SEBASTIAN BACH – Looking For New Guitarist And Bass Player

I HATE CHANGING BAND MEMBERS. If it was up to me, I would never change band members. It takes a long time to develop chemistry between band members & I have never taken that simple fact lightly. The reason Angel Down came out so good is that we captured a band that had been playing together live on the road for a couple of years at least, even being on tour mere days before we started recording that album.

Same goes for Skid Row & Slave To The Grind… those albums came out great because we were together all the time, playing, rehearsing, writing, all the time, every day… not because we wanted to. Because we needed to. Not because we were getting paid, because we weren’t. We played music for one simple reason: Playing music was (& is) our life.

Ask any musician, & they’ll tell ya: one of the hardest things about this ‘business’ is finding the ‘right’ band members. I can remember being in VELVET REVOLVER for about 15 minutes or so (about 3 weeks actually) & the thing I loved about that experience (working with Duff McKagan especially) is that those guys had at least 30-40 songs on the demo CD Duff gave me, & all of us had one goal in mind:
creating some great music. That’s it. We rehearsed at Matt’s for five hours at a time. No one asked ‘How much am I getting paid to rehearse? “Who’s paying my gas money to write this song?’ etc. The subject of money never came up. We rehearsed, wrote songs & hung out together because we loved playing more than anything else, & are happier playing music than doing anything else.

Since then, the guys I have had in my band have seemed to have gone on their own separate ways. I was forced to turn down five shows this summer: Gods Of Metal, Sweden Rock, MetalWay in Spain, & two shows in Quebec, Canada with my heroes KISS. The unbeleivable reason I had to turn down these killer shows was simple: I could not get ahold of all my band members, or I could not afford financially to pay my band to rehearse & do the shows. This situation can never happen again. I love the band on Angel Down, but now that album is three years old. Despite my repeated emails, phone calls etc… we have not come up with a single new song in three years now. This situation can not go on.

I am looking for musicians who love to play & create new music. Who need to play music. Who live to play music. I cannot make a good album when I have to pay all the band members to rehearse. I simply cannot afford to pay a musician to sit down & write a song with me. I myself have never once been paid to rehearse, or write a song. I do it because I love it. I do not understand the mentality of some of the musicians I have worked with, who demand payment to rehearse, to get better, to sharpen their craft in order to destroy the whole world on big stages & in the studio. In my mind, a good musician, a true musician, LOVES to rehearse, plays all the time, because they want to get better. Not individually. As a BAND.

I am not saying I don’t want to ever play with the Angel Down guys again. On the contrary, they all know I would love to get crackin’ on some new sounds with them right now. But they are all busy, or worse, I can’t get ahold of them. The official word from the guitar & bass player in my current band, through management, is ‘call us when there’s some gigs.’ What they don’t get is, my heart is not just into playing the old music right now, my heart is always in creating new music, & putting out another CD. Then there will be tons of gigs.

So specificailly, what I am looking for is:

– Guitar &/or Bass Player in the New York City/New Jersey area. Backround vocals are a plus. We rehearse in New Jersey, so the closer the better. This doesn’t rule you out if you are from somewhere else, but with the amount of jamming I like to do, relocation may be neccessary.

– Someone who doesn’t need to get paid money to rehearse, write songs, appear in videos, or do promotion. Basically the way it works is , if I get $, you get $. Sound fair ?

– Valid passport is required

– No criminal record

– No drunks, heavy chain smokers, or druggies need apply. All band members must be completely sober at all gigs & rehearsals.

– Should have at least some ‘road experience’. Again, this doesn’t rule you out if you are Dimebag Darrell or Randy Rhoads at the age of 17 (or any age for that matter), or the unknown ‘Adam Lambert’ of Lead Guitar. But honestly the chances of me taking someone around the world for the first time are extremely slim. I had one band member that smoked cigarettes so much that he threatened passengers in an airport in Germany because he couldn’t ‘go have a smoke.’ Goodbye!

– Drummers Need Not Apply. I am very fortunate to have the best drummer in rock, Bobby Jarzombek, here in this band to stay. When we were offered the five shows this summer, Bobby replied with an enthusiastic ‘Yes, let’s rock’, within minutes. That’s what I’m talkin’ about! There are also two drummers locally that we can rock with. If every band member was as pro as Bobby, it would be the best band ever. He is the standard, as anyone who jams with him knows.

– Internet tryouts are preferred. If you have a MySpace page with songs, pix, videos etc, that is perfect. Email links to ‘Bach Band’ at: [email protected]. Or you can mail a promo package with CD & or DVD to:

Bach Band
PO Box 215
Lincroft NJ
07738 USA
Packages will not be returned.

-Don’t try to impress me with playing old SKID ROW songs. That is the easy part. It just ain’t about ‘what happened in 1991′ anymore. My intention is always to create new music that is better than anything I have ever put out. That will take every ounce of time, passion, commitment, heart, balls, & fury we got. If you think you can write a better song than ’18 & life’, ‘I Remember You’, ‘Youth Gone Wild’, ‘American Metalhead’, ‘Monkey Business’, or ‘Stuck Inside’, I wanna meet you. I’m sure the writers of all of those songs can write even better songs than those. But, they do not ever show any new music to me, or write any new music with me. Truth is , I am bored as f**k right now. Does anyone want to rock?

Bring it.
Sebastian Bach”

Bach also revealed the following in a separate update:

“Yesterday sucked. Got offered yet another bullshit reality TV show. Forced to turn down $70,000. Yes you read that right $70,000. No fun at all.

I refuse to make bad art. The show had zero to do with music. Just money to be a clown. No more.

‘More Baz on TV’ is the last thing this world needs, unless it’s baz SINGING. I am tired of doing everything else on TV but SING.

‘Cause I’ve done so many of these shows, it’s all some people know me for anymore. I haven’t done a gig since August 2008. NOT COOL.”

http://www.sebastianbach.com/