Is This the Best Cover Band in America? Part 2

Is This the Best Cover Band in America? Pt2

I can dream about you, if I can't hold you tonight. I can dream about you, but you know how to hold me just right. I can dream about you, if I can't hold you tonight.

I can dream about you, but you know how to hold me just right. I can dream about you, but you know how to hold me just right. I think it's a great interview.

I enjoyed it very much, and I hope you do too. So up next is Mike Vandermark, the guy that got Lexington Land Band on the map, along with 92 other musicians, right now. So, you know, you've been doing this now, we're going on 12 years.

I think it's been, you were celebrating your 10th anniversary when I saw it, so I just went back and looked at it. Yeah, it's been two years since we talked. Yeah, and then I noticed that there was a video shot last year, I didn't see it, where they interviewed the people in your band.

Yeah. A reporter came in or somebody? Yeah, she's a good friend, and so she's an anchor in Nashville now, but I thought she just loves music and knows me, so I thought it would be good for her to come in and just ask us questions. So, yeah.

So, I mean, this is the question I'm sure you get asked all the time. Why don't you guys play out more? I know you have so many great musicians, and I know it is not easy to tour. I talk to touring people all the time.

I know it's logistically difficult, it costs a lot of money, but every time, like I told you in my email, you're one of the most popular. Here's what it says. Is this the best cover band in America? Okay, that's the headline, the thumbnail.

Everyone, yes, it is. Yes, it is. Yes, it is.

Yeah. Okay, so there's multiple reasons we don't tour. I know you do it once a year there in your town.

You do it once a week, once a year. Yeah, so there's several reasons. The biggest is what people want, and I've got some evidence for this, but what people want is what they see.

What they want is what they see. So, but you know this, what they're seeing is a combination of over 90 people. Now, yes, there's about 20 they see a lot of or they've seen a lot of, and there's, you know, 70 that have done, you know, one or two sessions, right? But they go, oh, yeah, you need to come to my town.

And then we've done it. So we've done a few small charity things or private things, and we take nine people, and I build the set list off of those nine people that are there. And they're like, oh, you're not doing that song? Well, you're not doing my favorite song.

Or that singer isn't with you? Or why isn't a guitar player here? I never thought about that. Or, and they're not mad, but they aren't getting what they envisioned, right? Yes, I understand, yeah. Randy, who books all that for us, I've always, and he does a great job, but I'm always just reminding him, please tell them what they're getting.

Like, so when we do that, and I've capped it at four a year, and it's not, we don't do public events at all. It's all private gigs. Either a charity thing or it's like a corporate convention or something.

Right. And just to keep our name out there and get new, you know, but because I don't want to interfere with our annual show, where people do get a lot of what they expect, because we'll have 50 to 60 of those musicians on the stage at that show. We do 30 songs, and it's, you know.

But what I tell them is please tell them what they're getting, which is in this iteration, it's a nine-piece band, but no horns, and it's late 70s to mid 80s classic rock. There's no country, there's no R&B, there's no, you know, there's no 90s, there's no, you know. So you're going to get from Boston and Eagles to Van Halen, and that's it.

That's it. Right? You know, you might get, you'll get Fleetwood back, and you'll get, you know, Pat Benatar with the girls, and you'll get, you know, you'll get some of those things. And we might go as soft as Billy Joel or Michael McDonald, but we're not going R&B or country or, you know, we're not going to, and there's a lot of people who go, well, why aren't you doing sailing? Well, because we don't have an orchestra with us, and we're not playing that, you know.

So that's the main reason is people who would want to book us want to make an investment in bringing us places, because they got, you know, we got travel. Oh, yeah, it's expensive. It's expensive, and so they have an idea in their mind, and they'll always say, oh, yeah, I totally get it.

And then when you show up, they're like, well, I really wish you'd do this song, you know, and it's never been a problem. No, but I understand. And then the other side is, you know, we could put a band together that's more, that's able to do a lot more of that, but they'd all have to quit their jobs.

Yeah, they're not going to do that. Nobody's doing that. That's not who we are.

No, no, you're not. Like this has never been, and you know this, I'm sure we talked about it in our first interview, but this is not about, this is not a for-profit endeavor. No, I know that, yeah.

This is a for-music endeavor. And so none of them would even do it. You know, they'd all be like, oh, that's a great idea, but I'm not doing that.

Well, you know, I can understand that, because you're not, you have so many different people, and I never thought about the logistical part of it. So the band that I really like, they kind of broke up after 10 years, the analogs that do nothing but Beatles tunes. But that's one, see, that's different, because that's all they do.

Yeah, so if somebody hired them, guess what they're going to get? They're going to get Beatles songs. Now, there are songs that, I mean, there are times when they have violins and horns and stuff like that. It's a 12-piece band, but they don't all go with them.

But if you say, hey, can you do Mother Nature's Son? Well, sure. How about Daytree? Oh, sure. But in your situation, it's like, do Sailing.

I can do the guitar part with the chorus on it, but that's not going to work. Yeah, it's just, and you're just, you're always going to not do the song that the one person thought they wanted to hear. And it's like, man, I'm sorry, we just didn't have time to work that up, or it doesn't fit this band that we've put together.

These guitar players aren't the right people for that, or, you know, so. I remember when I played all the time, and they'd come up to me and go, hey, I'd really like if you played this song. And I'd go, when did you get here? Like an hour, like 10 minutes ago.

Really? Oh, man, we played it right before you came in. Yeah, that's right. You just missed it.

You just missed it. That last set had it in there. Oh, could you do it again? No, we only do it once.

So it's like, I know exactly what you mean. So there's a lot to it. But the main is, it's just too, you know, I've said this to several people.

I like our name, but we're not really a band. We're a project. No, you've got to have a name.

You've got to have a name. Yeah, but we're not the band. We are the Lexington Lab Band, but we're a musical project.

And it's just difficult for people to understand. Kind of like Alan Parsons. Alan Parsons is a great, that's what he did.

Yeah, it is just difficult. The first time I bought an album, he'd have a different people on there. Yeah, yeah.

Now, he might put a tour together, but it's one-off. Yeah, it's a one-off. So you've got, how many tunes have you done now? Have you thought about it? I just counted it up, and it's just shy of 300.

Wow. It's just under 300. It's like 286 or something like that.

I'd have to look at my notes. Yeah, that's okay. So close to 300.

Close to 300 for 12 going on 13 years. We've done 11 live shows, and we've used, I literally just counted this up today, we've used 92 different people. Wow.

Yeah. When you started this, did you ever think it was going to be this big? No, no, it wasn't. But did you have an idea one day and say, you talked to your friends, hey, come in and let's do some cover songs and record them? Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, I had younger kids. I had gigged in some country and rock bands and also had the church job. And so those don't really, those three things make it difficult to be out till one or two in the morning on Friday and Saturday nights.

Right. And I thought, I really want to do music, but I don't really want to keep doing this, being out till two for $100. No.

The money wasn't, I've never really been driven by the money, but it also wasn't good enough to be that worth it. So I stole the idea of doing like note for note copies from other bands, like in Nashville. And there actually was one here in town that would play a whole album, you know, down.

And I thought that's a great idea. But who's going to really come out and listen to that? You know, we don't have a, you know. But then I saw Live at Daryl's House, the Daryl Hall show, and I thought, oh, they're doing video and it's pretty loose, but maybe we could do a twist on that.

And so that's how that all kind of came together. And I just tapped four other guys that were really quality musicians that I thought would be willing to work hard. And we filmed four Doobie Brothers songs.

And, you know, in 2013, it's almost like you don't remember this, but YouTube was there, but it wasn't. It's not like it is now. It was for cat videos.

And, you know, funny stuff. And, you know, there were some playthroughs, you know, guitar playthroughs, tutorials, you know, things like that. Here, this is how you play this song.

And so we didn't even think enough. We made two kind of errors, but we didn't even, we didn't understand. And it wasn't even totally developed.

We didn't understand that there, if you do a rhythm to your releases, it's going to grow. So we put all four songs out at the same time. We just wanted to get them on the internet, right? Like, just put them up on the internet.

And we also put them on the guitar player's YouTube, personal YouTube page because he had one and none of us had one. And so, and he'd done some tutorials and was, I mean, popular at the time was, you know, I mean, it wasn't super popular, but popular enough. We got like 2,000 views on each of those videos.

And we thought, oh, this is incredible. 2,000 views, you know? Well, I mean, we get 2,000 views, you know, 20 minutes now continue. So we didn't know, we had no idea there.

And we just thought, oh, it worked, man. People really liked that. You know, our friends called us and said, man, you guys sounded great.

And we're like, oh, let's do it again. You know, let's do it again and do it again and do it again and do it again. And then of course you get better at what you're doing.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, it didn't take off till everybody was at home, locked up. Yeah, COVID.

Yeah. So, you know, the numbers pre-COVID was like a million and a half views. Right.

So from 2013 to 2020, it was less than 2 million views total. So you're talking almost seven years. And now we're at a hundred and, I don't know, 103 million or something.

We're over a hundred million, you know. So, you know, we grew like 98% of our views have been in the last four years, you know. For me, if I'm talking to a famous artist, I'm not going to ask them, hey, would you go to your record label and ask for that? No, I don't care.

And sometimes I don't even have the ability to do that because they don't own the publishing. Well, that's true too. Yeah.

Especially with the catalog that you've done. You never know who owns it. So there's, yeah.

Well, so there's YouTube and the publishers are, they have a sweetheart deal for the most part. So let's do this. Let's set aside the Eagles and Bryan Adams.

Okay. And I know why. Let's just set them aside.

Yeah. Because they're the only two that we've ever not been able to get over the hurdle. Okay.

They're not going to do it. Yeah. But set them aside.

Yeah. YouTube and the publishers, and this is by the publishers, they agree to it because the publishers have the legal authority over the copyright. Right.

They have said to YouTube, you can allow this stuff to go up. And YouTube's created a digital algorithm that as soon as you put a video up, it scans the video. Yeah.

And it tells YouTube, hey, they're using a recording that already exists or they're using a recording that sounds similar enough to the original that we're going to call it a cover. So that's generally how we get tagged. You're using the master recording, which we're not.

So it's incorrect. Or you're using the song's melody, which is correct. That's right, yep.

And 90% of the time, let's go with the, and this is too deep, it's fine. No, no, no, I want to hear. It would be great for cover bands to understand this if they don't.

90% of the time we get tagged as, this is the melody. You're using the melody. Or well, no, let's say, maybe it's probably less than that.

We actually get tagged a lot as the master recording, which we'll get to in a minute. But when we get tagged as a cover song, 90% of the time they just let it go up. Well, they always let it go up, but they'll say, we're going to share the revenue with you.

I get that. Now they don't ever tell you what that split is. No, they don't.

They just says you're sharing the revenue. I guess I get those. And it's peanuts.

Yeah. I mean, it's peanuts. So you're not, if you're a cover band, you're not doing YouTube to make a living.

No. They're the worst paying of everybody. Yeah, I mean.

They're even worse than Spotify and all that. There's some other groups that crank it out a lot more than us, and maybe they're able to get it. But generally, or sometimes they just go, you're not able to monetize this, but it's still up.

Never gets paid. Now, what's great for us is sometimes we get, man, I hope this doesn't get, it's fine. Sometimes we get.

No, I can cut it out. That's okay. No, no, no.

You can leave it in. It's fine. It's fine.

Sometimes we get labeled as using the master recording. Like you said, if you interviewed, give me a band that you've interviewed that has original music, right? Or whatever. Well, Walter Trout, Eric Johnson.

Eric Johnson. So you've interviewed Eric Johnson. We did Eric Johnson.

We did Cliffs of Dover. So we put Cliffs of Dover up, and it says, you've used Eric Johnson's recording of Cliffs of Dover off of, what was that album called? Eye of Iacon, Eye of Iacon, or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it says, you're using that. And we didn't. We actually played it.

You did, yes. Let's say you're interviewing him, and you just put a clip of it up. That would be accurate.

It would accurately say, hey, you've used this. Yes. We're not going to allow you to do it, or we're going to allow you to do it, but you can't make money, or, you know.

The publishers have made deals with YouTube, and they're all individual, that circumvent the actual law. They basically said, well, right? Well, they do. They say, hey, we're not going to hold you to copyright law.

We're going to allow you to put that up because we want the revenue. Yeah, that's right. So for us, let's say we did that song, and I don't think this happened, but let's say it came back as, you've used Eric Johnson's master recording of Cliffs of Dover.

Right. Well, that's not true. And in good faith, you can dispute that.

Oh, yeah. Now, so there's just a simple three-part question. I've seen it.

Did you create this? And you sign your name, and you think, oh, no. They could ban my account. It's a copyright strike.

But I had been given really good advice to say, if it's true, go ahead and dispute it, which it is, and all I do is write a little paragraph that says, you've mistakenly claimed this as the original master recording. We created all of the audio in this video from scratch. Please release this incorrect claim.

That's all I say. And the great thing is, and this is like 80% successful, where it's not, it's with the Eagles and Bright Eyes. No, no, I understand.

They don't care if it's the master recording or not. Even if it gets claimed as a cover, they take it down. They take it down.

But they have 30 days to respond. Yeah. And eight times out of 10, they don't respond.

And it's released, and they don't even claim it as a cover. They don't even, they just, nobody responds. I think what's funny to me is, I get them like six months later.

All of a sudden, something shows up. That's a manual review. And all of a sudden, I'm getting something, hey, by the way, you're sharing the revenue.

And I'm going like, that's a manual review. That's last year. That's somebody who, you know, a lawyer somewhere who's paid by their publisher to look for them.

Yeah. But, but, what I was going to say is, the power that they hold, and I'm fine with it, is they actually can come back and just say, we don't agree. Well, it's their game.

It's their ball. Yeah. Because they've got a deal with YouTube that says, we'll allow this, even though it's really not legal.

Yeah. So, and what I was told was, when they come back and say, your dispute has been rejected, let it go. Yeah.

I've had a few of those. Don't, don't, don't escalate it. Because when you escalate it, is when they can start giving you strikes.

And, so they can just come back and say, well, you say you made that recording, but we disagree, so it's still ours. it's, it's, well, but you know, the bottom line is, nobody, it has, when do you think that anybody actually listens to it? It's all computers. You know, I don't know whether if you dispute, and, you know, most of the time, I've been following the, uh, manager, Stephen Bishop.

Okay. And she does, manages a lot of people. She used to, and she'll say, I get calls from people that, Hey, did you know my song is being, they used it for a year before I knew about it.

I mean, because they don't know about it. Right. And, oh, by the way, side note, Eric Johnson, I asked him, I'd heard stories that it took him five minutes to write Cliffs of Dover.

And he said, yeah, that's about right. Unbelievable. So, so we need, side note, we need to talk about that song.

Let's come back to that song. Okay. All right.

But finishing up on this, on this YouTube thing. Um, they, what I don't, and I, this is all, this is all I'm going to say about it, but what I don't understand about the Eagles and Brian Adams, and man, Brian Adams was, our video was up for like 15 minutes. Oh really? And that was it? Wow.

Oh yeah. And the Eagles, I, I could keep them up for about a year before they would figure it out. And then they would hit me with one and I'd take the other four down.

And then a little later I'd put one back up for a while and see, then they'd hit it again, you know, but no Brian Adams hated it. But what I don't understand about that is. I don't understand either.

They could leave, they could leave it up, take a hundred percent of the ad money. Yep. And have their songs, it's basically free advertising for you.

I don't get it either. But they're incredible songs, especially with a band like us. Who's not like trying to put a twist on it too.

No, you're going to play it. No, you're going to play it exactly the way it is. Make it our own.

We're not even saying we're going to make it better. No. We're literally just, just playing their songs the way they were intended.

I don't, I don't understand that. Out of respect. And if they were sitting in the room, I would just go, you know, I don't, I don't understand.

And I bet you a dollar. Now this goes back to, there was a, there's a video and you can find it on the David Letterman show. And this, this was several years ago because obviously I've been doing it for a while.

And they started, David was talking to, what's the band leader. I can see on the bowl. Yeah.

Paul, he said, Hey, why don't you do that? And he goes, Oh no, no, no, no, we can't. He can't do that. Yeah.

It was an Eagle song. And he said, no, no, no, no. He says, well, find out how much it costs us to do that.

So they go to break. And they come back. And they said, he wanted to do life in a fast lane.

Right. And he says, how much is it going to cost us to play that? I mean, just to, you know, the intro or whatever it goes. And he goes, Paul goes, we'll take a guess.

I don't know, 50,000. It's like half a million dollars. And he goes, what? So they had somebody take the same notes and change them around of life is in a fast lane.

So it sounded like life in the different fast. Yeah, no, I know it doesn't make any, it's a guy that supposedly it's, it's Hensley is the one that hires all these people that have nothing but do, but they actually sit around and listen to it. And I'm like, why do you care? How much more money do you need? I mean, come on, dude, you don't.

Honestly, what's funny is he makes less money because of that decision. Why? Like he would, he could make a, he could make a hundred percent of, of the profits on a video with ads on it with his music. If he wants to, I'm like, who cares? I mean, he'd rather be taken down.

And I'm like, I don't, I just think that's so short-sighted because we are introducing some of those songs to people who've never heard it before. Cause you mentioned Daryl's house. Yeah.

You and I both know that the video and you guys do the same thing. There's a lot, well, you don't have a lot of, you don't have conversation in yours. You just go right to the song, but it's cut live, but then you mix it.

I mean, cause Daryl's they're standing around talking and they're, Hey, you thought, yeah, okay. You do the harmony on the LKK. And then they kick it in.

You're like, okay, this is, this has been, this is post. This has been mixed. This doesn't sound like this in that room.

You guys have to do the same thing. So what does that take? When you come in and you go, okay, we've worked on this. So I assume, cause I remember seeing your bass player say, and it was funny what he said when he was interviewed last year, when he was talking about playing bass, how do you do? And he said something that's actually reminds me of myself when you play.

And he said, you know, really, I only pay attention to what I do. I don't pay attention. I mean, I'm so focused on what I'm playing that I don't pay.

I know what's going on, but I don't pay attention to after we hear it. So when you guys have a song, so let's say I come to you and I go, we're going to talk about cliffs of Dover. And I say, Hey, can you find somebody can play cliffs of Dover? Then you find that person.

Then do you get, how does it work from that point on to find the people? We'll plan a session. So we'll plan the typically as typically a session is three or four songs. Okay.

And one night, because I don't want to, we want to maximize people's time. And so we'll film, you know, and, and, um, so if we start from the beginning, we'll put a band together and then based on the singer or maybe lead guitar player, or if I got a fiddle or something, we'll, we'll, we'll create a set list around that band. Okay.

So it might be, uh, so we did a, we did a set in November that included a guy named Charlie Crow. He's, he was with Brooks and done for 20 years and Reba and Miranda Lambert, but he's from Lexington. So he agreed to come out and play with us.

but he didn't want to do country. He wanted to do more like classic rock, you know, we're like, great. So we did a Bon Jovi tune.

We did Edgar winter and we did, um, sticks. I think those were the three we did with him. Okay.

So we put a set together and then that's usually put out to the musicians with some notes on making me some assignments, things that really dial in on, Hey, you're playing this guitar player. You're playing this keys bar. They pay attention to this.

They usually have about four to five weeks. So at that time, their job, let's talk about Edgar wetter. You did Frankenstein.

Didn't it? Wouldn't you do Frankenstein? Oh, I'm doing free ride. Okay. I know this song very well.

I remember it. But somebody has to sit down and figure out how do I make my guitar sound like. That's the, um, Derringer song.

That's on the, that's on the player to come back and say, I'll say, Hey, you're going to play the guitar. That's in the right channel. And this lead at this moment and blah, blah, blah.

And you're going to play the distorted guitar over here and these things. And they kind of know what they're supposed to learn. And then their job is to dial in their sounds and learn every note before they show up.

So they'll usually have a month to do that. And they're so good that they know how to do that, obviously, or get as close as humanly can. And of course in post and we'll get to this point, but in post I fix things that I can fix.

Sure. You know, if it's too clean, I can add some stuff or, you know, it's, it's hard to take distortion away or delay away, but you know, I generally coach and most of them know this. I coach them to go less on the effects, even if it's part of the song, then more because it's always hard to, it's always hard to take things away more than it is to Adam.

So, so they have about a month and then we show up and this has changed over the years, but this is how we do it. Now we show up, we do Monday night around once a month, every five or six weeks, we'll do one. And the band comes at six and the band rehearses from six to eight, those three to four songs.

And then the camera crew shows up, we break at eight o'clock, we, you know, get something to drink, maybe.