U2start.com | General Chat 16

Oh nice, glad everything is going smoothly so far!

For our practices, we generally stay in our drummer's garage. His parents both work during the days, so their cars are always out and they aren't around to be bothered by the noise. The town police, however...

Let's just say we know a few of the officers by name. Some of them actually enjoy coming around to answer calls on us because they love hearing us play. It's quite an uncanny relationship we have with the police. Some of the shows that we play for the year are actually community-organized, park-district type of shows that are free to the public and sponsored by the community and taxpayers. So, when we are practicing for those...sort of hard to justify shutting us down!

RattleandHum1988

13 years

Originally posted by EyesWithPrideB3Oh nice, glad everything is going smoothly so far!

For our practices, we generally stay in our drummer's garage. His parents both work during the days, so their cars are always out and they aren't around to be bothered by the noise. The town police, however...

Let's just say we know a few of the officers by name. Some of them actually enjoy coming around to answer calls on us because they love hearing us play. It's quite an uncanny relationship we have with the police. Some of the shows that we play for the year are actually community-organized, park-district type of shows that are free to the public and sponsored by the community and taxpayers. So, when we are practicing for those...sort of hard to justify shutting us down!

Haha, that's awesome, but yeah I can see that getting a bit annoying. Do you guys write your own material or generally play covers and stuff?

MattG

13 years

Generally just covers...being so pressed for time, and having certain shows that require us to draw a crowd in order for us to get paid/even booked again (places like restaurants with stages that want to make sure we're making them money)...it's hard to buckle down and really write strong tunes. The other guitar player and I write frequently, and send demos across the internet fairly often. Only one has ever turned into an original song recorded by the full band though. We've jammed on several originals, and in actuality if we were practicing 3 times a week all year, cranking them out would be easy as cake with the way we play together...it just always seems to fit.

This summer we hope to build a few more originals into our set.

RattleandHum1988

13 years

Originally posted by EyesWithPrideB3Generally just covers...being so pressed for time, and having certain shows that require us to draw a crowd in order for us to get paid/even booked again (places like restaurants with stages that want to make sure we're making them money)...it's hard to buckle down and really write strong tunes. The other guitar player and I write frequently, and send demos across the internet fairly often. Only one has ever turned into an original song recorded by the full band though. We've jammed on several originals, and in actuality if we were practicing 3 times a week all year, cranking them out would be easy as cake with the way we play together...it just always seems to fit.

This summer we hope to build a few more originals into our set.

Nice, nice. Yeah I can see that being a problem when playing bars and restaurants and stuff. Most of the bands I see when I'm at a bar or whatever on a saturday night are only playing covers, but if that's what it takes to pay the bills, I've got no issue with that. Plus playing covers is always a blast anyway. Bands that want to play their own stuff around here usually play open mic nights or these "event" nights they have at a particular bar downtown. You can sign up with this local promoter that everybody hates and they can get you spots at these events. It sucks dealing with them, because they basically have a "we give you 30 tickets, you have to sell at least 20, if you don't YOU have to make up the difference" policy, and they take a cut of the 10 that you sell over their minimum. But in the end if you're trying to get your stuff heard it's the best way to do it. People show up to check out their friend's band and end up hearing a ton of strange music in the same night. Our first gig was actually at a bar that most bands don't get to play in until they have a decent amount of local fans that can come out to see them play. We were meant to open for this band that had a small following, but we ended up playing after them because one of them had to be up early or something. It was pretty cool being supported on our first gig, we didn't really say it like that or anything, but it was definitely a thought! I just can't wait to get up there and start performing stuff I've written again.

MattG

13 years

That's awesome!

We organized and hosted our own festival last summer. "Shrekfest" (based loosely on the last name of our drummer)...rented the stage on our own money, booked the bands ourselves (mainly just our friends, but one outside band was contacted and ended up playing for us)...the drummer worked as a janitor for a pretty popular church in the area, and the church owned a giant recreational room that they let us use for free that night. Just a big old room. Ended up being an awesome time- performances started at 6PM, and we ended up going on at 8:40 and playing just over our "curfew" of 10:00 set by the church. Collected $2 admission from everyone who came in, and we donated all of the proceeds to food pantries.

It was awesome to headline a show, even if it was our own and we were in charge of the order...people were filing in little by little, and it was awesome to have the support for the rest of the bands be sticking around for our big set. Spent well over a month preparing a setlist for that show- rehearsing it over and over, rearranging the order, adding original frills and solos and breaks to cover songs, pulling songs at the last minute....just such an exciting time for us.

MattG

13 years

We don't bother with any of the official "local promoter" BS. Hell, I think our Facebook even has only like 39 fans of the band. We could care less who shows up or how much popularity we gain. The same group of our friends always shows up to give us some familiar faces, because they know we just want to play. We'd play for an empty room if we had to!

RattleandHum1988

13 years

Wow that sounds awesome dude! I can't imagine organizing an event. That's so damn cool. Good on you guys for donating the proceeds too. All of that extra stuff on top of playing, organizing setlists, and things like that are always a blast. It just makes you feel so damn pro

And right on about the popularity. It might sound cheesy and DEFINITELY naive, but my friend and I still have the dream of hitting it big, hence the playing of original material and associating with local promoters. It's the reason we're trying so hard to find guys who share our interests. If it wasn't we'd totally be content with writing and recording music in my basement and just listening to it afterwards, which I'm sure that's what it'll come to before long. I haven't hit the brick wall that reads "end of the dream here my friend, time to start thinking about a normal life!", so I still have the bug. I know how much of a long-shot it is, but for some reason that doesn't break my optimism. Can't help but think we have "something". Who knows. We both agreed that if these guys don't work out, we'll probably just settle with writing music between the two of us, because it's easier and we have a lot of fun doing it without all of the trouble of finding people, transporting stuff, practise space, getting gigs, etc.

RattleandHum1988

13 years

Anyway man, off to bed, nice talking to ya. Have a good one, as always.

Alex

RUMMY

13 years