Have you ever "lost the faith"?

There's been times I didn't play for weeks, even months, on end... but the thought of just up and quitting never occurred to me.

Real life did bring me to a "sell my drumkit" moment, but that was due to mounting debt from a divorce, not a desire to quit the biz. As it happened, I was packing the kit up to go sell, I got an incredible debt consolidation offer from one of my credit card companies in the mail. I mean, the kit was loaded in the truck to go sell to a music store. Instead, six months later I was able to take it in and trade it towards a Yamaha Stage Custom kit -- which I still have.
 
I'm only happy when I am in a working band. To me, drums alone is useless. I can only improve myself when I have new songs to work, musicians I can trust, concert I can perform in and enjoy.
So it happens two or three times in twenty years after band failure, being fired or when it took too long to find new people to play with : I was desparate, wanted to sell the acoustic kit to go electro to play at home. Each time I rebounded, I found good musicians.
Still, even now, every band failure is a really bad time to me. Fortunately i trust more myself now more than I use to, I think I would take it better if it was to happen again.
 
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I have to say, long story short, my band broke up in the late 90's. I moved to LA and looked for bands but was always so frustrated and disappointed. After a couple of years I just gave up looking, but never stopped thinking about being in a band and playing music. Every 6 months or so I would get the bug, search the ads and then give up. It was a running joke between me and my friends. Every 6 months, "You know what? I think I'm going to join a band..." I practiced occasionally on friends' kits, but mine were in storage. For about 12 years, and the whole time just wondering, should I find a band? I played drums my whole life and all I've ever wanted to do was play music. I finally got a rehearsal room a few years ago. I still think about looking for a band, but the thought depresses me almost instantly, especially considering I'll be 50 next month. I'm pretty disappointed in myself for giving up and probably will be until I'm on my death bed. But I'm wailing every week on the same Tama Granstars I bought in 1989. When I graduate nursing school in December and get a job, my first paycheck will go towards a new set. Okay, that wasn't short sorry.
 
Years back i was in a symphonic metal-ish band and a prog rock band. With the first we had a couple of gigs and were talking about recording a demo, but we had problems that the vocals weren't up to par. So we spent quite some time finding a replacement for her with no success. Besides that, our bassplayer went to Norway for a 2 months or so, but after he came back he didn't want to play in a band anymore. So we 3 (guitarplayer, keyboardplayer and me) went on for a while.

The prog rock band had potential to become something (we even recorded a 4 track demo), but sadly our singer got sick (cancer) and was busy recovering from all the chemo's. Around that time our guitar player went to Brazil, fell in love with a girl there and decided to stop playing in our band due to moving to Brazil and marrying this girl. So we decided to pull the plug on this band.

That all left a very sour taste and a also quit the symphonic band (what was left). Didn't had the motivation or drive to start something new after the time, effort, energy and money invested. Had my kit in a practice space, but moved it back home where it stayed disassembled in the attic. Just didn't had the drive to do something musical anymore, but it was also the time that i went back to college and uni. Eventually sold the most of my cymbals so i could afford an electric kit, but ended up investing that money in a new bed/mattress/bureau

Fast forward to 2011; got my bachelor in laws and wanted to pick up drumming again (did play with a cover band during study, but that was once a year gig on christmas eve). Got a nice set of Zildjians and have been playing ever since, although the prog band a joined in 2011 is no more; but i still play once a month with that guitar player because it's fun to play some tunes. In early 2016 i joined a rock band after recording their EP and stuck with them ever since :)
 
Yup. Right at this moment in time I've lost the faith in the band I'm in and am thinking of serving notice to fulfil all remaining obligations then quit. Said for a long time that this is my last band (it's been the best by far) and that when this is finished I am also finished with drums (it's ALL about being in a band for me personally).

The bass player's an absolute arsehole. And I'm not sure I've even got the will, or the inclination, to try to tackle him on where things are going wrong.

I don't know if I'm mildly depressed with it all or something but I love the music the band plays. But am just so....."cannot be arsed" with this guy anymore.

It's quite sad. I won't bore people too much with the background but very basically I and singer want to gig, bass player (and guitarist to an extent) want to spaz around in his wanky little home made recording studio all the time and make CDs. Impossible to ever have any kind of discussion with the bass player about anything that he might object to because he's an utterly impossible 'sulk'.

He also fibs his way out of doing gigs (usually with the excuse of work). I long suspected it. His wife dropped him in it a week or two back.

Crowning turd on the whole shit pile for me was when he filled in his 'unavailables' for 2018 recently which left a mighty 12 weekends for doing gigs. I want to play fifty+ gigs a year. We're gonna be lucky to do a dozen. Sooo tired of it.

Rant over....my apologies.
 
Interesting thread

I've lost the faith many times - living in a flat will do that to a drummer, but I've lost the faith with my band mates more.

They never write tunes, so I taught myself, got my computer setup correctly and then kept sending the songs to them in a "look, even a crap drummer can write tunes"

Didn't work and to be honest, that's all I'm ever trying to do these days, inspire them to pick their freakin instruments up again. Brilliantly skilled, great blokes, just no desire to play.

I, on the other hand literally go mental if I'm not playing music in one way or another. At the moment I'm simply re-mixing my friends wifes music and whilst it's completely out of my comfort zone, I absolutely love it. Totally different style to what I'm used to and I'm learning loads about production.

So I took the positives from losing faith, but, another 5 years on and I'm still not gigging. Starting up a band with the guys from work and it's like trying to teach everyone how to be in a band again. They are a few years younger than me to be fair though.

Regular gigs would be terrible right now though as hypermobility syndrome is really causing me lots and lots of pain just sitting on a throne for 5 minutes.

I may have to give it up altogether
 
I feel like I'm in that "lost" phase currently. I would love to get into another band, but I can honestly say I don't miss all the rehearsal and political BS. I'm in a big time rut as far as music goes right now; of all the songs I know, I'm getting really bored playing them and no other songs seems get my creative juices flowing - I'm kinda bluh!

I just bought some new G2 coated heads for my toms and will probably change out my old clear EC2s with them this weekend. Maybe that will breathe a little life into me with a little change in sound and spending some time tweaking.

I think I need a life-changing event... something positive, not bad... I don't want that!!!

My whole life is so wrapped around a schedule, it ridiculous! Hell, I even have to pee on a schedule everyday too, it sucks! Year after year after year! Ok, this part doesn't have much to do with music, but you get the idea.
 
I feel like I'm in that "lost" phase currently. I would love to get into another band, but I can honestly say I don't miss all the rehearsal and political BS. I'm in a big time rut as far as music goes right now; of all the songs I know, I'm getting really bored playing them and no other songs seems get my creative juices flowing - I'm kinda bluh!

I just bought some new G2 coated heads for my toms and will probably change out my old clear EC2s with them this weekend. Maybe that will breathe a little life into me with a little change in sound and spending some time tweaking.

I think I need a life-changing event... something positive, not bad... I don't want that!!!

My whole life is so wrapped around a schedule, it ridiculous! Hell, I even have to pee on a schedule everyday too, it sucks! Year after year after year! Ok, this part doesn't have much to do with music, but you get the idea.

I've actually found a small pleasure in doing a lot of tweaking. I still love to play, but playing alone all the time gets pretty boring so I've spent way more time than I ever did trying different heads, tuning, snare wires, snare bottoms etc. If I ever ever leave Remo coated and go to Evans I'll know I've gone to the dark side...
 
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