Candy Shop: What Makes a Cover Band Great

When Alex Sturtevant moved from her hometown of Seattle to New York three years ago, her friend dragged her to an audition she found advertised on Craigslist—a cover band (made up of mostly 60 year old men) was looking for new female vocalists. “I think the older guys went into it like, “Let’s get together with our buds and play music!”

Nothing much came of the first iteration of the band—besides a year of rehearsals and paying $15 a week to cover her share of the practice space they rented. The one and only time they did book a gig, their drummer tested positive for Covid the day of (she still doesn’t believe him) and the other guys refused to find a replacement. “The other two singers and I were like ‘This sucks! We’re gonna quit.’ So we took one of the older guys, formed a new band, and held auditions.” 

For the past year, Alex is one of three lead singers, and one of seven in the (new) ensemble of the band, Candy Shop. This summer they spent every weekend playing gigs at some well known venues in the Hamptons—like Stephen Talkhouse, a small but popular place for musicians in Amagansett. In the city, they frequent Greenwich Village’s The Red Lion, or the FiDi’s Irish pub Ulysses on Stone Street. 

Tonight, as Alex talks to me from her apartment in Brooklyn, she’s mentally preparing for a Candy Shop gig at Red Lion in a couple hours. She’s wearing a baseball cap and relaxing in a bean bag chair, and I’m both impressed and insanely jealous of her ease. She doesn’t seem the least bit nervous about performing in front of several hundred people. I ask if she ever gets stage fright anymore: “I do it so much now, I think it’s just a part of me,” she says. 

What’s the craziest crowd you’ve ever experienced? We did a gig this summer organized by the town of East Hampton called Tuesdays at Main Beach. We face the water, and the audience sits on the beach and faces us. I think they said there were 3,000 people there. 

What’s it like playing in the Hamptons? We’ve had some weird celebrity stuff. I had some friends from Seattle come out for my birthday and there’s a little VIP section at Stephen Talkhouse next to the stage, and they got kicked out of it. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ and someone was like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. The Secret Service has taken over VIP.’ Chelsea Clinton came to watch us, which is, like… so bizarre. 

Did you realize Chelsea Clinton was there while you were on stage or afterwards? On stage. I looked over and was like, ‘Woah.’ There was this time I was at Red Lion and I looked out and did a double take—it was Will from Stranger Things… What's his name? Noah Schnapp?

What’s going through your head when you see someone like that in the crowd–is it terrifying? It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my god, scary,’ more my gut reaction was, ‘Woah, cool that’s he’s having a good time with us,’ or like ‘Wow, Chelsea Clinton is here to watch Candy Shop?’ I think what’s going through my head most of the time is like, ‘Is this working? Is the audience having a good time?’ because that’s kind of the whole point, is to create this party atmosphere and memorable experience.

What are some of your favorite songs, or top songs you guys play? We do a lot of mashups, so we usually start our set with Let’s Get it Started by the Black Eyed Peas. Then we go into Levitating, and Oops… I Did It Again. We always play Lady Marmalade. Recently we’ve added a mashup of Girls Just Want to Have Fun and I Want to Dance With Somebody. But we sing Since You’ve Been Gone a lot, that’s probably my favorite song to sing. 

What are the telltale signs a crowd is enjoying your set? It depends on the venue, and how drunk everyone is. I’m right front and center, and can see if everybody is engaged and singing along. We’ve had shows at Talkhouse where everyone is just so drunk that we try to talk to the audience like, ‘Hey, what’s up! How’s everyone doing?!’ and nobody’s paying attention.

Do you think there’s a way to control it? If the vibe of the room is off, is there a way to bring it back? Sometimes I feel like we can move it in a direction. But there are other times when it’s just a weird night. I have to remind myself just because someone’s not jumping up and down doesn’t mean they’re not having a good time. They could be standing still and still be enjoying themselves. 

When you’re rehearsing, are you learning songs that you all have agreed to, or is it like ‘Oh this place we’re playing this weekend asked us to play this song, so we have to learn that now.’ Rehearsals when we first started were really just building up a songbook. Our first three shows were like an hour long, so we’d have an hour of material. But we have grown really fast in the last year. We went from gigging once a month, or every other month, to gigging sometimes four times a week. But we’re playing a birthday party this Sunday, and got asked to learn two songs, and we also worked on some Halloween songs. But it’s different every time.

What’s the most requested song you get? Oh man, we get a lot of Taylor Swift. We get asked to play Taylor a lot, but we don’t have any Taylor in our repertoire. We should probably learn one. We sometimes get asked, ‘We’re from Jersey, we’re from Long Island, play Billy Joel!’ Or it’s like, ‘Play Free Bird!’

Whenever my local college bar had a cover band that’d play Free Bird all the guys would lose their minds. I was like, ‘Why is this the one they freak out about?’ Yeah, and like why is Mr. Brightside the anthem of cover bands? Who decided it would be a song by The Killers?

It’s so frat party driven I feel like. It’s so fratty, yeah. We learned Creep by Radiohead for Halloween and we’re like ‘Man, the frat bros are gonna eat that shit up.’ We try to do a balance of like, okay, this is for the bros, and this is for the girls. 

What do you think makes a good cover band? Is it the bands that play songs everyone knows, sticking to the original material, or is it the bands that put a spin on it? For me, it’s the bands that do their own version of things. I think you want to hear the music and have fun, but if the performers are having fun on stage, it gives the audience permission to also have fun. They’re not just standing there playing their instruments, because then you’re just listening to the radio. We're up front, jumping into the audience and having people sing with us, doing silly games and stuff. That makes it more of an experience. 

What do you want Candy Shop to ultimately evolve into? Do you want to start writing your own songs as well? That’s a great question that I think none of us really have the answer for. I definitely want to write. This last year we grew way more than we thought we would, and way faster than most cover bands do. Now we’re getting wedding inquiries, and so we’re like, ‘Do we want to be a wedding band? What are we doing this for?’ I think all of us want to write music, but there’s obviously not a lot of money in that. I think there’s a balance. Also wedding bands make a lot of money. 

I didn’t even think about wedding bands. How much more do they make? I think most bands probably cost around $8,000-$10,000 for a wedding, including the ceremony and cocktail hour and whatever. So if you’re doing, say, four weddings a month, just weddings, that’s $40,000 split between six or seven of us. But we’re not there at all. We just got inquiries for that next year.

Would everyone in the band want to eventually do this full time? A lot of people really like their nine to five, and wouldn’t quit it if this became a bigger thing. But me and our bass player, Nick, we both want to do this full time. 

What would you say is your ‘dream job?’ Is it to be a singer in a band, making your own records? Do you hope to maybe go solo one day? In college I would’ve said to be on Broadway. Then I moved here, and I didn’t know I was going to join a band. I didn’t know what that was. But, for the first time ever, I’m making most of my living doing music, which is so cool. I think I want to travel more right now. I think I’d love to somehow be able to do that with music, at least at this point in my life, and then also be writing and releasing my own music at the same time. 

What do your parents think about the band? Have they been supportive of it? My dad passed when I was 13, and so it’s just been me and my mom. She is my biggest fan. I could literally be doing anything and she’d be like, ‘Okay!’ She’s definitely not a parent that wants me to be a doctor or something. I think I could do anything and she’d be excited for me. 

Does your mom or anyone else in your family have a background in music and theater? I’m definitely the only one. I’m also an only child. My mom is super tone deaf, but she loves music. I grew up listening to a lot of music, but definitely not performers. But my whole life, my friends were kind of like my family because I’m an only child, so I had friends that did music and theater. 

Has your mom been able to come to New York to see you perform? No, which is a bummer. She was supposed to come around this time, but she couldn’t get the time off work. Seattle is pretty far which is annoying. I’m going home for Christmas, and then hopefully she can come watch some shows in the spring. She’s seen videos, though.