I was listening to a favorite tune played live, standing near the stage, moving to the music, when it hit me that I was in danger of becoming a tribute act.
I was at Musikfest in Bethlehem, PA, standing in a warm evening crowd, watching a tribute band play nothing past 1967. The set list included deep cuts from the early, gritty Beatles catalog, bluesy Rolling Stones tunes, along with the soulful yelp of early Them and Van Morrison. They were genuinely great, tight, faithful to every note. I was enjoying every moment.
Somewhere around the third song, I stopped watching the stage and began noticing the crowd around me. Every head was gray. Not one person younger than me anywhere in sight. And not everyone was in the best shape either.
I found myself wondering what this crowd would look like five years from now. What about in ten?
The hits will fade. So will the audience.
I saw Paul McCartney live in Seattle a couple of years ago, a birthday gift from my family. He played the hits, of course, Beatles, Wings, all of it. But he also played a few songs from his new record, and before one of them he said something like: I know some of you are going to get up for a beer or head to the washroom right now. But we like playing these new tunes anyway.
He said it and played it anyway. A sizable number of the audience made their way to the exit doors and the food stands.
I remember reading a quote from another legacy band, Journey, I think, asking why they don’t play more new material. Their answer, more or less, was that everyone wants to hear the hits. So that’s what they play.
Two bands. Two answers to the same problem. One insists on writing new songs even knowing people will walk out. The other has made peace with only playing the old ones, forever, because that’s what keeps the room full.
I think about this in terms of organizations too. This can happen to churches, nonprofits, and businesses of any size. These groups are often built around a founder’s original vision. When a founder is gone, there’s a real temptation to become a tribute act. They settle for playing the hits. Faithful to the old set list. And for a while, it works. The room stays warm but becomes decreasingly attentive.
But there are real dangers in becoming a tribute band. I believe there are more tribute-band organizations out there than we realize.
Again, the hits will fade and the audience with them. For organizations, that fading away isn’t just about fewer people in the room. What it signals is declining relevance of the brand or the cause, and lower confidence in long-term viability. When the audience begins to age, you find yourself just trying to survive, stuck playing to the shrinking audience because you never built anything for what comes next.
The first danger is that you stop writing new material. Not because the old material is bad. I think Paul McCartney’s hits are genuinely great. But because it still gets applause. And believe me, that applause is a hard thing to walk away from. Innovation doesn’t usually die from failure. It dies from comfort. As in music, there’s a temptation to keep working the same formula. The environment keeps changing, and it’s easy not to notice you’ve been left behind. What was once familiar may not be effective today.
The second danger is that you mistake the audience’s nostalgia for the audience’s future. Those who gathered to hear those songs played by a tribute band were there because those songs meant something to them decades ago. They were there for the memories and the feelings they had when they were younger. In some cases, when they were a lot younger. But it’s backward-facing. An organization that keeps playing to the older ears, comforting people with what once worked, will mistake present affection for future support and relevance. Ironically and deceptively, the room feels full. But the room is filled with fading gray heads, with no one behind them to replace them when they’re gone. The organization, playing as a tribute band obliviously, has lost the script and there is little reason for new ones to fill those seats.
The third, and the closest to the bone, is that you confuse faithfulness to the founder with faithfulness to the mission. A tribute band’s whole purpose is playing the hit songs exactly as they were written, note for note. That’s a fine goal for a cover act. But it’s a dangerous one for anything built to actually change lives. Because staying faithful to a founder’s memory on one hand and staying faithful to the actual purpose of the organization can become two entirely different things. The reality is that loyalty to the memory of a person ends up strangling the very mission they started. The organization becomes a tribute act, and few of those thrive. I have seen this happen to businesses and charitable organizations up close.
I am not exempt from the question myself. I’m 63, and I’d rather look to McCartney and what’s left of the Rolling Stones than to the tribute band. Paul just released The Boys of Dungeon Lane, his most personal album yet. The Stones put out Foreign Tongues this year too, both records getting some of the best notices of their careers in years. They’re in their eighties. They’re still writing.
The best communities intentionally focus on what makes them who they are, as well as their concrete mission or purpose. They take the time to make sure they aren’t becoming irrelevant, a tribute act playing all the hits. These organizations can sound familiar while becoming increasingly out of touch with where their people actually are right now. Eventually, they will fade away.
What’s true for organizations is true for us as individuals too, especially for those of us who aren’t interested in quietly fading away, who believe there are still years of real work ahead.
I have to ask myself: Am I nothing but a tribute band of my old self?
Am I still writing new songs? Or am I just playing the old ones louder?
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