White Ford Bronco

Have you ever gone to a bar on a Friday or Saturday night and a local band is playing? The bar is filled with a handful of the bands followers but otherwise nobody else cares they are there. It always amazed me that bands would play their own music that nobody knows, except the 5 people who belong to the fan club. Now this isn’t just me hating on the local music scene. Music is a passion of mine, but in all fairness when I’m out at a bar on the weekend I’d rather hear music that’s familiar to me. So to all of the small town bar owners out there, I would rather have a cover band playing recognizable music then a local thrasher band that will never make it out of their parents garage. The truth of the matter is every town has a bar that features local bands and it might suck if it’s a metal bar and you sing country but it happens. My only comment is, if they are serious about making it in whatever genre they perform in, move to the city that will make it happen. If you sing country, go to Nashville. If hip/hop or R&B is your thing go to NYC or LA, maybe even Detroit. If Rock is your act, I’m sure you can get by in any major city.

This brings me to my main point, Cover Bands are better suited for the local bar scene. A couple weeks ago I was at my now brother-in-laws bachelor party. We were going to see the Washington Nationals play the Reds. We arrived a little early and wanted to grab some beers so we went to the Bullpen outside of the stadium. The Bullpen had the right idea they hired a cover band to play and entertain the masses, which at Nationals Park is around 15 people. We call this period of time at Nationals Park BS (Before Strasburg). So you could imagine my amazement when the Bullpen had well over 100 people inside it. The cover band playing that night was called White Ford Bronco and they were definitely rocking out. I thought the name of the band was funny, because the image of the White Ford Bronco was familiar to me and I laughed to myself while I thought about OJ driving around LA 16 years earlier. The name was even funnier when the band announced that they were a 90’s cover band. For those of us born in the 80’s we’ve been going to parties centered on that decade since most of us started to party. The 90’s were too recent in memory for a party to be centered on that theme. I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but as the 00’s came to an end many people started rocking early 90’s attire to 80’s parties. But now a decade separates us from the 90’s and White Ford Bronco’s playlist was very nostalgic and brought back memories of middle school and high school dances, of songs that we’ve forgotten. The best part was the band did a pretty good job at covering these artists and they did not restrict themselves to one genre of music from the 90’s. White Ford Bronco played songs originally sang by the Cranberries, Garth Brooks, STP, Vanilla Ice, and Brittany Spears.

The next day we looked up the band and checked out there website. (http://whitefordbronco.com) We found out that they would be playing in Fredericksburg the night before my sister got married. Due to one of our buddies from the bachelor party flirting with the lead singer and me tweeting with the band, we got a shout out at the concert and a song dedicated to us. The best part was after the show the lead singer Gretchen came down and hung out with us for a little while before the band left. The best part about the show was when I looked around people weren’t just sitting down yelling over music they didn’t know or want to know, they were up dancing with each other and having a great time. So, if you get a chance and live in the DC area head out and catch White Ford Bronco.

Top 5 Cover Bands:
1. The Dan Band
2. The Blues Brothers
3. Hayseed Dixie (Rock/Bluegrass covers of Popular music)
4. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (Punk Covers of different genres)
5. White Ford Bronco (the local favorite)