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Also seriously miss Coeur D'Alene :^( I used to go to wrestling camps at North Idaho when I was younger and loved it

How long have you been in Spokane?

Man, if only you'd posted this, like, 5 years ago... I grew up in CDA. Maybe things have changed but the "music scene" was pretty sleepy up there when I left. Good luck finding folks.

Just posting cuz it's kinda surreal to see this thread at all, I guess.

The most important thing I have found is that your drummer basically NEEDS an in-ear feed from the chip part, or at least proper monitoring.  Things can fall apart real quick if the drummer gets lost and the robot keeps playing.
Also, everyone trying to do this should listen to Crying.

http://wearecrying.bandcamp.com/

Yeah, been there multiple times. Pretty much everybody has to take a hit and give up some of their personal time in order to make stuff work. For a while it only worked for one of my later bands to play during the weekend, and that was the only time I had to spend by myself/with my lady. I was the practice enforcer though, so I had to bite the bullet and basically piss off my girlfriend every weekend instead of relaxing and recovering from my then really shitty job. I would have been a huge hypocrite otherwise, haha. Another time in that same band it only worked for us to play Fridays from 9-11 pm. Then for two weeks running everyone showed up at practice but the guitarist. That band ended up ending abruptly due to awkward schedule demands and some grabass between band members over a girl. That's what you get for being in a band with teenagers. Zing! Nah, being in a band with the right teenagers can be fine.

After personnel, schedule is one of the hardest parts of playing music. Everybody needs to be on the same page and be willing to make some sacrifices. If a band member isn't with that it can cause friction surprisingly fast. Keep clear and open lines of communication about the schedule, and even specific practice dates. Call your bandmates the night before practice and remind them... I know that seems like a no-brainer, but I can't even count the number of times I've watched (or been) the band leader dude angrily on the phone trying to find out where the missing member is. "Oh dude, I'm at the laundromat, be there in an hour and 45 minutes." Sweet. Now we have half the intended practice time and an awkward hour of trying to practice without that member...

There will be times when you'll only be able to squeeze out a practice a week, and that's fine if you're just playing for the hell of it. If you're serious though, you'll want to look at the member who's dragging the band down in a more critical light. I've been in the situation of having the dude who I co-founded a band with pretty much lose interest, but if I brought that up he'd get all butthurt and talk me down over it. The second week in a row he showed up to the practice spot too late to finish a setlist before our time was up, I quit the band. It was a damn shame, but sometimes you're the only one who can be honest in a situation.

TLDR;
Scheduling is a bitch, good luck.
Don't ever let people waste your time. Don't ever be the guy wasting other people's time. Learn how to be honest with yourself about both.

I would encourage you to set semistrict practice times. If they cant commit to tuesday at 8, then how are you to play gigs.

As shite and corny as it sounds, you've got to be able to write music to be in a band, not just play an instrument with skill. Although this is non-chip, my band and I all have a lot of music in common, mostly punk stuff, which is what we try and write. It helps if you have more than one thing going on, don't get stuck in a JUST band rut.

As far as writing better music, preforming well and progressing as a unit, there is no secret at all. You can take lessons, read books on your instrument, spend money on better/more reliable gear and get the collective effervescence of the band going by being truly into it. All that stuff is great and will help in superficial ways, but the truth is, none of that shit matters at all if you don't practice. Practice every day you can possibly imagine practicing. Make a schedule and write it out on calendars for each bandmate... At the height of my best live band we were practicing 5-7 days a week. 2-4 hours a day. We made this work because we had a dedicated practice space, the three of us had 9-5 jobs and lived within 45 minutes bus-distance from each other. Did we get sick of each other? Yeah, but not to the point of violence. Did we get bored to death of the same setlist? Yeah, really quickly, actually. Was it all worth it to go on stage and absolutely floor audiences every time? Yup.

Working with channel economy like this is a great start to making your stuff sound way more full. A single channel does not mean just one single instrument has to be on it. So when you have all your channels doing this at once, it makes a huge sound! Many times it sounds like a track has more going on than there actually is - for example, you can definitely get away with placing a kick drum in the middle of a bassline (or even during a lead melody) without people noticing too much. If your song is busy enough, it might not even sound like the note is missing at all! Use all channels together instead of separating them based on "kick channel, drum channel, chord channel, and lead channel" and you'll find making this stuff isn't as difficult as it seems. Can't fit a kick drum in the pulse channel? Put one in the WAV. Can't fit your lead in the WAV? Put part of it in a pulse channel. Mix it up not just by the measure, but even per pattern...or even per note.