Mastering the Gig: Preparing to Play with a Band, Play a Show, and Go On Tour

Ever wondered what it takes to become an indispensable member of a band, someone who nails every performance and tour? Look no further, as we lay out the insider strategies for acing the gig life. Join us for a riveting journey through the meticulous process of song mastery and the art of group dynamics, where I reveal my personal approach to ensuring you're never the one letting the team down. Discover the harmony of skill and the right attitude, as you learn to blend into the music and the band with seamless ease, making every show a hit.

Strap in for a deep dive into the musician's ultimate toolkit for hitting the road. We're not just talking about the basic instruments here—I'm going to walk you through the treasure chest of gear that's essential for any tour, including the lifesaving Fender bag that keeps it all together. But it's not only about what you pack; it's about how you prepare financially and mentally for the unpredictability of touring life. Hear firsthand how a 'comfort' pedal can be your sonic savior and why a no-rehearsal gig doesn't have to spell disaster. Whether you're a seasoned road warrior or gearing up for your first tour, these insights will arm you for success and keep your career in tune.

Tune in now and learn more!

Links:

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus... 
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0... 
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... . 

Check out Steve's Guitar Membership and Courses: https://bit.ly/3rbZ3He

Transcript

Steve: 0:35

Hey, steve Stine here. Thank you and welcome to the Steve Stine Guitar Podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about how to prepare for your band, for a show, even for a tour, thinking about some things that you know any other musical situations you might find yourself in as well. But you know, it's not just a matter of learning this the music, obviously. That's the. The single most important thing is is making sure that you know.

Steve: 1:03

For me, it's always been about showing up Almost over prepared. You know, making sure that you know, if you join a band of some sort, you know you're not the the weak link if you will. So I mean, let's start there. So the most important thing is is if you are, what's the word I'm looking for, if you are relied upon, okay, you know, for a band, they want to hire you or, you know, whatever the case may be, you want to make sure that you Give them the best and the most professional that you have. You know, for me, I show up early and I'm always as prepared as I can be doesn't mean that I'm, you know, always Perfect on everything, but I want to make sure that when I show up, people aren't waiting on me right.

Steve: 1:56

So, when it comes to learning material. Okay, I learn it as good as I can, and you always have to remember that. You know everything comes down to Time limits or deadlines, you know. Just as an example and then I'll come back to this let's say you get hired by a band to play and today is Tuesday and you're going to play with them on Saturday. So you have whatever five days to get ready and you're going to learn their set list. Whether it's cover tunes, original tunes, whatever it might be, you know that that means that you have a deadline to get X amount of material done. So let's be honest. I mean you might be able to nail every single thing that you are Trying to learn, or you're going to have to figure out, readjust some things to make it work. I mean, let's say, for example, you're in a cover band and you've got 50 songs, which is not unreasonable at all to learn for a show. Whatever, 40 songs, whatever, whatever it is that you think that you'd need to do, and so you know 70% of it, 80% of it, is perfectly fine, but there's a few songs in there that are challenging for you, or there's a few solos in there that are not. They're just not going to be dialed in perfectly by Saturday. So what do you do, right? I mean you have a couple of choices either you don't do the gig, you cancel, you know, say you can't do it, or you do the best you can.

Steve: 3:27

You know you might need to readjust some of those parts, some of those solos, whatever, to accommodate the situation. You know, let's take solos, for example. You have the option of learning them note for note, as best you can. You have the option of learning the most important parts of that solo and then Adding your element in between those as best you can. Or you might improvise a solo, as opposed to learning that solo, because of one of two reasons really time limit or Ability. Now again, that's not a negative thing, that's an honest thing.

Steve: 4:03

You know, if you've been in a situation, you know you've been put in a situation where you have to learn something, but Whatever it is that you're trying to do is just technically Too much, or it's what's the word I'm looking for, stylistically very different for you. You've got to be real about these things, and so that happens. Learning songs the most important thing is you learn structure, you learn how the song goes, you memorize the song. You memorize the parts of the song, how it flows together, from an intro to a verse, whatever it might be, and then you learn intros and outros, which we'll get to in a little bit as well, which has more to do with rehearsal of the band. But then you've got to have flexibility. I mean, if you're learning the material and all of a sudden you get together with this band and they play a part a little different, or they play the chorus a little different, or there's an extended section somewhere, you can't stop your band and go hey, that isn't how the song goes. Especially if they've been playing together and you're the new person coming in. You have to be flexible. You have to be able to adjust to whatever it is that they have going. So learning the songs, but having flexibility, either because it's mandatory from a technical perspective, a time limit perspective, whatever it might be, and then having that flexibility because when you get together with these other performers, if you're hired for a show or a tour or something like that, these things happen and you have to be ready and prepared.

Steve: 5:44

So then there's the personality aspect of this. When you're working with other people, it's very important that you have the proper personality for the situation. You can't come into a situation with an ego and that whole thing that follows that you're not going to get a lot of gigs. It doesn't matter whether you're good or not. You have to be compatible with people and try and synchronize with these other people's personalities as best you can.

Steve: 6:17

I've always been blessed with virtually just about every band I've played in. We've ultimately become friends in the process of playing together, even when the band dissolves. These are people that I still talk to all the time or get together when I'm in town, wherever it is that I was playing with these people or in another country, with players that I've played with. That's important to me, to make those connections because it makes it more fun for me when I'm playing. So it isn't just a professional level for me. If that's all it was and I played with people that I couldn't stand and they couldn't stand me, I honestly probably wouldn't be playing with anybody, because that's not the way I see it. That doesn't mean I haven't been in bands before where our personalities haven't been completely compatible. Of course that happens, but you find a way.

Steve: 7:11

So being professional, showing up early, being very prepared for me, rehearsals. When you get together with rehearsals, rehearsals are time to become cohesive together. Rehearsals are not the time to be learning the songs. You can't show up to rehearsal and then start trying to figure out how the song goes. Or your bass player shows up and doesn't know any of the material and now the bass player is spending the entire time trying to figure out how the songs go. That is a waste of time. For bands that I've led, which is a lot of the bands that I've been in, I wouldn't stand for that. The point of the rehearsal if we're showing up on Thursday at 8 pm after everybody's had a long day of work and everything like that, we're showing up to practice together to take the songs that we've already worked on. We've already learned and now we learn how to put the structures and the grooves and the tempo and the sections of the song, whatever, and then again any flexible elements that might happen. That's what's happening at rehearsal, so just be as prepared as you possibly can be, okay, and then we move on to the songs themselves.

Steve: 8:33

Let's say you again, you get hired by a band to play with them in whatever capacity, and you've learned the songs. You know, you were at home learning them. And then you get together and again, structurally things are going to be different. What's going to be different? The most? The beginning and the end. Because the beginning somebody needs to start, somebody needs to lead that thing in. It might be the count, you know, the hi-hat, or the click of drumsticks from the drummer. It might start with a bass line or it might start from you, or it might start with a vocal you know cue or something who knows right. But just because you learned it on the album a certain way doesn't mean that's going to happen in your rehearsal. So learning the intros to things are very important.

Steve: 9:20

A lot of times when you play in a rock band you know there might be a commonality where the drummer you know might click off four counts, or maybe four tends to be too much, so your drummer's gotten used to always clicking off with two counts. You know just, and then you go. Whatever it might be, you want to get used to that. That doesn't mean every song is going to start like that, but if there's just common songs, that might be the way that they start and you want to get used to that. And the other really, really, really big thing is the way you end songs. You know, sometimes you end the song on a downbeat, a punch of some sort. Sometimes you do what often is referred to as a wash or a scrub, where you know you end a song and everybody's you're kind of playing and then the drummer will go pop, pop, pop, bomb, bomb, and then you're done.

Steve: 10:10

Getting used to those sorts of things are very important and you want to take notes, like for me when I'm at a rehearsal. You know I might take some notes in my, in my phone, or have a piece of paper where I'm writing some of these things down as we dial those in. Now, if we're a brand new band and nobody's played together before as far as this band is concerned, you know these are things that you'd be working out and you'd kind of plan out because you want these elements to be as tight as possible. Now, not every band does that. You know you might keep everything really, really loose. The problem is, is the more loose it is, that sometimes not always, but that sometimes can equate to a Lack of professionalism. You know, for me, if I'm playing in a band and I come out on stage and there's, you know, a large audience sitting there or standing there waiting for you to come out. You want to. You want to bring that energy, you want to bring that professionalism and that tightness To the show, because people can feel that and and certainly people can hear that. Now again, it depends on the style of music, it depends on the band, it depends on the situation, but you don't want to be the weak link when it comes to that sort of thing.

Steve: 11:21

Okay, so then we move on to preparation for the band, for shows, for traveling maybe we'll get to touring in just a second but you want to make sure that you've got your Gear organized right. So you want to make sure maybe you're bringing a bag along where you've got extra strings, string changing stuff, batteries, flashlight, extra guitar straps. You know, maybe a backup Little sort of you know rehearsal amp. You know, nowadays we have all these digital things. You might, you know, be running a normal tube amp, but you have this digital, you know, practice Amp that you bring on the road or whatever it might be, just as a backup in case something happens. Bringing a brat backup guitar is nice if you have that availability in case you break a string on stage or, you know, if you use a floating tremolo like I do, you know you break a string on stage. That guitar becomes essentially completely Unusable. So it's always nice to have an extra guitar available in that guitar stand that you've got that you can just grab and keep going.

Steve: 12:33

You know, extra guitar cables, obviously those are important. You know there's all sorts of different things to think about extra guitar picks and you know those are all things that I have. You know I keep Some sort of towel or rag in my my stuff in case it's really hot out and very humid and my guitar neck is sweaty, you know it from the humidity. I'll constantly be, you know, wiping it off and then tuning. Of course, always having a couple of extra guitar tuners, I use those little Deodario ones that just snap on to the, the headstock. Those are really nice to have and it's always nice to have a couple of extras and of course batteries for that.

Steve: 13:10

And all this fits into a little fender bag that I carry and I just have all that in there. I have a ground lift that I keep in there. I have a power strip. I have a couple of, you know, extension cables, power cables, you know. So I have one for my amp. I have an extra. You know those computer style cables. I have a couple of those that I have and then I have, you know, just extension power cables. You know a 20-foot extension cable. Whatever, I have a couple, those that I keep in there as well. That way I kind of have everything that I need. And I also have a couple things just in case somebody else shows up and goes oh crap, I forgot a guitar strap. You know I use these Deodario ones that have a universal and on them. So it doesn't matter whether it has strap locks or a traditional guitar strap. You know connector. You know I use those universal ones. That way, it doesn't matter what anybody has those. Those universal connectors on those Deodereal guitar straps will work for anything. So I have all of that ready to go. So that's what I use when I'm traveling with a band is I have all that stuff with me.

Steve: 14:17

The other thing is is if you decide you're going to actually go on a tour, you have to figure out whether or not a backline is going to be provided for you. You know, do you need to bring your own amp? You know, if you're flying out to join a band on the on the road, or they're from another you know state you're going to go play with them. Chances are you're not bringing your 412 and you know your tube head along on the plane right, you're going to get something when you get there. Or again, you have a what's called a fly rig, which is some sort of smaller amp that you bring. You know there's there's all kinds of ways you can do a fly rig. Whether it's a pedal rig, whether it's a digital amp, you know there's all kinds of different things that you can use. But you might use a fly rig that then plugs into whatever the backline is that they're providing and it's 2022 now. Maybe there is no backline, maybe it's just everybody's running direct with the in-ear monitors. But the point is you have to figure that out.

Steve: 15:13

One thing that I found when you, when you go on tour, if you're using different backlines in different cities, is that it might be nice to have a pedal or two that you bring along. That is kind of your comfort pedal. You know I have what's called. There's a company called Strymon that makes really great stuff and they have distortion pedal called the Riverside, and I've always found that pedal to be really great because I can put it in front of just about any amp, and if I need a little bit more of some, you know, a little more gain or or whatever, that pedal works really great for me because it's pretty transparent but it allows me to push, you know that, gain up a little bit if I need or, you know, shape the tone a little bit if the backline amp that I'm using doesn't have enough of whatever it is that that I need. You know it's it's ideal if you could go to every city and have exactly the amp that you're looking for all the time, but the truth is it doesn't always work that way. So it's nice to have a pedal that gives you a little bit of that cushion for your comfort zone.

Steve: 16:18

So, having something like that, if you're on tour, you also want to think about things like per diem. You know, what are you getting paid on showdays versus off days, and does that give you enough money to do what it is that you are planning on doing while you're on tour? You know, do you need to bring a little extra money? You know, is there any food restrictions that you you're going to require, because a lot of times, you know you're stopping at a Perkins or whatever at you know three o'clock in the morning, off the interstate or whatever it might be. Is there any medical elements that you need to be thinking about before you head out on tour? Clothes you know, a lot of times you bring a minimal amount of clothes in a suitcase and you might need to wear those clothes multiple times before you're going to get to wash them. It just depends, you know, but you need to be aware of these sorts of things, you know, before you head out. And so that's just some things to think about a little bit.

Steve: 17:15

And then, just, you know, staying, like I said, staying organized. You know, when you go out on tour and you're going to be playing with a band maybe you're doing a fly-in show or a fly-in tour you know those same rules are going to apply. You learn the songs, but you're going to need to learn how they the flexibility aspect of these songs that you're playing Intros, outros, any. You know extensions or modifications that are done to the song for a solo or for a breakdown, for whatever reason. You need to be aware of those and you might need to take notes in that rehearsal and you might only get one rehearsal before shows begin, you might get no rehearsals. I've had that before where you literally have no rehearsal. You just hit the stage and you adjust as needed. You know these are things to think about a little bit.

Steve: 18:05

So bottom line is you go in with a positive attitude, you go in professional, you go in organized, you show up organized.

Steve: 18:15

You show up.

Steve: 18:17

You know you don't show up late, you show up ready to go for whatever it is and you're ready for these flexible elements.

Steve: 18:24

And then you're also thinking about what you need for the situation. You know, maybe it's a local thing and you don't need to panic as much about you know all of these other elements that you would if you were on tour, but it's definitely worth thinking about a little bit and keeping yourself organized and keeping yourself professional, because I believe that's how your phone keeps ringing. You know your phone doesn't ring number one if people don't know you exist. And number two, your phone certainly doesn't ring if you wind up with a bad reputation of always showing up late or showing up unprepared. People aren't going to be calling you for that. But the way to be in demand is, you know, to have your musical ability as optimized as possible and then be ready to, you know, show up professional, show up being a you know, having your personality in check, so people actually want to be around you and staying organized, both for them and for yourself. So, anyway, hopefully that helps you a little bit Some things to think about. Take care, stay positive and I'll talk to you soon, okay.