I've persused the responses in this thread - it's an interesting thread, and one that I identify with because I've been working in the same cover band since 2001.
The truth is, there's only so far a cover band can go, and there's only so much you can do to elevate it to something else.
The band I play with is kind of on its last leg now, and there are probably a number of reasons for this, but I'll speak more to how things were in the band's heyday, between 2005 and 2008.
Our bread and butter has always been the wedding reception, with corporate events taking a pretty distant second place to that. We were at a point where we worked a lot - we were gigging about 40 dates a year, and we didn't want to do more than that because as it was, we were out almost every Saturday night of the year, and a half-dozen Sunday afternoons for the one-off bull-roast fundraiser at some VFW hall, Elks or Moose lodge, or that kind of thing.
Here are some of the things that made us successful and kept us booked:
- We were all young, attractive people. I think this is part of why we are no longer getting booked - we are essentially the same band we were 18 years ago, and we're all showing our age. I'm still fit and I look good for my age, but the fact is, I'm 49 years old in 3 weeks, so instead of relating directly to the people on the dance floor like I did when I was in my early/mid 30s and looked 10 years younger, I look like I could be their dad.
- Backing tracks - this fills out the sound, and lends consistency for parts that are hard to keep consistent on stage, such as backing vocals.
- Real horns - I'm a trumpet player in this band, and even though there were usually keyboard horns on the backing tracks, the live horns made it all sound real.
- Everyone sang - this was an 8 piece band, and when you have that kind of variety in vocals, it means that you can be a musical chameleon as a cover band with the person who is best suited for the song to be the one to sing it.
- MASSIVE song list - we can literally pull up any one of nearly 1000 tunes at a moment's notice because of the backing tracks that locks everything and and the fact that...
- Everyone was proficient at reading music - this was crucial to being able to add new tunes to the library.
- Technology - the band was using in-ears at a time when most other bands were still using floor wedges, which helped in a number of ways - it drastically reduces stage noise so that you can get cleaner, more consistent mixes in the room. There are also verbal cues on the backing tracks for the drummer, that also helps the drummer stay locked in to what's going on with the backing tracks. Also, we've always had really good audio gear - our stacks always sounded great, and we were one of the first bands in the area to go to an all-digital board. That allowed everyone to be able to tailor their own in-ears mixes with an app on our phones, and it allowed the sound man to essentially walk to the room to make adjustments to the mix with an iPad. And speaking of iPads, because we read our music, we are able to keep our books synced with the push of a button via an FTP server that holds the music. If a new chart got put out, the bandleader simply notified everyone via email, and we synced our books - it was just that simple.
- The band leader is a recording engineer, a music arranger, and profient on bass, drums, keys, sax, vocals, and percussion - this is something that ins't necessarily in your control, but for us, this really helped. He was the glue that put everything together. If someone requested a special tune that wasn't already in our library, he'd record the backing backing tracks, arrange the parts, and then upload everthing to the FTP server. We were literally able to add brand new top 40 tunes to our play list at the peak of those tunes' popularity.
- We tried to stay on top of things in terms of our promotional materials with up to date videos, recordings, and web/social media content.
So with all of that out of the way, I'm not sure there's much you can do to elevate your band, except to be super tight musically. My band never rehearsed. Seriously - in 18 years, I think the band has maybe had 4-5 rehearsals total, and that was because we were all pro-level musicians, and made a point to take care of being prepared musically, but with that said, I was never happy with that aspect of this band. We never had pre-set set lists - everything was called on the fly, which meant that sometimes I missed an entrance to a tune because I couldn't get the chart pulled up fast enough, or it was something really obscure or oddball, and something that if I hadn't looked at it recently, it was going to be difficult to play well. Tunes that come to mind that fit that bill are tunes like "Late in the Evening" by Paul Simon, or "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder. I think we'd have done even better if we had been tighter musically.
The only other thing that I could suggest is to look into the Tom Jackson model of music performance. Basically, it's a text-book method for how to structure a musical performance so that it becomes a real show that leaves people satisfied, and also wanting more.
Onstage with Live Music Producer Tom Jackson
onstagesuccess.com
The US Army Band program went through a phase where they were really out of touch with their audience. The older performance formats they'd used for decades that catered to the WW II crowd - the concert band and the jazz big band - were not resonating with a more modern audience. They started teaching the Tom Jackson model at the Army School of Music a number of years ago, and it has helped some. Serioulsy, I suggest you check into it. I went to the Army Senior Leadership Course at the School of Music earlier this year, and when we were going through some of the Tom Jackson methods, we watched Justin Timberlake's halftime show and analyzed it against the Tom Jackson model - it was literally a 1-1 match, so it's definitely being used by the big players in the entertainment industry. It delves into all aspects of a show performance - song selection and order, lighting, (different colors to convey different emotions and levels of excitement) movement, effects like pyrotechnics, etc. Seriously, if you go to almost any major concert event, when the concert is reaching a peak, invariably the colors being used are red with a lot of movement and flashing.
Tom Jackson model - drink that Kool Aid.