Man, my best bud drummer I essentially grew up with was a ridiculous drummer as a teen, went to Berklee and attached himself to Mike Mangini the 2 years he was there, double bass labs, independence labs, he was a total prog metal nerd then and comes out of Berklee as you’d expect; a fucking phenomenal technically capable drummer.
Dude joins a band playing this kind of music, moves to Nashville and in 2 weeks he’s playing a suitcase for a kick drum with a bunch of kids who faked being poor for a good 2 years doing there whole ‘roots/Americana’ thing.
They did a little East coast tour and came back up to where we were from, my buddy tells us immediately “Hey, don’t offer to buy anyone anything, they’re going to start pooling their change together acting like they’re broke, it’s literally an act, they’ve all got their parent’s credit cards, I’m making stupid money doing this tour”
He stuck it out because they were throwing money at him but some of the stories we’d hear about them, well….anyone who fakes being poor as if it gives them some kind of merit is a fucking moron, so you can imagine the kind of stories that’d come along with that.