5 Questions To Ask Your Bandmates Before Your First Show

The crazy thing about starting a band is that by default, once you play a show, the band is what it’s going to be.

The people who play in a band’s first show are, by default, the final lineup. So before you commit to that, here are 5 tough but important questions to ask your bandmates. 

1. What’s the goal of this band? (To play at bars, house shows? The 9:30 Club?)
2. How will we resolve disagreements?
3. Who will handle booking shows/practice space, making merch, managing social profiles finding recording spaces and paying vendors? And do they get anything in return for that extra work?
4. How do we know who should be in the band if we haven’t performed as a band? 
5. If we did change the lineup, who would decide who’s in or out? 

If you’re overwhelmed, you should be.

Bands are often started by friends who want to remain friends, so they avoid the difficult conversations these five questions bring. But in any group project, issues inevitably arise. 

• The drummer who does the same fill in every song starts to grate on the guitarist.
• The guitarist who’s always late starts to grate on the bassist.
• The bassist who only plays root notes starts to grate on the singer.
• The singer who bosses everyone around starts to grate on everyone.

When issues like these go unaddressed, time spent with your band can start to be less fun, or even tense. Audiences can pick up on tension in your performances, and that could lead to more internal tension.

Most bands just live with this tension. By the time they consciously realize it’s happening, it’s been months or years. And by that point, it is what it is and there’s no precedent to fundamentally change anything. 

From playing in several music groups over many years, I’ve noticed most people who play music together long term don’t like each other as much as they did in the beginning. 

Can this be avoided? Yes. But it requires a whole new approach to forming bands. 

When you form a band at Incubator, you know the following right off the bat. 

• When and where your first show will be
• How long your set will be (3 songs, duh)
• What everyone’s role is
• That you’ll have a capable sound person and access to all the equipment you need

Having all that in place provides a level of comfort that allows musicians to focus on the music. 

But it doesn’t stop there. Incubator will also choose your bandmates for you (for your first band, at least). This way, you don’t have to worry about risking friendships because you’re probably not friends with your bandmates yet. And since you didn’t choose them, you don’t have to feel as bad if this particular grouping of people doesn’t work out long term. 

When there’s a disagreement, Incubator has a dispute resolution protocol in place to quickly resolve issues while minimizing the chances of hurt feelings.

And all of this is overseen by unbiased, informed committees of peers.

All of the difficult discussions and social balance that being in a normal band requires isn’t a factor at Incubator. 

Here, the emotional labor and actual labor of starting and maintaining a band is offloaded onto Incubator’s support staff. 

We provide structure, a safety net, and a community to help people grow as musicians, writers and performers. 

So needless to say, these 5 questions to ask your bandmates before your show… you don’t have to ask them at Incubator. You can focus on why you started the band in the first place: to make music.