At their many local gigs around Connecticut, “King for a Day” does all the classic rock songs we know and love. The Rock ‘n Roll facts of life dictate in economic terms that bands keep the covers coming. “It’s part of our financial survival,” says the band’s bass player Randy Funke; but just because “the king” is dead and repetition rules the airwaves, it doesn’t mean that King for a Day has given up on us.
Emulating The Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin and such in their original music, Funke says, “Our mission is to create all the unwritten classic rock songs that the world needs.” If it then sounds something similar to their influences, the four-man band leaves the judgment to the ghosts of Rock ‘n Roll past.
“We try not to mull over what we are and what we do. We just know what feels good and go with it,” he says. That’s how it began three years ago, with the band being born from a first jam session in Funke’s living room. Today, those jams continue and veer away from just ironing out the kinks in the next show’s play list. Someone will be messing around with a rift when it suddenly strikes a chord. “Potentially, the next three hours of rehearsal could be spent building a song out of it,” he says.
Like-minded in pursuit of their musical product, they also understand that larger success is the same for a band as it is for a small business. “Our mechanism for success is the entrepreneurial in spirit,” Funke explains. The band has no manager and put all manner of business and production into their own hands.
They’ll push that model until it stretches beyond their capacity and enlist outside help when necessary. As is, King for a Day believes it’s okay to hope that someone will discover them, but it takes more than just having the musical goods to make waves.
No longer looking to develop artists, record companies expect bands to bring something else to the table. “They’re not going to look at you unless your 15 or you have a very large grass-roots following,” he says.
Playing gigs and putting together a CD for sale will help, but it also requires innovation on the business end. At least 4,000 fans have come away from their shows with CDs of original music, especially since the price was right.
Investing in a duplicator, they began producing packaged CDs for $.60 apiece rather than the normal price of about $2.00. From there, he says, “We take a certain amount from our gigs, put it back into the product and just give out a whole lot of them so people would get familiar with the music.”
Funke’s background as a sound engineer gives him the tools to take care of that process. “I’m the recording engineer guy,” he says, and having worked with Derek Trucks and Cecil Taylor from The Talking Heads does the band good, and allowing a supplement to his survival before the sun goes down. Otherwise, Benj LeFevre on lead vocals takes care of the mailing lists and works the phones to keep them in the clubs, while lead guitarist Kurt Bergland blogs it up on Myspace and You Tube.
Nonetheless, he will concede to the uphill battle that musicians face but accepts what many cannot. “I think bands have to get over the fact that all I want to do is play guitar. That’s cool but that gets you to your bedroom for the rest of your life,” Funke says.
Instead, he prefers to focus on the love of music and the technical aspect of production, while trying to figure out how to reinvigorate the over-35 demographic into live music again. “My challenge is to try to reach those people in their homes or wherever they are so that they can get into this music,” he says.
The difficulty of getting them out of their easy chairs aside, he thinks the time is ripe for the next big thing. “Everybody listens to all the classic rock songs,” says Funke. “At some point, they’re going to want something new that has the same soul to it. That’s where King for a Day comes in.
For more information visit kingforaday.net