It's no secret that people respond better to music they've heard than to music they've never heard. Even if it's a piece of music for which one doesn't have a ton of affection, the familiarity gives the music an edge with an audience. Have you ever danced to a piece of music you knew but weren't crazy about? How about a piece completely new to you (if you don't dance, we'll count tapping your toe)? I'm guessing you'd have a higher total in column A than in column B.
For this reason, if you'd like to make a living as a musician, the path of least resistance is to form or join a cover band (i.e.: a band that plays current hits, none of which are written by the cover band itself) or classic repertoire orchestra. There's more work available for such acts, it pays better, you can usually play close to home, and it's a fraction of the work. After all, you don't have to go through the bother of writing music and competing with the billions of other songs currently available. Beyond a little promotional material, you don't need to record music, film videos, tour (unless the gig pays extremely well) or put much thought into originality – your job is to copy, after all.

Now, I might get an argument about this from cover bands. The good ones do work hard, no question. Playing covers well often requires great flexibility and versatility. As a former cover-band guitarist/vocalist, I've often played gigs where I've had to sound like Freddie Mercury and Brian May simultaneously in one song, Van Morrison and Eric Gale in the next, followed by anything from Fastball to Dion and the Belmonts to Led Zeppelin. The gig does have its challenges.
This is not to say that you have to play covers note-for-note, in spitting-image. It's actually been my experience that audiences tend to appreciate a band that can infuse cover tunes with a bit of their own personality. Exactly how much personality seems to depend on how liberal the audience happens to be – and the band's self-possession...

Back in the Blizzard of '96/'97, I had a very well-paying gig lined up to play an Italian Cultural Centre New Years' gig somewhere on Vancouver Island. I was coming from a visit at my folks' house in the Okanagan and travelling 300 miles (500 km) to the meet up with my band on Vancouver Island just as the blizzard first struck – so the eight-hour trip ended up taking three days and two hotel stays. I'd probably eaten into much of the revenue I would have made from the gig right there, but I didn't want to let my bandmates down on the payday to come. On the day of the gig, our drummer baled, saying his wife forbade his travel on the roads as they were (which were, by then,...wet. Not headline news for Vancouver Island). We quickly found a new drummer (we'd never played with before) and soldiered on. We'd prepared, by specific request, a repertoire to please everybody – from Italian folk songs to the Macarena. I'd assembled a band of stellar musicians, and – it was all for naught. Once the old folks heard the Italian faves, they got nasty when we played current hits; and if we went back to the oldies, the young folks yelled 'what is this?!'. Meanwhile, an older gentleman took our saxophonist aside and told him that if we'd played 'Volare' like that in the old country, we'd have been shot (we'd kept that tune instrumental, so they couldn't complain about my Italian – but maybe that was the problem). Ironically, we were playing exactly what we'd been asked to play – '50's/'60's hits, with a smattering of current chart-toppers and Italian folk favourites. Ironically, this was our mistake. Each member of the audience came to see us as their jukebox, and reacted to us as you would to any machine that deviates from its expected performance - there just happened to be many differing expectations in that crowd. I suspect that if we'd dumped the Macarena and That's Amore and kept our '60's vibe unapologetically, the crowd would have acclimatized quickly and settled in for a fun community New Year's event. Hindsight is indeed 20/20.

I'm happy to say that that gig was, all told, singularly bad and hugely atypical of the hundreds of cover gigs I've played over the years. Most have been fun, and most, ironically, were far less work to prepare. The shows that tended to get the best audience response were usually pretty loose from the musicians' perspective, but where the musicians in question had the chops to make even songs that weren't completely nailed-down spirited and artful. Perhaps this is the environment that brings a good live musician's skills to the fore – unfamiliar enough to force all players to listen and focus, but comfortable enough to keep the players enjoying themselves and avoiding musical train-wrecks. Certainly an audience responds to how present the musicians appear to be, and perhaps such a setting keeps everybody pleasurably on edge.

The upside to having played so many covers gigs is that it got me in front of a lot more audiences than original music was likely to do. Especially in a little town like Victoria, where I lived for 25 years, there's far more work available for a cover band than an original act of equal quality. Any live musician desperately requires that live experience in order to get to a consistently good performance level, and all players work toward that level at their own rate. I certainly wouldn't trade away all that live experience. But...

I slowly came to realize over the last few years that all that time spent readying cover tunes and playing weekend nights was time taken away from my original music. While I do sometimes miss parading those instantly-recognized favourites in front of partying audiences, the more frequent work and the small compensations (which have declined for musicians over the last 40 years – not just in factoring in inflation and expenses, but actually declined), I eventually came to realize that an originals act requires every available minute of every week. The years that I was busiest with cover bands in Victoria were the years in which I produced very little original music. I had to choose one or the other. I teach music by day, so I don't need what relatively paltry returns the cover gigs tend to bring.

However – my sidemen have made a go of it. Lucky for me, Curtis and Jason are high-calibre musicians and a pleasure to work with – which means that a) they've been able to pick up better cover gigs for themselves, and b) they're busy! The days of the whole band sharing an apartment and/or a tour van, casting their lot for the vision of this one band breaking to the next level – those days happen in your teens or twenties, if ever. Meanwhile, with the music business in such a disadvantageous state for most artists, who would give up the relatively lucrative cover work for a gamble that offers poverty even for its winners? There is, of course, a trade-off. Sting, John Bonham and Robin Zander (who I just saw in concert last week, and, I'm happy to say – is as stellar as ever) all had to be lured away from comfortable, relatively lucrative and secure cover gigs in order to take the big gamble on original acts the Police, Led Zeppelin and Cheap Trick respectively...but of course, we will never hear about the untold numbers of musicians who take the same leap of courage and ultimately go nowhere. Like a lottery, you have no chance if you don't buy a ticket, but that doesn't mean your chances are much better than none if you do. Me, I eventually bought a ticket and turned my back on the dubious glories of cover bands. For as long as I enjoy making my own music, I'm at peace with the purchase.