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Replacing the Irreplaceable Member


MikeyParent

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I dont often start threads in here... but I am wrestling with something

 

Back in late August our superstar singing guitarist (VERY talented 30-year old guy) announced that he was going back to school, working 30 hours a week AND focusing on his originals career. This left no time for the cover band.

 

So began the decidedly gross task of replacing him. Finding guitar players is not a huge problem but the guy was a fantastic player and an even better singer. A natural tenor, he was able to do stuff like Crazy, Billie Jean and Another Ones Bites the Dust with relative ease. So he left a pretty big hole in the band.

 

Here is the full list:

 

American Girl

Another One Bites the Dust

Basket Case

Billie Jean

Buddy Holly

Crazy

Fortunate Son

Get Ready

Hard to Handle

Hungry Like the Wolf

I Saw Her Standing There

Just What I Needed

Lonely Boy

Moves Like Jagger

Play That Funky Music

Rock This Town

Sex on Fire

Shine

Summer of 69

Working For The Weekend

 

He, I and the bass player split lead singer duties (20/33/4 songs respectively)

 

As the mixed bag of auditions (4 dudes + 3 no-shows) draws to a close tonight, we are likely resolved to a great guitar player with limited singing ability.

 

So what would you do with those 20 songs?

 

We are thinking of splitting between myself and the bass player. I am not sure how well we will pull them off yet (some are easy, some not so much), but how much effort would you expend in trying to make them work versus just picking up some new songs to replace them. A couple are already candidates to be dropped.

 

Put another way, are there any songs above which you would just ditch and not look back?

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Few, if any, songs are irreplaceable. Although it sometimes seems like that when something is working well. A couple of the songs on your list (American Girl, PTFM, RTT, a few others probably) I would think would work just as well with anybody singing them who can hit the notes, and they aren't that hard to sing to begin with.

 

Others probably really need a strong vocal to carry them (Fortunate Son, WFTW) and should probably just be dropped if no one else can sing them as well as the old guy. To the degree you have fans who associate any songs with the guitarist singing them, it would be best to just move on and forward.

 

If it were me, I'd keep a couple of the easy ones, replace the rest, and use it as an opportunity to re-tool the band into something better/different rather than trying to keep it as-much-the-same as possible.

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Did you mean songs or singers?

 

 

I meant songs, but in this case it seems they are one and the same. If the singer was truely irreplacable, the band would either be breaking up or taking on a greatly different outlook. Instead, the OP's definition of "irreplaceable member" seems to be: "we can't easily find a singing guitarist who sings the same songs just as well as the old guy, thereby making replacing him more work for us than we'd rather have to deal with."

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If it were me, I'd keep a couple of the easy ones, replace the rest, and use it as an opportunity to re-tool the band into something better/different rather than trying to keep it as-much-the-same as possible.

 

 

That's where my head is at. Though I fear I may be alone in that regard (in the band). There are a couple stronger tunes that I would hate to see go and would probably spend some time trying to get them to work.

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I meant songs, but in this case it seems they are one and the same. If the singer was truely irreplacable, the band would either be breaking up or taking on a greatly different outlook. Instead, the OP's definition of "irreplaceable member" seems to be: "we can't easily find a singing guitarist who sings the same songs just as well as the old guy, thereby making replacing him more work for us than we'd rather have to deal with."

 

Nothing like hyperbole in a thread title to solicit responses :)

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Sex on Fire, not familiar with that one? Do people respond and do they dance to it?

 

American Girl - to sing it all you need to do is put a close hanger pin on your nose to give you that Tom Petty sound, hate the song with a passion, I'd drop it like a used condom. (sorry bad memories with that song, geetar players always do it WHY????)

 

All the rest seem to be pretty standard and good tunes for the average bar band and I'd keep them.

 

Lonely Boy - newer release see it posted on here a lot, listened to it, I think it sucks bad, not sure what the attraction is????

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That's where my head is at. Though I fear I may be alone in that regard (in the band). There are a couple stronger tunes that I would hate to see go and would probably spend some time trying to get them to work.

 

I hear ya. Just don't forget the bigger picture and that's that there are likely some other songs out there that would work just as well in the same spot in your set that one of the other guys could sing better (thereby making it a better song for the "New" {censored}takes.)

 

Nothing kills a song quicker than a poor lead-vocal, IMO. Especially on a song that really needs a strong, solid delivery. Nobody is really going to miss any song you didn't play at all. They WILL likely notice a song you sing poorly, however.

 

OTHO, it's certainly all a song-by-song/band-by-band proposition. And some songs ARE so strong that you can 'get by' with poor vocals. For us, that song is "Sweet Child of Mine". The drummer sings it--"OK" at best--and he hates doing it for that reason. I refuse to drop the song because it KILLS virtually every night/every crowd, and I keep suggesting one of the girls take it over. They both refuse while insisting that the drummer's less-than-stellar vocal is still better than either of them could do. I disagree. So around and around we go with that debate while continuing to play the song to huge crowd response while the drummer croaks through it. :facepalm:

 

So I guess my answer is---give those killer tunes of yours a shot, and if the response is still great and you aren't THAT embarrassed by the performance...all is well!

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I dont often start threads in here... but I am wrestling with something


Back in late August our superstar singing guitarist (VERY talented 30-year old guy) announced that he was going back to school, working 30 hours a week AND focusing on his originals career. This left no time for the cover band.



So what would you do with those 20 songs?


We are thinking of splitting between myself and the bass player. I am not sure how well we will pull them off yet (some are easy, some not so much), but how much effort would you expend in trying to make them work versus just picking up some new songs to replace them. A couple are already candidates to be dropped.


Put another way, are there any songs above which you would just ditch and not look back?

 

 

As a musician playing in a band, I tend to want to have the best possible vocals on every song. As a sound tech mixing bands every week, I see lots of bands do popular songs with less than stellar vocals, and it never seems to matter to the crowd. From the 'crowd' perspective, I'd keep whichever songs have done the best in the past in terms of packing the dance floor and getting good audience response, so long as the vocals are at least 'acceptable' and not off key etc.

 

The only other solution would be to add a lead singer to the lineup. (Not sure if that's something you could afford to do).

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I dont often start threads in here... but I am wrestling with something


Back in late August our superstar singing guitarist (VERY talented 30-year old guy) announced that he was going back to school, working 30 hours a week AND focusing on his originals career. This left no time for the cover band...


...He, I and the bass player split lead singer duties (20/33/4 songs respectively)


As the mixed bag of auditions (4 dudes + 3 no-shows) draws to a close tonight, we are likely resolved to a great guitar player with limited singing ability.


So what would you do with those 20 songs?


We are thinking of splitting between myself and the bass player. I am not sure how well we will pull them off yet (some are easy, some not so much), but how much effort would you expend in trying to make them work versus just picking up some new songs to replace them. A couple are already candidates to be dropped.


Put another way, are there any songs above which you would just ditch and not look back?

 

 

I would put the focus on the songs you and the bass player can pull off and work on more that you can easily sing. If a lot of these songs will strain your vocal chords, I would drop them until you actually find someone who can actually handle them. I'm a baritone, so I leave out songs that I can't sing very well, even if I love the songs. I sing the majority of the tunes, so I have to adjust the songs we do accordingly to what we can pull off well.

 

The thing to always remember is that vocals make or break the band unless you have some other kind of gimmick going on. Most bands will gain a following based on how many people like your singing. If you are straining to do songs that are out of your league, you will lose your audience.

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Look at this a the perfect chance to drop all the crap songs and retool to make a better band. This happened to me in 2005 and we became a better band because of it. What it doesn't mean is you guys have to be down and out for months. Its a ton of work but it can be done with minimal downtown.

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Look at this a the perfect chance to drop all the crap songs and retool to make a better band. This happened to me in 2005 and we became a better band because of it. What it doesn't mean is you guys have to be down and out for months. Its a ton of work but it can be done with minimal downtown.

 

 

Yeah I agree.

 

Don't cast the members to the setlist (if you're having this much trouble),

instead , make the setlist to the strengths of the members

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How about getting someone who only sings, perhaps a chick singer?

 

Is that a viable option? I know a few people who are strong singers, but either do not play an instrument, or are not good/versatile enough to cut it as a instrumentalist in a gigging band.

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I would recommend that you keep all of 'his' songs that you can. Change the key if necessary, but keep them. Your audience is used to hearing you guys do those songs, and they work for you. You've lost him, but you don't have to lose his songs.

 

 

I agree as long as they can cover them well. If they have to drop them two whole steps or an octave or they are straining every time they sing, that's cringeworthy stuff and most audiences are not that forgiving for that kind of situation. If they have guys in the group that can handle the songs easily, no problem. Keep the majority for sure if you can.

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Some of those songs could be sung by anybody, some could be sung by anyone capable of hitting an "A", and some (Moves Like Jagger in particular) can only be sung by the rare few possessing incredibly high range coupled with the ability to easily navigate vocal jumps larger than hurricane Sandy.

 

You could simply replace some of the difficult ones (Moves Like Jagger with the more current and much easier to sing One More Night for example), but maybe you guys should look at the bigger picture. Is the band as a whole going to be as strong going forward with just a new guitar player? Maybe you should look at adding a guitar player and a front. I know it's less money but you don't want to take a step backwards.

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(Moves Like Jagger with the more current and much easier to sing One More Night for example)

 

 

Not to get too far off-topic (or maybe it's not if they are considering replacing songs) but I'll offer up a caution I've stated before and still believe BIG time:

 

99% of the time, people don't give a {censored} about who the original artist was. People like "Moves Like Jagger" because it's a (relatively) current, danceable song that has connected with audiences well. They really could care less that it's a Maroon 5 song except as perhaps a secondary issue. If you're going to replace that song on your setlist, the choice would be something that fits the bill in the same manner, rather than simply some other Maroon 5 song people won't like as much.

 

I would say this is one of the most common mistakes made by cover bands: replacing a popular song (for whatever reason) with the latest hit by the same group thinking it will, for that reason alone, garner a similar positive response. That is almost always is a recipe for 'fail'.

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