Dealing With a Difficult Music Director
So, I really wanted to write about the positive aspects of being a cruise ship musician. So far, I can’t. I just finished my first cruise. It was really rough. This isn’t to discourage anybody from taking such a gig, but I do want to report on some of the negative aspects of it within the entertainment department, rather than the company as a whole.
Now, I realize Dave played with some killin’ musicians on his first ship. I’m not. They aren’t horrible, but they are at about freshman level for the colleges I went to. Which makes this whole situation I’m stuck in more confusing.
When I got to the ship, the drummer was the new kid. The MD is the drummer, but he’s taking a leave since his wife just had a baby. The tenor player is sitting in as MD for the moment. He was giving this poor kid drummer a really hard time. At first, I thought that the drummer just sucked. I was wrong. I sat with him in some jam sessions, and even worked out some of the charts with him. He’s got the chops, but the MD is hounding on him so badly, he was really doomed to screw up until he could relax. He never did, and he quit. He’s going back home to Indiana to gig again. And I don’t blame him one bit. I’ve experienced this before; if the bandleader says a musician sucks, the rest of the band will believe it.
Now, I get to be the new kid. I didn’t mind the criticism at first, because I figured I could handle it. But when the MD keeps repeating the statement, “don’t (expletive) up, because I have absolutely no problem replacing you” like a broken record, it really is nerve wracking. The problem isn’t reading down the charts, which I admit I’ve made a few stupid mistakes on due completely to nerves because of him, but it’s the shows that the rest of the band has played dozens of times before, and have things like playing this tune from bars 44-59 when you see the captain walk on stage, or play another short when M. walks on stage, etc. It’s a lot to remember, and when I don’t come in strongly on one, I find myself in the MD’s office explaining what happened to him, and having to hear him tell me “one more time, and you’re off at the next port.”
I find myself staying on the ship at ports working on these shows so something like that doesn’t happen again. That’s why I only got off once; it was a day we had off, anyway.
But then, something awesome happened. I found my chops again. They were lying somewhere in the Mediterranean between Kusadasi, Turkey and Athens. I had one little stitch right after that. I learned this: don’t play anything other than roots on the downbeats of chords if you’re a bass player, because the MD will tear into you. And he did that, right on a dance band set. It threw my focus off and I screwed up American Patrol. AMERICAN PATROL! How did I manage that?!
The next show, which was the farewell show on the cruise, I absolutely nailed. There was nothing the MD could complain about. And then we had embarkation day again. Remember that “Welcome Aboard” number I needed to shed for the next embarkation day? Well, it must have been nerves or something the first day, because this time around, it was easy. But, since our last drummer quit, we got a new guy. He’s good. Not only that, but he has played on ships for the parent company for years, so his adjustment to ship life is going to go fast. But we had a problem. At the “Welcome Aboard” show, we play a few things, and two of them are snippets of Chameleon and Beyond the Sea. It really bugs me when the MD counts in the horns on the Eb minor chord on Chameleon. I am really tempted to turn the bassline around every time. But I digress. Anyway, last night, the MD counted off Beyond the Sea, and the drummer went into Chameleon. An honest mistake, but it led to a complete and total train wreck. The piano player and I layed out, because we had a drummer pounding away at a slow funk groove, and the horns are trying to play an up swing chart. I got the evil eye from the MD. I knew where the blame was going.
Right after the show, he comes up to me and says “Good show. Can I see you in my office?” So I followed him down. He shares his office with the Cruise Director (CD), who was in there. I was really hoping he would go off on me in front of the CD, because I had already had words with him on how the MD is treating the new guys. Now that he is aware of it, he told me he would take care of it. I don’t know if he talked to him or not, but once he saw his boss sitting in the office, he said “actually, let’s go to my cabin.”
When I got there, he did go off on me. He asked me why I layed out. I told him it’s practically impossible to play up swing while the drummer is playing slow funk. He said this: “I don’t care. This is a professional gig, and you have to act professional, and not like a college student. If you pull a stunt like this again, you’re off the ship. Don’t (expletive) up any more, or you’re off the ship. This is the last straw.”
Right while typing that last paragraph, C., the drummer from the latin quartet came up to me. I had just finished talking to the singer, and we agreed it was best that I don’t play with them any more, even though they don’t have a bass player right now. The MD has been giving them trouble letting me play for two reasons: one, because I’m not Hispanic, I must not know Latin jazz. The funny part about that is salsa and Latin jazz were my first professional bass gigs. And bebop is only allowed maybe one to two tunes a night, and since I market myself as a bop player, that means I must not be qualified. Two, if I play well with the group, he thinks I won’t have the musical energy to play well in the orchestra. It seems like there will be trouble on both ends, so I agreed that I won’t play with them as long as this guy is the MD. Also, C. sat in for the orchestra drummer when he missed the ship a few weeks back, and explained the exact same situation that happened to me last night. C. played the wrong song and caused a train wreck. The funny thing is it was Beyond the Sea, the exact same song! The MD went off on the bass player, and Claudio is telling him that was the wrong place to put the blame. He told C. it was an honest mistake, and the bass player should have know better to fix the problem.
So it occurs to me there is a major communication problem between the MD and all the musicians, including the groups outside the orchestra. I hope it gets better; I took the job to save up for grad school, and I can’t afford to lose it. The other guys tell me that the original MD will come back next month, so when he gets here, things will get better. I really hope so. I hope I can make it to next month, too. It seems a little odd to think that cats like Slide Hampton and Nestor Torres took my card, and that some no-name Music Director of a cruise ship is giving me tons of trouble.
I was warned by a guitar player I played with that you’re only going to be as happy as your Music Director. He was right. You get a guy who goes on a power trip, you’re going to be jumping from hoop to hoop. The only thing I can say is this: don’t let it get you down as a musician. I know in the last two weeks I have improved as an electric bass player. By the end of this contract, I should be a very solid player. All the simple groove playing I do will be better, and will help me on this virtuostic stuff I’m trying to get. I’m trying to not let it get the best of me, but that part is hard. I found a way to successfully separate it from my playing though. I just had to reset my mind and remember how to get into the zone again. I can once again do that. Now it’s the mental games I have to work with off the stage.
Well, I’m off the ship for the second time in Messina. I’m about to get my first plate of real spaghetti in two weeks. Messina is where my family immigrated to the U.S. from, so it’s a little interesting to be here, even though before here, we came from Calabria. I bet the food will take me back home. I was about to go crazy without some good Italian food. Well, there’s no mood a good plate of spaghetti can’t pull up, is there?
About the author
Dude this blog really took me back to my ship time as a bass player. I just wanted to remind everyone of one simple fact about playing a ship gig.
IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG IT’S ALWAYS THE BASS PLAYERS FAULT.
In my experience on 7 ships that has held true for every gig. Yes I’m good and competent player but a lot of things can go wrong in the rhythm section. Horn players can drop the melody or the form, the drummer can play the wrong tempo, style or song, the guitar player can be in outer space playing with his effects pedals and the piano player could be so drunk he can’t even stay seated on his piano bench. All real life situations that I got blamed for. Don’t worry there is nothing you can do that is right. If you try and save the tune from crashing it’s still your fault when it does.
MD’s have a hard on for bass players. We are typically blamed for every mistake the band makes. And we are never ever as good as Johnny somebody that the bandleader used to work with. I don’t have any good advice for dealing with it. Telling the bandleader to fuck off helps in some situations. Believe it or not. Other times just grin and bear it. You can always gauge how good your playing is by whether or not the other musicians hang out with you at the bar. Seriously!
1/19/2009
Before I start, I’m a drummer who has recently moved close to Nashville, and thinking about getting a cruise gig, and I love this site!
But this article reminds me of a GREAT bass player in Louisville talking about his experience touring with the late great Buddy Rich big band for 8 months, a couple years before Buddy Rich’s death. The bass player said that at the rehearsals Buddy would yell at him for the bass being waaaay too loud, so my friend would turn the volume down. Then a little later, Buddy would yell at him for being too soft, and act mad about it. So my friend would turn it back up. This would continue indefinitely, until my friend finally figured out that he could just get his rig set up to where HE thought it sounded great, and so whenever Buddy yelled at him about his tone or volume, my friend would go over to the amp, act like he is adjusting knobs without actually touching anything, walk back over to his bass and play. Buddy wouldn’t say anything about it the rest of the night.
true story.
you can’t let that kind of stuff get you down, i guess…
1/29/2009
I too experienced a difficult music director. Got the “‘firing thing “, “you suck”, “your timing is off”, “you’re dragging”, you’re rushing”, “the industry shouldn’t waste any more money on you”, blah,blah,blah………….. Frankly, I feel this kind of treatment constitutes verbal abuse. Why isn’t there some kind of system in place to address this. It sounds like it is an all too common experience among band members. Why aren’t we able to evaluate their performance as a band leader like they do us? They need to be held accountable for their behavior.
2/7/2009
Ghostwriter, thanks for your great story, thoughts and views about being a bass player on the ships. I’ve worked seven different ships for four different companies, so I have plenty of stories to tell. Our MD’s were always the piano players for the orchestras; they would also end up playing the small band sail always and Captains Cocktails as well, so we built up a strong relationship as team players on our cruises. When I worked on Sitmar Cruises (dating myself a little?), it turns out the MD was gay, and he thought because of my involvement and willingness to help out, that I liked him. Once he found out that I liked the women, he got mad and broken hearted at me, so that made for difficult times for the remainder of the contract. You couldn’t even talk to this guy without him blowing up at you. He was replaced eventually after a a month or so.
You are right about the abilities of your fellow musicians, it seems the contractors just need to fill the chairs onstage and cross their fingers that everyone gets along and there will be no problems for the duration of the contract. What can you do, you have to all make it work as a team, you do sleep together, eat together, hang out in port together, party together, and these really are some of the best times of your life traveling and meeting people from all over the world.
Unfortunately the bass player getting the blame for everything is not just limited to the ships, it happens everywhere, especially in orchestra pits. I had been working with one MD doing community theater work for about fours years just up until maybe a year and a half ago. Every single show this guy would blame me for hitting wrongs notes or overplaying, or screwing around, yet he’s the one who would make backup tracks (strings, organ, extra percussion, etc…) on his computer that would have wrong notes in them, because the bad notes would always happen at the same place every time during the shows… guess who repeatedly got the blame? Uh huh. Plus he was the biggest screw off when he was MDing and playing drums, just don’t you do it first. And when the electric keyboard player would hit a wrong note, yours truly would get the evil eye. One day I just stopped playing when the keyboardist kept screwing up and raised my hands so MD could see that it wasn’t me. He looked so puzzled as what to do, because Mr. Keyboardist was one of his long time best friend kind of guys. I went home happy that night. On the next gig two months later he admitted that he was getting confused on the sound from my bass and the keyboard, so he told me to back all the bottom off my bass. Yeah. It really does get nerve racking sometimes, that’s when the mistakes happen and then you truly are the one to blame. Just be careful.
Cruise ships are just a gig, the music will be with all of us for the rest of our lives. In one ear and out the other I say. Sometimes you do have to stand up for yourself and throw it back in their faces. It’s all about them having just that little bit of control over other people in their lives, the power trip mentality. And that’s life!
Happy sailing and enjoy your cruise.
Eric
2/22/2010
Listen. Here’s how you deal with an abuse MD. Look at your ship rules/manual. It says that you can not be verbally abused. Point this out to the MD. If he/she continues then tape record the abuse. Then ask for a meeting with the CD. Usually the CD will do the right thing and put a stop to this. Okay if the CD doesn’t, then take you documented abuse case to the captain or at least threaten to. Good luck.
6/16/2010
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