The_Noble_Cause wrote:Jeremey, what was your experience like with The Waiting? Did you find it was easier to book gigs when you were doing Journey material with Frontiers? And have you retired from singing/playing live completely?
Personally, coming off of such a physical and disciplined gig like Journey, the Petty stuff was incredibly fun and liberating.
I loved playing guitar live, and I'm just a huge fan of the Petty songbook, and the Petty fans loved it.
I wouldn't say it was easier or harder to book gigs for The Waiting than Frontiers. You have to understand, when we started booking Frontiers back in 2002, a Journey tribute band was not a popular idea. Many promoters and venues just flat out weren't interested.
When I started booking The Waiting, we had a lot of people willing to bring us into their venue just based on the reputation and my personal relationships built as Frontiers. The one pushback that was kind of weird with Petty is that there was more pressure to dress in costumes from some venues – like they didn't so much appreciate the songbook as much as thought it would be cool and funny to have a band with a guy in a giant top hat and blonde wig, which we weren't doing.
The Waiting just went on unofficial hiatus not because the interest wasn't there but because we couldn't maintain a solid lineup. Unlike Frontiers, it was a part time gig and some of our lineup had main gigs that took precedence when it came to booking, others had full time jobs and family commitments, and it was hard to find and keep keyboard players.
So really, once a big festival or major venue like House of Blues calls and you have to turn them down once, you kind of get the benefit of the doubt – when you have to turn them down two or three times in a row because of availability, they pretty much stop calling LOL ...