Preparing a Cover Set for a Charity Gig | Lucid Liars

It's Monday and you know what that means.

We've got a busy week ahead, but not for the reasons you might think.

We're doing a gig on Friday for a private event for one of the charities we support. What this means in practice is reading the room and understanding that a Lucid Liars set might not be the best thing for entertainment of such a broad audience. It means learning an hour's set of covers designed to entertain as many people as possible and having as much fun as we can doing so. We had a run through of the set, which given 2 of the 4 of us play these songs regularly in cover bands, proved pretty simple.

We've done a handful of these kinds of events in the past, and they're always a good laugh (for a good cause). Typically we treat these gigs as a pallette cleanser from the more intense emotions attritubed to putting on a full Lucid Liars show, which we've taken as involving ourselves as much as possible with the setting up process.

Instead, this will be an hour's long set containing some of the classics you've probably heard at the pub.

Covers have always been an interesting thing to me. I prefer putting the Lucid Liars spin on any covers we do. Whether that's a rockier version of Dolly Parton's 'Jolene', a noisy version of 'In the House, in a Heartbeat' from 28 Days Later, or even that time we run a synthpop version of Mulan's 'I'll Make a Man Out of You' (the older fans will know this one, it was a Tooth and Claw exclusive tune for a while), I've tried to sit down and think about ways to incorporate our style in to the original, as it keeps it interesting for us.

For us, playing cover songs isn't about trying to reproduce the original exactly. We're an indie rock band from Inverness, so naturally we're going to find ways to make the songs sound like us. Sometimes that's a heavier guitar sound, sometimes it's changing the arrangement completely, and sometimes it's just finding the bits that are fun to play live in our own way.

There's a little bit of that in our planned set, but nothing too big. I'm sure the night will be a lot of fun and we're looking forward to it.

With that, here's what I've been reminding myself how to play.

Tina Turner - 'Proud Mary'

Absolute classic pub rock standard. Learning the brass on guitar has been a lot of fun, and we've rocked it up a little bit.

The Beatles - 'Twist and Shout'

One of the best early Beatles songs. I recently did a deep dive in to the Beatles and their solo discographies, this one is a great example of simplicity done right and performed well.

The Cure - 'Friday I'm in Love'

It just wouldn't be a covers set if we didn't include one of our biggest influences, right? I have a love hate relationship with this song as I always mix up where the bridges are, but think I've finally got it down. One of the Cure's best.

Until next time.