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Anyone doing/done a multi-tribute setlist?


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Our band is your stereotypical "dad' band. We play mostly private events for people around our age, 40's-60's. Our set list is all classic rock(Beatles, Stones, CCR, Bad Co., etc...). One suggestion from a band member was to do a multi-tribute set list. For example, Set 1 - All Beatles, Set 2 - All Stones, Set 3 - All Bad Company.

 

Anyone else have any experience with this? Looking to find out:

 

  • Did it work, or not?
  • Audience reaction?
  • Tribute sets that worked and didn't?

 

 

Thanks!

 

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The key to tribute bands is really all in the marketing. They work because people know what they getting up front. You can sell a tribute to The Beatles because everyone knows going in they are going to hear Beatles songs all night.

 

I think it could work in your case if you could sell yourselves as such and let people know that at 9PM it's the Beatles, at 10PM it's the Stones, etc. Otherwise, you're just a band who is only playing songs from one band all set, which might just seem odd to the audience and could backfire. In my view, anyway, there's a difference between a "tribute" band and just playing a bunch of Beatles songs in a row. And that lies in the marketing and presentation.

 

I knew a guy who used to do tributes to both The Cars and Tom Petty. And he would sometimes do both on the same night and it would be billed as two separate 'shows', even though it was the same band. He'd come out in slightly different costume. (He resembled Petty and Rik Ocasek a bit anyway). That was more on a casino/show band circuit though.

 

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Some friends of mine have a Beatles only acoustic trio. They had talked to some others of us about doing a Beatles and Beatles related band. The idea was to cover the Beatles, then all as solo artist, Wings, Traveling Wilbury's, some closely related bands (ie; Badfinger) and even some other cover versions of Beatles songs (ie: Joe Cocker's "A Little Help From My Friends", Elton John's "Lucy in the Sky".

 

I also saw a band where they did one set of Billy Joel and then a set of Elton John, billed as two acts. The piano player was the singer and dressed differently both sets. Much like the act in Guido's post. I enjoyed them.

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We work as a four-piece oldies/classic rock band but we also work behind a singer who's one of the best Elvis tribute artists in the business; a few years ago he got into doing Buddy Holly (even though he doesn't really play the guitar) and he's also got a set's worth of Ricky Nelson tunes in his bag, so we've been doing pretty well booking shows as all Elvis (usually 3 sets: 50's, '60's, & 70's), Buddy & Elvis, or all 3 which we bill as "The Three Kings." Have gotten many gigs using this strategy....The 3 Kings show usually features Elvis' Sun Record tunes from the '50s and Elvis is always the closing set. One added advantage to this is that after we do a tribute show, many venues will also call back to book just the band for a theme party or "sock hop" type of event.

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We are not a tribute band, but periodically dedicate one of our two sets to a specific band. We are an "80's" band, whatever that means. A couple of gigs ago, we did an entire set of The Cult songs. Previously, we have played entire sets of The Cure and R.E.M. Yes, we are a dad/hobby band but we continue to get fun and good paying gigs.

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