Originally Posted by
rickthedrummer
1st: Give it up, forget about it because it's not going to happen.
2nd: OK, you are not going to give up the "dream". That's good.....maybe.
There has been a lot of good advice given. Some from people who actually did it.
If you have enough cash that will allow you to cover your everyday expenses (gotta eat, a roof is always nice to have, which means rent, and the various things that pop up that, unfortunately, cost money.)
If you have enough to keep you afloat, put your own band together, but, finding people that want what you want is going to be hard. Back in the day, we auditioned about 300 musicians/singers over a period of several months to find 3 that wanted what we wanted. If you find people like that, you can pick the music, and the direction that you want to go, and you have to do that as a band, not 1 person.
Finding a working band looking for a drummer. That can be both good and bad. Good because you are working. Bad because not everybody has the same goal as you.
Someone mentioned a tribute band. I turned down a Doors tribute band that was a very busy band, working all the time. I would have had a week to get up to speed. Not hard to do when you are playing 1 bands songs note for note, and, for the most part, the drum parts were simplistic. I liked the Doors, but not enough that I wanted to do them 24/7.
Money: It has to come in on a continuous basis. We couldn't catch a gig for a while because the bar owners didn't have time to listen to the few songs we had on a little tape recorder. We started sending our bass player's GF (blonde, good looking, and looked even better in shorts and a halter top) The owners would at least listen to her, and she got us our 1st gig. $160 for the night and we played 3 nights and did well enough that he wanted us back every 6 weeks or so.
About 2 months later we got booked into the Stone Pony, rocked the place, and really never had to look for a gig again. Our fight, if you will, was how much are we worth for a 3/4 night gig. This was in the early '70's where you played 4 sets, and didn't split the night with another band.
When you start making money and playing better clubs, the money goes on a better sound system. We went with a Shure Vocal Master that did the job just fine.
There are just so many things that come into play when trying to do this that part of me wants to say "forget it", but I also know what it was like back when I was young and it was all I wanted to do. So................................................ ................GO FOR IT.
The part about failing is that I expected (when I was in my 20's) that by the time I was 35-40, I'd be playing in a jazz band. Never happened.
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