Losing faith in what Im doing.

[Low End Scum]

people like to hear stuff they know. I've never heard any of those three songs. IMO, it's fine to sneak in some deeper covers or more obscure tracks if most of the set is easily recognizable. There's plenty of funky covers you guys can borrow or, it sounds you people have enough chops to be able to take some poppy stuff and make it funky or soulful. I personally enjoy putting genre spins on songs. IME, it's not so much about contemporary, but about recognition.

Full disclosure: I feel the same way about our song choices - I'd heard about 15% of our playlist before joining and I wonder if the general population would have any better recognition. I know this style is way more about grooves and getting booties shaking than sing-alongs, but I believe the audience still likes to hear stuff they know.

Best of luck and yes, 12 years is a very long time to hold onto a dream like this.

Herein lies the rub in my opinion. My cover band plays "crowd pleasers". Radio Rock that gets the soccer moms who wish they were still going to see Blink 182 at Warp Tour or going on about the Killers interested in catching a show. People like it. People cheer. My drummer won't play any faster or heavier than Blink 182. We don't make edits to the tracks for our "style". That band I think has potential to either phase the covers out in favor of originals, or to be an event playing "wallpaper music" and playing radio hits type of band. For me, I get to get out of the house, play music in front of people, and not stress to much about an "emotional investment" in what we're doing. Frankly, I wouldn't listen to more than 1 or 2 tracks out of our hour and 10 minute current tracklist. It's about getting out there and playing live to a good response.

My other band, which is one that I definitely get way more musical appreciation and enjoyment out of is really not anyones cup of tea but ours. It's not in vogue. Bands that sound similar aren't popping up out of the underground. I couldn't care less. In my best situations I've run 2 bands. 1 that is for having a crowd be excited, and 1 that is entirely selfish. Given the choice between the 2, I'd pick being entirely selfish because I do this for me.

If, however, you're still fighting for getting to play what you as a player deeply deeply love and get musical satisfaction out of while also maintaining a following and bringing in sizeable groups to bars well......if you ever find the secret panacea to that other than happening to like whats popular at the time please let me know.

 

[Beej]

You guys sound fantastic - I was in a working funk band in the early 90s and we were maybe half as good as you guys functionally, but we were all in our early 20s, hot, had high energy and were playing in a busy and wide ranging venue circuit.

When I listened to funk back in the day, which was in the late 80s/early 90s, the music was only a decade old. You'd still hear bigger songs played on the radio. What you guys are running into now, would have been the equivalent of playing music from the 40s to a 90's crowd. That's older than my parents at the time. So yeah, you sound great, but the music at this point is arguably archaic. I can get my teenagers to listen to 90's grunge and newer, but going older than that just doesn't have the same grab to them. Deftones totally trumps Led Zeppelin to them, hands down and James Brown is 'funny sounding old people music'.

I think there's nothing wrong with it, but I'm also in the camp of your needing to do more covers and known songs rather than focusing on originals. If you love them, that's great, but how many audience members will love them? I love funk and for the right band, I might even actually go out to see them, but I'm certainly your target demographic, (if not even a decade older than me) and how many of us pack the scene to enjoy music right now? Where I am, it's few.

 

[pepj]

I think it's a fine line and quite an art.
We steer away from the songs tgat everybody does but find there is still enough around to be creative and also get people going.
We've put up our rate which is beginning to price ourselves out of the circuit where all the 'same' bands come from. This can be a positive and negative thing but we think if we really want to do that gig..we can drop accordingly but the realisation is that 80% of those gigs are not worth doing anyway.
Where that leads to is agency work, higher prices and likely tickets.
The latter isn't quite so drastic as it seems because venues are finding band rates a struggle so a cover is required.
The people who will pay a cover are also people who expect something different in terms of show and quality.
So, imv, the circle of a journey is joining.
The scene has 3 levels now, local cover, tribute and ticket covers and rates are way different.