Country Band question

Will I regret doing "Made in America" (Toby Keith) ?
We're mostly a dance band, and it seems anthem-ish and not specifically danceable, but I like the strength of the song, both lyrics and music.

I'm also going to do "I wanna Talk About Me", and possibly "Get Drunk & be Somebody". Another member is doing "I Love this Bar"

I usually have good results picking material, dunno why I'm hesitating but I thought I'd ask if anyone has had success with this song . . or not.

Gary
NYC

To me, it's 99% about whether your audience will buy into it. Theoretically, any song is danceable, so if you think your listeners would be familiar with it enough to get on board, then yeah. Sadly, bar patrons are much more willing to dance to something they've heard before than better music they haven't. (In my neck of the woods, if you hit the intro licks to Brown-Eyed Girl or Sweet Home Alabama, the floor is packed before the first verse starts.) ... It's really all about what will fly in *your* locale.

Same goes in this neck of the woods; keep em' two-steppin'...or play at home!!

All I know is if you ever get pulled-over after a gig, tell'em you're in a COUNTRY band!

As far as TK goes, it never hurts to learn extra tunes to keep in your hip-pocket.
Maybe they don't go over so well, but you never know when somebody would really appreciate your being able to play one when they request it.

~ ST

You'd be safer with "Red Solo Cup," "I Ain't As Good As I Once Was," "Who's Your Daddy," "I Love This Bar," etc.

You're in New York, and while maybe not in Manhattan, they may get a little weird w/ country lyrical content sometimes (if it touches some topical nerves.)

But you can count on a lot of people in the bars liking the drinking theme, and the general idea that brought them there may possibly be to meet someone, so at most you may only tick off just the right people. But that's why I love T. Keith anyway, so why not? Go for it.

Love the guitar stuff on his records, and he's got a sense of humor and believes in standing for something. That's getting rarer these days.

Nope,
Can't stay home and play. Home is for practice, stage is for good times.

I'm going to learn:

Crazy Town (aldean)
I Wanna Talk About ME (Keith)
As good as I ever was (Keith)

Bassist is bringing "Hicktown" & picking up "Love this Bar" from the steel player

Steel is bringing Kenny Chesney - "When The Sun Goes Down"

So 5 new tunes (for us) by January 7th. (and 1 trade off)

The dancers are good, they'll know what to do.


Gary
NYC

I'm in the outer borough of Queens and drive past Manhattan to NJ for gigs, or up to Connecticut. The people want country outside of the city.

Solo cup is next up on the list, especially for party's as opposed to dance halls.

As long as a song can stand by itself, and we can put it across decently, I'm not worried about getting one or two noses out of kilter. I have found that I'm not going to please every last customer with 100% of our material. We do pretty well though.

I actually wanted to do the in your face Made in America theme, but when 3 other people have to do their homework, I would rather have songs that will be keepers rather than long shots.

Gary
NYC
Tied to the Trax (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tied-To-The-Trax/129855153720102)

If you do any song like you really mean it, you can pull it off.

If I were doing this song I would:

A) start it with kick/snare or handclap sample going 1&2 3&4 , similar to Queen's "(We Will), We Will Rock You" intro (with matching light show) while I whipped up the crowd with some patriotic talk,

B) do the song,

C)then play a slow, distorted single note Gtr solo of "The Star Spangled Banner" over the repetitious Outro, endinging in a frenzied climax of drums/gtr/etc... You'll have'em standing and saluting!!! JMHO

All I can say is that I'd regret doing it. I just don't like it. I don't like much he does anyway even though one of my best friends plays with him. We just don't talk about work.

We tend to stay away from anything with a topical bent...and I cut my teeth and learned my chops from protest songs....in my current band, we have a range of personal beliefs...another member has songs I wouldnt do...and I got some that he wouldnt do because of the topical nature...

At one point we were doing "Orphan of the Storm"-the Tom Petty-Mudcrutch tune...and when we did the song, a former member began prefacing the song with very negative comments reflecting his particular brand of politics/philosophy surrounding the Katrina thing...the song remained and he left..its since been shelved for other reasons, but I thought it was bad form to allow one's personal politics into a performance in that fashion...we did do alot of gigs in Wasilla at the time and his views might have been more mainstream there if you get my drift, but I still think they didnt want to hear them at an otherwise rowdy good time bar...and...it was my tune and they werent my views, and he never voiced any objections while we were working it up...

Weve since come to where if a tune has content one or the other of us might not want to convey, or object to....we dont do it...theres alot of other songs out there......its not so much about the audience...its likely they would never know if and why we didnt play a tune....but what you can get behind...I think weve dropped one tune in 2 years for topical reasons so it doesnt happen often...and we all understand that there are tunes you might not like, or want to do...

For all the material T.K. has out, there are only a handful that I might enjoy performing.

Hey Doug, (sequencepro), you can be our stage production guy.!! I like it. I'd probably substitute a guitar line from America the Beautiful instead of the SSB. (See, I can't follow directions already)

While I really don't like soap-boxing a song for its ideas, especially with a preface intro, my playing situation now seems to be either none of the band members would mind, or we're all on the right page. (drift intended but not mandatory). Sing the song, get it done and those people who are listening will have gotten the valued message, and the rest, hopefully they'll tap their foot along with you. But speeches? No.

I don't think I've got any songs in the sets that I actually regret playing.

Thanks everyone for kicking in your respected opinions. I'm the only band member who does the "Forum" thing online to keep up with ideas and trends. Its great.

Holiday Greetings to everyone who celebrates them.
Health and Happiness to all.

Gary
NYC

Hey, good idea with "America the Beautiful"! A lot of our fan base are military, military spouses, and veterans, and they would love that.

My band thinks more in "shows" than "sets",i.e. three shows a night, with different costumes/content for each. We do lots of 10 minute+ medleys, which eliminates much of that awkward "standing and scratching between songs" that everyone hates.

We also do a lot of "mash-ups", blending new songs and old. Our usual formula is: start with something off of today's radio with a good dance beat to get the young girls dancing, then, with the same underlying beat, go to something to get their mothers dancing too. Think: Soldier Boy/American Soldier/Star Spangled Banner, Salt Shaker/Shining Star, Hot in Herre/Play That Funky Music, 1-2 Step/Brick House/Papa was a Rolling Stone, Beautiful Girls/Stand By Me, etc.

By contrast, when we play Classic Country, we try hard to get it as authentic as possible with our limited instrumentation.(sometimes there are lots of people/parts on the session).

Not everybody's cup of tea, but it keeps the dance floor full and constantly turning over, which lets more people comfortably be in the club, and sells liquor, which is the ONLY REASON clubs have a band.

Most anything is worth trying out once or twice..just have it down good. It may fly..it may not...don't know until you play it out....you like it...maybe others will too :wink:


http://bobbyandthejammers.wordpress.com/

Geeez my band plays stuff people up here have hardly ever heard..if they have heard it at all.. I think you'll be fine..People like us when they hear us but what a hard sell when your playing George Jones and Hag some Dale Watson ya gotta mix in SRV ZZ top or ya don't get the gig.. oh ya Sean Costello is another one that raises there eyebrows..They haven't heard of it and I am stubborn what a combination..:smile:

Great to read about the different material and approaches taken to the gig sets.
On January 7th we're going to do 5 new songs with no band rehearsal prior. It makes me smile and chuckle just thinking about it, but we'll be fine. Everyone does their homework and we've discussed the pickups and count-ins. The endings will happen when we're done playing. :lol:

The steel player likes to lay a sheet of lyrics on the steel headstock, (double 10) , and cheat that way. As the guitarist, (wearing contacts, no glasses), I'd NEVER be able to read ANY lyrics from the floor ( I print my set lists in 28 point arial black), so I have to have all my lyrics down pat, music and solo sections pretty much ingrained. Then its just a matter of time till I get the subtle ( and not so subtle) timing and phrasing down.

I've been working on Made in America at the same time, but won't trot it out till later on. Red Solo cup as well.

Dez
NYC

Country is awesome!!

The follow up from last nights gig is dance floor packed for 2 solid sets. The remaining people in the club/restaurant danced or something akin to it.

New songs were a hit, everyone did their homework and i managed all the words , even on I wanna Talk about ME, which many people on the floor were singing along with.
Was major fun, which is why I/we do it.

Post 911 the Toby Keith song really had a way of stirring up things.
We would get asked to play it, but we finally agreed that it was too over the top.

I really don't know how it would come across today. The only TK song we do is "Marry for Money". Great guitar intro, and if you guys have a steel should be able to do some very interesting things with the lead guitar.
Our steel player and I have put together little sections of songs that are harmonized.
Makes the night a little more interesting. Last night we even were doing "All Summer Long" and we started playing harmony leads on the tune, and it really sold.

We have found that for our configuration we can really pull off Dierks Bentley songs.

Other than that, I can't really tell you what you should play in your area. Minnesota has a kind of....uh....well....uh....it voted in Franken so that should say what we deal with here. We try to stay politically neutral. I don't go to gigs to argue with an upset patron who thinks we are trying to promote any ideology.

One of the other things that has always been my view about music and public performance. You can not write your list to please anybody but your self. If you become
overly concerned about the audience response, you will never, never please everyone.
Go for what you want to play.

To quote a really hackneyed phrase from a really hackneyed movie, "build it and they will come."

Our band leader was talking during set-up about doing "Truck Driving Man" and asked if I knew it. Around 3rd set we did the song and everyone was singing along. We do a lot of older honky-tonk material and it goes over very well. Some places better than others, and we always rock it up a little at festivals and concerts.

Hi Gary,
For the T.K. material, "As Good as I Once was" was a hit as an El Paso dance, and I don't know WHAT people were doing to I Wanna Talk about ME, but they were all singing along and in the bridge I just kept pointing to everyone going You, you you you you etc.
Geeze I love the country gigs.

Gary (aka Dez)

Well, as far as content, if you're a country band and a patriotic themed song doesn't go over that means you're not playing for a country crowd. I just don't like the song. The message is a good one.