Mark RobergeFounder, Artist Strategy, Make Our Music · Your A&R. Without the Gatekeepers.

From Covers to Gigs: My Band's Explosive Growth Story #shorts

15 Feb 2026 · 2 min

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2:03

In this first‑person narrative, the speaker recounts the evolution of his musical career over roughly two years. He began by drumming with his roommate Brendan, forming a casual covers/originals group that lasted a few years. After being dismissed from that band for not meeting drumming expectations, he joined a nearby rehearsal‑space band as a vocalist, quickly contributing lyrics and songs. That band, named Controlled Aggression, later saw Jim replace its guitarist. Jim’s addition triggered a rapid escalation in the group’s activity, moving from occasional weekend gigs (one show every other month) to a packed schedule of seven to eight shows per month. The story highlights key turning points—initial drumming, the switch to vocals, Jim’s entry—and illustrates how a modest weekend‑warrior project transformed into a high‑frequency performing act within a short timeframe.

Chapters

That band started doing pretty well. I mean, it's a long story, but we'll try to condense it. So originally I just started goofing around on drums with my roommate Brendan. And we just were doing covers and just kind of goofing around and wrote a couple of originals, you know, decided just like, all right, let's just pick a name and start, you know, trying to write some songs and find other players. So that band lasted, I don't know, maybe two, three years of, you know, while we were busy anyway. And then. How old were you? How old were you at that time? Probably 1:22, I want to say. Okay. And then that band started doing pretty well, but I wasn't really, you know, holding up my end of the deal with drums because I was just like a kind of a glorified hack. And so they kind of gave me the boot and. And that, you know, Jim was in the band at that time, and I was still interested in, you know, performing, and I still liked, you know, playing live and writing. So I quickly, you know, kind of found another band down the hall from a rehearsal space, and they. They were looking for a vocalist and I was like, yeah, I'll do that, you know. So I took the dirt demo home and just wrote some lyrics and went down like, I don't know, a couple days later and, you know, did a couple songs and everybody liked it. So I was like, all right, let's just do this. So started singing in that band and, you know, that band started doing well. And then, long story short, you know, Jim ended up leaving the band that I was in, which was controlled aggression. And he. He came to replace the guitar player. And then everything just kind of snowballed from there. But that happened fairly quickly. I mean, it was probably over a two year period that things went from totally just a weekend warrior type of play, like one gig every other month, to playing like seven, eight shows a month.