Field Music are moonlighting as a Doors tribute band: “Making a living from making our own music has become increasingly difficult”

Field Music are one of the most consistently great bands of the last 20 years. Led by musical polymath brothers David & Peter Brewis, the group have made nine albums since 2005, the most recent being last year’s fantastic Limits Of Language. Being a quirky, proggy indie band isn’t quite as lucrative as it once was and Field Music have begun playing out as a Doors tribute act called The Fire Doors. They played their first show in May. David Brewis is Jim Morrison and David is Robby Krieger and if you know anything about them and Field Music you know they are insanely talented (just ask The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins) and they are going all-in — watch video below.

The Brewises started The Fire Doors quietly but when fans got wind of it, they admitted to it on Facebook on Friday: “Now, we’re probably never going to post about this again – because sometimes you’ve just got to compartmentalise – but you may have heard the rumours that we’ve started a Doors tribute band…Well, those rumours are true, so if you like The Doors and you appreciate the massive nerdery that we bring to everything we do, then check out The Fire Doors,” adding, “And do it before I delete this post.”

After someone commented “Why would you do this?,” David posted a lengthy, thoughtful statement on Field Music’s socials titled “On tribute bands, creativity, novelty and surviving.”

“Why are we doing this? Making a living from making our own music has become increasingly difficult,” David writes. “We need other income streams. We have a lot of musical skill. We love The Doors. We became musicians by learning how to play this stuff when we were kids. Lots of venues put on tribute acts. Lots of people go to see tribute acts. We think that we could be really, really bloody good at doing this one. By doing maybe one show a month we can fill a hole in our dire finances.” He continues:

The next stage is the why behind each component. Why has it become difficult to make a living from original music? Well, for one, it’s always been difficult. But where we used to see a lot of casual record buying – how many of you spent a tenner on a CD back in the 90s and only ever listened to it once? – we now have a streaming culture where casual listeners get the same experience but without wasting that cash (which inadvertently subsided thousands of smaller artists.) Streaming also funnels attention and money to the top – the middle class of record makers either fights to get to the top table (by making music which fits the streaming paradigm) or gets a real job.

And on the subject of avoiding false modesty, I mentioned our musical skill. Boy, we are really, really skilled. Thirty+ years of developing as instrumentalists, singers, composers, arrangers, engineers, bandleaders… We’re really good at it. But in the current climate, those skills are basically worthless. The grassroots music industry is so on-its-arse, that no one has any money to pay us to employ those skills. In recent years we’ve often been asked to be the house band for one all star event or another, working with different singers and different ensembles, learning their songs plus covers, twenty or thirty at a time. Even when we’ve been paid for these things, there’s no way the fee can cover the time we put into working on these events…

…We always go above and beyond. And, you know, that’s fine – we like to contribute to our musical community® And also, each time it becomes something like a research project – we’re interrogating other people’s music, finding out what makes it tick and inevitably synthesising some of that into what we make ourselves. But also, wouldn’t it be awesome if we could actually get paid (more than a fraction of minimum wage) for this level of musical expertise we have?

Why do people go to watch tribute acts? Because they want to be entertained! For better or worse, we haven’t been entertainers since we played (Doors songs, obvs) round the pubs in the mid-gos, and even then, I’m sure the most entertaining thing about us was seeing little kids playing old music so, so seriously. We’d go home after a gig and analyse our faults over bottles of cheap supermarket lager, almost exactly as we do now. Since we started writing our own music, we’ve been treating it (and how we present it) as art –never as entertainment. It’s no wonder we’re such a niche concern. It’s difficult not to be hugely precious about our creations. Maybe we can let that go (and feel some joy) by lovingly playing someone else’s music to entertain an audience.

As an addendum, any embarrassment I might have felt about doing this has dissolved. Why the hell should I be embarrassed about devoting a chunk of time to music that I love, playing it with people I love, applying to it the same passion, dedication and care we take with all of our musical endeavours, and doing it all so that we still have time to make our own music, and as Phil puts it “exploring [our] own musical and spiritual dark corners?”

Peace, love and faux-leather trousers,
David/Jim

Sounds like fun and if it means more amazing Field Music music, then bring it on. Maybe The Fire Doors could fund a North American tour (including a few Fire Doors shows here too)? Read David’s full statement, and see a list of upcoming gigs in their poster, below.

Meanwhile, Field Music are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year with UK shows this fall featuring the original lineup of the band: “To celebrate this momentous and terrifying anniversary, we’re reconvening the original Field Music trio (Peter and David Brewis on guitars and drums and Andrew Moore on keyboards) for three special shows playing songs from that first, formative incarnation of the band. We haven’t done much looking back over those twenty years and I don’t think we’ll make a habit of it in the future, but just this once we’re going to allow ourselves a moment of nostalgia.” Check out dates below.