How do you challenge this type of thinking?

[Uncle Roy]

Hi Ken,
As Billy says a great post.
As you know I have had the pleasure of running the BSS now for 36 years after you decided that you had to put your steel guitar club to rest due to your busy schedule .
In that time of the BSS I have heard the same story over and over from many pro players here in the UK,but as stated it is now a new ball game. It is very sad that things have changed.
I guess like many others playing steel has always just been a hobby for me,and having a full time job has always help pay for this great instrument and the pleasure it's given me. Also the pleasure you professional guys have given me is superb.
Also as Billy said let's have more of your US travel stories.
Cheers Ken

[Basil Henriques]

There is another aspect to this scenario: consider the few, (and there are just a few,) like Bob and myself who perform as a duo but EVERYTHING heard is just us, created by us and mostly played live. Not a Karaoke duo performing to backings that are someone else's' creative work, and bought, or in some cases stolen on line primarily because they are not capable or too lazy to create their own.

For so long now you could go to half a dozen country/western/line-dance or whatever venues and see different solo and duos all using the same tracks. Utter laziness or lack of capability is the reason, these are the ones who have damaged the music business the most, junk P.A.'s and bad sound mix combined with the aforesaid is having the most negative effect on gigs, not only in our field but all music genre's.

Personally I think that those who go out and play gigs with backings they've obtained by the "Beg Steal or Borrow" method are nothing short of Karaoke performers, if 'performers' can be used very loosely.
My own thinking would be that those type of 'Players' should stay at home and learn how to make their own backing and we would all then regain individual identities and become more proficient and entertaining.

I'd like to use David Hartley as an example here, you may wonder how he got to be such a world class player ! Well, firstly he has a VERY good knowledge of music and an extremely acute ear developed by intent listening. His backing are individually crafted works of art in their own right, he has reached out and grasped technology by the He would be the epitome of a man crafting backings to suit what he wants to do, not adapting what he can do, to suit the backing.

There is only ever going to be a limited number of gigs available for all of us, and complaining about the lack of them is wasting time that COULD/SHOULD be spent learning skills pertaining to the job. This side music business is really the entertainment business and the entertainment side of the performance is what's lacking in so many that complain about no work. If the object of our playing is to entertain and please ourselves, we should stay in our "Weekend Bedroom Warrior" mode and venture out into the men's world when we can "cut the mustard".

The learning curve for dexterity on the majority of music technology equipment is not beyond most of us, and what should be looked at is how to use the tools to do the work.

I started with computers when the very first one became available to the masses, and have stayed abreast ever since, much to the detriment of my playing, which I'm certain would have been much better had I just stayed as a player with no other interests. I sacrificed the woodshed for the technology room and have always slightly regretted that. BUT, my foremost vision and aspiration was to entertain OTHERS..
This manifested itself in my building and designing recording studios all over Ireland and engineering and producing records for others, motivated by the wish to help others in their careers, doing it reasonably well helped my career also so that was a beneficial 'spin off'.

All that aside the subject here of "How do you challenge this type of thinking?' well. in a nutshell, you get better at what you do and learn whatever is required to make what you do 'Entertaining', be it to the audience or the band-leader that you impress.

Personally I think that before you knock others for using backing tracks you need to study how they are using them, and also try to assess who are the ones that are actually damaging the gig business. On Television, Videos and large concerts, backing tracks have been used successfully for many years, it's the abuse of them by wannabe's that has caused the partial demise of viable gigs.

I must admit that it is so refreshing to be able to have tunes in tune, counted in accurately every time and with all the right chords occurring, for so long being at the mercy of how much alcohol had been consumed by the drummer et al was the determining factor of the success or not of the performance was downright frustrating, and to have others being carried on my back just me off. It caused me to leave the "band" scenario, it was the motivation for me to develop more intense usage of technology.
All my life I've had the philosophy of "Good Enough" is not good enough, and I've proved the point.

"How do you challenge this type of thinking?" you change yours..

[Ken Byng]

Cheers Billy, Roy and John.

Billy, I see Mike S on Tuesday and will definitely pass on your best wishes to both Mikes.

Tommy White has emailed me to say that he has a gig on Monday evening at the Crossroads, but unfortunately I am meeting friends from England at the Time Jumpers gig on the same evening.

Basil
I certainly wouldn't knock anyone who has diligently prepared their own backing for live use. I arrived at one venue close to me in Hampshire recently where a band that I knew was advertised. When I arrived I saw the band's lead singer who I recognised, who was playing to well worn backing tracks complete with backing vocals, steel, fiddle etc. (Karaoke tracks). He came over to see me in the break and boasted about how he has over 5000 tracks that he hasn't paid a penny for. Digital file swapping has a lot to answer for. I said that I much prefer the spontaneity and overall entertainment value of real live musicians, and he said that he makes a load more money this way.

I could have made a comment about the club taking money on false pretences but decided it wasn't worth it. All of these loons who are file swapping are the ones who are killing things. Almost all of them don't have the talent or wherewithal to make their own tracks. I watched one solo guy holding down an E chord on his guitar all night long without changing it once! It's just encouraging lazy folks who want to become an instant part of the entertainment business without putting the work in.

It doesn't take long with BIAB Real Player to knock out some tracks that have no copyright issues if they wanted a relatively simple way to go down that route, but the loons would probably want to get a pirate copy of BIAB in the first place.

I haven't seen one act in the USA using tracks, and long may it continue. Over here, bands reign - period (as they say over here) or full stop (as we say over there).

Anyway, it is 8.05am here and I have to get ready to go out. Sorry for the rant.

[Basil Henriques]

Well said Ken. I know for sure that I could teach ANYONE how to do adequate unique backing tracks using BIAB and a sequencer in LESS time than a gig would last.. i.e. Two hours tuition, that would stand them in stead for ever.

Your words that I would concur with, "loons" and "Lazy", I may add uninformed to that because there MAY be those unaware of the alternatives to being a 'Karaoke' player..
File swapping is prevalent in the UK music scene not only with B/T's but also other music types like albums etc.
I think really, that whilst the local pub performance with trax is acceptable, when you move to a higher level of entertainment then integrity should come into play..

[Dave Nutt]

Slim- a great question that has gained an interesting response, with constructive views from both sides.

Input from Baz and Ken ? something that has been sadly missing of late, UK steelie stalwarts who both have so much to offer.
Lets hope we can keep em here.

[Jif]

I think this is true of live music in general not just country music. About 5 years ago I played bass in my sons band, which was Indie based, they wrote all their own material and for a while were going places. We played a lot of gigs, gigs in this circuit were mainly multi-band gigs, 3-6 bands in a night and you got anything from 30 mins to 1 hour slot. The bass player (me!) and the drummer had to use equipment supplied, bass amp & drums, drummers used their own cymbols & snare. Not much money in it but it was a vibrant scene and fun to do.

When the recession hit, it all went down the tubes and has basically died a death, where I live anyway.

Personally I blame Simon Cowell, innovative music of all kinds have been X-Factored to death

Then there are the tribute bands, many of these are really good and I've enjoyed a few myself, but sometimes I think - what if Pink Floyd had decided that original music didn't pay and was too much of a hassle and became a Shadows tribute band. Nothing wrong with the Shadows, but no one could ever be as good as the original. The same applies to Pink Floyd tribute bands or Queen tribute bands or whatever, they can make more money being 2nd hand clones than expanding their own musical ideas.

For me the answer has to come from the audiences themselves, if they do not want to listen to original/live music and prefer to be told what to listen to, (because it makes some fat cat a multi-millionaire), then no one can force them.

However I remain in hope that some day people, probably a younger generation, wake up and want something that is their music, not something they are basically told to buy and listen to by industry moguls.

I believe there was a recent country revival for a while in the smaller pubs, largely due to demand from a younger generation, probably not country as you guys know it but at least it's real music and the audience are there because they want to be.