Bottom Five: What the top five left out.

1) Divorce?

Just because you’re all in a band doesn’t mean you should put a ring on it. Sometimes it doesn't work out. In fact, it happens a lot. "It becomes a business if you want to take it serious and do something with it," Clayton Anderson of the Clayton Anderson Band says. "There's been a couple times when I've had to let somebody go and it stinks, and it's a big regret because he's such a great guy. But if you don't then you're holding everybody back.”

2) Create opportunities

Be a go-getter, not a come-get-me, even if you don’t immediately succeed. After winning a contest to open for Kenny Chesney in Cincinnati, Anderson took a trip to Nashville and started knocking on company doors...where he was promptly laughed at.

?"Since we did the thing with Kenny Chesney, I thought I would go ahead with his management company (Dale Morris & Associates, Inc.)," Anderson says. "I just kind of went up and knocked on the door and said, 'I'm here to see Dale Morris.' They all kind of laughed at me and then informed me that I couldn't just show up and see him, that I needed an appointment, and even then I probably wouldn't be successful.”

3) Bring the heat ?

Don't ever relax or get too comfortable. "You can't get complacent," Jip Jop sax player Davis Jones says. "You can't ever get comfortable with what you're doing."

Coyaba's secret weapon is their dub master, Clint Carty. Dub is a reggae post-recording effect that hasn’t been done much since the 1970s, which makes its sound really unique, guitarist Brett Holcomb says.

4) Go broke?

If you're in it for the money, get out. Splitting a $100 gig five ways doesn't exactly buy your groceries, especially when you're financing musical gear and cross-country road trips. But going broke pays for itself in gigs and exposure.

 "Every show, we get more people and more money," the Main Squeeze guitarist Max Newman says. No one makes money off the band, individually, says South Jordan's Mike Chan, but the money goes to the band's fund so they can pay for expenses such as equipment and travel. 

5) Practice at some point.

Don't ask us why this didn't make the top five. Ask the bands.