The Dread-Nots
Replacing that last plank on the poop deck
As you read in our last post, we recently replaced a key member on three days’ notice and the resulting tour went off pretty much without a hitch. Actually, a new sound and feel was injected into the violin and harmonies which gave our songs new life. This ability to swap people in has been key to the longevity of the band, and we now effectively have two functioning units, with the SSB (drums) and I traveling to either North America or UK/Europe and picking up three stragglers to play gigs.
But this got me thinking: how many members do you have to swap out before it’s no longer the same band? And this thought has given me a kind of insane idea. Wait until you hear it.
Anyway, in my line of work, we talk about this sort of problem a lot, in between changing the oil and replacing the bolts and washers on the Philosophy Machines down at the Philosophy Factory where I work. So there was this boat, in like, ancient times or whatever. The “Ship of Thesus”. And they kept replacing its parts when they became unusable, and eventually all of the parts had been replaced. But was it still the same ship as when it first sailed?
And obviously, the answer is: “oh my god, who cares, can you eggheads try to think about something useful for a change, like solving climate change or curing cancer?” To which my response is: no, fuck you, I managed to scam my way into a career where people pay me to think abstractly about boat repair, you’re just jealous. Nyah.
Anyway, the point is that whether we are the same band or not in our different guises, this member-replacement thing allows us to play way more shows than we otherwise would, because jobs and families and lives and stupid COVID keep lots of us from being able to just go anywhere. But still, every year we get about 40 requests from people in like Brazil, Slovenia, Greece and even Texas, to come and play some gig or festival or whatever and we have to turn them down. This is a lot of people who don’t get to see us who clearly want to, for some completely mysterious reason.
I’m getting sick of saying no to them. And that’s what provoked this insane idea in me. I’m opening up comments so you can tell me what you think.
What we do is we create an entirely new version of the band, filled with less attached musicians (who will almost certainly be younger and much more attractive) who would kill to go on a world tour and play to crowds of people and drink lots of booze. We train them up real good. I’d have to sit down with the guitarist/singer and devote Miyagi-esque levels of attention to him, making sure he knows just when to spit cider all over the stage, and just when to start verbally abusing the crowd, and how to do that endless, self-indulgent, seven-minute masturbatory banter in between songs so you don’t have to play very much music. Whack on, whack off.
And then we send this group of morons around the world playing our songs. Maybe tossing in a couple of covers that they feel like doing, maybe bringing their own terrible loser ba… uh, I mean, up-and-coming can’t-be-missed bands along as support. And all we ask for in return is 87% of the tour profits. Just kidding.
It sounds stupid right? It sounds like it wouldn’t be the Dreadnoughts, right? Well, listen, assholes, that’s the Ship of Thesus problem, that thing you said was useless a minute ago. We are already 3/5 members fluid. If we replaced one more and went 4/5 we’d still be the Dreadnoughts right? So why does replacing that final person suddenly magically make it a different band? HUH?? EXPLAIN IT TO ME!!!!
But the most compelling thing here is this: there are people in Austin and Athens and Arequipa who want to see us, and we are getting older, more attached, and much less mobile. There is a very good chance that they simply will never get to see us. Is it really better that we condemn them to this horrible, wretched fate, all because you purist jerkoffs don’t want to go from 4/5 to 5/5? REALLY??? HUH??????
Anyway, we’re thinking about it. It’s insane and stupid, but so was deciding to play punk and polka and sea shanties and klezmer at the same time, and that didn’t stop us.
Identity is fundamentally a linguistic rather than natural property of objects and thus the Ship of Theseus problem is conclusively answered by the arguments of late period Wittgenstein: fight me.
To apply this to less frivolous and lighthearted matters: the English word "band" is a linguistic label that most naturally refers (imo) to a specific group of people playing from a specific selection of musics. Of course, labels are flexible, and the word "band" is flexible enough to accommodate people playing Queen covers or inviting other musicians on stage at a festival. Even so, I'd argue that if that happens too much, it does wear away at the band's identity. Replacing all five members of the Dreadnoughts and calling it a Dreadnoughts gig would be quite a stretch to the identity of the Dreadnoughts as a band. However, to quote thedreadnoughts.com/bio:
"The Dreadnoughts aren’t really a band, they’re an advocacy group, ruthlessly promoting the idea that folk and punk music form a perfect union."
And see, "advocacy group" is a much more flexible identity label than "band". Dreadnoughts-trained musicians performing as The Dreadnoughts might be a stretch, but Dreadnoughts-trained musicians performing as Representatives Of The Dreadnoughts Institute Of Acoustic Studies* seems to me less so. It fulfils the important goal of letting people who want to experience a Dreadnoughts-inspired gig do so, without getting the knickers of purist-jerkoffs-such-as-I in a twist about diluting the identity of the Dreadnoughts band name. And more than that, it offers an opportunity to promulgate The Dreadnoughts' identity and "what it stands for" (i.e. punk, cider, aggro trad folk and loud guitars exalting each of these virtues) beyond any one band that might adopt the name. Ideas can fly further than mere mortals, after all, hence why Theseus is still getting talked about 2500 years later.
(*they should probably use a less shitty band name, unless y'all like that sort of things in which case I will take my copyright royalties in loose cans of Strongbow)
The interesting thing about the identity issue in the Ship of Theseus is that new components were integrated alongside old components. If all of the new components were simply assembled on their own, entirely separate from the original ship, you'd still have the same end product of the exact ship model with all of the same parts, but it would clearly be a different ship because it is fully distinct from the old one. If you intend to train up local bands to carry on your energy, that would certainly be blurring the line significantly more than an entirely new ship constructed from parts that never interacted with their predecessors.
On the flipside of this thought experiment, consider how much every single venue you've played at more than once experiences this same exact phenomenon: the audio equipment might've been replaced since last time, venue staff might have moved on and been replaced, and most importantly it's not the exact same crowd. There are likely going to be some but not all of the old faces and hopefully a bunch of new faces to the next concert in the same city. The energy of the crowd persists all the same.
I'm reminded of a previous substack post on how polka might actually die wherein you said that the focus of the music shifted away from the community aspects and into the fame of the band. If you subvert that by enabling anyone who wants to participate in the music to become a performer for the band, that both de-emphasizes the reverence with which members of the band might be treated *and* offers significantly more opportunities for community growth through music by just generally increasing the total amount of concerts being played. In turn, that increases the amount of opportunities for people with similar niche tastes in music to find others who share their tastes and have some chaotic fun.
Also, what were the inspiring influences behind Tuika? I can't quite put my finger on it.