Since my rhythm guitarist buddy and I left our bar band we've been playing around with the idea of a 'sing-cubator', where we connect with a singer and work up and open mic set for them. First collaborator is a young dude, Rydell, who wants to be in an R.E.M. cover band. He's a very talented singer, and has sung on stage with Dead Letter Office (an R.E.M. tribute act out of NY) at one of their shows. We've got a 25 minute set of IRS era songs (Radio Free Yurp, So. Central, Boxcars, Can't Get There from Here, Annelise, Rockville, Driver 8) and it's been well received at the handful of open mics we've played at. Even got offered a last-minute gig at one of the venues, but had to decline as they wanted an hour and we've only got half of that ready to go. So in a very limited format the concept seems to work.
So here's my deal; huge fan of R.E.M.'s early stuff, which I discovered as a HS freshman, and love playing Mike's lines. Over the years I've likely at least played along to everything they wrote prior to '87. So I'm super intrigued at the possibility, but don't want to lead a young dude astray. Had a look at Dead Letter Office's schedule, and it looks like they play about every weekend, but it's always a Friday night in one city, then Saturday in another city in the same state. Kind of what I figured a successful tribute band would be doing, as they're not going to get booked at the local bar more than once a year or so, I expect. We do have two more singers in the pipeline, and Rydell has met the one of them. They seemed to hit it off, and I think we can probably get them to sing backup for each other during their sets. She's got a more mixed list of Alanis, Cheryl, No Doubt, etc. Got a couple of drummers lined up to audition over the next couple of weeks.
Realistically, I think the play is to prod our little project into becoming a band with 2-3 singers, and eventually writing some original songs that suit our combined style. Should be no problem getting 2-4 gigs a month locally with the usual 'covers and a few originals' format. But I'm also pretty into the idea of the single artist cover thing. We're in the DC area, so we could likely book a show in VA, one in DC, and another in MD to keep from cannibalizing our own crowds, but that still not a whole lot of chances to play out. Guess Baltimore, Fredericksburg, Richmond, etc. are also in range, but my guess is we'd be able to book 6 local-ish shows a year at best.
Anyone got experience in a band like that? Am I possibly entirely wrong in my demand estimate? Not really into going full tribute, or spending entire weekends on the road, but if we could keep even a little busy close to home I'd be way into it. I guess the thing to do would be to keep working on the multi-singer configuration while adding R.E.M. songs and see which setup gets asked to play?
So here's my deal; huge fan of R.E.M.'s early stuff, which I discovered as a HS freshman, and love playing Mike's lines. Over the years I've likely at least played along to everything they wrote prior to '87. So I'm super intrigued at the possibility, but don't want to lead a young dude astray. Had a look at Dead Letter Office's schedule, and it looks like they play about every weekend, but it's always a Friday night in one city, then Saturday in another city in the same state. Kind of what I figured a successful tribute band would be doing, as they're not going to get booked at the local bar more than once a year or so, I expect. We do have two more singers in the pipeline, and Rydell has met the one of them. They seemed to hit it off, and I think we can probably get them to sing backup for each other during their sets. She's got a more mixed list of Alanis, Cheryl, No Doubt, etc. Got a couple of drummers lined up to audition over the next couple of weeks.
Realistically, I think the play is to prod our little project into becoming a band with 2-3 singers, and eventually writing some original songs that suit our combined style. Should be no problem getting 2-4 gigs a month locally with the usual 'covers and a few originals' format. But I'm also pretty into the idea of the single artist cover thing. We're in the DC area, so we could likely book a show in VA, one in DC, and another in MD to keep from cannibalizing our own crowds, but that still not a whole lot of chances to play out. Guess Baltimore, Fredericksburg, Richmond, etc. are also in range, but my guess is we'd be able to book 6 local-ish shows a year at best.
Anyone got experience in a band like that? Am I possibly entirely wrong in my demand estimate? Not really into going full tribute, or spending entire weekends on the road, but if we could keep even a little busy close to home I'd be way into it. I guess the thing to do would be to keep working on the multi-singer configuration while adding R.E.M. songs and see which setup gets asked to play?
