I know exactly what you have in mind, Jay. I play keyboard and sax in a 5 piece band with guitar, bass, drums, and a lead singer who also plays a little keyboard and harmonica. A keyboard really helps if you can find a good keyboard player. It's hard to play both sax and keys, so I do some sequencing, and our lead singer plays a few chords here and there. First of all, you're going to need some sound equipment. You might need to invest in a small PA system. You might look at Musician's friend (www.musiciansfriend.com). They have some packages that are very affordable. Of course, you will need a couple microphones, chords and stands and all the accessories. I would suggest a mixer with a built in effects unit and power amp for starters. I would advertise in your local music store, or maybe on a bullitin board at school; "looking for musicians, ages ??-?? nterested in starting a band to play locally" and list the instrumentation that you are looking for. Perhaps you might run across someone who already owns a PA system. Look for musicians who also sing. Everyone in our band sings, including me. We do a lot of old time rock and roll, and some doo wop music, and the vocal harmonies just sound so good. Of course, you want to try to find people with the same musical interests. You'll want to audition players, and when you have enough people to form a band; you'll want to get together and make up a song list together of the songs that you know, or that you want to learn. Think about your audience and the types of gigs that you intend to play. Our band plays a lot of dance music. We play a lot of local bars and clubs, and we try to get people up on the dance floor. Start with your cover songs. Once you've put together a list of about 40 songs or more, start making some CD's of these songs to listen to and practice with. Eventually maybe you'll want to work up a couple original songs. Try to get your band together at least once a week to practice for 2-3 hours. In the meantime, make sure that your band-mates have copies of the songs that you want to do. Pick a couple songs off that cd to work on between practices. It'll probably take a couple months of practicing to put it all together. It's a lot of work! Keeping a band together is one of the hardest things in the world to do it seems! Good Luck, Jim