Twice in the last two months, I’ve organized volunteer “pickup bands” for large events. The first one focused on “Mountain Music,” with string band instrumentation and a lot of 3-chord songs. The second one focused on mid-century jazz standards, with horns, piano, drums, and jazz guitar.
In both cases I was consulted only a few weeks before the event.
What non-musicans don’t realize is that even the most talented musicians like to have time to practice, on their own, and together. Every person I dragged into either band realized I was “up against it” and did what they could as a personal favor.
I really appreciated it, and still do, but I would just as soon NOT have to ask for extraordinary last-minute efforts like the last two project.
As I told Shelia, I don’t mind embarrassing myself, but I don’t want to put my friends in an embarrassing situation just because of other people’s poor planning.
The string band was the easiest for me in some ways, because we used material I know inside and out. The “band” included a guitarist friend who cut his teeth on “String-band music,” another guitarist who worked really hard to learn the songs and even rework the lyric-chord sheets, and an upright bass player friend from a church we used to attend. Those folks made it all come together.
A pianist friend who learned to play autoharp for this project, and a fiddler friend who showed up at the last minute rounded out our sound.
Also, having two acoustic guitarists allowed me to stay on banjo for all of the songs, which made the performance smoother, too.
Frankly, we sounded better than we “deserved to” based on our short timeframe for preparation.
The jazz standards band was more complex for any number of reasons. For one thing between the time the “planning committee” came up with the idea of having a live band and when I was actually given the “go-ahead” to organize it, my jazz drummer friend, getting up in age, gave his drums to a performing arts organization. And my bass-player friend, also getting up in age, sold his upright bass because it was too difficult to handle any more.
The hardest part of the latter group, though, was getting a piano player who could “plug in” at the last minute. We know lots of people who play piano, but few folks who are used to playing jazz standards, and all the accommodations that can entail. Finally, a professional pianist came onboard as a favor to our drummer, who was, frankly, doing it as a favor to me. There are no words to express our gratitude to him for bailing us out (or his patience with our lack of preparation).
For both projects, I passed out CDs and vocal/chord sheets of all the songs we were likely to use. For the swing tunes, I also tracked down sheet music, as well as “transposed” sheet music for the horns. Basically a full-time job behind-the-scenes.
For the latter, I also spent more time than I could really afford fruitlessly trying to get an upright bass player or to borrow an upright bass for my friend to use.
By the time we had got through the ONE practice our short schedule allowed, it was apparent that we wouldn’t have time to properly hash out more than ten of the twenty songs we had considered using.
Thankfully, EVERYONE stepped up to the plate and gave it their best. A trumpet player used to playing jazz standards in nursing homes, etc. A jazz guitarist who is actually a retired lawyer, but is professional in every way that counts. An old jazz drummer playing on a borrowed set of drums, myself trying to remember how to play saxophone, and a twenty-something church secretary who worked very hard on learning the songs and did them justice. Not to mention the piano player who, frankly, pulled it all together for us.
Several attendees thought we were were a hired professional band. Which is an undeserved compliment, we weren’t that good at. But we pulled it off.
Twice, I was asked by people involved in the closed-door planning why we didn’t have more songs prepared and why we didn’t have a bass player. I told the people asking that if we’d been brought in six weeks earlier, we could have had thirty songs AND a bass player. Hint, hint. . . .
I can’t help but remember all those Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland movies where they needed to raise funds for a good cause or some such and one character would say, “I’ve got an idea! Why don’t we put on a show?!” And of course all they had to do was string a quilt across one end of the barn to turn out a remarkably professional (if overly cute) concert, with no rehearsal, music, or practice. (And even an invisible orchestra rounding things out.)
But totally off-the-cuff performances only work if everyone involved is steeped the SAME genre, plays like a pro, knows all the same songs inside and out, and can transpose on the fly. And, let’s face it, while my circle of friends probably has a larger selection of such people than most, Springfield, Ohio is not Nashville, Branson, New Orleans, Memphis, LA, or NYC.
Live music is a LOT of fun to perform, and most people enjoy hearing it, but if you’re ever putting something together that includes live music of any kind, remember that – unless you’re hiring a a professional band that already has dozens of songs practiced up and ready to go – most folks need some prep to do their best job.
After this diatribe, no on will probably ever ask me to get involved in this sort of project again. That’s fine. But WHOEVER you approach to provide live music for an event, you need to get them involved as early as possible.
PLEASE!
