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We are a nineties indie tribute act.
Within genres there are circuits of specialist nights and festivals. The mod/ scooter rally circuit, the reggae circuit,etc. I used to know a chap who played in a trad jazz band and he probably gigged more than anyone else I’ve known. So, if you have an in on one of these circuits there have been quite a lot of gigs that way.
https://i.imgur.com/7t0jIxG.jpg
We've played BeeGees, Jacksons and Gloria Gaynor numbers at biker rallies and had the whole place singing along, partly because they've heard Smoke on the Water three times already today.
How anyone sits through a weekend of ska bands is anyone's guess quite frankly, there's always an opening for something else.
Has to be plenty of slow dance tunes for the happy couple, then some good high energy stuff, and ideally loads that have iconic choruses that even the most pissed usher can recognise and sing along with as he downs his 10th pint and tries to shag a bridesmaid. Genre is less important than the songs being easily recognised.
But - do it right and you can be booked up in advance for a couple of years. Can be boring as hell, but can pay very well.
https://speakerimpedance.co.uk/?act=two_parallel&page=calculator
Pre-covid, they had about £18k worth of wedding bookings.
You can make a living doing function gigs which can be a broad brush of pop/rock/soul or more genre-specialised bands (I played in a Motown/Soul band doing weddings/corporate for years).
You can do well on the theatre circuit with a tribute show. I've worked with Elvis, Michael Jackson and David Bowie tributes that fill large theatres (and even arenas with the Elvis show) and I've got friends who've toured with tribute shows for ELO, Kate Bush, The Smiths, Pearl Jam, The Beatles and others to a pretty successful level. The standard has to be pretty high and you need someone with a proper business head on to run and market it.
I know people working in genre niches who do quite well out of it - I was surprised to see the size of the modern country circuit but I've got mates who are doing very well in that market, and there's definitely still a blues audience out there. As someone else mentioned, the traditional jazz and swing thing is popular in a lot of smaller venues and also on the wedding/function scene too.
I'm also in a tribute band, a Kate Bush tribute which is quite niche and quite well paid. As @mike257 said the standard has to be quite high and you need to be very professional as all the gigs are ticketed. For us this means seated theatres gigs with hundreds of people sat of seats listening intently .... it's a much higher level of pressure and some people don't cope as well in this environment. The pay however can be very rewarding, selling out the larger venues can easily net the band 8K with the smaller ones being around 2K. As the pay is directly related to ticket sales it's a question of speculating to accumulate. This was one bummer of covid, not only did we lose thousands in 2020 from cancelled gigs but also lost the money paid in adverts and printing
Personally for me playing for money suits me. I prefer night work, kids are grown up and I don't mind the travelling. If you have young kids and a normal 9 to 5 though it can be a very tiring existence.
There was a time around 2016 when the recording studio I owned went bust and I basically did nothing but gig for a couple of years to put food on the table. Back then I was playing in 7 different bands from a Thin Lizzy tribute to a Rock a Billy band and doing dep work on bass and keys as well as guitar. Basically If I wasn't booked already I would gig for £40 a night just to get towards the £1200 or so a month I needed to pay the bills. It was all a bit stressful calendar wise with a lot of juggling .... did 3 gigs in one day once across 3 different venues. Don't miss those days but it kinda proved it could be done.
No Western Swing on that list!