Dad Band & Cover Band Hats

Cover bands run on a particular kind of joy. One Chicago festival-circuit player described the gig as "like you're getting paid to party," and another called the band a "second family" with no time limit. The Menlo Park dad band The Members, six dads in their 40s and 50s who work through roughly 90 songs from the Eagles to Green Day in a garage, say flatly that their wives are their groupies. The pay tells a different story: players on one forum say $100 a night per musician is still the standard rate, the same as it was twenty years ago, and Sweet Caroline remains a constant wedding request. These dad band hats live in that gap between the rock-star dream and the real calendar. Two badges name the band outright, while the sentences carry the world tour of two breweries and a wedding, the roadie who works for his own band, a bandmate who is also the dentist, and a Sweet Caroline count that has crept to 900. Drummer-dad caps already sell on the market, but the band itself has no hat of its own. It also stays clear of Funny Guitar Player and Funny Drummer, which cover the instrument rather than the weekend band, and of Dad Rock, which belongs to the listener. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Wear one to load-in at the VFW, or give one to the player in your life whose wife has already accepted the groupie title.