I am a musician/singer with over 35 years of experience. I agreed to leave my full time sales job with AT&T to join Jim Oliver's "Teen Angels" band. This decision was made after Mr. Oliver showed me the schedule of guaranteed upcoming jobs for the band, and after I informed him of the musical jobs that I had to honor in the near future.
I emailed Mr. Oliver the four dates that I could not play with his band, and he said it would be no problem to find a replacement for me on those dates.
About three weeks before the first of those dates was coming up, I emailed Mr. Oliver again, as a reminder, and I personally asked him if he had received my email concerning those dates. He agreed that he had received them.
One week before the first of those dates came up, he was speaking to us about the jobs for the next weekend. I reminded him that I would not be there, and he became angry, stating that it was my job to remind him of things like that.
I told him that I had reminded him, and later sent him the emails (that I had wisely saved) to prove it. I also told him that I would drive all night to return from the job, in order to make it for a job that I had told him I could not make, in order to make it easier on him.
He returned an email to me, not only stating that I would miss the jobs that I had told him about, but he then included several other upcoming gigs that he would use his former guitarist with.
Obviously, he was in the wrong, and he was taking it out on me. Also, I could not allow a precident to be set where he could just use whoever he wanted to, whenever he felt like it.
I sent several emails, and left several voice messages for him to contact me. He would not respond.
After several days of being ignored, I left a message stating that if I did not hear from him, I would no longer work for his band.
Several days after that, he sent an email to me, indicating that the whole thing was my fault, and wishing me "Good Luck" (Yeah, same to you, buddy!)
And here is the part that all other musicians should know who work for him: Jim Oliver books the band, and pays his "sidemen" (who have more talent in their thumbs than he will ever have) anywhere from $100 to $250 per job. Jim, meanwhile, is pocketing as much as $1,000 per job for himself.
Unprofessional: When I joined the band, we had one vocal rehearsal (where I made cassette tepe recordings of the parts that I had been assigned to sing) and then only one full band rehearsal before playing jobs. At that rehearsal, Jim spent most of the time totally changing the vocal parts (that I had spent hours of time memorising) to whatever suited him, with very little time spent on learning the material.
Not only did this leave me with little to go on (after thirty years of fronting this band, Jim had absolutely no tapes or CDs of their songs to give me in order to rehearse their arrangements) but when we went back to playing live, Jim and the others went back to singing their old parts (most of the time). Then, of course, it was the new guys fault.
There were no more rehearsals. At live jobs, Jim would just call out whatever songs he wanted (regardless of if it had ever even been mentioned before) and expect it to come out great.
Gee! I wish I had a job where I could just walk on the stage with only a microphone, sing like an effeminate Potsy ("Don't strain those precious vocal cords!"), ripoff my co-workers and treat them like low-lifes who should be kissing my ass just to be in my presence.
In my estimation, by inducing me to quit my full-time job, and then creating a hostile job environment which left me with no respectful choice except to offer my resignation if things were not put right, Jim oliver owes me at least $5,000 for lost wages.
All Detroit area musicians, beware.
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