About stage presence...
 

First, a little background; I'll be referring to my band as "us" and "we":

My band's been together for about a year and a half, and it's been six months since we found a drummer. It's a four-piece: two guitars, bass and drums. One of the guitarists and I sing.

We've been lucky enough to have several chances to play for a public (either friends or a crowd), but we just can't get the crowd going. There might be several reasons for this, but I think the most remarkable is that the two guitars stand still there looking at their fretboards while onstage. Also, they're are excessively nervous on-stage. The crowd obviously notices this and stands there bored, drinking.

I always try to move around, and while I sing, I look to anyone I know and smile just for the hell of it, because it makes people pay you attention and "feel more into it". Even though I'm introverted, I enjoy being on-stage, and love being the center of attention while I'm playing.

So to sum this all up: A couple days ago we threw a party at a friend's house and played for about 30 of our friends. We did well and overall felt and sounded nice. But something wasn't working: people just stood (or even sat) around us holding a beer. This held on for about an hour, until we played "Are you gonna be my girl". We didn't know the lyrics for the song, so a couple friends offered. AS SOON AS I STARTED PLAYING the whole damn crowd stood up and started dancing. Things warmed up and I immediately started "feeling" it. We then played A-punk (Vampire weekend), Janie Jones (The Clash)... and the crowd kept at it.

Is is just because of the singer's presence on-stage? Was it because they started getting drunk? I felt dissappointed the most successful songs weren't sang by any of us and they slowly took over the stage.

How can we get everyone on the dancefloor so both us and the crowd can have a good time? It seems that only I am worried about this, since there's been no improvement on both guitarists. After we played a previous show we watched ourselves in a couple videos a friend recorded and we could see what were we doing wrong (what I said above), so there's no excuse. How can I make them understand they've got to solve it ASAP? The drummer and I know about this, and I sure get his support.

Should we add to our setlist more songs like these? Is there something else I can do if they don't change their mind? I just want to get the crowd going, and I know it's hard, but I enjoyed it SO much! I'm sure you guys have been trough this and can chip in a couple ideas and advice. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for your time.

I don't know your current setlist, or your demographic, but it seems to come down to you setlist from what I can tell. If you are at a country bar and start playing dream theater tunes, not gonna have much dance floor action. It's discussed on here constantly about whether you should play for the crowd or yourself. If you want to have people dancing, you gotta play the songs THEY want to hear. What those songs are depends on who your target audience is.

I feel it is probably 75% song choice that will get a crowd up on the dance floor. The other 25% would be Your bands stage presence. IOW it's about the music. Good danceable tunes with a good beat and good bass. Bass is what pulses through the crowd and gets them moving. It's hard to get that through the heads of guitarists. They often just want to put on a concert with them as the Hero of the day.

Why not? :p

Yeah, OP has learned why there are so many cover bands out there methinks.

Yep. Setlist. It's just that simple.
People dance to familiar tunes, and only if they're worth dancing to. Playing what the band likes or wants to play almost never works.

These are the songs we played that day:

I fought the law - The Clash
You're gonna go far kid - Offspring
Song 2 - Blur
Heart full of pride - Perkele
Basket Case - Green Day
Leave it alone - NOFX
Smells like teen spirit - Nirvana
For whom the bell tolls - Metallica
Hate to say I told you so - Hives
A-punk - Vampire Weekend
Janie Jones - The Clash
R U mine? - Arctic Monkeys
Are you gonna be my girl? - Jet

I reckon some of the songs aren't fitting, but we don't have such a big setlist and had to fill up.

you have to know your crowd...you can't play Opera at Billy Bobs and expect the dance floor to fill up..We are a rock band.Our originals are rock, but we have LOTS of country two steppin dance songs on our list too..gotta play to the crowd, and especially if they are paying to be there...

You are playing high energy songs... it would look weird to me to see people playing those songs and not be moving around. A few years ago I was playing with a alt pop band that wrote amazing songs and were great musicians/singers. They also stared at their fretboards or "shoe gazed" We could never get a crowd on our side. My current band really rocks out and the energy from the crowd is also great. Our last show was pretty sloppy, but we still went crazy and had fun- and we got offered a gig at the biggest venue in town by a booking manager that happened to catch our show. You are playing the right songs to get people out on the floor- but you need to "sell it" more.

One thing about crowds dancing, though, is that somebody's got to break the ice, even if they like all the music and want to dance to it. Usually nobody wants to be THAT guy who's dancing his heart out... all by himself. So people act cool and look around and watch each other and wait for somebody ELSE to start dancing. Then they'll join in. Sometimes it's just a couple of songs to warm them up, other times it takes longer.

A lot of the time it's one particularly iconic riff and then a couple of girls just can't NOT dance to it, and the crowd follows. Sometimes it just takes a shameless invitation from the band. One time I saw a Beatles tribute band play a benefit near us for the public library. The crowd sat and listened appreciatively - and nothing else - till one of the guys in the band just said flat out, "Hey everybody, this is dance music, so if anyone wants to dance, come on up!" And people got up.

I think its a combination of song choice, alcohol and the fact that you were playing at someone's house. If you had been in a club people may have gotten into it sooner. In my opinion, great musicianship and song choice will always top stage presence. Many of the world's best musicians have little stage presence. (John Entwistle, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton for example).

John Entwistle

ZERO stage presence.

That is all.

All his stage presence was concentrated in his hands.

And that is all that matters...............to me.

Another thing to remember: even when you think you're rocking out, it'll probably take another 50% to make it actually look like it. I was watching video of a show from a few weeks ago, and while playing I thought I had great energy and was putting on a great show. When I watched the video, however, everything looked half done. If you feel like you're exaggerating your stage presence, you're probably only just beginning to put on a show.

Feed the guitarists some liquid courage, and have the FOH guy pipe some nitrous oxide into the ventilation system

"Your band doesn't have to have any stage presence at all," said that one guy who no one remembers.

+1

It would be hard to upstage Moon and Townsend.

I think a lot of what makes a band great is involving a crowd. I once played in a band that had an amazing front man. Some people have it some people can fake it, some just can't. You can try the Tom Jackson DVD set might help you out.

By the way that band that people loved was by far not the most talented band I was ever in.

He didn't need stage presence. Keith Moon was one of rock's biggest wild men. Roger was throwing his mic 20 feet in the air, Pete was doing windmills and smashing guitars. The Who were masters of stage presence. Four guys standing around like Entwistle would be a snooze fest. There are definitely genres that it is appropriate to stand and play, but looking the OPs set list, this isn't one of them.

Yeah, but in his case he was surrounded by three madmen. His low-key demeanor probably helped to ground the performance and make sense of the chaos.