Cover bands are no joke. You can make good money as a cover act, and the work is steady if you want it to be. Consider: I had a buddy who wrote his own original material. He told me once he played a club to about 150 people opening up for a bigger name. The club begrudgingly paid him a hundred bucks. Several months later, he fills in for a buddy in a cover band, playing that same club to the same amount of people, and the band cleared a cool thousand bucks with no hesitation from the club owners. (Tribute bands—dedicated to the music of one or two bands—can do even better; heck, look in any MOJO magazine back pages and you’ll see tons of tribute acts, including festivals dedicated solely to tributes!)

Scott Paris is a working musician. For most of the past twenty years, he’s been involved in a cover project called The imaginary Cookies, a band that started out as an original group but morphed into a long-running and somewhat popular regional act in the Ohio area. His new book, A Guitar Called Harry V and the Cover Band Conundrum, is a diary of his 2024. His work is a combination of stories of being on the road, gear talk, and remembrances based upon whatever he’s writing about. Sometimes his writing gets into a deeply personal place where we see him at his realist—would he rather play a solo show for 300 dollars or be happier playing a band show for double the guarantee but half the pay—and this gives real insight into what it means to be a working musician. 

And the conundrum is a natural one. Can you be an artist when the art you perform is not your own? Is there an inherent dignity in being an original artist, or does virtuosity exist outside of the original artist world? Paris addresses this subject but not in a roundabout way; he acknowledged he enjoyed his original bands and material but recognizes he’s reaching more people with his cover band. It’s not hard to notice a tinge of sadness when he discusses such matters, but he obviously accepts what he’s doing; he would not have dedicated two decades’ worth of his life to them if he didn’t, right?

But setting aside this melancholy moment, A Guitar Called Harry V and the Cover Band Conundrum is a fun, fast, and enjoyable read. Ultimately, one realizes that even though Paris may not be making original music for a living, his experiences are the same as one who does, and possibly more rewarding. This book is a handy guide to what it’s really like to be a working musician, albeit from a side that never gets books written about. Until now, that is. 

Purchase: Amazon

Do you enjoy The Recoup’s content? Please consider helping to support us by becoming a patron at Patreon. Your donation helps to keep the website self-sufficient.