Shared Experiences should not be 'doing the work'...

You hear a lot of people talking about 'shared experiences' and how much more powerful they are in life. I'm here to testify!

In my time as a musician I've played for years and years with the same groups - sometimes playing 5 nights a week together, others playing every weekend for many years in a row - and the 'bonding' aspect of music can take a while to settle in. When you are a group of 4 or 5 people juggling jobs, families AND your rehearsals and shows, you spend some time together, but it is mostly focused on the task at hand. Eventually, you become friends for real and some non-music time starts to happen, but a lot of the time it is still a small part of the 'hobby' or 'side job' that is playing in a band (when it isn't your full-time gig). 

Most of these projects have been local - sometimes like HYPER local - so you each drive in your own car filled with your own gear and meet up with the gang at the venue - the work becomes the shared experience, which I think is one 'light' version of the shared experiences that these engagement gurus talk about. You can't really get into the real-life shared experience when the work is the experience - that's just 'work'!

I've recently started playing with a band and I've played two private party gigs with them so far. Both of these shows have been more than 8 hours away from Henderson/Vegas. That means I have already spent more time in a vehicle with these 3 guys that I just met than the total amount of non-gig time I spent with some (most) of the other projects in the past. In two gigs we have figured out the personalities in the car, we've shared personal stories (and they saw LOTS of pictures of my daughter) and developed 'in-jokes' that help craft the starting of the shared language that groups of friends have.

We talked about it on the first trip - how strange it is that we had all just met and had gotten together just a couple of times for rehearsals and now we are in a truck loaded up with a trailer full of gear and we're heading 8 hours north together. It could have been a very stressful situation. It could have been two or three days of 'putting up with' a bad personality or we could have found out in the middle of a show that someone just isn't a good fit - but had to get through the show anyway... but it wasn't. This group works well together. I wonder if we had rehearsed and played a local show if it would have gone the same way. I kind of doubt it.

What did we have that made this awkward situation good? First, the right group of people - which is kind of a crap-shoot with musicians. Could have been really ugly if one of the rare jerk-type musicians had been called. Could have been stressful for Type-A musicians like myself if the flaky slacker musician had taken the gig. It could have been rough if Sammy (whose band it is) was unorganized, unreasonable or unbearable as the front-man (and they are often the WORST), but he wasn't. SO first, as much as you can control it - GET THE RIGHT PEOPLE!

We also all wanted to make sure it was a good show. Shocking, right? It's important to note that some guys would take a gig as a 'hired gun' and just be there to make it through because the gig payed. We all put in time on our own to learn the material so that rehearsals were more about fine-tuning than learning and there was less for anyone to worry about once we hit the stage. This was Sammy's band, but every part is important (and/or can make it a 'bad show'). WE ALL HAD THE SAME DRIVE TOWARDS A COMMON GOAL

Lastly, and I think it is what made this really work is that we were in the truck for 8 hours together the first time we worked together. It wasn't a cumulative 8 hours of rehearsing and playing in the same bar/on the same stage, it was 8 hours to get to know each other. We spent that time talking about ourselves, past musical experiences, general things in life and just 'being real' with each other. In one leg of our first 'mini tour' (an inside joke that came up on the second 'mini tour' about how funny it is that people call a one-off out-of-town show or a couple of shows in a short time frame a 'Tour'... ) we had had more time on the trip there than we had spent together rehearsing. We got our minds into 'figure this out mode' as human beings navigating something together. We weren't playing the show or rehearsing, we were driving North for HOURS... By the time we got to our hotel in Elko, NV it felt more like a road trip with friends we had known for a while. I think that if we had been playing locally it would have taken months - literally - to get to this kind of familiarity - and it shows on stage. You connect and communicate differently. THE SHARED EXPERIENCE WE HAD WAS NOT DOING THE WORK - ALLOWING US TO REMOVE THAT ONE ASPECT AND 'BE REAL' IN A WAY THAT YOU JUST CAN'T WHEN THERE IS WORK TO BE DONE.

So, I agree - shared experiences create an opportunity to bond, to connect and to build relationships on in a way that you just can't get with 'stuff' - but you also might not get the same results if the experience is doing the work. Find ways that are reasonable to make it extra-curricular, get away from the work TOGETHER and 'be real' with each other!