Growing up Bass Player (The Drummer Quit)

After a month of rehearsing in the basement, getting a feel of each other, the drummer quit. This left let a guitar/lead player and a guitar/bass player. Hmm. What to do now?

We started a search for another drummer. After a month or so we gave up on finding a drummer. Again remember we were in a small town in Montana with not a lot of musicians to draw from. The closest “large” town was Billings Montana, 150 miles away with a whopping population of about 50,000 people. We were just planning on playing on weekends. We both followed our mothers advice and had “real” jobs during the week. We could not find any drummers in Billings that were willing to drive 300 miles to play a gig Saturday night. Can you imagine that?

What we found was an old cowboy (over 40) who played guitar and sang a lot of county song. We felt, as I still do, that it is sometime more important to be out there gigging than worrying about the type of music you are playing. We, the lead player and I, needed to learn the mechanics of being in a band; things like getting along, working as a team, developing a style and a groove. In retrospect, I now feel we learned a lot from our new band mate. At the time it was sometimes good but mostly bad.

Singer Guitar Player