General Music Chat

Recently there was a guy, I think his name was Ellis on here asking if he should cross over from Karaoke to a band, prevost made a response where he and a band had picked some karaoke singers and tryed to use them with a band.

Im not looking for any more musical endeavers at the moment, with 65 hr work weeks, 2 teenagers single dad, a GF, my old band i dont havet the time to even think of starting about getting involved in a group of any sort.


BUT, for some one that may be looking for an idea, here it goes.

Why not start a Karaoke Backing Band?

This would take some better than average players. But the right rythym combo say a drummer, bass and guitar could cover it and with keys it could be better.

How would this work? Well most of the karaoke guys I know get some sort of base pay from a bar. Say somewhere between 150-400 dollars which is waht most bars pay bands.

Then charge the singers a fee per song or to participate. Maybe 5-10 dollars a song of 20-25 a night to be apart of it.

Musician wise if you are very genre specific, I dont think this will work. For instance in the metal genre I just cant see it working. But if you have a versatile group of players that can say cover some rock, country, r&b this coiuld get real interesting.

I think once you started this after a few weeks, now I envision this as a weekly thing. Theres really no telling how many singers you could attract to participate.

If you can get a bar to say pay you 250 bucks a night you might be able to generate another 250 or so from particiapants and tips.

Just a musical idea I thought I would throw out there for discusion.i

It is a feasible idea. I don't think it would fly though JW.
You'd be basically competing against a machine.

Hard to do in most cases.

I could be wrong ... may be a niche for this kind of thing.

I know it would be niche for the right kind of players and they would have to get a steady string of singers in to make it work.

But take a guy like Ellis that posted here, this would get a guys feet wet like him that wants to try the band thing.

As I said musician side of things, you would have to leave your personal interest bands at home and cover all the goofy songs that most people dont want to play. But when I go to Karaoke, and I do every week or two, the same singers are there week in and week out doing the same songs. Over time you could bend the song list to suit them and believe some folks would really get into the whole concept. Its not an over night thing would take a few monthes to develop on a weekly basis.

If you ever go to karaoke they have thier own draw of people. In my mind each person that sang would promote the shows for you. In my bands case a couple of us do that when we get a gig. In this case you may have the band promoting your shows, plus any of the singers would promote it for you.

I just throw it out as an idea that someone could embrace and run with.

Thniking more about it, it might be more suitable to what I call a "lounge singer" type act that covers a huge amount of material to begin with. From a band standpoint it would be a challenge to cover larger and larger amounts of material.

Its just like I said a thought that someone could run with. I wont be trying it, but this is a music site and many seem to be complaining lately cause thier arent enough musical threads on here, so I just thought it might be good to hear what others think of it.

George, I think I saw where your area got around a foot of snow, between Dallas and Shreeveport, hope things are going good your way my friend!

It's what a lot of bands did, back in the old days...but there was a lot less music top choose from, back then.

I played in an "invitation only" open mic once, where the singers came in with sheet music for the band, & we played whatever they wanted to sing. That was fun, cuz there were no bad singers!

It would be a neat concept. I'd have to have some ringers who could really belt then let folks from the venues audience participate as well.

As far as the snow, left here a little after 0500 on Friday and drove the 30 miles to work in it. Dry crunchy in my 4WD truck I could safely run about 50mph on cruse no problem. Very few others on the road at the time of morning.
90 % of the road surface is clear today. Sun shine and should get into the high 40's so we are good to go.
Thanks for asking.

It’s a good idea but to make it strictly karaoke would get old too quickly coz not all the would be bingers can sing, it might work better I think if the band plays couple sets and then dedicates a set for the karaoke crowd just for fun.

This is happening now in Athens GA.

and Chicago
http://www.livebandkaraoke.com/

And Danville
http://www.livekaraokeband.com/

And NY
http://rockstarkaraokenyc.com/

I dunno...it sounds like a twisted version of "Stump The Band," that the Tonight Show Band used to do, back in the 60's....ya know....BEFORE there was too much music to make it feasible.

I like it. Kudos JW, always trying to figure a way to turn a dollar.

When we did it .. the karaoke singers would pack the house with family and friends ... the venue owners loved it (of course) and we got 200 a man (4 pc) for the night. But it was a lot of work learning 24 new songs a month .. We were also play 2 other weekends a month besides this.

and Chicago
http://www.livebandkaraoke.com/

Yes this is true. Also, most of the blues clubs here have open nights where the house band lets the audience come up to do blues standards.

and Chicago
http://www.livebandkaraoke.com/

Yes this is true. Also, most of the blues clubs here have open nights where the house band lets the audience come up to do blues standards.

What? Like in Adventures in Babysitting? Albert Collins tells you that you can't leave without singing the blues?