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Location: Jet City | With an 80+ songlist, I imagine you'd need a music stand/ipad, but I still think it's lame.
I perform solo, in a duet (2 guitars), with a cover band, and in an original band.
I can't believe how many blues/classic rock cover bands there are here and most are playing the same **** with a slightly different smell.
While you want the songs to be familiar, there are just SO MANY over-played tunes. Mustang Sally is a song I could never hear again and be completely happy. I'd probably put House Of The Rising Sun high up on that list too... over-played AND boring. That said, you'll always get that one drunk yellin' "Hell yeah! PLay some more Animals!"
I think your songlist is pretty damned awesome. You have lots of variety to tailor your setlists to various crowds. A few are blatantly self-indulgent, I mean yeah... I'm a HUGE Zakk fan, but 99.5% of the people I typically play in front of wouldn't know him from Jake E Lee (I'd love to play some of his stuff from Badlands!). It's also pretty apparent you're a Not Ready For Prime Time musician fan. Again, I get it. I'm also a big fan of Joliet jake and Elwood, not to mention Nigel Tufnel, all well represented on your list. If I added Nickleback to the set, I think I'd have to turn in my man card though.
My duet and coverband have similar setlists and are also similar in content to yours. For the most part, we bill ourselves out as a 90's coverband, but we have some older classic stuff as well as some R&B/Funk. Being in Seattle, AIC, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, STP, Foo Fighters, RHCP, Dave Matthews, Collective Soul, etc. are heavy crowd favorites (and band favs too). There aren't a lot of coverbands willing to taking on tunes like Alive, Fell On Black Days, Interstate Love Song, Crush, #41, and being here in this area we can always pull out some more obscure locals like Mother Love Bone, Screaming Trees, or non-locals even like Big Head Todd, Seven Mary Three, and Vertical Horizon.
I think the Seattle crowd is a bit different than the Florida crowd. My sets probably would go over like a... well... Led Zeppelin there. You need to play to your audience when you're doing covers, so we have been trying to diversify the songlist a bit more with older classic stuff. For the classic rock and R&B stuff, we try to keep a fine-line between overplayed, and well loved songs. On the classic rock side theres some Neil Young for sure (who mixes in real well with the other stuff), Zeppelin, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Bill Withers (Use Me as well as Ain't No Sunshine), Paul Simon, etc.
Lately, we've been focusing on some more of the older stuff, but again trying to do stuff people know that others don't overplay. Song's we're currently working on include, So Into You - Atlantic Rhythm Section, Will It Go Round... - Billy Preston, Couldn't Get It Right - Climax Blues Band, and one of my personal favorites, Little Red Corvette - Prince
Your list looks good. I'd listen to you do 'em all.... until you got to House of the Rising Sun. I might politely smile and wave as I was walking out the door on that one.
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Location: Michigan | sonicpictures , the last three years that i have been to cape coral florida ft. meyers beach the bars that i have been in in have a one man band with a looper back up and they just do a bit of singing and get by with that and they are pretty damn good sounding.
i do not go to any club bars down there so i might be speaking out of turn but the bars i do go to are mostly one man bands. GWB |
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Location: Keepin' It Weird in Portland, OR | I play what I like... If I don't like it I won't learn it nor play it.
(although somehow I do know some Bon Jovi and Green Day  )
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Location: Boise, Idaho | Damon's post made me smile when he said he played some old stuff like Pearl Jam. I was thinking last night about some of the new stuff I liked, like Pearl Jam. I shows our age difference. There are actually a lot of new songs and artists I like, but they remind me of the singer-songwriters of my era. Brandi Carlile is one. A couple of her songs, down an octave unless you have a really good falsetto, would be a good addition to a set list. |
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Location: south east Michigan | Brian.. at tonight's practice you're gonna have to fill me in on all these songs you're "neutral" on. |
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Location: Jet City | Mark in Boise - 2013-03-22 8:37 AM ...old stuff like Pearl Jam.... "Ten" was released 22 years ago. Not really new anymore. I do my best at butchering 2 Brandi songs, but not with the band. What Can I Say, and Sixty Years On (actually written by Bernie for Elton) |
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| This is exactly what I wanted out of this thread. You guys are the best. To paraphrase something some drunk guy said on TV once, "I don't always use forums, but when I do i make it Ovation."
Damon... you are absolutely right. The original Saturday Night band (which later became the SNL band) was a who's who of amazing talent. The songs that they chose were what got me into the blues as a kid, so I tend to gravitate to those tunes, for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is the fact that I have heard them so much I've memorized them backwards and forward which gives me more room to improvise. Also a huge Zakk fan, though we do the arrangements a bit differently. Often times I'll let my partner go wild on the djembe while I just noodle around the chord progression for those tunes. So even if you aren't familiar with the tunes, it's impressive to watch him go wild on the hand percussion (my partner is a world class percussionist, he used to be in Chuck Rainey's band). I don't do the Layne Staley/Ozzy style drawl that Zakk uses on his vocal, more of a soulful, bluesy timbre and cadence to fit with my range and what we are trying to exude. Doubtful we will ever play all of the Zakk tunes in one show. I just like having them in the arsenal, because the chord progressions are usually extremely simple and even though I'm not near the player that Zakk is, I can pull off some good leads in the pentatonic and blues scales within those progressions.
House of the Rising Sun... I didn't know that was overplayed. This is my first cover group so I'm somewhat ignorant on that point. My partner suggested the tune. He plays it with more of an Animals feel to it, but I was more accustomed to the delta blues style of that standard, so I tend to stick to a more Lead Belly version (with a bit of slide and harp).
By the way... love Seattle. Cool town. Got to play the Knitting Factory when I was on a west coast tour back in 2008. Great venue and great people. The monitor engineer over there is a bad MF'er.
Thanks again, everyone. I'll say it again... you guys are the absolute best.
Nick |
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| On a side note, as far as forum etiquette goes, is it ok to post links to one's own original music? I really could use a vacation, but not from this forum. |
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Location: Jet City | sonicpictures - 2013-03-22 12:15 PM On a side note, as far as forum etiquette goes, is it ok to post links to one's own original music? I really could use a vacation, but not from this forum. Post away, here's some of mine... http://www.damon67.com/music/chasen-chantz-2/ |
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Location: Keepin' It Weird in Portland, OR | sonicpictures - 2013-03-22 12:15 PM
On a side note, as far as forum etiquette goes, is it ok to post links to one's own original music?
I would think it would depend on how frequently you do it...
On your "User Profile" page you can have a link to a website.
(mine goes to my evilBay "ME" page)
So, if you have a Soundclick or a YouTube page... You could link there.
That way anybody who wanted to find it could.
You could also add a link to your sig line. Many member have such links.
Should you use the OFC to promote your music?
Uh... Probably not.
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| Well, I'll post it one time and then add to my sig. Here's my latest release: http://www.reverbnation.com/sonicpictures
It's just me and my live partner, with him showing off his amazing percussion skills, while I handled the keys, guitars, bass, and the engineering/mixing/mastering. All instrumental, but I think folks here will dig it.
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| Damon.. i really like your tunes. The songs themselves.. the playing, chord structure, vocals... but those ultra dry drum samples make it really hard to listen to for me. Maybe I'm coming from too much of an engineer standpoint, but I'd rather hear that same song with no samples until midway through and then bring in a strong hi-hat, snare, kick pattern with fills on toms at the end of the 4th measure, heavily processed and in the BG. The samples are too hot in the mix and they totally remove me from how cool the vocal is and how much better it could be. |
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| If you want to get a little jazzy with it, do you the whole tune in 4, but do the drum part in 3/4, give it a loose triplet feel in the BG. Great song anyway, brother. |
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| Sounds like you need to sing closer to the mic for more proximity effect as well as heavier compression on the lead vocal. |
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| I will say that I LOVE the mouth percussion. Wish more folks would do it right instead of trying to "beat box" |
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Location: Flahdaw | Cool stuff on your site, Sonic.
I always thought this forum needed a section for posting our stuff, instead of using the "General Posting", but higher powers disagreed. Regardless, post your stuff without going overboard, or as senor' OMA said, add your site to your signature line.
I'm also a member of Songstuff forum, which is for songwriters to post and share ideas and get critique on original stuff. Pretty cool forum. |
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Location: Jet City | Sonic, I'm just playing the electric guitars, and doing some backup vocals in the Chasen Chantz stuff.
Hand Shaved Noodles is the cover band and I do most the singing there.
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| In that case, Damon... everything you did was the highlight of the tunes. |
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Location: sitting at my computer | darkbarguitar - ... For the most part tho, at most bars people want to hear songs they know and can hum along with. and depending upon the bar, the songs they want to hear can vary greatly. Remember that scene from The Blues Brothers?!  sonicpictures - ... I will not under any circumstances play "Margaritaville".. LOL - that's OK Sonic, I'll play it enough for both of us. Yeah it's overplayed, but vacationing family & friends love singing along to it and I enjoy seeing them enjoying ANYTHING I'm playing! 'tho my version is kinda thin without a calypso backup band. 
Sonic, give a shout out if you're ever playing 'round Sarasota way... or if ya breakdown in B'town. |
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How do you pick your song choices?
