What Music Should You Play At Your Gigs?

You’ve only got one shot at making a great first impression, so what are you going to play to captivate the audience? What you play now will determine their likelihood of sticking around to hear more, and even have the chance to become a fan that is willing to put some money in your pocket. If you’re looking to get out of playing simple 20 person audience shows - you’ll want to play something moving enough to get them to take action! Go to your website. Tell a friend. Buy some merch! If that’s something you want, the question is... What are you going to play?

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Take A Step Back

We first need to take a step back and lay down some truths. Can you fully appreciate a song you haven’t heard before?

Yeah, you may like a song you haven’t heard before; but do you have a connection to it and memories attached? Hearing a song you’ve heard before has way more potential to excite emotion than one you haven’t heard!

Maybe we should use this to our advantage. What are your goals in playing shows? What specific steps are you taking in order to reach those goals? If one of your goals is to grow an audience, then maybe this is something to consider.

What are you trying to get the audience to see and appreciate? In other words, what are you trying to sell or funnel the audience to? Unless you have merchandise, these are probably your original songs.

Going back to a previous article in this blog, you should be giving value instead of trying to take. You’re wanting your audience to hear your songs, but what are you giving in return? Nobody likes being pitched ads all the time!

Your original songs should be the place you’re funneling your audience to, not just something you show up with!

Of course, this completely changes if you’re a high demand band; they’re most likely there BECAUSE of your original music! In that case, give them what they want! Then you can use your original songs as a funnel for something like merchandise or whatever else you’d like them to gravitate towards.

Take Advantage Of These Truths

Now we can lean in and see what we can do after knowing these simple facts. If we know that covers will connect more with people you don’t know, what if you used them specifically for growth?

Whenever you’re at an out of town gig, or just a place you don’t have very many fans, maybe covers are your best option to connect with your audience. After all, strangers are perfectly content with NOT hearing your originals, because after all, they have never heard of you!

New fans should be fine listening just to covers as well; there hasn’t been much time to build trust. They’ll more easily see your creativity and skill with covers, because they have other bands they can reference you to skill and performance-wise. That’s not really possible with originals!

You’ll need to play these covers so unique and hit them out of the park that they’re begging to hear your original music. Keep in mind though, they most likely won’t tell you; you’ll have to feel around. If you think it’s time to start playing an original, hold off a little longer! Don’t rush into it!

When I say covers, I don’t really mean copying the song to a T. That’s not very creative and doesn’t show off your skill! Try to find ways to modify the song to fit your style, and keep things fresh and entertaining!

Are you mostly an acoustic act? Pick covers that you can play multiple parts on the acoustic; for example, some drum parts by hitting the body of the guitar. Or, maybe some harmony vocals played on the guitar to harmonize with your vocalist if you can’t sing. Get creative and find new ways of doing things!

What Music Covers Should You Play?

Well, since you’re going to be playing covers specifically to grow, you’ll need to pick from the top of the top well-known songs. These don’t have to be those cliche songs like Sweet Home Alabama and Wonderwall! Pick from the more recently released songs and tune it to something more your style.

If you’re a metal band, a lot of pop songs actually work pretty well sometimes; you’ll just have to choose the right ones! They leave a lot of room for creativity since they are usually technically super simple.

Pick songs that you want to represent you well. It will only end up being detrimental if you choose something like “Smack That” by Akon when you’re wanting to go in a conservative/religious direction with your originals! 😂 In other words, keep them on brand.

In the end, you’ll ultimately have to like what you play. If you dread playing these songs, maybe you should pick ones better suited to your band’s brand and interests! Playing songs you like will only give you better performances.

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The purpose of this article is really to get you thinking intentionally about what songs you play, because they do represent you as a brand after all. If you can show off your creativity by playing covers, there’s a much better chance you’ll be getting some more gigs!

When you feel like your audience is ready for originals, I’ve made a document I call the Top-Down Songwriting Pyramid aimed to keep you on track and focused on what really matters in writing a song. All you have to do is head over to the blog homepage and subscribe to receive email notifications about new blog posts that have been published, and you can download it from the email! Don’t worry, you can unsubscribe if you only want the document at any time; but you’ll be missing out on some posts that aren’t posted on social media! :)

Until next time!

-Michael