Tribute bands take Western Pennsylvania by storm

These days, it’s easy to book the Beatles for a wedding, go to a local bar and see Queen or score inexpensive tickets to see Motley Crue.

As long as you’re okay with a different band lineup, that is.

Tribute bands — groups of musicians who play sets imitating big-name acts, especially ones from the past — have been popular in other parts of the world for decades. In countries like Australia, where the original artists didn’t often tour, they’ve been a staple of the music scene going back to the late 20th century.

In North America, the trend has caught on in the past decade. Locally, venues like The Lamp Theatre in Irwin and City Winery Pittsburgh book them frequently.

Rick Rock of Canadian tribute act Simply Queen thinks that it isn’t just about the music for concertgoers.

“It’s become like NASCAR,” he said. “People who love NASCAR, they love to go to the events, some of them don’t even care who wins, they just love to be around people who love the same thing.”

He said that Simply Queen became in demand after the release of the 2018 Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The band plays at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg on Oct. 17.

Gavin Pring, who plays George Harrison in longtime California-based Beatles tribute The Fab Four, sees a whole range of people at their shows. “Our flagship show is the hits, you know, for regular Beatles fans and down, so people who don’t even know anything about the Beatles or what their names are.”

But what goes into making a successful tribute band? According to several musicians, a lot of time, passion and work.

An authentic experience

Allen Lamacz, the Mick Mars in local Motley Crue tribute Live Wire, said that their band puts a lot of time and effort into exactly imitating their counterparts in the real band. “The costumes take a lot of time. I actually had a guitar custom-made that has every mark, scratch and everything exact to Mick’s. I studied how he walks, I studied how he stands.”

His bandmate and Live Wire’s Vince Neil, Billy Greer, agreed. “Motley Crue over the years, from when they first started, they’ve had so many different eras of the band where they’ve had different costumes and stuff like that. We pretty much decided to kind of pick your favorite. I personally have probably 10 different costumes I can wear onstage.”

They reflect Motley Crue’s bombastic concert style with pyrotechnics, an extensive light show and female backup dancers who come equipped with a whole closet’s worth of outfits.

Pring started his impersonation journey because he had a Beatles fan aunt who always told him how much he resembled George Harrison. He said that the Fab Four do their best to stick with the Beatles’ exact stage presence, but they do make adjustments for a modern crowd.

“George and the guys stood next to their amps quite a lot, and George, a lot of times — and you have to do the moves because George did it live — put the guitar up to listen to the guitar because they couldn’t hear themselves. Now we play with in-ear monitors with a crowd that doesn’t scream that loud, pretending that we have to listen to our amps.

“Also, George wasn’t very entertaining when he played live, he just stood by his amp. So I have to do stuff, and I get criticism for it, too,” he added.

Simply Queen focuses on providing a show that brings to life Queen’s live performances, like their iconic 1985 stand at Wembley Stadium. “There’s quite a bit of different things going on with songs and different styles of music, too. … it’s always a challenge every night that we perform. Everything can’t be perfect, but we try to do the best we can,” Rock said.

Michael Petyak plays lead keys and does vocals for local act Pitt Floyd. He said that their band does make some changes to allow the band’s talented musicians to show off their strengths.

“We hold to the integrity of the music while letting everyone in the band shine, given the material. That can go from an elongated drum solo in ‘Run Like Hell’ from ‘The Wall’ or our singer, Erin Jay, who’s lovely … she belts out ‘Great Gig in the Sky’ every performance.”

‘Play Freebird!’

All of the bands agreed that there’s a necessary balance between playing the hits and the deep cuts. Since the crowd has a wide range of familiarity with the original musicians’ material, they try to do a little bit of everything.

Pitt Floyd has a repertoire of about four and a half hours of Pink Floyd’s songs. They always play crowd-pleasers like “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” and “Comfortably Numb,” but they also love adding lesser-known songs to the rotation. Petyak quoted his bandmate, Michael Moats. “He says, ‘I like pulling the deep cuts out for the two to five percent of people who come and say ‘Oh my god, I didn’t know they were going to play that.’”

Rock loves when Simply Queen gets the chance to play early Queen songs, including “The March of the Black Queen.” Greer and Lamacz agreed that Live Wire can mostly perform any track that diehard fans yell out from Motley Crue’s extensive, decades-deep discography.

Pring said that The Fab Four plays festivals and shows specific to certain Beatles albums such as “Rubber Soul.” “We did the whole album in the first set but then we ended it with the hits, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ and ‘Twist and Shout.’”

A labor of love

Being in a tribute band may be a job, but for many musicians, it’s an opportunity to play music they love in front of crowds who appreciate the songs as much as they do.

Rock got into Queen when he was in high school and saw them in Detroit in 1975, the same year they released their seminal album “A Night at the Opera.” He has great reverence for their musical talent and impressive catalog. “A lot of the artists out there, it might’ve taken four or five albums before they caught on, but some of their best stuff has never been heard before, so we like to introduce a deep cut.”

The guys from Live Wire are lifelong Motley Crue fans who have passed their love onto their kids.

“I just always loved the group, from day one, from the first albums and I always knew I could do it,” Greer said.

Lamacz concurred. “Growing up as a kid, Motley Crue was my favorite band, I was kind of obsessed with them. I knew all the songs just from playing them over the years. I always thought it would be a dream to do this, and now I’m living it and it’s really cool.”