Live Music: Call For Info

We had this idea about rounding up some musicians for the BareFootMusicNews “house” blues band that will be known as
Call For Info.

Dan Grigor and I sat around talking about a plan to put it together as a reality-type series of video clips for BFMN. The premise would be: Show those who never get off their rear ends to actually start a band that gets out of the garage and plays paying gigs just how it is done.

Click through to see how it’s done…

I couldn’t help but notice that Dan assumed it would be easy and run like clockwork. His take was like, “Monday we get some musicians to back us and Tuesday we gig.” Now Dan, an extremely talented musician and songwriter, could easily throw together a band of clones of himself. But since we don’t have that technology at BFMN headquarters, we would have to do it the way everyone else does it — trial and error.

When you approach musicians and singers about an exciting project like this one, everyone says “Yes!” and is super-motivated to join a pro band and get to be in videos and play cool venues for pay, along with the attention that being in a gigging band brings.

Without putting out a single ad, we got drummers, bassists, horn players and singers (we have the guitars covered) to jump on the band wagon from word of mouth through our own sewing circles.

Some never showed up for practice and were replaced before they got started. Others auditioned and didn’t make it. Some didn’t quite fit the bill but are too cool to give up entirely. We’ll most likely have some do other projects with us.

It ain’t easy. Most musicians join bands for their own personal benefit and really are not in it as team players. Everyone wants the long solo, basking in a sea of blue light with ankle-deep fog, but in reality — especially for a blues band larger than a trio — the vocalist and guitars pretty much get the bulk of the attention. The drummer would need three arms and the bassist would have to play a stand-up bass that was on fire to be the main focus of the show.

I am not bashing bassists and drummers. We need good ones desperately. They are the rhythm section and the keepers of time, and no one sounds good if they can’t hold down the groove. Drummers that are “human metronomes” and bassists that are “solid” on the low end are not a dime a dozen. In fact, they are not easily found or seduced into new projects. I recently spent some quality time with Carol Kaye, the legendary bassist to the stars and many of those “stars” would not be where they are today without her. If you watch TV or movies today, the chances are good you will hear Carol at some point. I can’t bring myself to ask that icon of the music world to join our experiment. It would be like asking Mick Jagger to be our frontman.

Our first gig is in less than a month. Hundreds will be in attendance and we are still auditioning and looking for the right people to fill the slots that need filling. It is going to be interesting to see how we pull it off. Our set list is mostly original stuff so it won’t be as easy as covering blues standards all evening.

There will be video, and you will see it on this site or YouTube or both. I am looking forward to seeing if this all works out on such short notice, or if this band will implode as so many do before lift-off. Time will tell, and we are in short supply of that precious commodity.