The Lifecycle of a Band

Earlier this month, I spent the weekend at a local music festival scattered across downtown Sioux Falls: Four Winds. I saw The Faint — Omaha’s favorite dance-punk band. I saw my co-worker’s band (Lilac Jam) and I saw a band full of kids from my 15YO’s high school (Chara) and I saw my friends’ five-year reunion show (Damn Your Eyes).

But, more than anything, I saw the full spectrum of the “being in a band” experience. It was incredible.

There’s a lifecycle to being in a band. Bands start in basements and garages and practice spaces, if they’re lucky, and they slowly expand their reach. They set goals and they work toward those goals. First, they want to play a show. Then, they want to open for their favorite local band. They want to record a song or two. They want to make it on festival lineups and they want to play to seven people in the back of a bar. They play for free. They play for twenty dollars. They build and build until they start headlining. They record full albums. They go on a tour. Three local towns. Ten regional cities. Across the entire country.

Bands are friends, and they are partners, and they are co-workers. They like each other. They tolerate each other. They know that their internal struggles lead to good art, to art they can sell, to sales that look like art, to all-out sell-out status. They cycle in new people and kick out old people and find their groove and change their groove and retire their groove. They mimic a sound and then they expand on a sound and if everything goes well they create their own sound. That sound is theirs until they find out that someone else made the same journey, and they only hope that they are the one that’s copied and not the one that’s copying.

I know these things because I know people in bands. I was in a band once. I miss it sometimes, but only sometimes.

At Four Winds, every one of these archetypes was present. The spiderweb of options, a choose-your-own-adventure: drop a drummer, bring in someone who changes your sound; record a new album in a new genre, hope that it’s not a flop; be serious for this show, pray it doesn’t alienate the old fans. A billion different outcomes, only a handful of which will turn into a career.

And that’s why it was so wonderful. Over the two days, I watched at least 20 bands, and they were all in it for something different. They were using their music to fuel something — nostalgia, success, art, release, a hobby, a calling, a career. And it was all inspiring, from the squawky untuned chords of the younger bands to the absolute precision of a band like The Faint.

Squawky untuned chords? They’re good. I want to be so very very clear: there were no bad bands. Some bands played music I didn’t care for. Some bands weren’t very good at their instruments yet. Some bands played predictable cover songs, and some bands felt a bit too serious (or: goofy, weird, trying too hard) at that exact moment. But there were no bad bands, because this experience is inherently good.

To get on stage — to write your own music and then present that music, to brave the people, to fight through fear and anxiety, to create and share — is an incredible thing to witness, whether you’re emulating grunge or creating your own genre. That’s the common experience — the only difference between a local band and a national touring band is production and poise. Everything else boils down to two simple things.

They want to make music. And, they want you to hear that music.

At my day job, I help make websites, which means I often encounter a particular breed of human: the entrepreneur. I keep the entire concept of entrepreneurship at arm’s length because it’s filled with bad actors. The whole focus of entrepreneurship — to share your idea with the world — becomes quickly eaten by the worst kind of capitalism. It stops thinking about how to bring an idea into the world and starts focusing on what the world owes their idea.

I’m not saying local music scenes are free and clear of the negative aspects of entrepreneurship. There are still bands doing it because they want to become rich rock stars. But most local music hits differently. Most of these bands will just be that. Local bands, playing their music a few dozen times a year, gathering experiences, putting out a few records, and seeing their name pop up in random playlists on Spotify. The success is an added benefit. They exhibit the core argument in defense of entrepreneurship: they want to show the world what they’ve got and have the guts to do it.

I don’t fully remember all the bands I saw at Four Winds. (I DID take notes, which is embarrassing; I wish I didn’t just tell you.) But I do remember how it felt. To see The Faint, still connected after a few decades, still together and making something extraordinary. And: to see a band like Chara, a bunch of kids already making incredible music.

To see that, despite the different sound — different people, different statuses, different levels of experience, different in nearly every possible way — they were also almost identical.

They are just artists making something for the world, and we are lucky enough to watch along.