Booking Rehearsal Space For A Thirty Member Band Is Thirty Times As Fun!
When it comes to rehearsing, Never Enough Hope has never enough time, never enough members present at once and never enough viable rehearsal spaces. Yet it always seems to work out, according to band leader Toby Summerfield. In this vid he talks about the Tibble-population-like growth of Never Enough Hope, and shares some rehearsal booking horror stories.
Mr. Summerfield is proudly sponsored by Mylanta, we're assuming.
[NEVER ENOUGH HOPE PERFORMING, TOBY SUMMERFIELD CONDUCTING]
TOBY SUMMERFIELD: My name is Toby Summerfield. I’m a guitar player and bass player in Chicago.
One of the projects I do is called Never Enough Hope. It’s a very large group.
[NEVER ENOUGH HOPE PERFORMING, TOBY SUMMERFIELD CONDUCTING]
It seems to be getting bigger every time I do it. Originally, there were 16 people and then there were 20 and then there were 22 and then in California they were like 25 or 26 depending on the night, and I have to conduct.
When I originally thought of it, I was just going to play and everybody would understand what to do somehow instinctively, but no, I have to conduct, which is a whole another, yet another thing I don’t really know how to do that I try to do.
[NEVER ENOUGH HOPE PERFORMING, TOBY SUMMERFIELD CONDUCTING]
Rehearsal are hurried and harried generally. In that band in particular, there’s a lot of people from out of town, so the last one we did in Chicago, it was about half and half so there were 10 people that flew here and 10 people in town, and we had one day to rehearse. So, we had a rehearsal booked for like noon to 5 the day of our first gig. It got a little funny because rehearsing at a venue, which was in a building with other business that operate during the day, and we had thought that it was all cool. Both the guy who ran the space and I had talked about it, and he had talked to the building manager, and it was supposed to be cool for us to play from 12 to 5. The minute the bass saxophone came out and started warming up, the building manager came in and said, “You absolutely cannot do this.”
The show was in eight hours, and there are 20 people who just spent an hour and a half setting their gear up. Everybody’s ready to play, can’t play there. So, of course I freaked out and then someone says, “But we can all just sing our parts. That’ll be quiet.” Yet another thing I can’t do that I’m asking these people then to do. “Can you just sing your parts to these crazy songs?” Ad they did, and it was really pretty, and then we ended up having a dress rehearsal later on that worked all right.
The next time I do it, the plan is to have longer rehearsal like when we went and did it in California and I booked three rehearsals, two evening rehearsals and one all-day rehearsal. The first evening rehearsal, 3 people out of 20 came too. That’s cool. You know, I can’t pay anybody so I couldn’t like demand their time but it’s sort of a bummer. And then we did it again the next night, and a good amount of people came but not enough to make me feel like everybody was going to be on the same page starting the next day. So, the next day was this long rehearsal at the venue again, it was sort of like rehearsal and sound check, and everybody learned their stuff, and I was a little bit freaked out like we rehearsed and I feel like I didn’t do a good job of explaining stuff.
It was the hours between the end of our rehearsal and the beginning of the show, I get more and more freaked out, and I’m sure everything’s going to fall apart. And then once we’re playing the first song, I remember that I asked all the best people in the world to play this stuff and then do everything right even if I explained it badly. You know, like in that band, the best gear is in their heads I think.
[NEVER ENOUGH HOPE PERFORMING, TOBY SUMMERFIELD CONDUCTING]
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