the rub

Catfish

New member
So, my band of three years is breaking up. Since discovering polyamory, I can't help but see the similarities between being in a poly relationship and the band dynamic. It's about... you guessed it... communication.

A few weeks ago, Rarechild and I had dinner with some friends, one of which is a fellow musician, and we got into a serious discussion about 'taking the band to the next level'. My friend's main contention was that we should hire a savvy booking/promotions manager in an effort to do what we are good at and let a professional do the rest. I still believe this would have been the right move, but when I brought it up to the band... let's just say communication broke down. Everyone's individual level of commitment was brought into the light of discussion, some people got 'snarky' and some got defensive. Two of them got into a heated email battle and that's what started the beginning of the end.

*side note*
You probably know this already, but you should never argue via email!


Reading that first paragraph over, it seems so juvenile now.

We have all put a lot of love and effort into this band. We have become very close. I feel like I am mourning the loss of a long time friend. The band has been not only a second job, artistic outlet and full time love affair, but it has also been a defining aspect of my life. These four guys have each, in one way or another, aided me on my path to self actualization by getting me closer to my goal of being a full time musician. And in my zeal to make this dream a reality, I pushed it a little to hard. I guess that's the rub. My love and enthusiasm for this band was ultimately it's undoing. We could have gone on the way we were for a long time, but as great as it was, that's not what I want. I want the real deal. A dedicated group of musicians who understand the sacrifices it takes to become professionals. I'm not taking full responsibility for the death of this band. Everyone involved failed the whole in their own way. But I see my role for what it was. Facilitator.

I guess the moral of this story, and how it applies to polyamory, is that sometimes you can't make things happen the way you want them to. You can't just decide to be poly, then tell all the cute people you've ever known about your new discovery and expect them to jump into a triad. Sometimes you have to wait until the time is right and let the universe present you with your unicorn when he/she is ready. Musically, we were ready to go full time. Emotionally and logistically, not so much. There have been some serious mistakes made on the band front in the last few weeks that have literally and figuratively brought me to tears.

But I'm learning.

I have learned...

-Not to put all my creative eggs in one basket.
-Even the purest community minded intentions are tinged with self interest, and that's ok.
-One can not spend extended periods of time in a relatinship of any kind without some degree of disappointment.
-That disappointment is usually brought about by unrealistic expectations.

and last but certainly not least...

-Communication is a delicate essential in any group dynamic.

So, onward and upward, right? My goal is the same, but the means to that end have changed.

Thanks for listening.

Anyone want to start a poly string band?
 
The band that I am in imploded a year and a half ago. We were doing really well at the time, we had a lot of great songs that we had all written together and we had a nice local fan following. And, important to me, we had at least one really talented female musician/band member.

We also had: very little income, differing ideas about time commitment and how often we wanted to play, and a band member who seemed to have passive aggressive hostility toward female musicians.

So the band imploded: split in half. There were three of us that still wanted to carry on. The female in our group had departed and she was also one of the ones who had been doing a lot of the work (getting us gigs, writing music, etc.)

At this point it also came to light that one of the three remaining members had always disagreed about how many people should be in the band, preferring that we could all make a lot more money if there were fewer of us to divide the money among. He just wanted us to add a fourth "guy" that would be a musician only and we could build the band back around my songs only.

To me... that sounded like a terrible idea. I had rather strong feelings about it in fact: something along the lines of "Please shoot me in the face before I ever resign myself to being in the archetype 'four guys band'!!"

So I invited a female friend of mine to front the band with me and she said yes. She has been totally awesome about everything, even about the episode where our former bandmate issued a passive aggresive ultimatum: along the lines of "I don't want to make any kind of ultimatum or anything but if she's still in the band in a month I'm probably going to leave." Yeah. No way that could be taken as an ultimatum or anything. (Sorry, the bitterness still seeps in no matter how dispassionately I try to recount all of this)

So, long story short, the new female lead brought in her boyfriend and her brother (both of whom are great musicians) and now we have a totally awesome band that really communicates and really wants to see each other excell and we all have similar goals and objectives. I still really miss all of my ex bandmates, and I really hope for them to acheive their various musical goals, but we all were just not fitting together at all and the people we have now fit perfectly.

It all seemed incredibly destructive and senseless at the time, but I'm glad for it because it led to here and now.
 
Mono can play the mouth bow!
 
It all seemed incredibly destructive and senseless at the time, but I'm glad for it because it led to here and now.

Thanks. I know that's what will eventually happen. Some of my greatest successes were brought about by my most sincere failures, but it still stings.
 
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