First gig with the "new band" this past weekend.

[Bonhomme Richard]

First posted in musicians group but I wanted to share with the lounge.



A little background. When I say new band it's a bunch of non-professional musicians I pulled together just to play and have fun at my place. I got tired of playing out but wanted to still play regularly. I was the only one of the bunch to have played out (about ten years) and all the guys were just at home players. A real mix of ages from their late 20's to their 50's. I really believed the only difference between them and me was confidence.
Well, I worked them as is they were in a working band and with zero intentions of playing in front of anyone but we were asked to play a party. Saturday packing up the equipment to head out I felt like it was graduation day for my students because this was going to be a first for all.
We went to the gig and played for more than 4 hours and blew everyone away. They were really good and acted like professionals (except I did allow them to keep the lyrics in front of them). What impressed me the most is that there were professional musicians in the audience and they too were impressed, enough so that they were telling the guys what clubs they should be playing.
We played a lot of oldies ( a lot of Beatles) but some highlights were American Girl, While My Guitar Gently Weeps (the jam at the end was awesome), Man on the Moon, and something no one expected to hear, the Guess Who's Laughing segued right into No Time.

I just had to send this post because I was so proud of what they accomplished that I wanted to share.

[dbt]

1. Congratulations!

When are y'all going on the road?

:evilgrin:
dbt
(Just retired from 10 years of gigging)

[Bonhomme Richard]

3. LOL, I too retired so to speak.............

and now I think I created a monster although the older guys didn't like the hauling/setting/breaking down equipment part.
I wished I had a buck Saturday for everytime I told someone that I had no intentions of playing anything other than a party now and then.

[Dudley_DUright]

2. Cool

My brother is a semi-professional musician who in a folk/rock duo. He loves playing "name a Beatles song we don't know" with the audience. He always wins because they know them all.

[orwell]

4. Congrats

Sounds like fun. It feels great to put something together and have it work out to exceed your expectations

I just got finished with a 9 show run of a musical called Zombies From the Beyond. It was great to watch the project come together and provide a showcase for some very talented actors and tech people to shine.

There is a lot of hidden talent out there. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to organize it and put it in motion.

Congrats again.

[Squeech]

5. Yay!

Good for you and your bandmates! You didn't explicitly say so, but the tone of your post sounds like you had fun doing it, which is extremely important.

I'm thinking about quitting the band I've played in for ten years, because it has ceased to be fun. (We do originals; I'm the bassist in a trio, and the singer/guitarist writes all his own material, in a sort of psychotomimetic power pop vein like Robyn Hitchcock. It's good stuff, and I get to take up as much space in the arrangements as I want-- which is obviously common practice for power trios-- but we can't seem to accumulate any new fans, and the number of clubs we get asked back to keeps shrinking, and I'm bummed about it. It seems obvious to me that we have no charisma, and I don't know what to do about it.)

[Bonhomme Richard]

6. It was a total blast. Beautiful day and hot. Thank god

they put up an awning over us.
About your situation, hang in there. If you enjoy playing what you play then that's all that matters. Hell, after playing out for ten years the one truth was that we certainly were not doing it for the money. LOL
You might consider adding someone to the group who is more comfortable talking/revving up an audience. An extra instrument can't hurt.