Singer struck down with serious illness and trying to keep the band afloat...

CaseOfAce

Told the news at the weekend our female singer has guillain barre syndrome (via Covid) - and is now in hospital and can't walk / disorientated i.e. very serious. She is expected to make a full recovery but not sure when.

We'd got away with a 2 x 45 minute set for the first time with the drummer's other band's singer (who sang 50/50 with myself) due to the pre-illness lady being away at our last gig.

In what could have been a "well... that's a cozy 5 minutes" / Spinal Tap / Nigel's left" type situation, learning the lyrics / singing some of our set in hindsight has been a good idea this year and keeps us running out of track as we look at the business end of 26 gigs next year. It was at times hard work but has very much paid off.

Just how long we can keep this thing going into next year is anyone's guess - I am not looking forward to Search For A Star knowing what's been out there in the past.

Anyone else struggled due to sudden departures and what's your contingency?

shufflebeat

Sorry to hear about your singer’s trouble, best wishes for a swift recovery.

I’ve done some tech-support gigs recently which included a string quartet, doing their own spot and working behind the main act.

Over the series of gigs there was no time when the same line-up as last time turned up. I saw at least 10 different players in all and everyone got paid. The only consistent features were the laptop the backing tracks were on and the lovely clothes.

This is an emergent property of the situations individual musicians find themselves in and negotiating that scenario is probably one of those skills we have to master.

I look at it like the difference between squad and team in football. Actively seek out a spare left-back and keep them up to speed with the set.

The quartet benefited from a shared language as they were all sight readers and could drop into the set without much fuss. I’m not a sight reader but can follow a chord chart pretty well, even better with the iReal app (strongly recommended).

p90fool

I'm the only member of my band who's done every single gig for its entire ten year history, everyone else has had a stand in take their place at one time or another. 

I do all the organising, bring spare mics, leads, strings, amp sim pedals for everyone in the band, so I also organise the deps and keep them on standby. 

I don't have a dep for me because if I'm ill and miss a gig I don't care if nobody else gets paid if they can't be arsed to do anything about it.