Covers and originals in different areas

This is not hate/troll post. So please read before posting. I’m curious to hear how different areas vary.

Was reading a thread today where an original music bassist referred to switching to covers as “joining the dark side.” And over the years as a member of TB I’ve seen a lot of people post about their preferences in different types of bands. Personally I’m all for playing whatever makes you happy. I enjoy playing both originals and covers. So this is not a troll thread and I hope if it becomes that that the moderators could take control. I personally really just enjoy playing good music with good people. That said it’s always interesting to me to read on talkbass how music scenes are different in different areas because of the situation of the local scene here. I even see it driving a feeble hours away.

One of the reasons it’s interesting is for a lot of the cover gigs in my area there is actually no bass player at all these days. Of course there are exceptions where full band cover gigs are in demand. And I could probably drive two hours each way to the beach each weekend and play cover gig on a regular basis. I have a couple friends who do that. But most of the cover gigs here close to where I live are one or two acoustics and a cajon, djembe or some other type of hand drum. Many are solo shows with just one person singing and playing acoustic guitar. So there’s not much work as a bass player looking to play covers. Like most places as I gather cover gigs typically pay better but there’s just not much demand to gig on a regular basis as a bass player in a cover band here. There’s literally one bass player in my town that plays regularly in a cover band. And he’s plays a regular restaurant gig at one of nicer Italian restaurants in town. So mainly the same venue all the time with very few exceptions. Seems like the cover scene has largely moved away from the full lineup cover bands that used to stay pretty busy to low volume acoustic style gigs.

So I’m just curious to hear more about the music scenes wether they be cover scenes or original scenes all over the world. Seems like in other areas the situation is very much the opposite and original bands aren’t as common and everyone is in cover bands. What’s it like where you live? Are these small acoustic solo,duo, and trio gigs becoming popular in your area?

I think this is also interesting because I enjoy keeping up with the gig stories threads on talkbass and it seems like very few members of talkbass are actually gigging unless they just totally ignoring those threads. Maybe 20-30 of us out of the hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who frequent talkbass post on the gig threads. So I encourage everyone to go check out those threads and post pictures, video clips, and stories of your gigs.