I have been in all kinds of bands since I was 18 and I’m 36 now, so that’s a long time. I have recently been in these bands:
I am now playing drums in a new-ish and still nameless band recording a 3-song demo at the moment.
It’s always been original music for me and never anything too successful, but it’s great fun to write and play your own stuff.
I’m a singer. Right now I’m a jazz singer though in the past I’ve been a rock and blues singer and in college I studied classical.
I also play piano but I’m not great at it. I’m actually taking lessons again.
My husband is a full time jazz drummer. He augments his performance income by teaching private drum lessons.
Me, I haven’t quit my day job but my band gigs just about every week. A combination of clubs and private gigs. In fact, now that I think of it, I’ve been a working musician with a day job for about 25 years or more. :eek: how did I get so old?
And since some folks have posted links to their Myspace pages I’m hoping it’s OK to point to my web site At least one doper, **Big Bad Voodoo Lou ** has seen my band. Come to think of it, he’s a saxophone player, maybe he’ll check in.
I just started singing jazz a couple of years ago so I’m in a big learning curve right now, especially with respect to improvisation and scat singing. My recent influences are Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, Anita O’Day, Freddy Hubbard, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker.
Sorry I missed your post Big Bad Voodoo Lou I haven’t had my coffee yet.
Maybe if we had 20% unemployment, things would be different here. Music matters more in hard times.
Jeepers, I forgot the web site for the band (now less relevant, since we’re playing acoustic until we find a bass player). You can find a couple of live cuts on the CD page.
And my (seldom used) sig.
To that, all I can say is “practice, practice, practice”. It’s entirely possible to train your voice to go higher.
After my voice changed in my early teens, I was proclaimed a “bass” by the choir director at church. He checked my range, and found I could reach down to a low E (open low E-string on a guitar), and that I topped out at the A just below middle-C. Now, that was just fine if I wanted to be country singer - which I did, later, but at the time I wanted to sing rock.
I was into The Beatles at the time, and so I sang (or tried to sing) their stuff. Eventually I had stretched my range enough to sing their stuff. Then, later in my teens, I got into bands like Rush, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden. I heard these singers and really really really wanted to be able to sing like that. I discovered that Rob Halford and Bruce Dickinson had naturally deep speaking voices, and I figured that if they could turn around a scream like banshees, so could I, if I tried hard enough.
So, I sang and sang and sang with these records (driving my parents batshit insane in the process 
) until, eventually, I was able to consistently hit high E, i.e. 12th fret on the high E-string. And I’m talking about singing full-voice, not falsetto. It was nice being able to say I had a full three-octave range 
Of course, now that I’m 40 I can no longer sing quite so high; I top out around the A or B above middle C. On the plus side, even though I can’t reach the highest notes any longer, the overall quality of my voice at the upper end of my range is better now.
Of course, by the time I was finally happy with the way I sounded in the upper register, there was a paradigm shift in rock and all the singers started going low and growling like Cookie Monster. Sigh.
I’m coming late to the game but, since I just got back from tour, I figured that was a good excuse for a thread like this—plus, now I have y’all’s music to listen to while I’m temping, which I suppose shows that we aren’t the most…lucrative band on the planet. Ah, well.
My band is, surprise: Birdmonster. We’ve got the myspace thing and a blog that I write pseudo regularly over here. We sound like Bruce Springsteen crossed with Fugazi (trying for good simple songs with interesting, usually aggressive arangements) and I play bass, banjo, and accordion now and again. At this point, we’re touring 6 months a year, nationally, writing when we get back, and paying the bills with…creativity. It helps being 25 and having only a couple bills to deal with, certainly.
I play a weird custom bass made by this hippie in Berkeley who demands to be paid in cash and needs to learn how to put electronics in his own instruments. It’s got an amazing character though—very full with plenty of attack. Also: lots of chipping paint.
And Wordman: Thanks for the tip—I need to fight off Taylorism a bit longer.
Don’t know how I missed this post earlier!
Yeah - that’s Mary; she is great - and completely one of the guys, too, hanging out for a beer after practice.
Birdmonster - hey, anything I can do to keep you distracted from your time-and-motion workaday temping job is something I am happy to do!
I’m a “day-job” musician. I did spend two semesters in music school but I found I liked music more as a hobby. I now play double bass (a 1959 Kay S-1 Swingmaster) in an old timey swing band (a la Count Basie, Benny Goodman, etc…) and play guitar in an all originals post-punk type rock band (Jesus Lizard meets Modest Mouse kinda). My jazz band gigs regularly but the rock band is just starting; we are trying out a singer on Saturday who will be singing in French (she is French Canadian). I starting playing finger-style guitar then transitioned to jazz and rock later taking up the double bass and drums. Here’s a like to the jazz band’s website with some mp3’s.
Now I have to write a song, or maybe a play, about how Jesus Lizard meets Modest Mouse.
I’d pay to hear a post-punk band with vocals in French. I could tell my grandkids about it!
As a quick aside, I was told by the band today that my remix has been played on a clear channel radio station Belgium. I don’t care if no one even heard it, I’m just excited that it got played!
Cool!
Hey, I link that like! 
That’s good typo!
I didn’t join in initially because I assumed that the OP meant currently gigging musicians and I haven’t played in public for five+ years. I still play every day so that counts right?
Guitar player electric mostly (it’s a long, long time since I practiced my ragtime). Have played in a whole bunch of bands, the last real gigging one was all my show. I wrote all the songs sang lead and played guitar. The Idea was to sound like a cross between The Soft Boys (who practically noone had heard of and were not successful) and Doll by Doll (who nobody has heard of). Complicated arrangements with three part harmonies. Looking back we were nowhere near as aggressive as those bands.
Influence wise, I spent years channelling Jimmy Page. Which means I can play blindingly fast pentatonic sloppiness in my sleep. Later on I decided to be Steve Vai (don’t try this at home folks) which meant practicing several hours a day. I’ve given that up now since I’ve realised. . .
I started to play guitar because I wanted to play Chuck Berry songs.
I play cello in a part-time amateur orchestra. The orchestra tries to hold very similar standards to the professional part-time orchestra here in the city, but they let me in, so obviously they don’t try that hard! We play some very challenging pieces and recently won an award for our performance of Mahler’s 6th symphony (which was incredibly awesome to play).
I also volunteer for any other gigs I can find - chamber music, pit orchestras for musicals (I just finished a 10-show run of Camelot), other groups’ concerts that just need a few more strings, etc.
I’ve played since I was 10 (so that’s 18 years now) but from the time I was 17 until January of this year I hadn’t really played seriously - just got the ol’ cello out and dusted it off a bit each month. I really wanted to get back into it but without a goal to aim for I didn’t feel motivated enough to spend hours each day getting better. This orchestra was the perfect thing to get me motivated again, but I’ve also found it quite frustrating because my skill level has slipped so much. 10 years ago I would have been able to play all of these pieces, sight-reading, without a problem; now I struggle to get up to speed by the third or fourth rehearsal.
It’s great fun but I wish I had more time to devote to it. Well, I’m making time for it anyway - just signed on with a lady for lessons and am reducing my work load to make more time for music. That sounds crazy, I’m sure, but my whole life for the past 5 years has been academia so it’s really great to get back into something creative.
Since this thread is still kicking, I’ll pop in and mention I just found out my aforementioned band The Cat Mary is a finalist in this year’s Independant Music Awards, Americana song division.
Yay us!