Hiring a live band can be a scary proposition. By their very nature, you are hiring a group of people to play the music that they know and can perform well. So what if your event has a wide variety of people? Or what if you only want a “party band” during the dance, but not during dinner? And who is going to make announcements for your wedding guests or special event crowd?
My chosen career in “the business” often causes me to contemplate the needs of others and come up with entertainment solutions that will work for them. One idea that continuously has come up over the years is the idea of a small, energetic live band that can play party music, combined with a DJ&MC that can fill in gaps, play dinner music and make announcements.
The solution has been the formation (in 2008) of my band, The Metroplexers. If you know me as a DJ & MC, you know that I can handle the announcements, organize the flow of your event, and make sure your guests are taken care of. What you may not know is that I am a life-long musician and have played professionally in several bands over a long period of time.
The Metroplexers are designed to be a crowd-pleasing dance band. We play the most popular dance/party hits based on the music I know works from years (*ahem decades*) of being a professional wedding DJ. We can even customize a set from our playlist. We play lots of stuff that is still on the radio, but we also know tons of music from the ’80s, ’70s, and even earlier Big Chill and MoTown eras. The beauty is that if we need to fill the floor with a song we do not play, I am both the DJ and Keyboard player in the band. So any song is available at any time! No worries. :^)
So what is an occasion that would be a good fit for The Metroplexers?
Live bands work best when you have a guest count of at least 100, but usually in excess of 150. A live band puts out a lot of energy and can overwhelm a small audience where a DJ alone may be a better choice. In our case, we are a four-piece band (guitar, bass, drums and keyboards) with 4 musicians plus one additional person to run our sound for a total of 5. This means that we can play in a wider variety of venues than other bands with more people in them. Some popular wedding facilities, for example, will not allow bands with more than four pieces. While we prefer a stage, our band can also be tucked into the corner of a room or even in a strait line against a wall to save space. If we are outdoors, we always require a flat surface or stage and a shaded area if the event is during the day.
Even with The Metroplexers as featured entertainment for the night, many other options are still available. Wedding ceremony services (DJ), UpLighting, GoBo monograms, video screens and more can all be combined with any band or DJ service I provide. If you do not know what is the best choice for your event (DJ or band or both), please call me and we can talk about it.
Here is a slide show with some audio clips of the band playing live:
MPXR Demo 2013 from Mike Mahnich on Vimeo.
Contact me anytime!