Faced with ‘catastrophic financial doom’ in a difficult industry, the Sunderland outfit explain why imitating Jim Morrison is their way to survive
F
or years, Field Music playfully toyed with the idea of forming a hybrid cover band called AC/BGs, featuring one set of AC/DC songs done in a Saturday Night Fever-style and one set of rock-heavy Bee Gees numbers. “These things are a joke until they stop being a joke,” says David Brewis, one half of the Sunderland art-pop band.
Another idea made it beyond a tour bus gag to become their new side hustle: a Doors tribute band called the Fire Doors. When the band announced it on Facebook last month, they received critical questions asking: why? The band’s response was a piercingly honest multi-page statement. Brewis wrote of Field Music’s sincere love of the band, the high levels of skill required to do such a job proficiently – and how doing one tribute gig a month could help their “dire finances”, having accepted that after nine albums, they have “quietly passed into contemporary irrelevance”. He had an emphatic signoff: “Why the hell should I be embarrassed?”
They were flooded with hundreds of comments of support from other professional musicians in similar scenarios. “Our situation is not unusual at all,” says Brewis. “There are tons of musicians who subsidise work by playing in some kind of entertainment band but mostly don’t talk about it because it’s seen as naff or embarrassing. It’s like a dirty secret. But me saying it out loud, because I have no shame, illustrated something unspoken.”
