I've been in few tribute bands:
- Motely Crue
- Iron Maiden
- Frank Zappa
And one "Tribute to Southern Rock"
The Crue and Maiden bands got paid amazingly well! For the Crue band, we would come out dressed in the "Shout At the Devil" costumes for the 1st set, and dressed more like the Girls, Girls, Girls era for the 2nd set. For the Maiden band, we even had a "Eddie" on the payroll that would come out during the 2nd set. Both bands had dedicated sound and lights and our shows were completely correograpghed and very professional.
The Zappa band was fun, but not much draw (other than musicians). The southern rock band did great at biker events but was not really my cup of tea.
I have been asked to join or audition for other Crue and Maiden acts as well as an Eagle's act.
If done well, a tribute act can really rake it in. But it has to be done VERY well (musically as well as production-wise), or it is just cheese. With the right promotion and the right act, you can pack just about any room.
However, if you're going to be in a tribute act, you must have a huge playing area. We would never do more than one show in any one market any more frequently than once every 6 months. Once you burn out a crowd in an area, you are done. We would play from Maine to Maryland and out to Buffalo. That area was large enough to allow us to work every weekend without saturating any markets.
Some tributes I've seen doing pretty good in my area:
- Rob Zombie
- Eagles
- Motely Crue
- AC/DC
- Bon Jovi
- 80's hair band
- 80's pop
- Metallica
- Pink Floyd
- Motown
I've seen others through the years do OK, but their crowds are either gone now or the musicians have moved on. There's one that comes to mind especially out of CT. They came out and did their first set as a Queensryche tribute. Their second set they came out as a Judas Priest tribute. Musically they were incredible, and they put on one hell of a show too.
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