[Dixielandjazz] Performing in Multiple Groups

Mon Jun 26 09:51:12 PDT 2006

What's wrong with several wives?

I too play with several bands.  I consider playing with one band for a long 
period of time to be a mistake.  I played with the same group (Group 3) for 
about 15 years.  We worked a lot and made good money but all things come to 
an end and at one point we just blew apart.  Now I had been playing about 
100 gigs a year with that group and all of a sudden I'm on my own.  I really 
didn't know a lot of guys and they didn't know me (musically) or what I 
could do.

I had to start at the beginning playing with an almost freebee band to make 
contacts and to keep my chops up.  The DJ's were starting to savage the 
wedding business here and gigs were starting to drop off anyway.  Many bands 
like ours had already folded.

Not a good time to look for gigs, either as a leader or as a side man.

Tom makes one good point about band loyalty but it works two ways.  Around 
here the members of bands tend to be very loyal to a point of not booking 
with other bands.  It's frustrating to call a piano player and have him 
explain that he won't take your gig because he plays in another band and 
unless you can offer him more gigs at more money he isn't interested.

As a leader you can solve the loyalty problem by using charts and find guys 
that can read and fake and have at least two guys for each chair.  This 
becomes problematical if you are a basement band that does all head charts. 
In that case you are screwed if someone takes off on you.

I work for several bands and book my own gigs as well.  The way I do it is 
that my first priority is my band and I try to book several months out if 
possible.  My number one band that gives me a lot of gigs gets first 
priority but he also books months out and rarely does he get last minute 
gigs. My number two band books months out also and I play with them even 
though they only book a half dozen gigs a year because of the prestige of 
playing with that band.   Now to fill up my card there is one group that I 
will take a gig a month out and there are three bands that need not call 
over a week out.  If I'm free I play and if I'm not, no hard feelings.

All of these band leaders have multiple people they can call for the chairs 
so if I book with one band or another they just call the next guy on the 
list.  Fortunately I am fairly high up on everyone's list so I get lots of 
calls and play most weekends.  Another thing, I book my bands usually during 
the week and on weekend afternoons which doesn't conflict with the other 
gigs.  That's one of the good things about Dixie (at least around here) and 
that's you don't play on Friday and Saturday nights leaving you free to book 
other things.

Tom makes a lot of good points and I'm not really disagreeing with him. 
Each market is different and each one of us has a different playing 
capability.  If you lived in a small town with few musicians to choose from 
or possibly more limited as a player the answers would be totally different 
but I live in a major metropolitan area and I meet new players all the time.

Because of the experience of being out of work for a fairly long period of 
time after Group 3 folded I found out that the bands needed good subs who 
could walk in and play a chair. I did have to brush up on my reading skills 
though.   The bands around here tend to be social clubs who have their 
favorites but there are four bands with five sax players each and on any 
given Friday or Saturday night someone will want off.  Since there aren't 
that many guys around that can read a book cold and play lead tenor I pick 
up gigs.  Since this is what I do, band leaders expect me to turn them down 
fairly often and there is no hard feelings.  They just go to the next guy in 
their book.

I avoid the basement bands because while some are really good I just never 
wanted to be completely joined at the hip and take myself out of circulation 
again.  The biggest benefit is if I want to take off a weekend I can without 
putting the whole band out of work.  When I played with Group 3 we almost 
never got a weekend off and because the guys were depending on the bucks and 
we had to stick together.

The most important thing is gig integrity.  First of all if you are a leader 
of your own band absolutely never hand out your card on someone else's gig. 
Secondly never take another gig and beg off on a job even if the gig pays a 
whole lot more.  There is an exceptions to this.  My cornet player books 
gigs and if either of us books a gig that conflicts we just hire someone 
else.  We do this quite often especially around Mardi Gras and NY eve.  We 
both have several guys we can call on.  This has cost me money but if you 
beg off you will burn that bridge and burning bridges in the music business 
is really bad news.

Simply put do what you say you agree to and don't interfere with the other 
guys business.  This business depends on a handshake, personal contacts and 
recommendations by other musicians and leaders.  If you screw that up you 
might as well pack your horn now.

There are a lot of ways to commit gigacide but those are the  biggies.

The way one guy handles the image on his website is that he knows Photoshop 
and if the members of the band changes he just removes their head and puts 
the new guys head on the old guys body.  Cool huh?  If you want to see it 
contact me off list and I will direct you to the website and tell you who 
has been decapitated and added.

I solve that problem with my groups that change a lot is I engage in 
shameless self promotion.  I am the star and I'm the one they are hiring. 
Never mind the other guys although I do not shy away from building them up 
and talking about them.  I just don't use them in my printed material.  I am 
setting up a web site and may change my view on that somewhat because that's 
easy to change.
Larry
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <tcashwigg at aol.com>
To: <Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 9:20 AM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Performing in Multiple Groups

> While I understand that you probably get more work that way Bruce, it is 
> akin to having several wives, :))
>
> Would it not be a lot easier to just have one group and book it all the 
> time ?  when guys run all over the area playing with different groups, 
> they face the reality of not getting enough gigs for their own band and 
> often disloyalty form it's members who then see you doing it and follow 
> suit, this also does little for the image of the name of any of the groups 
> and simply turns most of them into a jam session of who ever can show up 
> today.   Yes I know lots of guys do it that way and have done so for many 
> many years, but that does not make it proper, and is no doubt why there is 
> a shortage of any Superstar OKOM acts in the market place.   Ya'll have 
> all become ALL-STARS  amongst yourselves however the General Public has no 
> clue who you are because the acts rarely promote or publicize themselves 
> and or the events they play for.   The media is also often reluctant to 
> get behind the name of a group that shows up with different personnel 
> every time and simply treat you with little or no respect as performers.
>
> It is a common practice in all genres of music for many people forming a 
> band to surround themselves with players who are not a threat to their 
> musicianship and who will work for less money so the leader can be the 
> Star and make more money doing so.   Other groups operate under a 
> different premise however and simply think that all things in the band are 
> equal and split up the money earned that way but leaving the leader to pay 
> for all the phone calls, do all the booking, print flyers, pass em out, 
> mail em out and a ton of other things that they have to do to make a real 
> business out of it and book the band.   This is also wrong,  and leads to 
> groups breaking up more and more and forming five or six more dong the 
> same thing over and over again,  in all genres of music.
>
> Just some passing thoughts to ponder.  These methods of running a band 
> work in varying degrees for different bands and the leaders of course but 
> we have learned on this great list that not all ideas work for all bands 
> and their particular situation you have to look at each situation 
> carefully and make the best of it in todays market if you wish to stay in 
> one genre of music alone, in particular, every okom musician with an 
> instrument is your competition for every gig and with all of them hustling 
> for gigs it is no wonder it is difficult to play in only one band. 
> Especially when each memebr wants to be the leader and go out and book 
> their own gigs and be the Star. :))
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tom
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Stangeland <stangeland at earthlink.net>
> To: Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
> Sent: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 23:24:53 -0700
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Performing in Multiple Groups
>
>   Mart,
>
> I am a fairly new member of DJML.
> At the moment, I perform with 7 musical groups in the San Francisco Bay
> Area:
>
> Jubilee Jazz Band - banjo/ guitar
> Joyful Noise Jazz Band - banjo
> Gateswingers - banjo / guitar
> Sir Francis Drake Irregulars - banjo
> Dana Street Jazz Trio - leader / banjo / guitar
> Old Folkies / New Life Band - banjo
> Gospel Choir - bass/baritone
>
> Note that I only try to lead one group, the trio. For the rest of the
> groups, I depend on the leader to get us gigs.
>
> Cheers,
> Bruce Stangeland
> Berkeley banjoist
>
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