but I'm going to switch spots with my bass player. It will be a different perspective and it might make things feel a little fresher as far as stage moves and all that.

On break, we talked again about having an expanded version of ourselves for bigger events (wedding dances, private parties, street dances, New Year's Eve). In that version of our band, we would be similar to how the group was in 2011. We'd find a great bassist/harmony vocalist (preferably one that could sing a few songs too), I would switch off between lead guitar and keyboards and my cousin would become the 2nd lead guitarist/vocalist. We can do a lot more songs justice that way.

The "2 bands - same members" thread rekindled a couple ideas I had regarding separate projects. I mentioned to the guys that it would be cool to have another version of us, but playing different music. I would love to play music like Seether, Chevelle, Black Keys, Godsmack, Three Days Grace, etc. but in these clubs, people would look at us funny (and have before). So, we'll probably experiment with having another version of us (with a different name, of course) that does the modern rock PRS guitar-tuned-to-Drop C style of music and find audiences that like that sort of stuff.

I'd also like to try to have a third band that would be more along the lines of Hairball. After watching them last weekend, I realized how much I missed playing a lot of those fun, BIG songs from the 70s and 80s. That lineup would be a bit more difficult, as we would have to find a great frontman to hit the high notes, get the crowd riled up and basically put on a hell of a show. I would switch off on guitar and keys in that group as well and get an amazing lead player that can play that stuff note-for-note and again, a great bassist and drummer. This third idea is more of a long shot, though.

Anyway, those are just a few ideas I have to inject some more freshness into the group. Do you guys have any ideas you've tried out or want to try out in the future with your bands?

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Bands only start feeling stale to me when we've hit the wall for growth and potential.   SInce we are far from being as good as I know we can be, what we do never feels stale to me.  There's so much room for improvement.

The type of band we are and the way we sell ourselves leaves a lot of room for variety.  So that's usually always fun and a challenge.  A few months ago we were working our asses off to learn an Indian/Bollywood song!   If that type of stuff won't keep you on your toes, I don't know what will!   As will playing for completely different audiences every show.   Hard to worry much about whether the audience is tired of any particular song when you know they've never heard us play it before.

But basically, we keep stuff 'fresh' just by trying to push the boundaries of song arrangement and song choices.  Lately we've really been enjoying coming up with mashup and medley ideas and working all that stuff out and making sure we keep the audience on board is pretty challenging.  Feels a lot like the old days of doing originals where somebody would come in with a basic song idea and the whole band hashes out the arrangement. 

As far as the same band being two or more different bands goes?  That makes sense as long as there is enough gigs and enough time.  If one's primary band isn't working enough, then it makes sense someone would want to be in another band.  If more than one member from the same band wants to participate?  That makes obvious sense as well.    The guys in my current band used to occassionally pick up small gigs as a 4-piece without the girls up front and play under our old name just for the fun of it or to keep things tight.  We haven't done that in awhile though.  So much of that older guy-fronted material has gotten away from us.  It would probably be more trouble than it was worth to work it all up again for a $400 bar gig or whatever.

But to be two or three different bands just of the sake of doing it?  That sounds like it would be more of a distraction than anything else.   Maybe make sure your primary band is as good as it can be first before you start spreading everyone too thin?

 

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I wonder what you mean by "far better" bands than Hairball from TC? I've never seen them live, but what makes them seem like a $22,000 band is the way they so tightly focus their presentation and image and sell it as a narrowly defined product for a specific market. Sure, there's probably a lot of hype involved in the promotion, but the bigger point is that there is something TO hype.

 

Certainly not every band can or should be "Hairball". But if more bands were that focused on who we are, what we do, and how we sell it as opposed to being "a group of indescript, generic looking guys playing songs you may or may not be interested in--wait until you get to the show to find out"---I think the whole live music scene would be much better.

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Like I said, I've never seen them live and probably never will. But I think bands would do well to focus on the things acts like this do right and apply accordingly to themselves.

 

I occasionally see comments thrown around here like "I could easily put a cute girl up front or develop a gimmick and make a lot more money". It isn't quite that simple. Hairball must be at least good enough to not disappoint those who bought tickets based on the hype, or they'd be out of business. You have to back it up to some degree.

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guido61 wrote:

. Hairball must be at least good enough to not disappoint those who bought tickets based on the hype, or they'd be out of business. You have to back it up to some degree.

You sure do! Over the weekend we played a gig and we were afraid we were going to have a very light night because not to far from us was a theater hosting a Beatles tribute act. well aparently the tribute was so damn awful the place we were playing got flooded with people before the beatles show was half over.

So We happily played a beatles tune for them (8 days a week) and i was told it was 1000X better than the tribute band they paid $25 to see. :)

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Well, switching sides onstage worked out better than I expected. We were both able to hear everything much better than before and our singing improved as a result. I also took control of the sound mix, which I had let my cousin handle before. I tweaked the settings a bit and got rid of the slight feedback issues we were dealing with the night before. I think where my amp was placed (and where it was facing) also helped out there.

Since he was no longer worried about running sound, I gave him the light foot controller to play around with instead. I wasn't sure how he'd react to that, but he said it was more fun for him to have something to do (he just plugs in his bass guitar and sings, no extra effects) and, as he noted, it was one less footswitch for me to worry about. It also freed me up to relax more onstage.

Who knew something so ordinary would have such benefits?

I think we'll keep things this way for a while.

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I agree about 50k bands not needing to be on Gigmasters and that the typical private event Gigmasters gig paying much less. Although I'm not sure I get what the advantage would be for paying the annual fee to be on Gigmasters just for the ability to publicly overbid for gigs you won't get on a sub-menu of the site few people even see--especially if the people you're trying to reach with this overbidding aren't Gigmasters clients.

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The original band I am playing with will be hitting the studio in 2-3 months.  We have been looking for other members (keys, horns), but haven't found anyone so we're going to do the power trio thing and move forward.  We have a good thing between us.  Musically it has really "shaking things up" for me as the only original stuff I have done has been home recording and more rock, pop type stuff with vocals and your typical song structures such as intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, solo, chorus, etc.

I miss playing out right now and am going to start looking for a cover band to play with again.  I don't want it to interfer with the band above and I don't want to commit to something and back out.

 

 

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