Mainstream | Press | Seattle Times

A Great Gig
By Joanna Horowitz, Seattle Times staff reporter
September 5, 2004

You can request "YMCA," or even "Feelings." Seattle band Mainstream will happily oblige, as long as you dance.

Of course they would be even happier to slide out a jazz standard like "All of Me," but in this business, the customer is always right.

"The key is to play what people want, not what you want," said Mainstream drummer Don Gaines.

That strategy has helped the members of Mainstream supplement their day-job incomes for 25 years and have a lot of fun doing it. While the "casual-band" business won't make anyone rich, those with musical talent and a willingness to please (and tolerate the occasional obnoxious partygoer) can find a rewarding way to bring in some extra bucks and help make a couple's day a little more special.

"Even a good year for us, we're not making enough to sustain anyone's living expenses," lead singer and guitarist Ken Morrison said. "We're doing this for fun and the extra income is nice, but we're not counting on it to sustain a family or make a house payment."

Mainstream caters primarily to weddings, but also play at reunions, parties, bar mitzvahs or corporate events, especially once the May-to-September wedding boom dies down.

Recently, Mainstream played for the Bellevue Downtown Association's Live at Lunch series, trying to get co-workers to dance with one another on their lunch breaks in The Summit building by running though a lively set of mostly jazz standards. Though no one cut a rug (save a few well-executed shimmies by the band), the five band members, all men in their 40s, inspired plenty of toe-tapping.

"I think they're great. They've got a lot of range," said Jim Tremper, who was visiting clients in the building. "I think they'd be great at a wedding."

The small number of these type of bands may be due to the job's low pay (gigs pay well — $1,300 for three hours — but a band like Mainstream only plays about 35 a year) and the fact that pleasing the audience is the No. 1 priority.

"Yeah, there's a stigma. It's a service job," bassist David Pascal said. "We need to cater to the desires of a specific audience."

But that doesn't bother Mainstream. They got into the business with no goal of rock stardom: they wanted to play social events, and they still have a great time doing it, despite a dip in gigs that they attribute to the economic downturn.

"People don't spend money like they used to," said keyboardist Andy Roben. Couples with a high income can still afford to pay for a live band, but many middle-income brides and grooms are going the cheaper disc jockey route, which can range from $400 to $1,000 or more.

Though a DJ may be less expensive, Mainstream's members said having a live band has plenty of advantages like their ability to change songs or let audience members sit in (and then cover for them if they're awful).

With income mostly just coming in on the weekends, party band members can't afford to quit their day jobs. Saxophonist Bruce Wilson and Pascal are full-time musicians, playing in three or more bands in addition to Mainstream. Morrison is a television producer (formerly for KOMO, now on his own), Roben is a sales engineer for Internap, and Gaines is a vice president at Puget Sound Energy.

What keeps them playing together is the thrill of enticing people out of their seats and also getting a peek behind the scenes before the wedding starts.

"What's fun about the band is we're kind of invisible and people will do all these things right in front of us and they just don't worry about the fact that we're standing there," Wilson said.

The band has watched from the sidelines as a bride exploded at a wedding consultant over a tardy cake, a groom was left at the altar after paying for the entire wedding, and plenty of people got intoxicated.

So don't expect the audience to be paying much attention to you at times. And it helps to have a good sense of humor, a love for all kinds of music and an outgoing personality to get into the casual-band business, Mainstream members said.

"Listen to many styles of music and don't look down your nose at any of them," Pascal said. "And learn how to play them so they really feel right."

You'll also need a demo tape or CD to get started and then to keep going, bands use booking agents, ads in the yellow pages, bridal publications such as Bravo! and online sites like www.mySeattlewedding.com.

But once your name gets out there, the gigs may come mostly by word of mouth.

That's the case with Mainstream, a name that's been out there for a long time.

Plus its members have all been rocking since before they could drive, and most have had formal training. Not only that, they grew up listening to and playing the kind of music that's in demand for weddings: classic rock, swing and jazz. But, Mainstream said, younger musicians often don't want to play that.

"When we all got into this there were a lot of young people doing this, you don't see that so much any more," Morrison said. "There aren't a lot of wedding bands that I know of that are made up of five 25-year-olds."

Mainstream has played for the weddings of each of its members and outlasted three of the marriages. Now the band is playing for couples almost young enough to be their children, but the gigs are still coming in.

"I always figured as time went on it would die down, people would stop calling us for gigs and that hasn't happened at all," Gaines said. In fact, some people even call Mainstream to play at their first wedding and then again for a remarriage.

"That really hits me why this band has stuck together because we all have the same general attitude and philosophy about just having fun at these things, and we don't take anything too seriously," Morrison said.

Joanna Horowitz: 206-464-3312 or jhorowitz@seattletimes.com The Bands Play On

Casual acts provide fun, part-time work

Demand: It's there, but not really hot, because of competition from disc jockeys and an overall decline in spending for such entertainment in recent years. Employment in the broader category of "musician" is expected to grow 10 to 20 percent over the next decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Pay: Varies widely according to skill, popularity, experience and number of gigs played. No figures are available for casual bands, but under the category of "musician" the average salary ranges from $51,580 a year nationwide to $64,520 in Washington, according to the Labor Bureau.

Homework: Watch "The Wedding Singer" starring Adam Sandler. And then forget about it.

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