It happened to me a few years ago, I’d joined them, they were a jazz outfit doing lots of well paid gigs. I’d just started my MMus, which took up more time up than I’d envisaged. I had told the guy before I joined that I was going to start it. They didn’t rehearse; no real need to, we were playing from lead sheets. Then a new guitarist joined and wanted to rehearse, which is when things went wrong, I couldn’t spare the time. They admitted the guy that took over from me was nowhere near is good, that didn’t really make it any better. I enjoyed playing with them, and I lost a source of income.
it has happened to friends too, and it’s happened to other musicians in bands that I’ve been part of. It’s partly why in the end I stopped being an actual member of a band, and just did dep gigs. I couldn’t stand it, I’m very much a loner, it used to really annoy me when people would try and embroil me in the inter-band politics.
The last thing I was a part of was actually really good, it was more of a collective, three bassists, one doubled on guitar too, two drummers, a couple of sax players, two keyboard players, two vocalists. It was organised so that everyone got an equal share of the gigs, not every gig needed a vocalist; we were playing jazz, it worked really well, they were great musicians and really nice people. I was the youngest by about 30 years, maybe that’s why it worked so well, them being more mature?