CHOICE OF SONGS
Gator & the All-Stars love great music. That's why your song lists covers so many styles within the rock genre. At any given time, we'll have more than 250 songs we are rotating through our live playlist. Although we try to play songs by artists people like, we often take song by a favorite artists that other bands aren't playing. For example, Tom Petty had many great songs, but 90% of the cover bands you hear will play Breakdown or Mary Jane's Last Dance. While these are great song, people get burned out hearing them over and over. So we do Swinging, Free Falling, and some other gems that others may not choose to play.
We also like to vary styles and artists we cover. As one reviewer recently said in his article "When was the last time you heard a band that pulled off excellent renditions of Stones, Van Morrison, Beatles, Chicago, Allmans, Eagles, Tom Petty, and Jerry Lee Lewis all in the same set?"
INSTRUMENTS
We use a lot of stuff in our gigs. In addition to the guitars, bass, and drums that most bands have, we always have keyboards and horn at our gigs. And, since our musicians are multi-instrumentalists, you'll occasionally hear accordian, dobro, clarinet, acoustic guitars, and more. If Steve jumps off the keys to play acoustic, Terry may jump off sax to play the piano. Gator plays harp on some songs and even drums on occasion. Rich is fantastic bass player but is also a very good guitarists. It gives us flexibility.
ORIGINAL SONGS
We have had several of our originals enjoy success---especially in Germany, Italy and France. But as a rule, we do covers because that's what our fans like. They enjoy our takes on songs by the great rock artists from the 50s-80s. If requested, we will do an original, but we will not cram them on you. We know that 90% of the time, people want songs they know and love.
INFLUENCES
Our influences are very broad. Rock, country, and blues are the main influences but bluegrass, jazz and doo-wop have also influenced all of us. Terry has played jazz extensively outside of our band and Gator has toured playing blues. Some of the artists he worked with are multi-grammy winners and in the Blues or Rock HOF members like Johnny Winter, Buddy Guy, Pinetop Perkins, Keb Mo, Jimmy Vaughan, James Cotton, and more.
PRIVATE PARTIES
Yes, we do a lot of them and love doing them. If the host asks us we will allow folks in the audience to sing and/or play with us. It's a great part of the fun.