managing a band and it’s problems

I will not start immediately with the subject of my post..there is much more about my things..

I am lost now for more then a 2 year, sometimes I feel I am on track and then I loose the ground.

I am writing this note to myself, I am depressed like hell and I know people like to read only about good things, well, sorry to let you down I am in a hell and I do not know how to get out of it.

I lost my motivation for life, music, acting, modeling, I feel like all these things are not important anymore to me, as my life has no purpose I am just going with the flow, live my life day by day as it comes. On top of that I feel a guilt for not being a good example to my 5 year old. I feel like being another of those parents going to their works to earn for living and not enjoying their jobs and their life, they just get their salaries, pay off rental fee, living costs, take some trip maybe, but they do not feel this vibrant energy in themselves they created something good. What example is this to your child?

However, to come back to the subject, my biggest pain is:

I failed with two bands and it left such a deep scarves and dissapointment that I do not know how to handle it. I was let down so much. I invested so much energy in the bands to make it work to end up realizing I was the only enthusiastic person about it and what I see now since then they moved on doing their own music and having successes. I am not jelaous, but it hurts a lot as I know I thaught them a lot about how to do things to make things work and now I am the only one not having a band and people to work with.

Yes, I am upset and I am summarizing to understand what I was doing wrong, but all I can think of is that I was just with the wrong people with people having different goal as mine and I allowed and compromized more then I should as I tried so much to keep together the band.

I am very target oriented. If I have a goal I put into it a lot of effort and I invest all my time to make it work, this is how I did with Genuine Latin Groove. After a while I realized everything I invested from my time was later taken as granted and expected to be done by me again. E.g. one of the musicians used to be late for rehearsals or he showed up without his bass guitar to practise, I let him go, then he started to message the other behind my back how he would like to join back the band. The other guitarist was not following our group posts about rehearsals so sometimes he cancelled his attendance in the last minute or never, or he was late, when I asked him to change his approach he replied the bass player was doing the same. I asked him, so by your opinion it is how things should work? He did not know at that moment that I released the bass player because of his unseriousness. I released him from the band too.

The next time one of the musicians not having an acoustic guitar on the rehearsing day turned to me with a question where to get a guitar as he had to take his own to repair?? I do not get this approach, as he should have known he needs to fix his guitar, plus the same person has another band and in addition to that even in our band there was another member who had acoustic guitar whom he could turn to with this question (which he did in the end on my advise). The worst situation I faced was, when I arranged our concert in on of the ruinbars of Budapest where they had not equipement and I asked my bandmates for a help and advice, the same acoustic guitarist from above replied: you arranged us to play there then get the equipment.

On the same concert I organized I got pushed back in the background as the second singer – who claimed she is not interested in doing serious music and performances – took over the stage and sang from papers. After the concert I got critics on this, which I can understand. We have been rehearsing about half year and the lyrics she did not memorize.

ETC. ETC….these are just few samples..

However our last concert was the point when I finally understood I am not working with the right team. I got so tired and ashamed that couple of days later I noted the band I am leaving.

The second band setup ended the same, when I started to split tasks among the bandmates to support the music project, suddenly nobody wanted to invest time.

I do not know why musicians think it is enough to know how to play music? Let me inform you, it is not. If you have no agent, it is much more work about it to do to succeed.

This is the reason I got lost and my motivation as well, I lost my faith that it is only about not finding the proper people to do music together, at the moment I simply cannot believe this music thing will work for me, however I will keep searching.

I am still looking for an acoustic guitarist player to play Brazilian MPB songs and perform duo. On top of these songs I sing in Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian and English of course. I am one of those singers who is willing to learn, who appreciates if there is a regular schedule, task split, has serious approach and is willing to practise on a regular basis.