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Local Musician Seeks ... What, Exactly?

Sunday, October 28, 2007:

For the past three years I've been playing in a band with a group of talented local musicians. We've played a few gigs (maybe five or six a year). It's been a lot of fun. The musicians in the group are excellent. (The leader is frankly a better soloist than I'll ever be.) And we all enjoy playing pretty much the same kinds of music.

So what's the problem? Well, at a certain point, I myself wanting more. Not just more gigs and more money, though that would be nice. More seriousness. Some kind of commitment to artistic excellence, and to sharing our music with people. This band has no website, no publicity photos, no demo mp3s, not even any business cards, and seemingly very little interest in putting together any of those things.

My non-musician friends say, "Well, if you feel that way, you obviously need to go out and find some other people to play with." And of course they're right. Nonetheless, the correct response to that statement -- indeed, the only possible response -- is, "No, you just don't understand."

Finding musicians with whom you're compatible is really, really hard. Let's enumerate the factors:

• Must be in local area, so as to allow convenient driving to rehearsals.
• Must have a schedule that allows regular rehearsals -- which means both, a day job that doesn't interfere, and no other musical commitments that will get in the way.
• Must have significant gigging experience.
• Must be able to play their instrument really well, be able to read notated charts, and know music theory.
• Must play an instrument that fills a hole in the lineup. (Mandolin ... no.)
• Must have shared tastes in musical styles.
• Must have a compatible vision of what they're hoping to achieve by being in a band -- how often they want to play out, etc.
• Must be 100% willing to avoid chemical intoxicants during rehearsals and gigs.

You could scan the musician ads in craigslist for ten years without finding even one person who fills those criteria. This was why, back in the '70s, I gave up playing music in order to write science fiction. I was burned out on answering ads (in those days they were print ads) from guys who seemed plausible at first glance, and maybe even talked a good line on the phone, but couldn't play, only wanted to play blues, only knew how to play blues, didn't even know how to play blues, only wanted to get wasted, or had never played a paying gig in their lives.

At that time I figured that all the good players had either moved to L.A. or only wanted to play show tunes in lounge bands because the money was good. This was an overly simplistic analysis -- there are a lot of fine musicians in the local scene here in Northern California. But I remain convinced that good local musicians (a) tend to have family obligations that get in the way, (b) have quirky artistic visions that don't mesh well with what I'm doing, and/or (c) only want to get together and jam, because the prospect of being committed to getting up in front of an audience, doing their best, and living with the bad reviews is just too scary.

Go ahead -- prove me wrong. I'd love for you to do it. Right now I'm off to scan craigslist.