DrumDoug
Senior Member
Back in November the country band I am in let a new player join the band. He is a guitar player and he is a booking agent. Things started out fine, but have quickly gone downhill. Since he started booking the band, we have been playing a lot. We had 11 gigs last month. We have two gigs coming up opening for national acts. The thing I didn't know, was that at the time he joined he was wearing a monitor that alerted the court if he drank alcohol. He had several DUIs and that was a condition of his probation. As soon as the monitor came off, the drinking immediately got out of control. He passed out on stage at New Years Eve. He has started fights on stage with the singer in front of the audience at four different gigs. He got involved in a fight out in the parking lot at one gig when it didn't even have anything to do with him and he didn't know anyone involved. When he gets drunk, his playing becomes horrible. I could go on but you get the point. We decided to fire him from the band and he didn't take it well. He became belligerent and told us that if we fire him we will never play anywhere again, he will cancel all our gigs and make sure no one books us anymore. A couple days later he called and begged to be let back in the band. After he calmed down he realized how good a gig he has and he didn't want to let it go. After much discussion, we gave him another chance. The next gig was fine and he didn't drink. The gig after that, he showed up drunk and was argumentative again. He didn't show up for the gig after that, and put up pictures on Facebook of himself sitting in with a band at a bigger club than we were playing that night. We want to fire him again, but who knows how that will work out with all the clubs we are playing since he books for all of them. We are going to have to go into damage control mode and let the club owners know that the band is still together, we aren't broken up ect.. Letting him in the band has been a horrible decision that might have irreparably harmed the band.