Impactful couple of days... I gotta get this out because I feel pretty bad about it inside right now.
So on Thanksgiving we had our traditional friendsgiving, a potluck meal and party with good friends. Me and the band with Adam the guitar player (the unstable one) had a show the day after (last night) and so we decided to come over really early and practice all day and then have them over for the night, so they could join in our friend family Thanksgiving (practice space is in the same house). The practice went very poorly, partly due to equipment issues and party due to lack of focus on Adam's part (ie, being convinced we need to learn new songs a day before the show and not working on any of our existing songs which we needed to incorporate the synthesizer into). Then we had dinner which went great, everyone was happy and welcome and so forth. But then as the night went on, Adam started to get drunk. When that happened, he just decided to get super smashed once he crossed the few drinks threshold (which is common with him and we all dread it). He took a benzo and proceeded to drink everyone's liquor and beer, quickly, without asking. At that point he was smashed and started to get really, really annoying, talking non-stop about himself over everyone and constantly interrupting to do it (this is what he does when he gets really drunk). And then my friend whose house we were in said something totally innocuous to him, it was part of a conversation where he had asked whose children she would give to some goddesses or something random and silly like that, and she picked someone else's hypothetical children instead of his. He fucking lost it, started screaming at her "fuck you", "bitch", etc, getting all aggressive on her. Then the drummer (who is his best friend and basically takes care of him in life) tried to chill him out and defend her, and Adam went off on him, and started accusing him of all kinds of paranoid shit such as that he only uses him for his drum set and doesn't really care about him, etc. So they got in an epic fight too, and the drummer was really hurt by it. After hours of dealing with that, she finally kicked him out of her place, the upstairs, so he went downstairs to the other half of the duplex where my band friends live, and proceeded to annoy everyone there, almost break a bunch of music equipment by stumbling around, talk non-stop about himself, insult a bunch of people, tell everyone he wishes he was dead and might kill himself (to show us), and declare loudly that tomorrow he's leaving forever and won't see any of us ever again and is going to find new people to play music with. He kept my friend who lives there up until almost 6am when he had to work at 8am, because he's homeless right now and has no place to go and was wasted and we wouldn't allow him to drive (obviously), and we didn't want to leave him along unsupervised because shit tends to break or go missing when he's left alone in a space.
It was incredibly annoying and painful for me/us to deal with this... there was such an intense level of anxiety and frustration involved that I hated experiencing. And it's not the first time this has happened, it's the second huge blow-up since I've known him (that I've been there for, the bass player has been there for even more of them) but there have been countless smaller events like this. He's SO hard to be a band with, every single thing is stressful, every practice, every show, the fact that he seems hell-bent and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy for himself, where he feels like everyone he's ever known has abandoned him but then he tries his hardest to alienate people, so he can feel justified in this belief. And a bunch of little things that add up to be infuriating and frustrating. The next morning all he had to say about it was his usual response: "whoa, I took so much alcohol and benzos, I don't remember any of it, isn't that funny? I'm sorry but it's not my fault, you can't hold it against me since I can't remember". I don't even believe he has total blackouts when this happens because you can reference things he said and he'll show he remembers it, as long as you say it in a way where he doesn't realize you're trying to test him. He gets that way so he has an excuse to act like that, and then takes no responsibility. In light of his next morning behavior, me and the bass player decided we were fed up and have had enough. It seems there is no conceivable way that this band will ever be functional and professional enough to be successful and tour and shit like we keep talking about. As the day went on we decided what we needed to do was talk to them about going on a hiatus for a while until they can find a place to live that has a practice space (because the Thanksgiving stunt resulted in Adam no longer being allowed to be over there at all, and that was our only practice space we ever got to use with this band, and we were lucky if we could do it once a week), and to see whether Adam can get his head on straight. And then let the bartender who books us there (who is amazing and a friend and has been really, really good to both of our bands) know that we're going on hiatus and to not book that band for now, but that our other band is not going on hiatus and we should still do those shows we have lined up.
That was our plan. And she and I had on several occasions vented a bit together about Adam's behavior in recent times. I thought the bass player had already talked to the other guys about the plan, but it turns out he didn't. I wanted to make sure she knew about it before the show was over because usually she comes right after the show and books us for more dates, and if she did that with everyone what would have happened was that they would have said yes and we'd be stuck playing more shows with them when we really shouldn't be playing shows with them now, we're totally unprepared and we have a loose cannon who is an embarrassment on stage (due to what he says, not his playing). So, I brought it up to her. She seemed a little put off by it, which I noticed for sure, but didn't think much of it and we started playing. The show actually went pretty well other than Adam always announcing how we fucked up or that the song we just played was "sketchy", sorry, etc, even though the crowd was whooping and totally into it. Then after the show we packed up and we were all heading over to a nearby house to post-party. They took longer to get there, but when they arrived, Adam pulled me into the kitchen to talk to me (sober for once).
He said that the bartender told them what I said and she thought it was really sketchy. And what she communicated to them was not what I was trying to communicate to her, she basically thought I was trying to disband this band and make a power play with my other band to replace them. When she found out we hadn't talked to them yet about the plan (which was true even though I thought they'd been talked to by my friend already) it seemed to verify it for her. So she told Adam that she's going to keep booking him and the drummer and not me and the bass player, and that she's not going to book our other band anymore because she doesn't want to deal with people like that. I feel really bad that it came off that way because it was not what I was trying to say, I was trying to say that we're taking a break to let them get their shit together so we can come back prepared and ready to be serious about it, and that the same is not true of my other band, we're still ready to play the shows we have scheduled for January. So now she thinks poorly of me and the bass player which makes me feel the worst out of this whole thing because she's awesome, and a friend, and she's been really, really nice and cool and helpful to us. I feel really weird about it, guilty and kind of ashamed even though what she thinks is not what I was actually doing. But I realize I made a mistake, straight up, in the way I introduced the idea to her. I was careless with my words... I was coming from a place of extreme frustration at Adam and I was emboldened by the fact that she and I had vented about Adam before... hell, she even said once that if he doesn't get his shit together she is gonna have to stop booking us. But I was too cavalier and this is the result.
Next Adam said that me and the bass player are done playing music with them, that this is over, because they refuse to deal with people who would do something like this. He was really hurt (he considers me the only person around here who gets him at all and it hurt him that I would do that). I explained to him where I was coming from and what I was actually trying to communicate to the bartender... I told him how much it hurts that he behaves the way he does, and that I feel like it's holding the band back. I told him I have nothing but love and respect for him and I respect his decision on this, and that maybe energetically we're just not right to be in a band together because it feels so hard all the time. The conversation went really well, there was hugging and mutual respect, and afterwards we all hung out and laughed together and conversed and so forth. However through it all he continued to take no responsibility for his actions the night before or any of the other times, he really was not getting it, just kept using the "I was blacked out and don't remember so it's not really my fault" excuse, so I felt alright about parting ways as a band. I also found out he had already lined up new players to replace me and the bass player, prior to this, so I guess he was organizing things behind our backs too. So, I think it's for the best. Being in that band (or dealing with Adam actually) is the highest level of stress of anything I have dealt with in my life recently, consistently. And I really don't want to have band practice 6 days a week because of being in 2 bands, especially since my girlfriend is about to come back from California and I want to have time to spend with her. So it's probably the right move, and I think the chances of the band actually being successful, at least at this point in his life, are virtually zero. He is just a mess... he believes bad things just always happen to him but he makes them all happen... last time he was in town, he ended up homeless and jobless and broke... this time, he just recently got evicted again and has alienated most of his friends and is living in his van... he's frequently late for work, he has another warrant out for his arrest, it's like, homeless and broke and in trouble is how he always ends up. He's too unstable to be in a band with. I love the guy, I really do, but enough is enough. At this point it's toxic for me personally to be in that band and I've felt that way for a little while now, and so does the bass player, we were talking about it all day yesterday before this happened.
Still, it really hurts and the way it went down makes me feel very weird and bad. And I seemed to have burned a bridge with the place we'd been playing shows at the most often. I'm gonna try to send her a facebook message explaining my intentions and apologizing for how I went about it... even if it doesn't result in my other band (I guess my band, singular, now) getting booked there anymore, I just consider her a friend, and I see her around at shows and stuff, and I don't want her to think of me the way she's thinking of me now. I really did have a lapse in judgment about how to bring up and deal with this situation with her, and now I have to deal with that internally. Doesn't feel good.
