We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nic Bongers from Detroit Rock City KISS Tribute Show a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nic, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Everyone in my group grew up being huge KISS fans. It’s a step further to actually make a tribute band. Since you have years of knowledge, you try and seal up every detail at as high of a level as possible. KISS fans can tell when they see you what looks “close” and what doesn’t. It’s part of their experience to judge and discriminate. From our point of view, we see it as a challenge. Some of the things we make need to be mobile so we can set it up. We don’t have roadies to set it up, nor a semi truck to transport it all. But details matter. Some of things we have made are incredibly accurate, and amidst the details that could be better, we get just as much or more praise for having details that other groups like us don’t have.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We are a KISS tribute band. This is not to be confused with a cover band that only plays the music. We dress and look like KISS did in the 1970s. We’re talking full outfits and makeup down to the 7″ platform boots. We play guitars that are accurate to what they play, and have a stage designed that takes everyone back to 1976. We play that era of songs 1974-1979, which separates us from other KISS tributes that play the entire catalog – we specialize in KISS Alive! and Alive II era songs. We spend a lot of time working on our “show” which is more than the image and the music. It’s the stage, it’s the pyrotechnics, the choreography, and the banter in between songs. We need to live up to a standard set by the KISS Army (KISS’ fan club) and we hold ourselves to a high standard so that we “come correct” when we do our shows and it all comes together. Our goal is to put everyone in a time machine and take people back to a time when KISS ruled the world.

How did you build your audience on social media?

We play music all over the country, but mainly in the midwest. Michigan is our home, so we play all the quadrants of Michigan as well. The nice thing about a KISS tribute band is that we can play an area we never played, and there’s sure to be at least 100 KISS fans that want to come and see what we are all about. They’re expecting to have their jaw dropped on the floor (a good performance) or to see a trainwreck to laugh at (a bad look, music, or anything bad). Knowing that we need to win people over, we do our homework and come prepared. Therefore, we build our audience by word of mouth. Those that have seen us before bring more people next time we play. Social media helps for our local market, but venues will find us from our booking site. We try to stay active on social media, but the KISS fandom has pockets of thousands everywhere. Since many of them kick it old school, it’s on the venues we play to make sure their area lures all the local KISS fans. Most of them do a really good job, word spreads fast when you do a good job. That’s not just fans, but places willing to book a tribute band.
In terms of social media, it’s just as much about networking with other bands and venues as it is with potential fans. Everyone can sniff out professionalism, and we pride ourselves on being uber-professional with venues and the bands we play with. It helps establish a reputation that people would want to do business with.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I taught a course called KISStory at Oakland University. I’ve read most of their books, and led a class of 20 students do a deep dive on KISS for an entire semester. Just learning from KISS as they progressed through the years. We’ve all had bands before, and have experiences shortcomings and challenges with venues. So we pooled together all of the details we want to be confident about going into a gig. It became a Rider or contract with venues. At first, it intimidated some venues that weren’t used to seeing this kind of thing. What it did, however, was invited an itemized conversation over the phone to establish what is and what isn’t possible when we play. It really allowed for us all to be transparent about everyone’s needs and expectations so that nobody was left wanting. None of us like contracts per se, that’s not exactly what rock and roll is all about. However, the concept of an agreement has measured in spades with the amount of worry we now do without. A lesson many say “get it in writing” is usually what people say to safeguard their interests. Our Rider agreement certainly does that. The conversation and the flexibility we’ve established with it is probably one of the things that makes our band function as efficiently as it does. We started with something simple, and whenever we see something that should be on it we add it. For example, you’re playing at a huge festival, and there’s nowhere to eat for miles… can they provide us a free meal? If you don’t ask or talk about it, you won’t get it. We take hours to setup the stage, get into makeup, etc. so having food nearby can be a gamechanger. If you remember to ask for things you want or needs, you’ll never have to wonder on the fly.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thebash.com/kiss-tribute-band/detroitrockcity
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/detroitrockcitykisstribute/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DetroitRockCityKISStribute/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@detroitrockcitykisstribute5607

Image Credits
(watermarked) Dwane Kellar