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eddie1261
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How have you guys, in the aspect of you being the band's leader, handled replacing people who just aren't cutting it? Can you put friendships aside and do what the business side calls for? Whether it's because they don't care, don't make time to practice, or are just not good enough, sometimes people you have to make decisions involving people you are close to. How have you handled that in the past?
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The entertainment 'industry' has at least two "types":
A: Professionals working together to provide quality and professional entertainment services.
B: People who just 'entertain' and believe because they can play an instrument, they can essentially deliver whatever suits them in their own way.
I have worked with both.
I kept type A
Type B, no matter how hard it was, could not stay, and I had to let them go. To continue would have been disastrous. Some players lasted a few months, some much less.
At least one time, Type A, who was a very close friend and despite being a sensational drummer, seemed to lose interest. Professionalism needed to apply and I replaced him. That's part of the job also. Our friendship remained, but we didn't work together again.
Usually, type A lasts for years, (we still occasionally perform together).
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eddie1261
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Professionalism needed to apply and I replaced him.
That's what I am asking about. Not THAT you replaced somebody, but HOW. My being an aggressive, assertive Type A personality, I would just say "You aren't good enough. Don't go on stage until you polish your game because you can't play. At all." Friend or no friend, I have to have A List players in any band I am in. The powers that be just have to be onboard and be able to separate personal from business. And in this case, they can't. They have been carrying dead weight, harmful players for years. And frankly, I am REALLY tired of it. It's just not my band to make the call on it.
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Have you been reading any Dale Carnegie books lately Eddie?  I would've thought you could have delivered the required news fairly well. I believe all you have to do is to be firm and assertive. It's not easy, but there's a job to do also.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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You're fired. ...... This just isn't working out. Or in one case.... Man, you're too good to be playing in a country band in NC. You need to be with players who can show YOU something about the guitar. I've heard them all. And... I've used them all.
Other than that.... it was often a disaster trying to fire someone. Some were yelling matches and some ended up in fist fights, and some.... people just cried. It was rarely about talent. It was more about personalities. Often we overlook the personality when we're starting a band and just look at the talent so it was rare that we ended up with a non-talented player because they never made it past the auditions stage. The personality gets overlooked or hidden for the initial first few weeks after being hired. He's an arse, but so are we, kinda thing until suddenly, it IS a problem when he's standing on the B3 cussing out the audience for requesting a song halfway into the show.
Most of the bands and players I have been in have been fairly good players. With me, if someone is reasonably talented and is willing to work up the tunes, they are a better bet than someone who is exceptionally good but is a PITA to work with. One of the best bands I was in was a band where everyone in the band was considered a "B-list" musician to the "A-list" players in town". You'll do until we can get so and so from another band. We were decent, and like the kid who gets picked last to be on the team, we had more nights sitting at home than being on stage. Hence the reason we gravitated towards each other and started a band. We had been together in a band previously with some other folks.... and in the second incarnation, it was just the 3 of us. We went to a battle of the bands... a big event with 30 bands from all over the east coast. Good money offered for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. We had pulled into the staging area when we ran into a bunch of the "A-List" musicians from our town who were in a really tight, professional sounding band. They were there to compete. No joke.... they laughed at us to our faces.... "What are you guys doing here? Come to listen to a good band? We'll show you how it's done" It made us feel bad.... seriously. So we decided...screw it, we're not going to beat those guys so we're just going to have a good time and go home. At the end of the day..... the A-List guys didn't place in the top 6 finalists, but we did. Coulda knocked me over with a feather when we got the news that we made the finals. We ended up taking the first place prize and the venue owner approached us to open for a big regional name a few weeks later.
Yeah, it was business, but it was also a family and friends. So it wasn't exactly a matter of firing and hiring whenever someone did something. Work it out. We're a band, we're a family. And we're friends. The better bands I have been in have had a special spark that made it work when the original players were involved. In those bands, when someone was eventually fired or quit, that spark was gone and the band often broke up totally shortly thereafter.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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when someone was eventually fired or quit, that spark was gone and the band often broke up totally shortly thereafter. Seen that more than once. One person leaves (whether asked to or not) and another follows .. half a band doesn't usually recover; might as well start over. Which we've done many times. Barry and I have had many bands together and the commonality is us. We can work with many different musicians .. until we can't. Sometimes it means simply starting over. And we do have ex-band members we still get along with socially just fine. If that ends the relationship as friends, it's on them. I can still be friends, and you can decide to get better at bass or drums or whatever so we can play again (or stop drinking at shows, or .. whatever) My best friend and I have played together since the 70's. We also get along just fine when he decides he wants to do weekend bar gigs and I don't. That stuff should not ruin a true friendship. And a true friendship should not ruin a band.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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eddie1261
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Great story, Herb. Nothing makes me happier than an underdog story. Personally I just LOVE taking people down a rung. Even more when I can knock them off the ladder completely.
Our Motown band, Cruisin', was once booked on a double card with a competitor of ours, The Boulevard, calling it "Cruisin' the Boulevard." The owner booked that on a Sunday night that was THEIR rotating Sunday, and we were already salty about that. We sat down for a meeting and I had a list of condition for us to do it. I didn't want to do it because I didn't want to help him draw people on the standing gig night for a lesser band.
On the list was this.
They do 50 minutes. No more, no less. We do 90, and we will do 90 non-stop with no break.
I will give you a set list. They CANNOT do any song we will be doing.
Whatever you pay that 8 piece band for their 50 minutes, you pay our 5 piece band 1/2 again more than what you pay them. If they get $400 for their short set, we get $600 for our longer set. (They get $50 each, we get $100 each.)
You want a "both band jam" at the end of the night. I decline to participate in that. I refuse to play with the second team. I am a starter.
He initially balked, and I said "Then we don't do your show." I then explained that they were our competitor, and they were giving places lower prices than what we commanded, claiming "We play a lot of the same music", and I was not about to help them draw fans that are supposed to follow US around town from bar to bar.
So they did their show, there was a 20 minute break, then we came out and hit the crowd with Pick Up The Pieces, (because we had 2 sax players). After that we broke into a 35 minutes Motown medley that started with Temps, moved to Tops and ended with some Isley Brothers. Then a little Stevie Wonder which started with a bass solo during which I snuck off stage and changed from the casual tux garb to parachute pants, a vest with no shirt, an apple cap and a Cadillac hubcap on a piece of lamp chain as my gangsta medallion. The character was called Heavy E, one more than Heavy D, and my initial. I introduced the band doing the Cruisin' Rap, then went back off and changed as the guitar player did his solo, and came back to do Superstition. The end of the show was a 3 song Marvin Gaye medley that continued to reference the outro of "What's Goin' On" as we changed songs, ending with Sexual Healing. We blew that band right out of the building, and I was rarely happier than I was as we relaxed in the dressing room. So our leader asked if I would PLEASE do the 45 minute set with both bands, and I agreed but only on sax. We took his tenor and my alto up and joined their tenor (who was and still is VERY good) and their trumpet player and we ripped some TOP with them and some usual Motown stuff like Knock On Wood. When that was done we went back to our dressing room to change into "loadout" clothes that weren't soaked and 2 of them came over to our room and said "Man, you guys are REALLY good." They never really heard us because they were working when we were working. So we settled who the kings of the Motown party were that Sunday night. Our wedding business grew by about 40%, and they broke up within a year from that show.
Just like YOU cleaned their clocks! Great feeling, ain't it???
Last edited by eddie1261; 06/25/21 12:18 PM.
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Over the years, I was involved in three situations where we had to fire band members, Once because of physical ailments that affected her singing voice long after she joined the group, another time because of mental illness which we knew about before hand but were assured was in the past, and the third time because the guy would repeatedly get too drunk to play.
The first two firings were disasters. I explained to the singer that we were replacing her and that she was fantastic when she was well but that we had limped through three month of her trying to get well and that her reduced singing ability was costing us jobs. She spent the next several weeks calling my house and hanging up several times a day.
The second guy, I sat down with and explained the issues which all had to do with him not being able to put a filter on any of his behavior. It was no big surprise because we had been talking constantly about inappropriate things he was doing all of the time but he was one of these guys that had spent months in a mental hospital getting electo-shock therapy and was about as burned out as Cheech and Chong. He was fully aware of the problems he was creating and didn’t give me the least bit of grief. His mother on the other hand hit the ceiling. She called me up wanting to know why we had fired her son, which I patiently explained, but then I got a long lecture on being insensitive to the needs of the mentally ill, and how her son had a PhD in music and the whole band put together couldn’t match either his talent or musical knowledge, which was probably true.
I finally got smart with number 3. We all handed in our 2 week notice and quit, leaving him as the sole member of the band. Never heard a word from him again.
Keith
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eddie1261
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I finally got smart with number 3. We all handed in our 2 week notice and quit, leaving him as the sole member of the band. Never heard a word from him again. 
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Folks, If you decide to let go a band member please tell them! I was the unfortunate person approached by an ex-band member who ask me, "Has the band been playing anywhere? I haven't heard anything for a few months." Awkward for me!
...Deb
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Has anyone being let Go though, the other side of the coin? 
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eddie1261
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Has anyone been let go though, the other side of the coin? Yep! I was once told that I am too much of a perfectionist and the rest of the guys didn't care about things being THAT close to spec, so they let me go and went without a keyboard player. Right after that the kid phenom guitar player I brought in left and moved to Nashville. 2 weeks later the singer quit to go play in another band with his brother. TWO YEARS LATER they have finally resurfaced with a bunch of local scrub players. I saw their demo video and watched with glee as they sucked badly on every song. Parenthetically I ask, WHY do bands put singing LAST? I would SO rather recruit 4 people who can sing and then teach them instruments if they were not instrument players. There was a band here who did that and the were 18 months in the making but when they finally came out of the basement and started playing, man, the singing was incredible. I see band after band where everybody has a mic but nobody but the lead singer really sings, and harmony is non existent. And the excuse is always "The music we play doesn't really require harmony". PS I would likely have left that band that fired me on my own soon after they fired me anyway. Music is to be revered and respected. EDIT TO ADD: Shockingly, it was NOT because of my brusque personality. As aggressive and borderline abusive as I got during rehearsals, they all understood that it was all aiming to make that band the best band it could be. A band, like a man, has to know it's limitations (props to Dirty Harry Callahan for that line). The drummer, who thought he was great and wanted to be musical director, was an awful drummer and will always be in bad bands because he stats songs too fast and then speeds up. I turned on a click track a few times and he was gone by the end of 8 bars.
Last edited by eddie1261; 06/26/21 04:01 AM.
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Did HE hear the click or just you?
Any drummer that can't play to a click really isn't a drummer. Never had a drummer in any of our bands that couldn't.
They never got that far.
Some drummers even brought their own click because they knew the importance of the tempo. Playing the song (any song) at the correct tempo is kinda important. Even more so if they are unfamiliar with the song (ie an original).
Drummers set list:
Song 1 - 132 BPM
Song 2 - 128 BPM
etc
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Dangit dude, you just keep pulling them out of me Kinda on topic; http://bobandbarryshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Twelve2021.mp3<we're special> Not sure how much is Motown or how much is TOP .. and how much is just us
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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eddie1261
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Did HE hear the click or just you? It was through the PA. LOUDLY through the PA.
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eddie1261
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Not sure how much is Motown or how much is TOP .. and how much is just us I hear some Zappa in the arrangement too.
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probably .. we had fun like that
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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eddie1261
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I believe all you have to do is to be firm and assertive. It's not easy, but there's a job to do also. Oh, as a former high school linebacker and hockey defenseman, firm and assertive is my wheelhouse!!! I didn't get this face because it's never been punched! I gravitated to sports where I wore helmets and masks for a reason. Man, that one game against Shaker Heights... You hit ONE guy with a stick and everybody loses their mind... LOL!!
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Red Green: Keep your stick on the ice
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Eddie, we've been working together for ten years now and I'm quite happy with your "direct" approach because it's always constructive.
If you tell me a guitar part isn't right, them I'm happy to do it again until it IS right. The same with the mixes I've done for you.
At the same time, you're never offended if I ask you to re-sing a note that was flat (really?), so it works both ways. This is possibly
why we still talk most weeks. That and soccer.
If you need to sack someone there's no nice way, so just do it. If you lose a friend, then they probably weren't worth your friendship.
If the band is going to be professional, then all the players need to be professional - end of story.
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Our new country & Americana RealTracks deliver a rich collection of acoustic, electric, and roots-inspired styles! We have new country pop (9) with legendary guitarist Brent Mason. There is also a potpourri (14) of bouzouki, guitars, banjo, and more, perfect for adding texture and character to contemporary acoustic arrangements. We’ve added funky country guitar (5) with PG favorite Brent Mason, along with classic pedal steel styles (5) featuring steel great Doug Jernigan. There are more country songwriter styles (8) that provide intimate, rootsy foundations for storytelling and modern Americana writing. Finally, we have “background soloing” acoustic guitar (12) with Brent Mason — simpler, but still very tasty acoustic lines designed to sit beautifully behind vocals or act as a subtle standalone solo part.
Check out all the 202 new RealTracks (in sets 468-488)!
And, if you are looking for more, the 2026 49-PAK (for $49) includes an impressive collection of 20 bonus RealTracks, featuring exciting and inspiring additions to add to your RealTracks library. You'll get new country-rhythm guitar styles from PG Music favorites Johnny Hiland and Brent Mason, along with modern-pop grooves that capture today’s radio-ready sound! There are also new indie-folk styles with guitar, bass, 6-string bass used as a high-chording instrument, acoustic guitar, and banjo. Plus, dedicated "cymbal fills" RealDrums provide an added layer that work very well with low-key folky styles with other percussion.
The 2026 49-PAK is loaded with other great new add-ons as well. Learn more about the 2026 49-PAK!
2026 Free Bonus PAK & 49-PAK for Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac®!
With your version 2026 for Mac Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, Audiophile Edition or PlusPAK purchase, we'll include a Bonus PAK full of great new Add-ons for FREE! Or upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for only $49 to receive even more NEW Add-ons including 20 additional RealTracks!
These PAKs are loaded with additional add-ons to supercharge your Band-in-a-Box®!
This Free Bonus PAK includes:
- The 2026 RealCombos Booster PAK:
-For Pro customers, this includes 27 new RealTracks and 23 new RealStyles.
-For MegaPAK customers, this includes 25 new RealTracks and 23 new RealStyles.
-For UltraPAK customers, this includes 12 new RealStyles.
- MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
- MIDI SuperTracks Set 46: Piano & Organ
- Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
- Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
- Playable RealTracks Set 5
- RealDrums Stems Set 9: Cool Brushes
- SynthMaster Sounds Set 1 (with audio demos)
- iOS Android Band-in-a-Box® App
Looking for more great add-ons, then upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for just $49 and you'll get:
- 20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums with 20 RealStyle.
- FLAC Files (lossless audio files) for the 20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums
- MIDI Styles Set 93: Look Ma! More MIDI 16: SynthMaster
- MIDI SuperTracks Set 47: More SynthMaster
- Instrumental Studies 25 - Soul Jazz Guitar Soloing
- Artist Performance Set 20: Songs with Vocals 10
- RealDrums Stems Set 10: Groovin' Sticks
- SynthMaster Sounds & Styles Set 2 (sounds & styles with audio demos)
Learn more about the Bonus PAK and 49-PAK for Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac®!
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