When the musicians Peter and David Brewis wrote on Facebook that they’d formed a tribute band to The Doors, the iconic 1960s rock group, some of their existing fans had a question: Why?
The Brewis brothers are best known in Britain as Field Music, a cult indie group that in over two decades has released more than a dozen critically acclaimed albums, attracted celebrity fans including Prince, and developed a rabid fan base for its songs, which veer from elaborate pop to funk jams.
Many Field Music followers were puzzled by the band’s decision, even if the Doors tribute act was a side project.
David Brewis had a simple answer. Playing just one show a month as the Doors, he replied, would “fill a hole in our dire finances.”
At a moment when paltry streaming fees and the soaring costs of touring make it hard for bands to make a living, Field Music’s decision to form the new group — jokingly called the Fire Doors — is a sign that even seemingly successful musicians can be struggling.
Peter Brewis said in a recent interview that most musicians now needed “portfolio careers” to sustain their passion. “Do you have to give up on the idea of being an artist because you’re also playing in a tribute?” he asked. “No, it’s just a commission.”
David Martin of the Featured Artists Coalition, a nonprofit that represents musicians, said that if a band as respected as Field Music was branching out to boost its bank balance, “You can imagine how bad it is for everyone else.”
Field Music — which is anchored by the Brewis brothers — stands out as a band unusually happy to discuss its finances. In interviews during the band’s early days, the brothers often talked of doing their own accounts and staying in hostels while touring to save money. The Times of London once called Field Music “the incredible shoestring band.”
In an interview before a recent Fire Doors show at the Craufurd Arms, a pub popular with covers bands in Milton Keynes, 55 miles northwest of London, David Brewis said he had once thought Field Music had “nailed” surviving as a cult band.
The group, which is based in the city of Sunderland in northern England, produced its own records and its members drove themselves to gigs and sold their own merchandise. They also have other jobs: Andrew Moore, its regular keyboardist, works for a food manufacturer; Peter works three days a week as a music lecturer; and David helps out at a nonprofit for young musicians.
Still, David said, “The margins for us were so, so tight.”
As teenagers, Moore and the Brewis brothers began performing by playing covers of classic rock songs in pubs, including by the Doors — although Field Music’s own sound is far from the Doors’s blues-rock and more often compared to Talking Heads.
The idea to return to playing Doors covers “started as a joke,” David said, “then gradually didn’t become one.”
David researched Britain’s tribute band circuit and found that there were already three well respected Doors acts: The Doors Alive, The Doors Rising and The Strange Doors. But he thought that Field Music’s members, along with David Hyde on drums, could recreate the band just as well, if not better.
After a brief discussion over who should be frontman, David took the lead and bought some fake leather pants from a fetish clothing website to mimic the style of the Doors’ lead singer, Jim Morrison.
Initially, he said, he thought that acting like the lascivious singer onstage “might be a bit of a slog,” adding that he felt uncomfortable “wearing stupid trousers” and singing in an American accent. But, he said, “It turns out that throwing it all aside and losing your inhibitions is actually really fun.”
The Fire Doors played its first show last May. Peter Brewis said that deep immersion in another band’s music had proved a “wonderful journey of discovery.” The Doors’s songs are bluesier than Field Music’s, with harmonic choices that he and his brother wouldn’t have considered, he added. That was likely to influence future Field Music albums, Peter said.
At the recent Milton Keynes show, about 220 fans had each paid 16 pounds, about $22, to see The Fire Doors perform two 45-minute sets. The band took home 70 percent of the ticket price, with each member getting just over $800.
David said the band’s expenses were “minuscule”: just fuel for the drive from their homes in Sunderland and a cheap motel room.
A handful of attendees at the gig said in interviews that they were Field Music fans. Claudie Combelas, 64, a retired administrator, said it was “a real shame” that the band members needed to top up their incomes, but if the Brewis brothers loved The Doors, she said, then “good for them.”
Many other attendees, however, had never heard of Field Music and were there for the Doors’s organ-heavy hits, including “Light My Fire,” “Riders on the Storm” and “Roadhouse Blues.”
When the group opened with the funky “Break on Through (To the Other Side),” the crowd started dancing immediately and many held their phones up to film the band.
A tipsy audience member shouted “Come on, Jim!” at David, who at one point tried to banter with the crowd in Morrison’s enigmatic style. “Does anyone here follow astrology?” he asked. “I myself am a Sagittarius, the most philosophical of all signs.”
At the gig’s end, the crowd demanded an encore, and the Fire Doors rounded out the show with a rowdy version of “Touch Me,” a song about turbulent romantic relationships.
Leaving the venue, Julia Hilton, 55, who works for Britain’s national health service, called the Fire Doors “the best tribute” she’d ever seen.
She hadn’t heard of Field Music, she added, but its members “were so incredible” playing as the Doors. “If they came here with their own thing,” she added, “I’d see them.”
Alex Marshall is a Times reporter covering European culture. He is based in London.
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