Ad It Up

Local artists who’ve used the "bandmate needed" ads share their life lessons.

Smell Wonder

A few years ago we had a big festival to play in Denver, and our bass player quit. We put out an ad -- in City Paper, I think -- and a guy answered. He came to practice and handled all our songs well enough, but there was one problem: He stank. Massively stank. Terrible B.O. We let him join anyway. Turns out he doesn't like to shower. Or wash his clothes. When we came to pick him up for the trip out West, he had just gotten out of the shower. He smelled worse. I think the steam released all the organisms embedded deep in his epidermis. Anyhow, while we're driving 25 mph during a raging rainstorm on Interstate 70 in Kansas, the flattest place on Earth, he decides to take his boots off. Much screaming and carrying on ensued until he was convinced to reinsert his cheesy feet into said clodhoppers. Remember, it was a raging rainstorm and we couldn't open the windows. Everywhere we went he left a trail of fumes. After the show we decided that no matter how good he is, we couldn't be known as the band with the smelly bass player. The clincher was that the dude who put us up in his apartment when we were in Denver called us up when we were back in Philly and said, Just wanted to let you know that I had to have the couch cushions sent out for cleaning.

Moral: Stinky people in confined spaces make for miserable traveling. —Sam Steinig, Mondo Topless

Journeys into the Unknown

I responded to Andrew [Chalfen]'s ad in the City Paper, looking for a singer. Although I fundamentally disagreed with his assertion -- gender unimportant -- I liked the types of music he mentioned and I wanted to try something new. After a good telephone conversation, I agreed to meet Andrew at his apartment to audition. It was dark, and as I approached his building, I started questioning the wisdom of going to a stranger's house, alone. As it turns out, physical violence was the least of my worries. I realized pretty fast that I didn't have appropriate songs to sing him and honestly had no idea what to say or do. (Remember: This was all very new!) Not wanting to leave without at least showing him I could sing, I stood there in Andrew's bedroom and sang him an Italian aria.

Moral: Trust your instincts.—Beth Filla, The Trolleyvox

Beth was like the fourth person I auditioned from the ad. I was rather discouraged by the affinity for the Indigo Girls held by many respondents. So Beth shows up and wafting off of her is an aroma of woodsmoke. From what I could get out of her, she had been at a pagan ceremony of some sort, and it had involved a ritual involving the burning of various spices and twigs. The audition was a bit awkward because we couldn't come up with any tunes we both knew that I could play on the guitar. She did sing along to a recording of The Byrds' Everyone's Been Burned, which, in retrospect, fit her smoky aroma. She also sang part of an aria, and it was then that I realized that I had really found something special here. I think we agreed to get together again, and after she left, I kept thinking, 1) My potential new singer is a witch, and 2) What the hell am I getting into? Animal sacrifices? Turns out Wicca was just a phase (like grad school) and I'm pleased to report that no Stevie Nicks-isms have surfaced in our stage show.

Moral: Same as above.—Andrew Chalfen, The Trolleyvox

Wrong Answers

Back when The Vexers first started, the bass player and I put up an ad around Los Angeles, looking for a drummer to get things off the ground. We gave ourselves one month. We wrote stuff like, misfit kid drummer who can still get excited about stuff, and you don't have to be Keith Moon, you just gotta want to learn. We didn't get anything close to Keith Moon. We got L.A.'s finest: slackers, junkies, convicts, former strippers, former child actors, senior citizens who look young for their age and basically bullshit. And right as we were packing our stuff and saying, To hell with everyone, I'm gonna go join a militant group, the ad attracted a guitar player instead, whom we hired. Of course, we left L.A. anyway, because getting that close and personal with the majority of L.A.'s music community is enough to make you want to vomit. Besides, Philadelphia looked pretty on a map.

Moral: Place your ads if you want to. Take chances, welcome bizarre circumstances, accidental meetings, whatever. Do what you have to do to get your art out, have sex, find a boyfriend, get a roommate, make music, get your toes sucked, etc. But choose your words carefully.

P.S.: The guitar player quit anyway, and we found our drummer at a party.—Jennifer Taylor, The Vexers