Might have a drummer

"Only" 4 hours of non-stop, hard-rock music? The singer was smart to call a halt. Seriously, unless you can offload some of the vocals, you should schedule some breaks.

Laz,
There were breaks for both the singer and drummer. We are not that crazy. :lol: There is also discussion between songs and takes too as we are working things out. Our unwritten rule, you want a break you take one. No questions asked. We may practice for 5 or 6 hours straight, but it's not straight playing. We are becoming friends, getting to know each other. It is a social event as well as a band practice.
Roy,
Well, I'm not considering any songs gig ready yet but we usually play Burning for You cleanly. Jail Break (Thin Lizzy) was flawless with me singing, Martine needs to get the timing down better. Same with the KISS songs we are doing. He doesn't really know how they go, he's like 26 years old. :lol: Long View and Basket case are real close too as is Ain't Talking About Love. (Right out of the box yet!) I'd say we have a lot of songs that are very close to being ready. We need to get our endings straight and such. I'll list what is working:

Burning for You
Jail Break
Aint Talking about Love
Running With the Devil
Long View
Basket Case
Detroit Rock City
Cold Gin
Strutter
Crazy Train
Paranoid
NIB
Sweet Leaf
Under the Bridge
Hair of the Dog

We have a bunch more musically that we do but just need to get Martine on them. I'm gonna do up some lyrics for him as today is a day off. Cheap Trick stuff, some Beatles, the list of things my son and I jam on is endless.

CNEV,
I'd say Martine is a better than average singer and is truely a diamond in the rough. He will make a good front man too. He isn't a heart throb but has a good look for us. He has a little bit of a gut, tatoos, long hair and a bit of a beard. He reminds me of a young Ozzy except for the beard. "Hey Martine, shave off your beard so you look like a young Ozzy!" Don't think that will fly. :lol: I hope things go well for you with your singer. Jamming is fun but don't you want to play in front of people? I suspect you are less of a "weak link" than you are letting on. Hey! I own the sound system and practice area too. Our drummer played drums in high school marching band and jazz band, my son was "All County" on bass and I ............... ummmmmmmmm got over 30 years spanking the plank. I play guitar too. :mrgreen: Nah, we are all pretty good at our instruments and Martine has a nice voice. He is a pretty good guitar player too and I think we might introduce him to a little guitar in a few of the slower strumming kind of songs. He lives in an apartment in a housing project so we sent him home with a small practice amp. (30 watts, 12" speaker) and the dreaded half stack is sitting in the Man Cave with a sheet over it. As I'm sure you well know, there is a difference between blasting out some distorted loud stuff and "playing" in a band. That is what we are really starting to get down. The loud and soft, fast and slow aspect of things. Dynamics! I got another problem. Martine ... 26, ThunderFingers ... 23, Tommy ...31, me .......... gonna be 50! I wonder if I can get some advice from Mick Mars? Maybe I can try to look old from doing drugs or something so people will think I'm younger. :lol:

Gigs? Not sure how long that will take but we hope to do a 10 song set at a wedding the beginning of October. (There will be other bands) There is a curve in effect here and the more we play together the faster we seem to come together on the songs so my calculus is rusty and I am not sure when we will have a solid 3 hours plus of music, but when that happens I will let you guys know. We are near the 3 week mark now so I think we are moving pretty fast.

Yea you definielely are moving fast but if some of you know the material already then that makes sense. We are starting from scratch again although I'm sure we will keep some of the songs but it's really only me and the drummer left as the bass player is gone to.

As for playing out yea I'll do it if we sound tight but I don't have any really great desire to get out there and it has nothing to do with being nervous it's just not a top priority of mine.

Yea and it looks like you are more of the odd man out in terms of age just like me. I'm the oldeset one in the group too except the age differences aren't as much I'm about 12 - 14 years older than the singer and guitar player and a few more than the drummer....thank god I'm alot cooler though...Ha

The other guitar player wants to do Crazy Train and is learning all of Randy's lead. Our other guitar player never wanted to try it he thought it would be too hard for him and he was very good, but this new guy is used to working out difficult passages from his classical training and he's just about got it all down.

Make sure you do take enough breaks for the singer if he wasn' t trained as a singer otherwise he will end up hurting his voice. We played some Audioslave song and the singer didn't even want to try the screaming parts unless he practiced them a bit so he wouldn't strain his voice.

If you have another guitar player you might want to check out Still in love with you by Thin Lizzy ( the live version the studio version suxed) it's a pretty cool song and there is a lot of room to do your thing with the solo's. I never really knew the song before our original guitar player suggested it but after awhile it grew on us. It's a long song almost 8 minuites.

me .......... gonna be 50! I wonder if I can get some advice from Mick Mars? Maybe I can try to look old from doing drugs or something so people will think I'm younger. :lol:

Ahhh, the Keef approach :lol:

Optionally, you could grow a Billy Gibbons type beard to hide behind. 8)

Or just pretend to be an old blues master the kids found "settin' on a stump in a swamp, pickin' a beat up ol' guitar" :shock:

The drama begins. Night before last we had a practice. Started of usual ... well sort of. Our singer was wide awake and ummmm .... well not stoned. He had commented on how he liked the fact that we worked and got things done and didn't just play two songs and then sit around and get wasted. Our drummer combined parts from two snare drums to make a better one and we finally started playing. It sounded good for a short bit then our drummer said .... lets not do a song lets just jam. We were like, huh? We got work to do. We humored him for a bit. His drumming starts to slow. He gets up, gets a beer and sits on the couch and falls sound asleep with the beer in his hand. We were like, guess we're done. ThunderFingers starts playing the riff from Sweet Child of mine and the drummer pops up, yells "I love that song keep playing!" Sticks in hand he procedes to fall over knocking over a stack of my amps as he crashes to the floor. Practice over. Next night he shows up with two buddies. Says the singer said he didn't want to do it anymore so he had these guys with him. One guy had a guitar. My son wasn't home from work yet. He said, thats OK cause the other guy is a bass player. He can plug in and play on ThunderFingers' rig. I'm like, NO ..... not without his blessing. The drummer is in a state again where he can't keep his eyes open mind you. Now these two guys may have meant well but let me tell you they smelled bad. They were dirty and I later found out from the drummers mother that they are bad news. Friends from the old pre rehab days. Oh no, here we go. I sent everyone packing anyhow rather than put up with a bunch of wasted people showing up to use my rehersal space and equipment. We were hoping this would be good for him and at first it seemed it but now it looks like we may have started up the "good old days" for him again. We will see what happens, I believe in second chances but I'm not gonna tolerate that stuff. I mean, we drink a few beers while we play but I want no part of drug abusers.
PS The Man Cave smelled so bad afterwards that my son had to hang a car air freshener up.

Interesting story. :( I hope the problem gets resolved, the drummer gets better or changes his habits or his location? :?

Hey TR now that's Rock n Roll!

TR, that's really sucky news. so what's left besides you and TF?

Well, we technically still have everyone. They are just irresponsable stoners is all. :lol: I don't think the singer does want to continue but I'm not sure, only going on what the drummer said when he was really stoned. The drummer just thinks I didn't feel good that night and didn't want to play. His mom is supposed to be having a talk with him cause we are worried about him. If he is willing to try and straighten himself out, we will still have a drummer. I still got his drum kit and the singer's half stack and music book out there in the cave. The boy and I are still working the set list.

Plan B: Get Tommy back out here,work as a 3 piece and take our time picking up a singer. I have found that if you rock it is easier to get a singer to want to play with you. (The band wants a good singer but a singer also wants a good band)

Plan C: ThunderFingers manager at work plays drums and has permission from his land lord to have a set in his appartment. He says he is buying a set.

We are not going to give up this easy. I just already dropped $400 to beef up the PA system. ThunderFingers has a second 15" bass cab with a spare 125 watts of power. (Slaved off his GK) This could be a post all of its own, but the more speakers you have, the less volume you need. Think about it. You can fill the room with a lower level of sound.

Ya, for sure. Makes sense. My first instinct would be to guess that it would also be clearer music for more people with that paradigm.

Oooo, that word came straight out of the 90's. I bet it's dated. just like everyone on those top 100 blah blah blah shows being interviewed and saying that so and so is the quintesential blah-de-blah act. And that lead to this comment during a VH1-classic program I was watching. Quintisential is the quintisential over-used word for top 100 shows. The mrs told me that she's ruined forever now.I digress.

Man, that bites about the stoner thing. I hope they control their usage. What's really going to stink is when TR goes to sell his band, it's TR. Not the band. TR is the contact, TR gets his but chewed out if band memeber too stoned for gig and in that gin-mill operator's eye, TR will be forever associated with stoner band and unreliable. (Or, your rep is on the line. Be careful. :) ) That stoner could probably be in another band after his arms heal from the beatings you administer, and get to play in said gin-mill before you ever do.

So, good luck with that, eh?

Well, there you go. The singer texted ThunderFingers tonight. "When are we practicing again?" Apparently he didn't know he quit. :lol: The drummer asked his mother for our phone number. (He is without a cell phone at this time ... lost it in his yard at a party ... imagine :roll: ) He is oblivious to any problem. Sheeshe! What to do! I hear you Roy. Singer is a no show, drummer is messed up, ThunderFingers and I are up front as targets for the rotten veggies and fruit. Not something to have to worry about.

Well, we technically still have everyone. They are just irresponsable stoners is all.

Dump 'em. Dump 'em NOW.

If they can't stay straight & sober long enough to practice, they're just going to waste your time and money.
If they can't stay straight & sober long enough to practice, sooner or later they WILL be TOO intoxicated to give a decent performance at a gig.

When that happens, YOUR reputation goes in the toilet along with theirs. Once that happens it can take years before that reputation as "unreliable screw-ups" stops affecting your ability to get hired as a musician.

Been there, done that, learned it the hard way.
The T-shirt was ugly.

(yeah . . . Roy nailed it too ;) )

I'd have to agree with Moon, that it's probably better to dump them now the cahnces of them "changing" are about slim to none and it will eventually come to a head at a practice or worse a show.

I'm not sure your long term rep would be ruined but probably would be for the short term and you might really have to kiss some butt (like beg to play for free) just to get back in those clubs.

I feel for you TR I know you want this to get started and you felt like you were on your way but sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward.

We went through the drunk singer thing once for about an hour until we kicked him out and told him not to come back.

Yes, good advice and I appreciate it. I'm not sure the plans to move foreward but if there are any second chances with these guys I am in no hurry to gig for the reasons everyone has stated. Mind you I can't fault the singer. His girlfriend had a problem with 2 nights in a row of practice. The drummer conveyed that poorly in his "state". The singer showed up fried the first practice, proceded to down energy drinks and ice tea, did his job and showed up sober as a judge the next time ready to work. The drummer is another case. He is our friend's son. He is disabled, cut his hand off in a work accident. (it is reattached with limited use) This was supposed to be something for him to do constructively with his time instead of hanging with the wrong people doing the wrong things. I am almost obliged to give him a second chance for our friend. Am I going to be in a hurry to schedule a gig? I don't think so. I just can't tell him don't come back just yet for friendship's sake. The singer, well he seemed to be trying to walk the straight and narrow, he just didn't give the message to the right person. Family (in this case cohabitating girlfriend with kid) comes before a band. It is kind of funny though that the guys with the jobs seem to have more time to practice. :roll:

Man I wish I lived near you I'd love to play with you I can't take the drama I'm going through and I had to laugh at your last comment about the working guys seem to be the ones with the time to practice.

I'm just about ready to pack it in right now it's turning out to be to much trouble. The new singer is now saying he's not down with the music but has agreed to come by one more time. I don't have alot of hope that he is going to stay but we'll see.