Managing Bandmate Expectations

Most new bands (and just about all first bands) are the Marxist Three (or Four, or whatever) Musketeers:  all for one, one for all, from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.  This tends to create a crisis down the road, because human nature being what it is, that is not a sustainable model.  You can potentially avoid that crisis by taking steps when forming or joining any musical project to make sure that expectations are realistic.

In any band, especially a new band, there will be an unequal distribution of work.  This can manifest in a number of ways.  Sometimes it's a single person who handles all the administrative stuff, doing all the booking and publicity and running the band's social media.  Or maybe it's a single person who takes care of technical support, providing/running the PA, maybe lights, and perhaps even providing instruments/amps for other musicians.  Someone may provide a rehearsal space, or a vehicle to haul the big stuff.  Then there's disproportionate actual work: loading in and out; setting up; tearing down.  During the initial wave of enthusiasm for a new project, often the people taking on the disproportionate amount of the work load just do it, in the interest of getting it done, and because, in the haze of new-band euphoria, it doesn't feel like work.

But fast-forward a year, and it probably IS starting to feel like work, especially if the band is playing a lot and making money.  Whoever has been providing various free services starts to feel that an even split of the gig proceeds is not fair since they are doing more work.  Or maybe they just tired of doing so much.  For whatever reason, there comes a point at which someone who has been doing something for free no longer wants to do so.

This can present an existential problem for a band.  Despite the fact that, logically, the other band members have no reason to expect bandmate A to do something for free, if a pattern has been set under which bandmate A had been doing thing X, and then says that henceforth he either needs to be paid to do thing X, or he is no longer going to do thing X which means the band has to pay somebody else to do it, experience and anecdotal information suggest that the other bandmates will resent that.  It can generate bad feeling that can tear a band apart.

So, it is VITAL to manage expectations from the beginning.  It can be helpful in that context to sit everyone down and make a list of all the ancillary jobs that come along with running a band and all the technical stuff that will be required, and either (a) assign tasks and responsibilities so that everyone is carrying an approximately equal load, or, (b) assign values to various tasks and come up with a formula for how proceeds will be split up based on who does what.

Note that if you go purely on market value of services, it it quite easy for that to eat up all proceeds of many low-level gigs---renting a PA, a van, and a rehearsal space could result in zero income for anybody but the people providing those things.  Particularly if it's something that you have anyway, and there is minimal marginal cost to you for the band to use it, you should not expect people to be willing to let you take all the gig money.  But that also doesn't mean that you should be expected to provide stuff for free in perpetuity.

There are all sorts of concerns and formulas that could be applied when you start getting into the specifics.  My point with this blog post is to raise the issue and hopefully get people thinking about it.  I'm happy to discuss specific issues if people would like that.