Tribute Bands at Red Devil Lounge

Date: September 20, 2013
City: San Francisco, CA
Venue: Red Devil Lounge
Artist: Petty Theft
Opening Act(s): Pretending

I wasn’t able to travel to Los Angeles to see Tom Petty perform any of his weeklong shows at The Fonda Theater. Instead I had the opportunity to see Petty Theft, a Tom Petty tribute band at Red Devil Lounge.

A tribute band is a band that plays songs from one specific band while cover bands will play songs from several groups. The movie “Rock Star” starring Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston first introduced me to the term ‘tribute band’. In this movie the tribute band strived to sound exactly like the band they were paying tribute to even going as far as mimicking their live performance banter. I, of course, was not expecting this type of show.

Having never seen Tom Petty live I cannot compare Petty Theft’s performance style to that of Tom Petty. I can tell you that this show was a lot of fun. Petty Theft performed Tom Petty favorites including “Free Fallin’”, “You Don’t Know How it Feels”, “I Won’t Back Down”, “American Girl”, and “Refugee”. Lead singer Dan Durkin had strong vocals and great showmanship. He worked the crowd well and got them to dance and sing along. It was definitely an entertaining night of live music.

The opening band was tribute band to The Pretenders called Pretending. The lead singer, Karen Alvarez, definitely had the look down with a similar haircut and style to Chrissie Hynde. The rest of the band did not look anything like the original members of The Pretenders. They performed an hour’s worth of songs including “Don’t Get Me Wrong”, “Middle of the Road” and “Back on the Chain Gang”. Karen’s voice was ok, but it was not as strong or distinctive as Chrissie Hynde’s.