Musician Forum - Band Discussion Board - BandMix

Heres a few from last weekend. A new club for us that Ive been trying to get us in for awhile. The turnout was so so, but the club owner pretty much threw out the calendar and rebooked us for a couple of shows, so he was happy. Jackson is a fairly large city with a lot of clubs around town. People kinda cruise around all night trying to find "THE PARTY" so we had people coming and going all night long. Really weird compared to what we are used to. Our core crowd comes in our more local gigs and they are there from can to cant.

Heres a few more from this past weekend.

Looks like a fun buncha guys havin' a fun buncha fun!

Yeah, We have a lot of fun all right!

The crowds do too.

This was wierd and I dont know if I should even share it, but what the heck.

We ussually play Honky Tonk Women, Hard To Handle, Get Down Tonight and get the gals dancing. Then we drop D and do So Hott by Kidd Rock and the women ussually go wild. Well this night all the women sat down for the Kidd Rock song and I had all these young guys in suits dancing in front of me screaming "I want to f*** you like Im never going to see you again". I mean all those good looking young ladys that were dancing just sat down and it was an all male revue. This was a first! I looked at Kevin our singer afterwards, Im like I dont know about that dude. Kinda weird. He says man lets not talk about it and never bring it up again.

It just goes to show you in spite of all the crap Ive seen at gigs thru the years there is alwasy some sort of suprise right around the corner.

You just never know!

Hey, just like the Flintstones. We'll have a gay ol' time. Just kidding.
We got called to play a club few years back. The owner called me looking for a band. He didn't know me but his DJ did and gave him my number. It was a predominantly country bar, and I knew most of the country bands that played there. He was having a Grand Re-opening, and all his country bands were booked. I told him we didn't play country, but played the rock n roll that all the country people grew up on. Well, he didn't have a choice so he booked us. We went early and sat up and did a sound check and he was freaking a little because we were rockin' to set the top levels. Before it was time to start, there were people from a local dance school that taught line dancing and they were out on the floor dancing. The owner told us not to worry about starting on time, to let them keep dancing to the DJ and we'd get paid for the full night anyway. An hour after we were supposed to start, he came up to us and told us to go ahead and start, but if people started leaving, to take a break and let the DJ take over and we'd still get paid for the whole night. The other guys in the band were a little apprehensive too so I told 'em, "Just let me call out the songs." I started with the signature lick of "Keep Your Hand to Yourself" and the dance floor filled immediately. Then I kept on with the southern rock, Skynyrd, ZZ Top, etc. for a while until the dance floor started thinning out some, so I called off a couple of slow tunes and it filled up again. I kept this up the whole set and when we took a break, I went over to the DJ and he was laughing his a$$ off. He said we had more people dancing the first set than most of the other bands had a whole night. By the end of the night we had them two stepping to Van Halen. Cowboys and cowgirls were buying us drinks all night long and the few we did put on tab, the bar owner took care of. He booked us back a lot after that. I love a good crowd and, if they're responsive in any way, it ain't what you play, it's how you play it.

I hear ya, weve got 40 yr olds that want to hear Rage Against The Machine and 20 yr olds that want to hear Heard It Thru The Grapevine.

We get post on here by folks that havent played out much and they think theyve got it figured out, but its changes as soon as you start gigging.

I guess if a band only want to play a handful of gigs for basically no money, just to get out you can play whatever you want, provided you bring all your best freinds and family to hear you that one or two times. Once you try to establish yourself at some level you have to feed off an audience and give them something they want.

We still do things that we want, that dont really fit our audience. We pull out stuff like Freeway Jam, YYZ stuff to entertain us, but then we have to turn around and do Old TIme Rock N Roll to keep the crowd. I get a kick out of playing old standards cause we never practice that stuff anymore and we may not paly it for 6 monthes, but when someone wants to hear it and tells you that you are badassed for doing it. Hey thats what its all about, isnt it.

Entertaining an audience. Its really not about me or my band, its about getting an audience emotionally involved.