I just joined a cover project and I may feel dead inside

[tripstan]

Dude. I know some cats in cover bands that make $400 a man every night. I would love to play my guitar for 4 hours, make people dance and have fun AND get paid.

This ^

If everyone gets along, your playing good venues and the group can breath some original life into the covers it's pretty fun. I'm pulling in $150-$300 a night and most of the time it's in house PA and lights too. But haters gonna hate.

 

[crankyrayhanky]

Curious how you land such an audition?
Word of Mouth?
Craigslist?
BandMix?

I need cash yo

 

[romanianreaper]

When I was in the military I played in different bands doing everything from Top 40 to Grunge to Punk to Metal. I'm in my 40s and I just can't imagine going out and setting up gear and doing gigs anymore, especially while working a regular job.

With that said, I got back in touch with one of my high school buddies recently and we have been writing original songs together and it has been a blast. I play all of the guitar and bass parts and use EZDrummer2 to arrange drum parts. I send him the completed song and he puts the vocals on it in a studio near his location. It has been fun to create rather than just jam on guitar.

 

[Scumback Speakers]

Cover bands are fun IF you've got decent players to play with, and audiences to play to. I was in two original bands, got signed, did gigs, and was broke and going back to college inside of a year.

In the cover bands I played 5 nights a week /5 sets a night, and worked 50 weeks a year for three years straight.

I made more doing that then the lumber yard job I was in to pay for gas and tuition at 40 hours per week vs 20 hours per week.

It'd have been great to been a successful signed original group, but the usual 80's thing happened...sex, drugs, cheating on your wife, and players showed up to gigs drunk or stoned, and it fell apart. The cover band was steady, and we picked tunes that were popular and deeper cuts other bands didn't do. Helped to have four of the five guys sing, and they could all play, too, though. And I'm sure the fact that we had a good sound man was important for the audience to enjoy the music, and punching up the solos so it sounded much better than other groups we were on the same circuit with.

I loved both the original and cover bands...but there's only so many good bands / guitarists in LA, and I was one of 10,000 in the early 80's.

Now I'd guess I'm one of 100,000 (if I even qualify for that)!

 

[thiswaythatway]

No reason to feel bad when you get paid to play out. I did it from 1998 to 2003. When we started pulling in crowds we never made less than 1k for the band a night. And we always had a least 3 shows a week. But I'm not sure the cover band scene is what it was. Fucking DJ's have taken a lot of the gigs and the younger generations don't care as much about seeing live bands.

 

[8len8]

It's interesting how the OP's main point was about artistry, but most of the replies have to do with money.