In defense of cover bands 

• Travis Skene
• Rylee McDonald

The modern cover band stands within society as a textbook case of the classic Shakespearean conundrum. While you're probably thinking, "Don't you dare quote Shakespeare!", cover bands everywhere are ripe with the scent of Romeo's monologue, a little ditty that goes like this: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." When removed from the constraints of iambic pentameter, Romeo's mournful under-the-balcony chant brilliantly encapsulates the idea that simple things such as name or category do not define content. Which inspires the question: Then what does?

Enter Rylee McDonald, local musician extraordinaire, who offers his personal philosophy of the cover band: why he's in them, why they often find themselves in the hot seat, and why, in spite of the scorch, cover bands can transcend the "spectacle" categorization and become spectacular in their own right.

McDonald stands as a mammoth in the Salt Lake City music scene, playing in numerous original and cover bands spanning genres and eras. Mostly acting as lead guitarist and frequently as lead vocalist, (as well as songwriter, mixer and master-er for his original band, Advent Horizon), McDonald's keeps his hands full (and most likely calloused) given the hours he has spent exploring a slew of different guitar techniques to properly encapsulate anything from 2000's pop punk, classic R&B, or prog-esque original licks.

Even after touring endlessly—including opening for big names in the rock world such as Foreigner and Lynyrd Skynyrd—Advent Horizon was faced with the reality that many talented, local bands find inescapable: Originality does not necessarily mean financial success. "We tried every way that we could to figure out how to make money from music, but there was really no money to be made," McDonald says. "And, eventually, we realized if we don't find some way to make money off of music, the band is going to have to break up. So, we decided: Let's start a cover band."

Hence, the birth of Shuffle, founded with the original members of Advent Horizon and a few welcome additions, to become a cover band focused on "all things rock." Yet, McDonald's dabbling doesn't stop at Shuffle. He is also part of awe-inspiring, 13-member Pink Floyd cover band The Great Gig, as well as "10-piece party band" Modern Retrospect, who drive home modern pop and classic R&B at corporate parties and weddings.

Despite demonstrating unimaginable range, admirable musicianship and intense dedication to the craft, McDonald recognizes the schism that exists between original and cover music in terms of public perception, which often ousts the cover band from claiming a sense of honor in the realm of originality. "Just like any other art form, there will be a way to capitalize off of [music] and make money, but oftentimes that comes at the cost of your own artistic integrity," he says. "There's the thing that you want to do, and then the thing that makes money, and sometimes you've gotta do both if you want to succeed." Yet McDonald also notes that "a lot of musicians tend to frown upon capitalizing off of other people's music instead of making their own. Which is totally understandable, but in my opinion, maybe a little bit misguided."

Not only does completely shredding in a cover band provide steady income to musicians who might otherwise not find the dimes that they deserve, it's also a fun—yes, fun!—way to keep your chops sharp as a musician while engaging and creating an entirely new aura of showmanship. "Playing a show as an original musician, you are an artist playing that music on the stage," McDonald says. "In a cover band, you are less an artist and more a performer. You're not speaking from your soul per se, but that doesn't mean what you're doing doesn't have value. You are an actor, playing a part that you've been hired to play, and if you do it well, there is a lot of art in that."

Encased carefully within that art of performance lies the crux of nostalgic recollection and present, intense memory-making. "It seems to me that the general public, people who don't play music all the time but enjoy music, get really excited when they see a band playing songs that they can relate to, and I think that's the big thing. It's music that you have memories tied to," McDonald says. "If we as a band can play those songs and do them faithfully enough and with enough energy that it brings back those memories to those people, we're not just playing a song to them. We're literally recreating an experience from earlier in their lives."

And it's not just the audience that can experience something special when a cover band plays. "As you can imagine, as an original artist, it's very rare for me to go play an hour of my original music and see everybody singing along to every word, right? But it's the opposite when I'm playing covers." McDonald says. "When I'm up on stage and I'm playing, say, [Bon Jovi's] "Living On a Prayer," everybody knows every word. They're all screaming it back in my face while I'm singing it, and that is an undeniable energy.

"It's so much fun to be in that environment and to be singing, even if I didn't write the song and have no artistic skin in the game. I'm recreating something that they already love, and we are all having fun in the meantime."