a night in the life of a cover band...

StuffnJunk wrote:

haha, i'm in a cover band, we play:

Brown Eyed Girl
Sweet Home Alabama
Killing in the Name
Don't Stop Believing

but no Rod Stewart....so we have just about all the bases covered, no pun intended

lol, yeah, our band only plays sweet home alabama from that list. and that is sparingly, so the girl in the video would have been a mega bitch to us....lol..

we always get drunk girls asking for brown eyed girl, possum kingdom by the toadies, and blister in the sun by violent femmes....we never learned any of those songs because every other cover band in history plays those...we tried to distinguish ourselves by playing stuff you don't hear every weekend..

StuffnJunk wrote:

thats so funny you say that, cuz our singer wants us to add possum kingdom, and i'm kind of opposed cuz i HATE that song, but thats not what a cover band is about...and we do play blister in the sun

as far as not playing songs that every other cover band in history plays, the thing is - they get a reaction...brown eyed girl has NEVER failed to make the girls dance....if your gonna be in a cheesy cover band, embrace it!!!

i would not consider my band a "cheesy" cover band. we play the biggest places in the st. louis metro area and get to travel sometimes to play big places elsewhere. we draw large crowds and make bars a TON of money. as such we get paid handsomely and have the luxury of calling our own shots. since there is a lot of money at stake for the venues we HAVE to deliver and we have to put on an amazing show and as a result it has become a business of sorts. we have been at it for 7 years and have a great reputation. as a result we play what we want to play and people still follow us and we pretty much ignore the cheesy requests we get. if we were playing really small rooms for $30 a guy per show i would embrace it and be more cheesy, but the current reputation we have would not allow it.

i like possum kingdom but i would never play it since everyone else does, same with vioent femmes. the way our band is set up, we have to agree 4-1 to play a song. the only time we ever argue or anything is over songs. each guy has veto power that can be used equally. if someone nominates a song we vote on it and if it gets 4 votes for we learn it. if the one dissenting guy absolutely hates it or thinks we will have a problem with it or we can't pull it off he can veto it and then we arrange a compromise. that is how we end up playing things like Muse and stuff that is not the most popular thing on the charts but we get a good reaction when people are like "wow i have never heard anyone other than the original artist play that song and pull it off..." the veto is very rarely used because the 5 of us are mostly team players, but sometimes someone throws down the gauntlet with a veto...we actually have a "banned band" list that we will never play a song by those particular bands, so that is kinda funny i think.

StuffnJunk wrote:

do you have any samples of your band online, a website, myspace, or youtube stuff? we have old stuff with our past singers, will have a demo with our current singer up on myspace soon

not right now. we had some stuff that was about 3 years old audio and video on our website but we took it down because we all bought some vintage marshalls and updated our pdal boards and that footage was no longer and accurate representation of our sound. we are working on a demo of 7 songs and are in the process of mastering recordings of an entire show from a few months ago. that is a slow process but we hope to have it ready and posted in the next 2 months or so. sorry.

FrankieG wrote:

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gimmesometruth27 wrote:

we actually have a "banned band" list that we will never play a song by those particular bands, so that is kinda funny i think.

Who is on the list??

LOL, most of you can probably guess...

creed
nickelback
live (our bass player hates thier guts for some reason)
guns n roses (every band around here tries to pull it off but fails)
my chemical romance (singer has permanent veto on these guys because he can't hit the highs anymore, yet he can falsetto his ass off for the darkness)
dream theater- we tried to learn a song of theirs a few years ago and was like "screw this stuff, its too hard")
harvey danger (everyone plays their one song, so we refuse)

there are a few others that i am forgetting. i will see the guys at our show tonight and will try to remember the rest.

Fuzzy Bidali wrote:

That was very funny. I play in a Pearl Jam Tribute band.

We had a gig a while ago and this dude yelled "Spin the Black Circle" in between every song we played. I bet even if we'd played STBC, he would have still yelled it out.

We do almost always get someone yelling for Ledbetter in our first set, or showing up in the third and asking for Corduroy.

that is too funny...everyone that has ever seen PJ knows that corduroy is played in the first 10 songs and ledbetter is last or 2nd to last usually...

we close with ledbetter nearly every show and have done so since our first show nearly 8 years ago. it is amazing to have the soundguy bring up the house lights and watching everyone in the crowd swaying left to right to left in unison and singing the choruses...so many cover bands around here close with something really hard like rage or tool or metallica but we choose to play a hard ass third set and then we close with a slower song like ledbetter...it is the perfect finisher...

FrankieG wrote:

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gimmesometruth27 wrote:

creed
nickelback
live (our bass player hates thier guts for some reason)
guns n roses (every band around here tries to pull it off but fails)
my chemical romance (singer has permanent veto on these guys because he can't hit the highs anymore, yet he can falsetto his ass off for the darkness)
dream theater- we tried to learn a song of theirs a few years ago and was like "screw this stuff, its too hard")
harvey danger (everyone plays their one song, so we refuse)

there are a few others that i am forgetting. i will see the guys at our show tonight and will try to remember the rest.

Ok, I can live with that list, But come-on... Harvey Danger: Flagpole Sitta, that one I would actually like to play

I am learning guitar at the moment actually.. What were the songs that you started out with, or the ones that are good, popular sing-a-longs? I have been learning some Pearl Jam songs, but I would like to impress the adults that i would be playing to.

haha yeah that is a pretty good list lol...i would like to play harvey danger too but someone in the band vetoed it because too many bands around here play it.

i started out playing in 1993 with some pretty easy tunes. the first 3 i learned were queensryche's silent lucidity and metallica's nothing else matters and unforgiven because they were really easy and were mad popular at the time. then i started to learn the songs that inspired me to pick up the guitar in the first place that were tabbed out in all the latest guitar mags, smellls like teen spirit, alive, release, green day stuff, glycerine and everything zen by bush, etc...i didnt really worry much about people who might watch me play because i was learning for ME, not THEM and at that point i had no aspirations of ever being good enough to play in a band so it was easy to play what i wanted to learn. after that in late 1993 or early '94 i discovered the greatest thing ever, internet tab. pretty much any song you want to learn can be found tabbed out somewhere online.

if you are going to play in front of older people you might consider some older classic songs. depending on their age, they might enjoy some early 90s grunge standards, but you can't go wrong with things like simple man, or sweet home alabama from skynard and wish you were here by pink floyd b/c everyone knows those, i particularly liked big head todd back then and some of their stuff was easy and quite good. then i discovered the lemonheads and figured out that about 90% of their songs transition well to being played solo acoustically so i soaked up most of their songs. in about 1996 i started tooling around with bands and never really looked back from there.

if i were you i would play what YOU like and if it is a good song then people you play it in front will recognize that it is a good tune and even if you make a mistake or two they will appreciate it because it is a good song. in my experience, the audience is there and they want to be taken on a ride and it is your job to entertain them and make them have a good time. you just have to tell yourself that 95%of the people there do not play guitar and could not do a better job than you can. that is how i do it, especially when i play and sing solo in front of large groups. i am a decent player but i suck as a singer, and i really know that. the best advice i can give you is "say screw it, just go for it and see what happens"....i hope that answers your questions, most importantly do not quit or give up. good luck..

FrankieG wrote:

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gimmesometruth27 wrote:

because i was learning for ME, not THEM

This is exactly what I needed to hear.

Thank you

I like learning the riffs to my favorite songs, but then my dad is like "play me a song" and i dont really know a full song all the way through. I can't sing and play at the same time very well so I havent really learned the chorus or verse etc. of the songs that i like..

This gets me discouraged... And then I feel like I cant really play and that I am just faking it. :roll:

I really appreciate all of your advice. Hopefully, when I have alot more years experience, I want to be in a band. Its probably not a realistic option but it's a goal..

you are welcome. we are here to help each other and i remember being in your shoes years ago. it just takes some practice and some encouragement. if i were you,. i would learn some early bob dylan, before he plugged in, back when it was just him and an acoustic guitar. those songs are timeless and everyone knows and loves them. most of them are played with open chords, are pretty easy, and if you have ever heard dylan sing live, i would be hard pressed to believe that you sing worse than he does lol...good luck.