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The Dude Looks Like Steven Tyler (pdf)

Dude looks like Steven Tyler

By Joan Anderman, Boston Globe Staff, 6/30/2002

Every day strangers on the street stop Neill Byrnes and ask him personal questions about his anatomy.

"Are those your real lips?''

They touch his face and demand to know if he's had his cheeks done.

What about those eyes?

Byrnes isn't a celebrity or a freak. It's just that he bears a freakish resemblance to a well-known celebrity, singer Steven Tyler of the band Aerosmith. So striking are the similarities, a member of the music media who shall remain nameless once initiated a conversation with Byrnes thinking that she was schmoozing with the actual rock star. Byrnes knows he could avoid some of the confusion by moving to sub-Saharan Africa or getting a crew cut. Instead he's spent the last 10 years in front of a microphone stand draped in scarves.

Byrnes is the frontman for Draw the Line, an Aerosmith tribute band. The Boston-based group is in fact the world's only officially sanctioned Aerosmith tribute band, which means that the guys in Aerosmith think the guys in Draw the Line are such accomplished imposters they've given them their blessing to spread the pseudo-gospel in small towns and sweaty nightclubs and all sorts of places Aerosmith wouldn't get within a hundred miles of.

In 2000, MTV honored Draw the Line as one of the Top Tribute Acts around. But that was nothing compared to the rush of pulling off the perfect screech during the tag of ''Dream On'' at the Alternate Route in Weymouth for an audience that included Steven Tyler.

''I knew he was there,'' says Byrnes, 32, who lives in Hingham. ''Let's just say we played the first few songs a little faster than usual.''

One can only imagine how surreal it must be for Tyler to watch Byrnes being Tyler. And vice-versa, for that matter. Their first encounter was in 1989, when Byrnes came in first at a Tyler look-alike contest sponsored by WAAF (107.3 FM).

''It was during the `Pump' tour. My friends gave me a few beers and convinced me to go down. I won, '' says Byrnes, whose looks inspired teasing in middle school and fawning in high school. By the time graduation rolled around, not a day went by without a case of mistaken identity. ''Part of the deal [at the contest] was going backstage at Great Woods and meeting the band,'' Byrnes says. ''Steven's jaw pretty much dropped. It was right after the whole thing about his daughter, Liv Tyler, had come out, and I think he must have been worried that another kid had shown up. I was nervous, but they were all funny and down-to-earth. Ever since we've had a good relationship.''

Byrnes has lost count of how many Aerosmith concerts he's been to; neither can he estimate the number of hours he's spent poring over video- and audiotapes, books, bootlegs, and fan collections in the effort to master his act. Needless to say, he's a fan.

''They've been working so hard for so long, and I feel like we're the No. 1 Aerosmith booster club,'' he says. ''We try to keep their image alive. It feels like this type of music is dying out a little, and there's nothing like those rock bands that came out in the '70s. People still want that.''

But isn't it profoundly weird, or at least tiresome, for a musician to spend his entire adult life pretending to be a different musician? ''To be honest, I was going to get out of this a couple of years ago,'' says Byrnes. ''How many times can I play `Sweet Emotion?' But there was such an outcry. And that's the charge, night after night. It's the reaction, the energy from the crowd. And the girls taking off their shirts and throwing their bras at you.''

Despite the thrills, Byrnes is eager to spread his musical wings.

''I'm starting to write some original stuff,'' he says. A solo CD is in the works. ''It's gonna be hard rock, two guitars, different sorts of melodies. Something that has that Aerosmith type of sound.''

# # #

The rise and fall of a cover band
Attleboro's Itchy Fish tires of a life playing Pearl Jam

By Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff, 9/29/2001/

It's hard to count the differences between Itchy Fish and Pearl Jam, but here's a start: Pearl Jam is not from Attleboro. Pearl Jam's lead singer is not named Ziggy. Pearl Jam - as far as we know - does not practice in a former jewelry factory, beneath a mural of an upturned middle finger.

But Itchy Fish sounds like Pearl Jam, note for note, wail for Vedderesque wail. Itchy Fish plays Pearl Jam songs, over and over and over again. That's what a tribute band does: re-create the original experience, on the cheap, in hometown bars.

This can, it turns out, be a speedy route to success. Soon after they started playing Pearl Jam tunes eight years ago, the Itchy Fish guys bypassed the struggling stage of band life, quit their day jobs, and went on tour. And even as the real Pearl Jam's fortune wanes, Itchy Fish's greatest-hits show still draws crowds up and down the East Coast. There's apparently an endless supply of twentysomethings who want to hear ''Jeremy'' live.

It's almost the real-life version of the film ''Rock Star'' or the VH1 hit ''Cover Wars'': Local boys play cover songs so well they make it big. Except that cover songs are the problem, too. Sure, Itchy Fish can fill a bar, and Ziggy can writhe like an authentic rock star, tossing his dreadlocks and grabbing the mike stand with outstretched arms. Still, there's something wrong. The music isn't theirs; it's Pearl Jam's, from roughly a decade ago. Over and over and over again.

''That's what's driving me nuts,'' says Dave Raposa, 40, the drummer, who plans to quit. ''It's like a bad day job. I think I've played `Even Flow,' like, a million times.''

This is the moment Seattle meets Sartre, when a band realizes its secret weapon could also be its downfall. This summer, some of the Itchy Fish guys decided they wanted more: to play original songs, forge an identity of their own. And they fear they can't do it in front of a crowd that paid $7 a head for Pearl Jam songs.

''I don't think there's anything we can do to get our original material out and get taken seriously,'' laments Sean Compton, the lead guitarist, who also plans to leave. After eight years of Pearl Jam purgatory, Itchy Fish is breaking up; their last-ever show is tonight, at a Hartford nightclub called Bourbon Street. The ride is over. The devil is paid.

Bob Eddie might have to get a job.

A fast rise

That might not sound tragic, but for Itchy Fish's baby-faced rhythm guitarist, it's a serious concern. Bob Eddie - real name, Robert Edwards - is 27 years old, lives with his parents in North Attleboro, and occupies a sheltered world, as musical fortunes go. One day, he's working in a D'Angelo's, not long out of high school, and someone asks him to come over and play a few tunes. Suddenly, he's a professional.

The world is full of musicians with day jobs and dreams, who toil in small bars in search of recognition. That's not how it happened for Itchy Fish. The band, whose name means nothing in particular (their other choice was Canine Chihuahuas), had been playing rock covers around Attleboro eight years ago, and Ziggy's voice happened to sound like Vedder's. Someone suggested they play a Pearl Jam show at the now-defunct Rocky Point Amusement Park.

Thus began an intense few weeks of memorization; Compton listened to Pearl Jam songs on continuous loop all day at work, until he could barely stand it. But it paid off; the Rocky Point gig was a hit, and soon bars wanted to book the band for more Pearl Jam shows. Within a few months, Itchy Fish played the 1,500-capacity Strand Theater in Providence, and fans lined up around the block.

Such quick good fortune surprised even the band members, some of whom found the music an acquired taste. In the beginning, Compton says, ''I didn't like Pearl Jam at all. I thought Eddie Vedder sounded like a goat.''

But as they kept playing, Compton, 36, not only grew to love the songs; he realized how fortuitous the Pearl Jam move had been. Many tribute bands are paeans to the past: the endless supply of Beatles knockoffs, the camp hits like the Neil Diamond tribute band SuperDiamond. The Itchy Fish guys believe they were among the first to mimic a new act, pay tribute to a band that was just getting big. They were also the unexpected beneficiaries of Pearl Jam's public fight with Ticketmaster in the mid-'90s. For years, Pearl Jam didn't tour. Itchy Fish did.

As Pearl Jam's fortunes rose, so did Itchy Fish's. They played the college circuit with hip-hop duo Naughty By Nature. They played packed beach bars in Key West, Fla., developed a fan base in Albany, N.Y. They drove their bus to Florida one summer on a lark, and wound up with a regular gig and a rental house with a pool.

It's been a good life, says Ziggy, 29, whose real name is Don Sevigny, and who also lives with his parents and has spent many years without a day job. He bought himself a Harley and a used BMW, and last month the balance in his bank account was negative-$16. His fate, he says, is to be ''a mini rock star. Very mini.''

What is mini fame? It's girls coming up and asking for guitar picks, set lists, and autographed drumsticks. Girls giving Bob Eddie their phone numbers without him having to ask. It's pulling out the ''Itchy Fish'' credit card in Best Buy and seeing the sales clerk's eyes widen with awe, which happened to Bob Eddie and bass player Jesse Bastos a few weeks ago.

In Attleboro, Itchy Fish is an institution, one of the biggest draws at Johnny Mac's Sports Bar & Grill, where the band played one Friday in August. Co-owner Kirk LaPorte says he can understand why. The clientele is working-class, late 20s, early 30s, people who hire baby-sitters on Saturday nights. They're not interested in original music, LaPorte says. ''They have one night to come out. They want to hear something they know.''

That's not the most popular notion among fledgling musicians, even the ones who came to the Itchy Fish show. ''Cover bands killed the original scene,'' said Bob MacDougall, 27, who plays in a Rhode Island band called Sulfer. ''It really takes away from the guys who are striving to write their own music. ... There are a lot of good bands out there that nobody knows of.''

But Darryll Paquette, 30, a heavy-machine operator from South Boston, said he appreciates the virtues of a tribute band: easy access, cheap ticket, good show. He's seen Aerosmith a lot, and he's seen Draw the Line, Aerosmith's official tribute band, a lot. And he says he usually has a better time at a Draw the Line show.

''You gotta love a tribute band,'' Paquette said. ''They always try harder than the original!''

Respect, fans, mini fame: Itchy Fish has it all. It would be great, even satisfying, if they didn't have to think about Godsmack and Staind.

`The next big scene'

It's hard to avoid comparisons, and this one is painful to think about: the fate of the bands that used to be small. Staind, from Springfield, once begged to open for Itchy Fish; now, they're singing with Fred Durst on MTV. Godsmack, from Boston, opened for Itchy Fish at the Strand and now has been playing Ozzfest. There's even a Godsmack tribute band.

The difference, of course, is that Godsmack and Staind play original songs. But for a time they were playing covers, too. They switched before it was too late. ''They made the right decision at the right time,'' Raposa says.

Itchy Fish could have made the move, too, Compton said, but the band was too busy having fun, basking in the big crowds and the road trips and the contracts that guaranteed them three cases of beer a night.

''I don't think we even gave that a thought, that it might hurt us in the long run,'' he says. ''We never really thought it out, that this might not be the best way to go to write the new material.''

So while Staind is playing on MTV, Itchy Fish is still in the Foster Building.

Not that the Foster Building isn't romantic, in a hometown-band sort of way. It's an old jewelry factory - Raposa's mother used to work there - that, from outside, looks abandoned. Inside, guys with punk haircuts scurry around, and bass notes pound from behind brick walls. The factory has been carved into rehearsal spaces; someone down the hall, from a band called Stoner, drew up the Itchy Fish logo. This is the exchange, the center of creativity, the headquarters of ambition.

''Seattleboro, we always called it,'' Bob Eddie says. ''It's gonna be the next big scene.''

Of all of the rooms, Itchy Fish's $300-a-month space is the biggest, cavernous and dark, decorated in guy-band chic: a sectional sofa, a vintage pink refrigerator, a poker table, weights. It's a great place to unwind, to hold raucous parties after shows. But it is less and less a place where they actually rehearse.

That's been one of the signs of the decline. Itchy Fish used to come here to work out original songs - they even put out an album last year, called ''She.'' But lately practice sessions have morphed into card tournaments. And the band members, all friends, have begun to drift apart. Compton and Raposa both became parents during the Itchy Fish run, while Bob Eddie and Ziggy were still living at home. Raposa got tired of the loping life and went back to his job as a mason: ''I was golfing. I was fishing. It got old.'' Ziggy, who admits he likes to fight when he drinks, sucker-punched a drum tech, who then sued him. Everyone stopped getting along so well. And then there was the music.

`Changes are good'

Word trickled out slowly. A girl at a show told Compton she'd see him next time, and he told her that after September, Itchy Fish was done. She started to cry.

''We're just a cover band,'' Compton says, amazed. ''I didn't think anyone would care.''

But by mid-August, it was clear that they had to tell the fans. So at their last-ever Attleboro show at Johnny Mac's, in front of a teeming crowd in tank tops and jeans, Ziggy tried to explain. Yes, Itchy Fish would soon cease to exist, at least in its current form. After that, the band might keep going somehow, minus a couple of players, maybe using the same name but dropping the Pearl Jam songs. Or maybe not.

''That doesn't mean I'm going anywhere,'' Ziggy said.

No, the mini-rock-star life is hard to beat. And Ziggy was clearly loving it, crouching down, jumping high, a purple light shining in his face as people danced and cheered. After each Pearl Jam song, the crowd bounced more emphatically. The screams got louder, and stayed loud toward the end of the first set, when Ziggy announced that Itchy Fish would play one of its originals. A song called ''Changes.''

''I know you don't like changes,'' he sang, ''but changes are good.''

Right now, he's trying to make himself believe it.

This story ran on page F1 of the Boston Globe on 9/29/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.