Cover band play time?

[Vic Winters]

I know this varies from state to state, bar to bar and gig to gig, but what would you say is a safe minimum of material to have (time wise) if you wanted to do cover gigs? 3 hours? 4 hours? 5 hours? More? My favorite bar to go see live music has one band playing from 10:30 to 2:00 with one break which is usually 15-20 minutes. That's the extreme. I've heard of and seen sets as small as 45 minutes at other places. Right now my band has between 2 and 2.5 hours of material.


What say the more experienced TBers?

[seanm]

Three 45 minute sets are pretty standard, with 15 minute breaks. However, we quite often play for a full hour on the first set just to get the audience going. So let's say 2.5 hours plus any encores.

Three and a half hours with only one break is brutal.

[Vandelay]

If it's a "happy hour" gig, you might be able to get away with just 3 sets of 45-minutes each. Otherwise, I think you'd want to have a minimum of 4 sets before you try to get bar gigs.

[nsmar4211]

We do 45ish minute sets with 15ish break. Four sets. We pushed to have 40 songs before gigging, 4 hours worth of material. That's our usual night. We usually play 9-1 on weekends. Couple gigs have been 930 to 130, or 7-11 (noise ordinances here). If the crowd changed right when we are supposed to break, we'll play an extra song or two to try and catch their attention before break . We have played 2 hour shows at festivals as a band, we didn't bother to break because it was so short. When my duo plays a two hour show, they do take a 15 min break (usually some really small place that won't mind it).

Our first gig was a 3 hour gig with 2 hours of material (gulp...). Somehow we did it (thank goodness for friends wanting to sit in!). Wouldn't want to do it again. I'd have 4 hours of material... and then you can breathe a bit. We're still adding stuff because even with 4 hours worth, some of it gets a bit boring. There's about 10 songs Id like to see be replaced.... keep adding! Much better to have too much material than to have to pull out some songs that aren't as good.

[5andFretless]

We are a house band for a bar. We play every other Saturday night mid February to Mid October. Our contract says 9 pm to 12:30 am. It does not stipulate anything else except our pay. We normally come on a little after 9, play until 10, back on at 10:15, off at 11:15, back on at 11:30 and off at 12:30 or a little later. That adds up to 30 songs, we know about 50, but we are constantly dropping songs and picking up new ones. We do not do encores or requests. We are employees of the bar. We play what ever is popular on the radio. Tonight is our first night of the season. Opening song of set 1 is "Here for the Party", opening song for set 2 is "U & UR Hand", and opening song for set 3 is "Before He Cheats."

[KrisH]

We'd do four 45 minutes sets, with three 20 minutes beaks. Twelve songs a set, virtually no time in between tunes. Sometimes the last set would run longer, depending on the crowd and when the bar owner wanted to get out.

[lawsonman]

Originally Posted by KrisH

We'd do four 45 minutes sets, with three 20 minutes beaks. Twelve songs a set, virtually no time in between tunes. Sometimes the last set would run longer, depending on the crowd and when the bar owner wanted to get out.

Ditto!

[bassforce]

We usually play just one, 1,5-2 hour set, get money, drink beer, rape some women, burn some church and go home

[Stinsok]

During the week 8-11, weekends 9-1/10-2. Way back when I was young we had a steady Saturday night gig that went from 9-4. We were stupid for doing it.

[Bassin']

Originally Posted by bassforce

We usually play just one, 1,5-2 hour set, get money, drink beer, rape some women, burn some church and go home

Hey, where's your next gig?.. sounds like fun.

[Bassin']

We have just over 40 songs right now but we're working on getting that up to the 50-60 song range. Once we get to that point, we will probably start to weed out some of the songs that aren't working quite as well.

As far as gigs, the longest we have is 9pm to 1:30am- basically four sets stretched out a bit with 15 to 20 minute breaks in between each. We're all decent musicians and we have a lot of sections in our songs that are left open so we can easily take a 3 minute song and stretch it into a 8-10 minute song. Normally we would do this if there's a lot of people on the dance floor but we've also had to do this because of the time we're required to play. It will be nice to get enough material where we can pick and choose when to stretch songs out.

[bassforce]

Originally Posted by Bassin'

Hey, where's your next gig?.. sounds like fun.

Just the regular stuff Pity, that we play, rape'n'burn only in Poland ... yet

Here's our myspace;
http://www.myspace.com/removalmachine
Our youtube channel:
http://pl.youtube.com/user/BelvisB
and some nice carrots:

[BassmanDk]

Originally Posted by bassforce

We usually play just one, 1,5-2 hour set, get money, drink beer, rape some women, burn some church and go home

Same here except the moneypart!!!

With my top40 band we normally play 3x45min, 12-3 or later, which is about 30 songs plus encores. But we have a rep list of about 4-500 songs! Yes, a lot but we've been playing for years and the others are good fakers and i remember really well!
One outdoor-gig we played every summer at a festival, we played 6x45mins both friday and saturday and 7x45 mins sunday. Now that ain't funny, just dumb. Sunday we could hardly sing or even touch our instruments because of blisters. But we made it thanks to ungoodly quantums of beer. Thank god it was at a harbour. Once the drummer turn around on his chair and took a pi.. in the water during a long intro by the guitarist!

[Phalex]

We do 4-45 minute sets with 15 minute breaks. I'd say minimum would be 10 songs a set. That means you should know 40 tunes to start and keep adding more as you go.

[Vic Winters]

Originally Posted by Stinsok

During the week 8-11, weekends 9-1/10-2. Way back when I was young we had a steady Saturday night gig that went from 9-4. We were stupid for doing it.

7 hours? Holy s***!