About to make the switch with one of my bands. I’ve used them in another group, but hardwired/cabled. I detested them for guitar sound in that context, but I have reason to think that the gear situation will be better this go round. Will update after tonight’s gig.
Yup. Be good, be responsible, be punctual, be flexible, be kind, be fun. All things being equal, the better hang in the clean shirt will get the gig.
“If you aren’t skilled, your talent will fail you.” Or as the hustle/grind kids like to say, “Nobody cares. Work harder.”
Aptitude (because “talent” gets thrown around primarily by people outside the area of expertise), gets you the easy stuff fast. But over time, a work ethic, enthusiasm, and curiosity tend to outpace it. The Socials are of course saturated with people who are both young and at least moderately skilled, because our culture fetishizes youth and potential over maturity and expertise. I’d rather keep making a steady living with music in anonymity than worry about how many likes I got and what my streaming metrics look like.
I’m a big GD/ABB fan, as well as jam bands in general. Love swing, Western swing, bebop, hard bop, straight ahead, soul jazz, Blue Note funk, organ trio stuff, NOLA/Trad, etc. Just not a THC guy. “Drugs are like shoes: Most people need em, but they don’t all fit.”
It’s just such a great feeling instrument. Played my first whole gig on bass last night, and even though it was challenging (especially when I had to sing), every note just feels important. So weird.
Turnpike Troubadours have ruined me for most younger acts. They’re like someone took everything I love about this music and fed it through imagination of one of my favorite songwriters.
I think it’s Chris Potter on “West of Hollywood”. Just monstrous!
If you count every gig I’ve played in the past year, there’s been everything from instrumental improv/free jazz to John Denver-type covers, with a bunch of funk and Americana thrown in. In my most recent band, I play resonator guitar which has been an absolute knife fight to get a handle on amplification wise. Every time I’ve gotten to play in my straight Country outfit since that started, playing electric feels like silk PJs. If I had to had to pick, I’d probably say funk for electric, Americana for acoustic, and anything you want on bass, because it’s still pretty new for me and everything is fun. I aspire to be the bass player in a super dank reggae/dub band some day.
Yeah buddy! No interest in the lifestyle, but High On Fire, Sleep, Kyuss, etc is SUCH a vibe!
Not much fear, plenty of loathing.
As any major dude will almost certainly tell you.
I gotta say that there was a time when you would get utterly roasted for wearing your own merch anywhere near a gig. It was literally considered the least punk rock thing you could do. Like cringe on the order of, “Oh, so you like your own band? Weird flex, but cool, I guess…”
I completely agree about all the branding/marketing/being proud/laundry crisis comments. But I can tell that I am ancient, because when I came up people lived in mortal terror of looking like a “sellout”. Which is ironic, because secretly they all wanted those problems. But social media has basically turned everyone into their own marketing agent, screaming their brand name into the void.
I think some of it has to do with the harmonic richness of a horn. Which isn’t to say that guitar isn’t playing the same notes, but a horn moves air as you hear it. Because archtops are the OG jazz guitar sound, it was only reluctantly that people got cool with any kind of amplification. And decades later, Serious Jazz Cats still hang onto the Joe Pass/Wes Montgomery sound as the accepted standard. That sound is beautiful, but it has neither the fullness, sustain, or immediacy of a horn. This is what Holdsworth was chasing with the whole “guitar like a saxophone” concept. Because of fusion’s rock heritage, all the stuff that compression, distortion, reverb, delay, etc add to a guitar’s notes are part of the accepted palette. Don’t take my word for it: dial up even a super generic rock tone and play a Bird head like “Donna Lee”. It feels more like a horn in terms of complexity and dynamics.
It is what basics do in the absence of music/arts education. Otherwise where would we get clickbait listicles of The Top 10 Greatest Micro Genre Lefthanded Bassists of All Time?
He was a great frontman as well as a singer. That shit doesn’t just happen very often. The kind of dude that was always the most interesting thing in the room. He was special.
Love and respect for Mikey. It isn’t fair he had to leave the party so soon, and the band wouldn’t exist without him. And of course no old school fans will ever be happy with anyone who isn’t him.
But think about it: Do you play shit exactly like him? Do you do the important licks/riffs note for note and try to capture his vibe on the rest? Do you aim for what you think of as being his essence as a player? Is any of that shit why you got the gig in the first place? Do you listen to the loudest fan? The loudest band member? All of that would leave you incapable of just playing the damned tunes. To try to copy him verbatim would be silly at best, and creepy/disrespectful at worst.
Panic fans lost a singular player and musical personality, but gained literally one of the greatest living practitioners of improvised rock guitar music on the planet, and still ain’t happy. Even though Jimmy’s been in the band longer than Mikey was at this point. As my granddaddy used to say, “Some folks’d complain if you hung em with a new rope.”
If Mr. Sutton is doing it, you know it’s going to be supremely musical, tasteful, and done with great care. An absolute master.
Dress like the band you’re in (at a minimum). Usually dress at least 10% nicer/cooler than the audience. If your band doesn’t have a “look”, then kinda no pressure (as you pointed out). One of my old band leaders used to say, “Dress like the cattle, get treated like the cattle.”
Miles to Dizzy: “Man, why can’t I play all that high fast shit like you?”
Dizz: “Cause you don’t hear high and fast.”
Which is an important part of any player’s development and necessary for finding a voice on an instrument. But no moron crawling between Heaven and Earth is running tryna say Miles was better than Dizzy.
Jimmy Herring is, by a wide margin, the most technically capable guitarist in the jam world. He’s also supremely musical, as anyone who’s heard his solo stuff or seen The Invisible Whip or 5of 7 shows will attest.
I’ve seen ZPZ three times over the years, and they have never been less than exceptional.
He’s got character, even if some of his character traits are amoral. Between his soft spots for Jewel, Doc, Trixie, Dan, and even Johnny, it’s hard to argue he’s soulless.
Al Swearengen is one of the most repugnant and malevolent characters I've ever encountered
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