Crap! Drummer just quit

[mayfly]

Well Hell - our drummer just quit the band. Just when we were starting to get more gigs too! We've got a gig in a month, and another one lined up in the summer with hints of others all over town.

Just venting really, but also curious to see how you guys get members for a pretty damm good semi-pro band.

 

[BroccoliRob]

this is exactly why god invented the boss dr-880 dr. rhythm

 

[mayfly]

I was seriously thinking of that! At least it has a volume control on it...

 

[Rick]

And it doesn't show up drunk

 

[mayfly]

And does not take up 3/4 of the stage...

 

[stratamania]

That happened to me in the early 90s. After deciding playing original music was not really going somewhere and getting together a talented covers band to play the club circuits, after putting rehearsals together etc, getting early paid work and at the point we had lots of bookings ahead with increasing fees, the drummer quit.

We simply were unable to find a good enough replacement quickly enough and the gigs were cancelled and that was pretty much the end of it.

 

[Spud]

That happened to me in the early 90s. After deciding playing original music was not really going somewhere and getting together a talented covers band to play the club circuits, after putting rehearsals together etc, getting early paid work and at the point we had lots of bookings ahead with increasing fees, the drummer quit.

We simply were unable to find a good enough replacement quickly enough and the gigs were cancelled and that was pretty much the end of it.

Was that the skiffle group your were in?!!

 

[stratamania]

Was that the skiffle group your were in?!!

That was a few decades earlier

 

[NedRyerson]

That happened to me in the early 90s. After deciding playing original music was not really going somewhere and getting together a talented covers band to play the club circuits, after putting rehearsals together etc, getting early paid work and at the point we had lots of bookings ahead with increasing fees, the drummer quit.

We simply were unable to find a good enough replacement quickly enough and the gigs were cancelled and that was pretty much the end of it.

I feel like I ended up doing that to my band. I was the bass player, and we were getting some notice in what we were doing, but I had joined the band originally on the contingency that we would not be solely known as a Renaissance Festival/Faire band. Yes, let's do the Faire gig but during the off-season, could we also concentrate on getting other non-Faire gigs? After two years of playing at our local Renaissance Festival and those non-Faire opportunities never happening (aka never being pursued with any seriousness), that's what we ended up becoming. We became a RenFest band.

When our guitar player started getting those stars in his eyes about touring RenFaires around the country, that's when it broke for me. I was not willing to live in a rental van at almost 30 years old, quit my job, have no health care, and beg for gigs to make half of what my then-current salary was when my girlfriend-at-the-time/now-wife and I were talking about getting married and starting a family. So I was the one who split from the band.

They brought in a fill-in bass player for the next season at Faire, but it was one of those "can't recapture the chemistry/magic" things. They didn't play anymore after that.

 

[stratamania]

@NedRyerson I can understand that if you had joined with a contingency up front and then it starts going in a different direction than agreed.

In our case, it was clear from the outset what the plan was. Had the drummer etc said we will help you get it off the ground but you need to line someone else up, it would have been different. He had tried to help and over extended himself when it came to it, but to be fair, he did the right thing to bail when he did, even though at the time it seemed a real pain in the end it probably did us all a favour.