TurnDown-SpaceOut-ClearUp-MellowOut-Record: A Bar Band Rant

Scott Shewbridge · From: Bay Area, N. California

I just got back from Texas and was inspired to write a little rant. This was done with love and hopefully the right amount of chiding humor. It is about many, but not all of the bands I’ve seen. Here goes nothin’.

Over the last two years, I have seen over 100 small venue bands performing live. I’m talking about your local dance hall / bar bands playing for crowds of 20 to 200. I’ve been to several parts of the country, including Nashville and San Antonio/Austin and all over northern California. The style has been mostly country, followed by a mix of country rock, western swing, rock, R&B and funk. I am almost always impressed by the musical abilities of one or more of the members of the band, but at the same time, I am too often disappointed by hearing the same stupid ensemble mistakes, over and over again. If I ruled the world, this is what I would make all of these honky-tonkers do.

Everybody, turn down the volume. Universally stupid. I have tinnitus and know all too well when the band has crossed over the 110 db pain threshold; I get really grumpy. I have to use my fancy earplugs all too often, which, despite all of the advertisements saying otherwise, do diminish sound quality and make conversation impossible. I’m not the only one who’s suffering. The other night at a club in Austin I saw some great two steppin’ dancers having a blast. More than half of them had the purple foam jobs sticking out of their ears. This is stupid. I dare you all to take “the crowd wants more” challenge. First band to get the house to ask’em to play louder - wins.

Four stringers, enough with the sub-woofer / bass amp doom and destruction drone. Ever since you got that three hundred-watt rig and the compressor with the ultra-sustain mode, seems like the only thing you know how to play is half notes. No wait a minute, they aren’t half notes. They are 0.598578 notes. You know, the droning tones that sustain for 338 ms past your next played note. Did you learn how to play bass from a barbiturate-soaked, foot-pedal stomping organ player? I hope not, but if so, trying going back to the basics. Listen to the sound of an upright acoustic bass and the way the notes are struck and decay. It’s like a pebble skipped across the water, not a thunderstorm in a box canyon. Lighten up. Bounce. Leave some room for the others to say something, which reminds me….

Singers, have some dinner and stop eating the microphone. OK, goin’ “on down to San Antone” with Johnny Cash is a heck of a lotta fun and grabbing a piece of that proximity bass can be pretty cool. But constantly? Yuck. Singers, you do this so much now, you think it’s normal. I’ll tell you though, it’s killing your diction. I can rarely tell what words you’re saying, even when you are just chattin’ up the crowd between songs. And when you add your electronic mega-baritone to the droning of your bass player, all I can hear is this stupid, numbing over-saturation of the 100 to 200 hz portion of the spectrum, intermittently punctuated by your attention-deficit, hyperactive drummer’s crash cymbals, which reminds me….

Drummer dude, mellow out. No matter how loud or how many times you bang those skins and metal, you are still going to get fewer chicks than the lead singer and guitar player (which, granted, will probably be more than the PSG player). Show some class. Hold something back. Focus on the spaces. I’m telling you, your dance card will fill up lots faster.

Lead guitar players, you guys should…. oh never mind. You won’t listen to anybody else anyway.

Finally, would you all please just listen to yourselves? Buy a digital recorder and listen to every single performance. I have used them enough now to believe in their fidelity; my H2 was cheap, easy to use, small and works great. And while they aren’t a recording studio, they are not lying. If your live recording sounds bad, you can bet your performance sounded bad too. Give up on the excuses about the club being too small / too narrow / too many hard surfaces, the PA feed, yadah yadah yadah… Horsepucky. I was there and I can tell you from listening to your recordings, it is how you sounded. After the show, hook it up to your car stereo and see if you were as incredible as your girlfriend says (oh yeah, don’t forget, her birthday is tomorrow). Some of you might want to think about skipping that first beer and catch a bit of yourself during the break too.

Stop making excuses. Figure out what to fix and fix it. Then maybe you can move up from the little dives. The good bands are you know. I’ve heard them too.

Frank Freniere · From: The First Coast

Nice!

Brian McGaughey · From: Orcas Island, WA USA

I could not have said it better, but inclusion of the lead guitar in your rant Scott would be good, just for shear entertainment value.

I'm looking for a new band to play steel with because I'm tired of looking for room in a crowded, loud sonic landscape. We sounded great last Saturday night for exactly 2 songs, then, UP goes the volume, down goes the beautiful, rich sound of instruments blending well with a vocalist on top. And 3 electric six stringers ("special" guest Confused

), it turned into exactly what I knew it would, a lead guitar shoot-out.

Barry Blackwood · Posted 24 Aug 2010 6:43 am

Pretty much nailed it, Scott. As far as small dive bars go, it has been this way for so long, I doubt it's ever gonna change.

Paul Sutherland · From: Placerville, California

Scott: I am not surprised to read of your frustration, given what happened at the Western Swing jam room just a couple weeks ago. It only takes one player to start the volume wars. Once it starts the others have to either join in the battle, or concede. I have not found a good way to handle the situation when the person pushing the volume ever higher is the person who is supposed to be in charge on stage. Do you have any suggestions? Paul

Roger Miller · From: Cedar Falls, Ia.

We have bands around here that even though the singer is singing, the guitarist thinks it's solo time. Also what the hell is with these harp players who play thru the whole first of the song, then when the solo comes, they're tired and out of breath. I see this once in a while and it turns me off also.

Scott Shewbridge · From: Bay Area, N. California

I don’t know if I conveyed this in my original post, but many of the musicians in the bands I am talking about are very talented and proficient; most are better than me. I really think that if, as a band, they followed some of these very simple, almost non-technical rules – Turn Down, Space Out, Clear Up, Mellow Out and Record - they would be doing much better and the quality of their music and audiences would improve. I think these things are more important than most of the arcane details and technicalities we as individual instrumentalists or singers get bogged down in.

Paul – I think jams are much more complicated than bands. The volatile mixture of egos, abilities, cliques, handicaps and so on make it near impossible for a one-time pickup jam session to work really well. My own experience is jams only work when there is a dedicated core of musicians with similar mindsets, shared experiences and common repertoires. The core group needs to lead by example and have clear, considerate and equitable ways of bringing people into the fold and/or sending them on their way.

Contrasting two groups of jammers – Bluegrass and Blues, I’d say the Bluegrass folks have it figured out much better. Maybe it’s because the music is acoustic. I know of no way to solve the musical and social challenge when these problems arise in an amplified jam, other than hope for the best next time. I do believe though, that it is worth taking the time and enduring the suffering to develop a common mindset, experiences and repertoires, especially when the potential legacy is rich.

You know, last week when I was practicing, my boy asked me to turn down – I did and I still love him. Maybe I should ask him how to do the same in a jam session? Very Happy

Roger – I have yet to meet a live harmonica player that had sufficient reserve for me to voluntarily listen to, let alone play with, twice. Toots (the King) is dead. Long live Toots (the King). Less is more.

Ron Whitfield · From: Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA

Many players have blown their hearing and need to crank over everybody else or for them it's hopeless, but then there goes the neighborhood...

As long as nobody makes an immediate no way fuss about it each and every time it'll continue.

Leslie Ehrlich · From: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

Roger Miller · From: Cedar Falls, Ia.

Leslie, you are correct. We have a suffiect(rather large JBL pa, thousands of watts) Pa. The band leader is all the time telling us to turn down, we're miked. Yeah, but.....the drummer has his kick drum and snare thru his monitor, the louder the better. Drives me nuts, he's a great drummer but nobody but me sees that issue. Lets take the drums out of the monitors and lets see where we are then, that would help big time, but that isn't the issure to the bandleader.

Bo Borland · From: South Jersey -

Yep, shoot most of the harp players. I saw one last week never took his hands and mic away from his face thru the entire set.

Re the bluegrass jams being better, only marginally IMHO, banjos are loud, and what's worse than an extra loud-mostly flat fiddler that HAS TO PUSH every single turnaround and pick up.

I gig every week with a great group of guys who complain they can't hear my steel enough Whoa!

but that's because the rest of them play too loud and after all these years I still think the volume wars start with the drums and lead guitar disease.

chas smith R.I.P. · From: Encino, CA, USA

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