I used to have a band, back in the day. It had a very catchy name. The Jim McCarter band. Yeah, that isn't original at all. Why did I pick that as a name? Honestly, I had a couple reasons, maybe not good ones but I had reasons.
One of my thoughts was that if the band disentegrated, I would still have name recognition. I was the driving force behind the band. I was the lead vocalist, the acoustic guitar player, songwriter, gig getter, set list maker and I had the PA and speakers.
The other reason I chose that name was I had learned how important it is to get your brand out there. I used to have a real estate license and I sold homes with my sister, Lana Mae Leach and her husband Robin. It was a great part time job. I worked for them. They had their names in the paper with how many dollars of home sales they achieved for the year. My name was not in the local newspaper. My sales were under their name or their brand. That was when I learned how important it is to build your own brand.
I had two other musicians in the band. Jason Finson was the bass player. He is one of the finest bass players I know. He had more musical ability and band knowledge than me. He went on to bigger and better things. He's a rock star.
Atef Khalil was the drummer. He played a mean, and loud hand drum. Jason and him could really get a groove going on a song. This made it so much fun to play and sing along to. Atef and I both worked at Dillons grocery store. Dillons is part ot the Kroger grocery store chain. It is not much different that any business. Atef and I were assistant store managers and they thought they owned our lives. And they were right. It was impossible to work around our work schedules.
I used to talk and tell stories between songs. It was basically filler. You needed filler time when you were going to be playing for three hours. We had between 30-40 songs on our set lists to fill. I would talk about things off the top of my head. Jason didn't say I was funny but he did say he liked my witty banter.
Maybe that should of been our band name. Witty Banter. Sounds like a idea but I think I'll just go solo and stick with Jim McCarter- Kansas Songwriter. Not to original but it gets my name and music out there.