The Story of a Band
Once I had a grand vision: The Musicians and The Madmen. It would be an ultra-competent bass-guitar-keys-drums quartet, then a bunch of crazy people doing… stuff. Multiple writers. Saxophones. Didgeridoos. And a local Punk Rock Legend on vocals. So I got The Band together.
Our first gig was on a bill with the late, great Colorblind James (Chuck Cuminale) at the old Milestones. We did tunes by our singer, by our sax player, by me, and some by Morphine, The Pretenders, Bobby Fuller, and Laura Love. Jaffe, Chuck’s keyboard player, said he’d never heard anything like us. (Yes, I know; but he meant it as a compliment.) Chuck loved it. So did I.
Still, our great lead guitarist, our rhythm guitarist, and the less mad of the two Mad Saxmen immediately quit. As we brought on our seventh guitarist years later, The Singer said, “Ya know, it’s like a bus ride… folks get on the bus, folks get off the bus.” And it was a bit like that. The Maddest Man broke up with me and quit about half way through our run though we continued to do his cracked songs to the bitter end.
The band had eras defined by the guitarists or lack thereof. Our first CD featured a long-running odd couple of ax-slingers. The Lead Guitarist was a covers guy, into Little Feat and such. Played strat, very skilled. Good guy, but the defining moment in our relationship was one night when I accused him of speaking Pashtun. It was unkind. But we didn’t communicate very well, and he eventually left to focus on covers.
His partner was a conundrum with an assured aesthetic (afro-polka, we dubbed it) and a complete lack of technical confidence. In a sense, he was the worst of the seven, but he was also the most distinctive, and looking back, I think his sound and ideas produced probably our best work. He traveled a personal arc in the band: more confident, then less and less so until his anxiety led him to quit. I was deeply sorry when he did.
One guitarist, Gordy, came in and out of the band several times, as his habits allowed. But I’ve written a whole piece on Gordy. Miss him dearly.
Number Six was brilliant; great combination of clever, clean, passionate, and creative. But he wanted to go tabula rasa. The band at this point was maybe 5 years old, had a CD and a large catalog of material. The rest of the band said they wouldn’t start over and had had it. I kicked Guitarist Six out instead.
That sucked. I love managing groups of creative people. It’s part of why I am a Serial Band-Starter. But creative people are never simple, often difficult. Still, I love the energy, the motion, the communal creative esprit de corps. Firing people? There is nothing I like about that.
And artistically — if I may — firing Six was a bad decision. The producer of our two CDs saw the one gig with Six, and said it was our best ever, that the sound was new and totally cool. I wondered, not for the first time or last, exactly why I start these bands. The personal repercussions of that firing linger.
Before and after Six, we jammed around music I was writing. I’d gotten a good electric guitar — MusicMan Silhouette — and a Loud Amp — Mesa F-50 — and was inspired. Rob Fetters of The Bears, who writes commercial music for a living, has a cool approach to writer’s block: “I pick up an instrument I don’t know how to play.” This naïve guitarist totally gets that. My wife taught a course called “Beyond the Limits” that set restrictions on students and spurred great creativity. Try it! I brought new song ideas to almost every practice, The Singer scribbled words, and we were in a new, creative period. It was fun.
And then we found Number Seven. He was huge. In every way. And he was more of a pro than we’d had. He insisted on getting stuff right. He questioned parts that conflicted. He pushed us all to have better stage presence (no shoe-gazing!), and he had excellent presence himself (even makeup!). I’m grateful to him for all that; my own musicianship and showmanship took a step up. We wrote some good material.
But a fatigue was setting in. I needed to send out engraved invitations to get everyone to show up for practice. Seven was resistant to Adam’s Guitar Period material, memorably calling these my “Sesame Street Songs” (ouch). We were both turning our backs on early material (especially mine!) and not moving forward with any alacrity.
About this time I invited a singer-songwriter to open for us, and The Drummer and I offered to back him up. I invited the Great Guitarist from the first gig (remember him?) to a practice, and there was magic. Suddenly, I was in another band, and it was on fire, creatively. THAT band, though, is another story.
The two bands coexisted for a little while and then I told The Band I’d had enough. The Big Finish was a chronological retrospective, with six of the seven guitarists as well as The Madman participating. It was fun and fascinating, well attended and well received. We closed with an epic song with almost every guitarist on stage and taking a solo. Gordy slayed. Guitarist Six did a Wes Montgomery-like thing I can still hear in my mind’s ear. It was the One Big Band with Everybody In It that I’ve always yearned toward.
It never occurred to me that The Singer would view what I’d done as the classic break-up-the-band-and-re-form-without-one-guy trick. I never believed it was that. I get restless and need New. I need my creative outlets to feel, well, creative. And for me, The Band had run its course.
Regrets? Of course. We’d worked on our second CD too long, rushed it to completion, and it’s never felt satisfying. The songs deserved better and won’t get it. And the Band left dozens of songs unrecorded, including the entire Sesame Street and Guitarist Six eras.
I’d been in a lot of bands, but that was nine years, 70 original songs, thirteen band members, countless gigs, a whole lotta highs and lows, and, well, just a bigger deal in my life. Maybe it went on too long. Maybe we didn’t get done what we should have. I wish the Afro-Polka Guitarist had stayed. I wish the Guitarist Six period could have come to fruition. I wish The Singer didn’t feel like I ditched him (this, deeply wished). I wish Gordy hadn’t died. I wish Gordy hadn’t died.
A band is like a marriage, but harder. In a marriage, I can have a problem with you, you can have a problem with me; there are two types of problems. In a band with just three people, there are at least 6 types of problem; 4 people, 24; 5 people, 120. I used to say that the Coffee Achievers, an earlier band, had 117 out of 120 possible interpersonal problems (I did not, for the record, have any problem with Gordy). But problems or not, The Band was pretty good. I love that first CD.
I am sometimes nostalgic about old bands (The Toasters from high school, the Coffee Achievers from after college, Nemo’s Omen a bit later). I almost wish I could be in them again. I am not nostalgic about The Band. But I appreciate it. A friend says, “you read your life backwards.” He adds that it often takes 5 or 10 years. I think I’m able to read this chapter now.
With great thanks to Stan, Marty, Jenn, Thom, Greg, Bruce, Ken, Brandon, Josh, Chas, Bill, Mark, and Gordy.
