Event ideas?

[OneDayWeekend]

I'm running out of ideas and cant seem to come up with the right search terms to find what I'm looking for.

 

We're a 4 man modern rock covers band and we're always looking for simple effective ways to set ourselves apart from the typical classic rock cover bands in our area.

 

We're a very tight, popular band [in our own little pond] and have been tending towards the overbooked side of our twice-a-month gig schedule over the last year. We are pulling good crowds, 50-150 depending on the venue's size, and the response is always a nice ego-stroke.

 

One of the things we do to with our promotion [we promote alot!] is whenever possible we make each show more of an event rather than the typical "X band is playing here". We've been fortunate that a lot of our shows have been event-type shows [grand openings, birthdays, club anniversaries etc] that lend themselves to easy promotion.

 

Our most successful shows have been where we brought in a good original band to open for us. We promote it as a big event, they play our first set, which gets people in the door earlier, and ends with the venue hitting their 300 cap. each time. One show we spiced it up by having the local radio station come in for a live broadcast and the wild child girls came in too to sing happy birthday to one of the bartenders. It's a good formula that seems to work, but we want to do other things for variety.

 

So to make a long story even longer! Do any of you cover bands do things like this to beef up your shows? What we really need is some new ideas that are similar to what we've been doing, but fairly simple to put together.

 

Any ideas?