When I was a freshman in college, I started and led my first band. Because of my love and obsession with the Chick Corea Elektric Band, we started off as a jazz fusion group, then over a few months, grew into a RnB/Soul band. I joined forces with my buddy Dave Creel who was a music management student at the time, and the rest is history.
In this band, there was a musician who joined our group about a year after we formed. This particular musician happened to be present at one of our rehearsals and was so hyped up that he approached me afterwards. We talked about music and everyone seemed to get along with him, so we had him sit in at one of our rehearsals, then I decided to have him join us.
Not too long after that, we started running into some issues with this musician. The rest of us learned pretty quickly that this member had an anger issue, and found out at one of our shows, to make things worse. We were playing our first private party as a band, and our first gig where we had to have enough music to fill up 3 hours. At 19 years-old, I’m earning my stripes, as we all are, and we realized after we finished our first set, that we had pretty much played all of the tunes we knew as a band… And we still had 2 hours of music to play.
This was not good.
During our break, we all stressfully brainstormed what we could play, what songs we didn’t practice, but felt confident enough to play together, what songs we could stretch, what originals we could attach choruses of other covers too, etc. (needless to say, thinking back on all of this, I laugh now because I do these types of shows on the regular for a living). As we were brainstorming, the newest member I mentioned earlier exploded. Raised his voice at all of us, told us we should have been better prepared, implied terrible leadership on my part, and contributed nothing else.
I should also mention, as I was 19 (and the youngest member), this musician was closer to my age now, which was early 30s.
I had never dealt with this kind of thing before. I froze for a minute. One of the other bandmates broke the tension and tried to encourage us, which is what I should have done, but that was another learning moment for me. I quickly took control back and continued encouraging and led us back to the platform. We played some of the best two hours ever. People danced the whole time. The electric slide even broke out at some point. Turns out, we had a lot more in us than we thought.
Great gig. But another problem was looming.
To make a long story short, the musician who exploded on us stayed on with us for a little over two more years after that show, and those were the most difficult two years of my young music career at the time. More episodes, more calling my leadership into question, more words said that I had to internally fight with all my heart to not let paralyze me in the moments they were said. It took up a lot of my brain and heart space. More than I allowed anyone to see except my father and a couple of really close friends. I just wanted to have fun and play music with likeminded people. I was not at all interested in managing people and their behavior, especially people who were 10+ years my senior, yet that was exactly what I had to do. I avoided doing anything about my situation for as long as I could.
Then one day, before a big show we had, opening for India Arie actually, he did his thing again in a rehearsal in front of the whole band, and I had enough. I yelled at him. We went back and forth for a minute. Rehearsal paused. I called us back, and let everyone know to just focus on what we had to do and we’d talk about the rest later. We had a good rehearsal, and then a great show. India Arie gave, to this day, the most impactful show I had ever had the blessing of witnessing and hearing. That’s another story for another day.
After the show, I think the next day, I met this musician one-on-one to tell him he was out. I told him I wanted him to play that last show with us because he had been working hard like the rest of us to make it what it was, but that last episode was the last time. We had a tough talk, but it was short, and ended well. We hugged, and that was the last time I saw him face-to-face.
That was over a decade ago.
Why am I sharing this story now?
There are so many lessons I’ve learned from that period that still inform my life today. I just want to share a twofold one with you.
What that two-year period taught me was that:
No matter how bad, unprofessional, lazy, irresponsible, or [insert negative trait here] person I have on my team, as the leader, the responsibility falls on me to do something about it. Every day that I don’t, the consequences are on me. Their actions are their fault. The corrosion on the team wrought by their actions are my fault.
Monumental disasters like the ones I had usually have warning signs, and most are like train-wrecks in slow motion. There is grace for the beginning, but as I get older, it’s my responsibility to notice the collision course earlier and make wiser decisions.
I’m still very much learning as a leader both in music and in other areas of my life, but I can tell you that those two years have helped me so much in the area of discernment. Even thinking back on it now as I type, I’m remembering things that happened weeks before the first incident that went completely over my head then that I would take deeply into account now. I did not see or understand a lot of things 10 years ago, and I will hopefully see and understand a lot more 10 years from now. This is not meant to laud myself above anyone else, but to hopefully use my foibles and early struggles to encourage anyone reading this.
I will be forever grateful for that band, and for that time.