u/EchoesInBlue32

I am from Central Arkansas and love going to see live music of all kinds. I have been trying to find a cool local band to support and have been going to different shows. Most recently I have been following this BOTB in Hot Springs. I by chance went to the first week of competition and I have continued to follow since they have been posting all the performances on YouTube, I have been to a couple other weekends. Here is the thing I don’t get, almost every single act is awful. Truly some of the worst singing I have ever heard. They are doing two categories solo/duo’s and bands. Is it suppose to be funny or a joke competition? The band currently in the lead can’t remember their name has the word soul in it, the lead singer is so off key and pitchy she sounds like sloth from Goonies trying to singing classic power house songs and they got almost a perfect score. It did introduce me to a new band called Red Oak Crows, not my typical genre of music but they sounded awesome, I ended up following them. They deserve to win in my opinion.

Onto the solo/duo’s two of the guys that have performed have been really good and I actually looked them up and plan to go see them play live outside of this event. One guy is already out of the competition and the other one is still in. However just like the band the rest of the acts are terrible, none of them can sing and most can’t play the guitar properly. The duo act has potential but they are very coffee house vibes and only the girl needs to sing. She is young but you can hear the potential. One guy is a great musician minus he loops everything live. If you know anything about looping it is extremely hard and takes forever to get into a song. He did the worst cover of mur*er in the city I have ever heard, it was so bad if Scott and Seth were there they would have told him to stop. It was like Christopher Walken sings The Avett Brotherss.

All of this to say, this entire BOTB seems like a SNL Joke. No one involved in the judging is well known or important. One of the judges has a local band and I have seen them live and she can’t sing either imagine a cat screaming over and over again and every song sounds the same. I actually left during their set because it was so bad.

So my question is there a better BOTB to watch in Central AR? I enjoy the competition aspect of it as well as discovering new bands. Secondly is this a new thing for live music? As long as you can work the crowd you’re a “good” band or is there not a Simon Cowell person to tell them the truth? Are there any good Central Arkansas bands out there I need to listen to? I am constantly looking for new bands, huge on supporting local music. I am having a hard time finding a good band to go listen to. It seems like it’s always the same 5 bands playing Little Rock and Conway. Went to Hot Springs and haven’t found a good one yet. I also wish Conway had more venues to go to, if anyone knows any cool hole in the wall spots that do live music let me know.