Function Bands & Research
Over the years I've been involved with many original bands and artists as a bass guitarist. This has involved me composing whole tracks, or solely bass parts, which I've performed often for free or for little money. While composing, recording and performing our own material around clubs, venues, and even at one point - an arena, has been great fun, the truth is we never really saw much payment for it, and as I've moved into territory where rent and bills stack, these gigs become a bit of a labor of love. Jams with musicians have turned into "will you play with my band at a pub next weekend, it's unpaid but good exposure!", and I've sadly had to turn down a few, with my thoughts geared more towards performing and being able to pay the bills.A good friend of mine, Chris Cant was offered a paid wedding gig performing covers. Seeing a close friend do this inspired me to look into the possibility of starting my own function band.
My idea is to combine my love for 60's/70's music with live performance, offering package deals with PA and lights for weddings and corporate events. I soon found that playing strictly 60's/70's music appears to be a setback, as observing successful party band setlists, I can see that they play a variety of material. I can however see this setup such as this working at some events, it appears that this would soon become a limiting factor as Ollie Thomas of successful function group The Zuzu Men explains:
"If you limit the styles you play then you're potentially limiting the number of gigs you're going to get"
I continued my research of function bands through observing the standard practises, and speaking in person to members of existing, established groups. I quickly discovered that starting a running a functioning band requires a lot of investment in both time and money. The bassist from a successful function group (which unfortunately I've forgotten the name of now!) which performed at the EasyJet 20th anniversary party informed me that the group had been running for roughly 25 years, and had seen several different members of it's time. Session bassist Samer Sharawi explained to me some of the different function group work from party bands, to cruise ship work and wedding bands. He explained that there is a lot of competition, though in his words "there are a lot of wedding bands...but there are a lot of weddings".
With these challenges in mind, I decided to make a rough plan detailing some of the costs I should expect along the way. Looking into logo design I found a cheap website Fiver.com, which I may use to have a logo designed.
With these risks in consideration, my plan is to take things a step at a time. Ideally I'd like to join an existing function band and learn as much and gain as many contacts as possible. Until then, I will begin to record cover material in my own time and set the wheels in motion for the launch my own group: Sunflower Safari.
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