Dep musicians

[Phil Starr]

Has anyone wide experience of using specialised dep musicians? Or maybe you work as a regular dep. If so how has it gone for you and what do charge/pay for a typical gig?

 

We've been trying to get a project going for a while and keep stumbling over finding a decent guitarist. Quite simply most of them struggle to work outside of their usual genre and fail to learn the songs. We don't gig frequently enough to attract pro musicians to join the band and the amateurs are too amateur. We started out with a great drummer and guitarist and played three gigs to an enthusiastic reception from the audiences and re-bookings from the venues. The guitarist left due to changes in his circumstances and the drummer sold her house and moved. I've used a number of drummers as deps and it has always been great. Dep guitarists have been mixed with one turning up for a run through knowing every song in the set with around a weeks notice and at the other extreme having to turn the guitar off in the monitors so we could get through the songs. I've talked to some of the function bands round here and the use of deps is fairly extensive and these bands sound great. Using deps wopuld let us go on developing the band and building up contacts whilst looking out for a long term band member.

[bassbiscuits]

I’ve depped on bass regularly with bands, and because I spread myself over a few, I don’t need any one of them to provide full time work. 
 

You might strike it lucky and find a guitarist in the position of being a decent dep with other bands and who can adapt to yours too. That means he’ll be professional level instead of amateur, but won’t be expecting full time work with your band. 

In terms of fee I believe I get paid the same as the person I’m standing in for (in the case of typical cover/function bands which usually has a core/band leader and then various people on hand to dep.) 

I find it works both ways and puts me in contact with loads of other good players I can ask to dep with my own bands if the situation arises. 

[Phil Starr]

@bassbiscuits Thanks for kicking this off. In the past our deps have usually been part of the 'family', friends of the band or of other friends. As such they always simple accepted the missing persons share. Our standard fee is £300-320 so that's only £75-80 I'm concerned that won't be enough to attract a pro to learn a 30 song set. Having said that I also know another friend does national tours with a band and pays £100 a night for his musicians plus basic accommodation so maybe I'm being pessimistic.

 

I know a lot of band members and ex band members over the years who have been full time musicians in the sense of it being their only source of income and they've had to earn most of their income by teaching mid week so £80 for an evening's work has been helpful to them. in some ways it's an easy gig. No band tension, we've a pretty professional approach, decent PA and lights and everything is ready for them to just come along and play. The songs are all as the originals apart from 3 or 4 which have a key change.

 

At what level would you think you would think it worth doing?

Edited Wednesday at 20:30 by Phil Starr

[jrixn1]

3 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

one turning up for a run through

 

37 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

attract a pro to learn a 30 song set

 

A pro doesn't want (or need) a run-through, or to have to prepare anything.  You'll have more success if you have good charts and the dep can just turn up and sight-read the gig.

[bassbiscuits]

1 hour ago, Phil Starr said:

At what level would you think you would think it worth doing?

As in money you mean? I don’t think there’s an absolute answer to this in the same way that I couldn’t say “how much would you do a gig for?”

 

For me depping comes down to whether I can make it work with the rest of my life/gigs/work/ other commitments as much as anything else. 

 

It might involve other factors too - like whether the gig is close or far away, whether it’s a gig/venue with a decent reputation, how much notice they’ve got to learn the set etc and whether the dep is actually mates with the band or if it’s just work etc.

 

I agree with the comment about having a run through. I’ve never rehearsed with any of the bands I dep with - it’s another time commitment and expense that might put off busy musicians. I’ve just learned my stuff at home and at most just run thru any unclear or difficult bits in the soundcheck. 

I wonder if the focus on “a pro player” is making things more difficult. There’s a lot of professional standard players who are still mostly combining music with other work, and depping might work for them.  

[mattpbass]

Deps are common place in the function world but you’re looking at players used to individual fees of £200-300 (or more). I don’t know any decent players who would look at a 30 song set for £80 as a one-off, I certainly wouldn’t. But for a friend where there is potential for repeat local work etc you might have a chance of attracting someone. 

[Jakester]

I dep regularly for various bands on both bass and drums (not at the same time!). I usually get whatever the regular guy gets - occasionally if I’ve had to travel further I might get a contribution to petrol, but that’s about it. 
 

Most of mine are covers bands so getting the tunes down is reasonably straightforward. Most bands I play with want at least one run through because they all do the standard covers band tunes in a different way.
 

For example, one used backing tracks but the versions were different to the originals, so had I just been going straight in, that would have been quite the shock. 

 

I don’t generally want lots of rehearsals though - that’s mainly why I like depping so much. 
 

I’m not a pro by any standard, but I’m reasonably capable and reliable, and that’s what’s got me regular dep gigs. 

[Phil Starr]

Just to make it clear this is a pub covers band with aspirations, but still just a covers band. Any talk of 'pro' musicians wanting £2-300 and expecting to have the dots written out is way out of the realms of possibility. We've used a few drummers as deps and that's always worked, a couple of them turned up with no rehearsal and were superb, a couple of others wanted a run through which we organised and that worked well too. The guitarists we've used as deps have all asked for a run through. Only one of those turned up having all the songs good to go. The others wanted a second rehearsal.

 

So what we are looking for are just competent guitarists who can reliably deliver a set. If they are any good the idea would be to use them regularly. I've chatted with @Jakester in the past about dep drumming for us (hi Jake ) in that instance it was the combination of distance, the set and money that meant it made no sense for that gig.

 

We've spent months looking for the ideal replacement for our guitarist with no luck. I'm just trying to get Bass Chat's collective wisdom about the possibility and practicalities of using regular deps instead so that we can continue gigging. One particular practicality is how much will it cost. I'm fed up with rehearsing rather than gigging only to find people who can't meet deadlines or who aren't capable of carrying a full set of songs and I don't want to turn down any more gigs. If paying someone competent the going rate is a practical proposition then it's a no-brainer. A share of our crrent charge would be £80 so that would be no problem. I'd happily pay £100 to end the endless search though so many inexperienced hopefuls. If using deps pushes up the standard of what we do we can up the charges as soon as our bookings start filling up again.

 

You can probably tell I'm a bit frustrated with all this

[Downunderwonder]

Chart for a pub cover band means chords over lyrics and a V/C/V/C/B/SolooverV/C/C "arrangement", not dots.

 

If they can't wing it over that then they aren't worth the 80 quid, next!

[mattpbass]

I get the situation and economics of it, I’m just saying I think you’ll find it difficult. I have a foot in both worlds, I’m in a busy professional function band, and a pub band with old mates. For the function band, getting good deps is no issue because the budget is there, for the pub band unavailability means a cancelled gig. 

[Mrbigstuff]

Deps tend to have more availability during the week so might be more inclined to take a gig with a lower fee just for the extra income. If your gigs are weekends you’re competing against £150-300 fees for weddings ect.

You can’t compare to tour fees because normally they include days when you’re travelling and not playing, and are a guaranteed income.

[Phil Starr]

1 hour ago, mattpbass said:

I get the situation and economics of it, I’m just saying I think you’ll find it difficult. I have a foot in both worlds, I’m in a busy professional function band, and a pub band with old mates. For the function band, getting good deps is no issue because the budget is there, for the pub band unavailability means a cancelled gig. 

Thanks Matt, that's obviously not what I wanted to hear but probably what I expected. If I thought it was going to be easy there would have been no point in asking. I'll wait for a few more opinions before making my mind up whether and what to try. What you say sounds about right though

 

 

1 hour ago, Mrbigstuff said:

If your gigs are weekends you’re competing against £150-300 fees

 That brings it into the realms of possibility. We were OK as a band, our first lineup was with a guy from a function band we just needed a bit more time with him and we could have raised our fees. He'd been doing 200 gigs a year with fees for that band in the £600-1,000 bracket. His wife said at the first gig that we were better than his function band, I think she meant the set was better and we were more entertaining but we were obviously OK.

 

I'm not personally in it for the money, I'm in the lucky position where everything I earn is just put aside for any gear I fancy and treats for my long suffering partner who loses her weekends quite a lot but is very supportive. The singer and I pay all the incidental costs of the band already and I'd be happy to sub some of my fee to bring the deps fee up to £150. I wouldn't be ecstatic about it but it might be more fun than dredging the bottom for a guitarist or spending months in rehearsals while they painfully learn one song a week.

[Phil Starr]

3 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

Chart for a pub cover band means chords over lyrics and a V/C/V/C/B/SolooverV/C/C "arrangement", not dots.

 

If they can't wing it over that then they aren't worth the 80 quid, next!

I've offered that as It's what I use when learning new songs. I also provide a spotify playlist of the originals and shifted key recordings of any songs we play differently from the originals. I've also got videos of much of our set. Mostly people have been offered those sort of charts but turned them down.

[mattpbass]

11 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

Thanks Matt, that's obviously not what I wanted to hear but probably what I expected. If I thought it was going to be easy there would have been no point in asking. I'll wait for a few more opinions before making my mind up whether and what to try. What you say sounds about right though

 

 

 That brings it into the realms of possibility. We were OK as a band, our first lineup was with a guy from a function band we just needed a bit more time with him and we could have raised our fees. He'd been doing 200 gigs a year with fees for that band in the £600-1,000 bracket. His wife said at the first gig that we were better than his function band, I think she meant the set was better and we were more entertaining but we were obviously OK.

 

I'm not personally in it for the money, I'm in the lucky position where everything I earn is just put aside for any gear I fancy and treats for my long suffering partner who loses her weekends quite a lot but is very supportive. The singer and I pay all the incidental costs of the band already and I'd be happy to sub some of my fee to bring the deps fee up to £150. I wouldn't be ecstatic about it but it might be more fun than dredging the bottom for a guitarist or spending months in rehearsals while they painfully learn one song a week.

There’s no harm in trying! I suppose another question is even if the budget is there can you actually find a good dep (or two!) any easier than you can find a good permanent guitarist? 

[BigRedX]

The Terrortones used deps on numerous occasions when we were going through our seemingly endless cycle of replacement guitarists and drummers, so that we didn't have to cancel important and/or lucrative gigs.

 

Deps for originals bands come with their own set of problems. Our main one was getting the replacements to dress appropriately. While we didn't expect them to get leathered up (although it would have been great if they had) even a simple instruction like "wear black, no obvious band or brand logos and no trainers for guitarists" appeared to be difficult to follow.

 

The other problem was that we would have to change the set so that we had decent recordings of all the songs for the dep to learn which often meant dredging up back catalogue that we hadn't played live for ages and consequently we only knew the songs slightly better than the dep.

 

On the whole while the deps were mostly competent, only one of them had the right vibe musically and we eventually offered him a permanent place in the band. The rest made us glad to get the proper band member back playing drums or guitar. One drummer in particular managed to mess up playing our single, which was our best-known and most popular song. Therefore when we got an unexpected encore we decided to play it again to make up for getting wrong in the set. Then he managed to mess it up a second time in a different way!

 

I was even dep'd for one very important gig that was doubled booked with the covers band I was also in at the time. I had to lend my replacement a 5-string bass so that he could play all the songs and he had several rehearsals with the rest of the band. I've seen video of a couple of songs from the gig and it seems that he spent most of the set with his back to the audience. I vowed that wouldn't happen again and was one of the many reasons why I quit playing in the covers band.

[Len_derby]

What about rearranging your music so that you don’t need a guitarist?

[Phil Starr]

1 hour ago, mattpbass said:

There’s no harm in trying! I suppose another question is even if the budget is there can you actually find a good dep (or two!) any easier than you can find a good permanent guitarist? 

We are struggling to find a guitarist and if I'm honest it's because of our set, think Tina Turner, Pink, Blondie,Lady Gaga and so on. Most of the guitarists round here are of a certain age and want to play rock from the 70's,80's 90's and so on. This isn't primarily guitar music so not seen as rewarding. We are looking to fill the dance floor and give people a good time not force them to listen to rock standards. I don't have a problem with that, I get that if you are of a certain age then music is about fun and playing what you enjoy. I'm sure we'll find someone permanent in the end but we've had bookings available and turned them down. I'm looking at a way to build the band while we look and it'll be easier to recruit if we have a full calender

 

I suppose I'm asking the BassChat collective to give some guidance as to how to attract and hang on to deps and if it is possible to run a band with only a core of permanent members. It's not my ideal but if it can work I'd rather do that than fold the band.

 

As you say no harm in trying but no harm in asking for advice either, and thanks Matt this is helping

[mattpbass]

Yeah I think you find yourself in a tricky middle ground; standard pub rock covers you can probably find someone easily enough, but anything else means more prep work/time for the dep which then pushes the financial demands higher. Which is much the same as my “for fun” band, our set is too niche to have someone just walk in and play it, and we are too cheap to be able to pay someone for the time to learn it! 😅

[Al Krow]

Tricky situation Phil!

 

I know of one band who are 'talented hobbyists' rather than semi-pros, with other sources of income, and who are happy to take home less each from gigs so that their dep bass player, who is a pro and lives off his performance income, can get a decent fee. They end up with an excellent bass player who is happy to commit and the rest of the band enjoy the gigs much more as a result

 

Tangentially, I've heard of a band leader not personally taking any payment from gigs in order to be competitive on pricing, so the rest of the band got a decent fee per gig, and building up a roster of venues. The band then put up prices once they had got themselves established.

 

I guess we've been fortunate in not needing to do either of the above, but there's a certain logic to the first and I do have admiration for the approach taken in the second! They may give you a sticking plaster solution till you find your permanent band member. Good luck!

[fretmeister]

Has the OP mentioned the genre - I noticed the comment about guitarists not being happy outside of their genre but that struck me as a bit odd for a pub covers band?

 

Are all the covers some obscure nose flute death metal or something?

[Mrbigstuff]

1 hour ago, fretmeister said:

Has the OP mentioned the genre - I noticed the comment about guitarists not being happy outside of their genre but that struck me as a bit odd for a pub covers band?

 

Are all the covers some obscure nose flute death metal 

 

6 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

We are struggling to find a guitarist and if I'm honest it's because of our set, think Tina Turner, Pink, Blondie,Lady Gaga and so on.

 

[mattpbass]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

Tricky situation Phil!

 

I know of one band who are 'talented hobbyists' rather than semi-pros, with other sources of income, and who are happy to take home less each from gigs so that their dep bass player, who is a pro and lives off his performance income, can get a decent fee. They end up with an excellent bass player who is happy to commit and the rest of the band enjoy the gigs much more as a result

 

Tangentially, I've heard of a band leader not personally taking any payment from gigs in order to be competitive on pricing, so the rest of the band got a decent fee per gig, and building up a roster of venues. The band then put up prices once they had got themselves established.

 

I guess we've been fortunate in not needing to do either of the above, but there's a certain logic to the first and I do have admiration for the approach taken in the second! They may give you a sticking plaster solution till you find your permanent band member. Good luck!

Precisely what my pub band does, a couple of us are full time musicians, and the others have higher earning jobs, so we don’t split band income equally. It kind of has to be like that otherwise I could’t commit to tying up dates where I could be earning way more gigging with the function band. But does rely on being good mates / trusting each other to make that work. 

[Phil Starr]

2 hours ago, Al Krow said:

 

Tangentially, I've heard of a band leader not personally taking any payment from gigs in order to be competitive on pricing, so the rest of the band got a decent fee per gig, and building up a roster of venues. The band then put up prices once they had got themselves established.

 

 

I think that is more the route we are thinking of taking. It's then up to us to take the band to the level where the figures do add up. Part of this is my wanting to just play at a higher level I've spent 15+ years playing in 'bog standard' covers bands covering the same songs everyone else does. Every now and again we've recruited better musicians and the whole band are lifted and suddenly the gigs roll in and people want to join the band. The early days with this band promised something better so I want to recruit well and get back to that feeling. Deps potentially would allow us to continue gigging whist we search and who knows we might be able to recruit one of the deps if they enjoy it enough.

[Bilbo]

Sorry, not read the whole thread but most of the gigs I do are deps. In short, you turn up with an ireal book and make music by having a collective insight into what you are there to achieve. It's done by a knowledge of tunes, obviously,  but also of idioms, certain groove types, predictable figures, instinct, nods, winks, eye contact, chord charts, dots and little bit of luck and fairy magic. You won't be able to busk Bohemian Rhapsody but there are a million songs that you can put together at the drop of a hat.

I remember one gig with a singer a drummer I had never met and a guitar player I worked with often. Before the first note, our chats revealed that I didn't know a single tune they were going to do. As we approached the stage, I was listening to the first tune on my phone, much to the singer and drummer's alarm. We knocked it out of the park and it was one of the best gigs they had ever done. It's a mix of knowledge, competence and intuition. I have done hundreds of gigs like this (it has got to the point where a single rehearsal is actually inhibiting). It doesn't always work (but it is usually 'good enough' but, when it works, it can inspiring.

[casapete]

I’ve done a fair few dep gigs over the years. As pointed out above, basic charts should

be a given for all bands IMO. What if one player can’t make it at the last minute and a dep

is obtained but doesn’t know the stuff? Even more important when it’s covers and the

arrangements / keys / tempos are altered from the original. 

I recently got asked to dep in a tribute outfit for one gig a good distance from where 

I live. They have no charts of any description apparently. I’m unavailable, but would

have been able to play probably 90% of their set, just needing to brush up on a couple of 

songs I don’t fully remember. I suspect they will have trouble getting anyone who

is willing to put the work into learning the stuff for only one gig ( if they’re not familiar with

the material).  If they had charts then at least they’d have a good chance of finding someone

to do it.