Rehearsal Spaces
Where did we practice and play?
I really had to think about this subject. There have been many bands, many gigs and many places where we practiced our music - sometimes late into the early morning hours. There were many times when a rehearsal room might be the place you slept because you were way too tired to drive home after eight hours of rehearsing. The following is a look back at the bands and places where we rehearsed, and what it was like to be a struggling musician, back in the day.
In those beginning days of my learning how to play the guitar.
My rehearsal space was my bedroom in the basement of my parents house. It was my private sanctuary where no one was allowed to hear me practice. Like most teenagers at that age, I was 13 years old and had little confidence in myself. I didn't want anyone hearing me make mistakes. This insecurity would slowly dissolve when I got together with my best friends, Mark and Curt. Mark also started guitar lessons with me in 1976. Mark would show me what he learned and I would show him what I learned. Rehearsals moved to Curt’s house. The three of us did a lot of Saturday night sleepovers at his house because all three of us had paper routes, and Curt’s house was the designated bundle stop. Mark and I brought our guitars over to Curt’s house and we sang and played songs until his parents went to bed.
I met a few kids in junior high and high school. Sometimes, they’d come over to my parents house and we'd try to put something together in my parents basement. Sometimes, I’d go to their house. Once I got into high school, I started playing the bass guitar in the school band. The band room became our rehearsal space for an hour a day, five days a week. This high school band was called “The Horicon Horn Band” (HHB). It was quite literally, the very first real band that I was ever in. We did gigs around town, and we even got paid. We even recorded our own album. Those three years were some of the most inspiring days of my early life as a practicing instrumentalist, many thanks to our band director, Al Clausen. We learned what it meant to play on a more professional level. None of us were afraid to play for an audience. We wanted to play for our family and friends. The drummer, Jimmy and I became friends. Jimmy and I put together a couple of band projects at his parents house, in their basement. This was what we did on Sunday afternoons. I dragged my huge Ampeg tube bass amp down the basement staircase and set it up next to Jimmy’s drums. Every week we did this. This was our normal.
Our first rented rehearsal space.
For the next several years into the early 1980’s, I worked a full time job over night, which meant that playing in a band meant losing precious sleep. I joined a relatively new band with a former band mate from a project we did together a few years earlier. We had an actual rehearsal loft in an old car parts warehouse building in downtown Racine. Olson Auto parts allowed bands to rent the rooms in the back of their building. There would be a half-dozen bands in that building, all rehearsing at the same time. It got loud a lot. Those were some of the night when we wouldn't even start rehearsal until ten at night. We'd drink and eat snacks. It would be going on four in the morning before we'd call it quits and go home.
Florida.
Mark and I both moved to Florida a few years later in 1988. Mark was the first one to find local people who played in bands. He auditioned for a few of them. I met a few people when I worked at the airport. When you go from a small town like Racine, Wisconsin to a huge metropolis like Orlando, Florida, you're bound to meet a whole new level of musicianship. That’s exactly what happened to both of us.
Since I was a bassist with my own gear, my own car and I could sing, I got asked to join quite a few bands. I remember living room rehearsals, storage building rehearsals, backroom music store rehearsals, garage rehearsals, bedroom rehearsals, church auditorium rehearsals and on and on. Wherever there was enough room to set up an amplifier and plug in, that’s where we rehearsed.
What did a rehearsal space actually have in it?
If we were lucky, we had sufficient access to electric power for all of the equipment. If we were really lucky, we had air conditioning/heat. If we were really, really lucky, we had a refrigerator stocked with beer. What was the actual reality most of the time? Imagine trying to cram four or five people into one small room, with instruments, Mics and a P.A. and a drum set. Usually, you had to stand most of the time because there was no room to sit. So, we improvised. We took breaks, we walked around outside and got some fresh air. Then we came back and got right back to it.
Let’s say the average band has a drummer, a bass player, two guitarists and somebody who volunteered to sing. Four people in a small rehearsal space would be loud, especially with a drummer who only knew how to play at one volume - loud! Guitar players want to hear themselves over everyone else. So, volumes on amplifiers gradually and incrementally increased. After a while, it got so loud that all you heard was white noise. Again, we did with what we had and we improvised.
Becoming a matured musician.
Over time, I was fortunate enough to work in bands with real pro musicians, with large places to rehearse. Plenty of room for everyone. Sometimes we even had our own wedge monitors so we could hear everything more balanced. The older I got, the better the musicians I got to play with, would become. When you do this for as long as I have, you learn a few things along the way - like, not wasting time, not playing while someone is trying to talk, keeping the volume at a listenable level for everyone and above all, respect for one another. Being in a band is an exceptionally difficult thing to put together and maintain. This is why so few bands ever stay together longer than a year or two.
Bands are about being in a group, an organized gathering of individuals with a common goal - to make music. When you have a sufficient, comfortable rehearsal space, things get a little easier for everyone in the band.