Auditions in Hell

[Lozz196]

Virtually impossible 

[Gasman]

So I answered a JMB ad last week for a bass player - seemed interesting with an emphasis on funk n soul, with a female vocalist, so I was thinking Jocelyn Brown, Dawn Penn, Colette Kelly maybe, yum! I responded also mentioning that I played sax. The guy replied that he already had a bass player (a friend, who’d’a guessed, so why advertise?) but would like a sax player as well. So he sent me charts for ten tunes that they were rehearsing, mainly by male not female singers, very little solo sax, a few with brass section stuff, alarm bells already ringing but I  invited him to my place one evening for a chat and a guitar plus sax tryout. It soon became clear that a) he was a very reasonable guitarist but b) he had very fixed ideas about what and how much sax he wanted in each number, eg one 8 bar solo in Moondance in a five minute number, and a few chorus punches in the Graham Parker version of Hold back the night where the original had a three piece brass section riffing all through, you get the idea. I played him some video of what I’ve been doing in other bands, where the sax was used more, but got nowhere so I stopped the session and told him that I didn’t think they needed a saxist, I couldn’t justify 50 mile round trips for rehearsals playing just a few notes with no gigs in the book, and BTW why did he advertise for a bassist if he already had one? Answer came there none… thing is, I took up bass two years after the sax because I’d learned that while bass is pretty essential in a band, sax is a optional extra that needs a careful curation of setlists to get maximum value…grr! Was I being unreasonable?

[Sean]

4 minutes ago, Gasman said:

So I answered a JMB ad last week for a bass player - seemed interesting with an emphasis on funk n soul, with a female vocalist, so I was thinking Jocelyn Brown, Dawn Penn, Colette Kelly maybe, yum! I responded also mentioning that I played sax. The guy replied that he already had a bass player (a friend, who’d’a guessed, so why advertise?) but would like a sax player as well. So he sent me charts for ten tunes that they were rehearsing, mainly by male not female singers, very little solo sax, a few with brass section stuff, alarm bells already ringing but I  invited him to my place one evening for a chat and a guitar plus sax tryout. It soon became clear that a) he was a very reasonable guitarist but b) he had very fixed ideas about what and how much sax he wanted in each number, eg one 8 bar solo in Moondance in a five minute number, and a few chorus punches in the Graham Parker version of Hold back the night where the original had a three piece brass section riffing all through, you get the idea. I played him some video of what I’ve been doing in other bands, where the sax was used more, but got nowhere so I stopped the session and told him that I didn’t think they needed a saxist, I couldn’t justify 50 mile round trips for rehearsals playing just a few notes with no gigs in the book, and BTW why did he advertise for a bassist if he already had one? Answer came there none… thing is, I took up bass two years after the sax because I’d learned that while bass is pretty essential in a band, sax is a optional extra that needs a careful curation of setlists to get maximum value…grr! Was I being unreasonable?

I think you handled that very well indeed. You were 100% straight and got all the expectations out.

 

I agree with the thoughts about how sax should be handled as far as set lists go too.