Quiet, but No Jazz Please
I think I've mentioned here before that I spent about a year in the worship circle, or whatever you want to call it. I was the backup bassist at a megachurch. And it was so weird. The culture was weird, and what I figured out, at the end of the day, was that I was never in a corporate job, so I didn't know how to deal with that properly. a/k/a it was me.
The people were very nice and sweet. Yes, it was cultish, yes, it was weird, but still friends with some of those people that I met throughout that whole thing today.
But, you know, playing five songs twice, and getting paid a lot, and not being able to play anything but whole notes. The whole thing was plain hard for me.
Contrast this with the show last Friday, and how easily that gig worked, and how complicated my job was, but how not complicated it felt. It's so hard to be doing, trying things when it's wrong, and it's like, when do I pull the plug?
Which, incidentally, I pulled the plug on the worship thing.
There was a last gig that I never responded to the ask for, which is not like me. And that was the show that their married youth pastor got popped for having a relationship with an underage male, and that particular gig, when they filmed it for broadcast, the pastor was talking about it, and the only other person on camera was the bassist.
Ho-ly sh*t
So, if you don't believe in a higher power, I don't know if it's irony or coincidence, but that was basically proven to me through all that, and the fact that it was a church was ridiculous. The hand of God pulled me out of that one. 100%
Anyway, persistently what I heard from parishioners and friends who were at the church was, “Why is it so loud?” And it's something that the church would never address.
But if you look across all megachurches and their super bombastic music, the responses are all there. Everyone is wondering why the music is so loud. None of them address it. Ever.
And I would first ask, is it church-like to have earplugs as an option when you walk into the sanctuary? And blackout curtains, and black darkness, and lights, and...
There weren't lasers, but maybe implied lasers, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of AV equipment. I mean, Sweetwater has its own worship division. That should tell you all you need to know.
This is all to say, as I book up for the fall, one persistent thing is in the back of my mind.
I saw this really great show of Bill Kirchen and his band, and he had a drummer with a snare drum and a bassist, and the bassist sang backup, and Bill was on his Telecaster. It was the coolest, most mellow thing.
And that really stuck with me.
It's like, what if we did an '80s and '90s cover band that was quiet? That people could talk over, that you're meant to talk over? In the background just being cool.
A guitar, acoustic is fine, a snare drum, no mic. And a bassist, and then, of course, like an MPC or something to trigger samples. Or a sequence if it's needed, but everything's quiet enough that it's just in the corner, kind of, I guess, DJ-style.
But there is not a band like this. Actually, there are bands like this. They're called jazz bands, and everyone hates them.
As I get more into these events and playing events and talking to folks, people just want something that's gonna make their event cool.
As long as you're being cool, you're good.