You gotta love those musicians who constantly bash bands & musicians for doing covers, saying that they have no talent and they would get criticized constantly by many around the local scene. I’m talking about the people who seem to only support original music, nothing else outside of that. There are many bands & solo artists who don’t do too many cover songs or they don’t do none at all. I still see this lame argument today around local musicians in facebook, and other places online.

You see, I LOVE doing covers. I’ve always loved doing both originals and cover songs. I think it’s important for all musicians to do both. It doesn’t make a musician talentless hacks ’cause he/she wants to play covers. If you’re a musician and don’t want anything to do with cover songs, then I’m sorry, you’re not an actual musician. It’s pretty important to do cover songs. Playing covers is important for a few reasons. 1) It’s important to have a large repertoire of songs, that people will recognize so that people can take you seriously more as a musician. 2) It’ll help improve your talent and skill as a musician and songwriter. Writing original songs is great, but if you want to take your songwriting to the next level, learn cover songs. Cover songs will help make you play your instrument better and WILL help your singing better too. Playing cover songs certainly helped me play guitar and sing better, that’s for sure.

On top of that, there is nothing wrong with a cover band or an acoustic solo artist who plays nothing but covers. I think it’s pretty cool to hear different takes on cover songs by different musicians. It is also possible to make the cover song sound like that you wrote it, if it’s good enough.

I like a good cover band. I’m practicing and learning better guitar, and when I improve, I’m actually thinking about joining a cover band someday. Since I can’t get any other job anywhere else, I’m actually considering this idea.

It’s why I like to play covers at my live gigs from the past and upload cover songs on youtube. Doing covers is fun. It’s challenging and can be useful. I plan on getting back into learning covers again soon. I want to be doing this again.

Kev