Paul Wright is a cover musician. But don’t hold that against him.

He’s not proud of it.

“I don’t take much satisfaction in saying that I play covers,” Wright says. “It’s just a college job that kept going. What I do is totally for fun.”

Wright, like thousands of other musicians, is a victim of the unfavorable connotations surrounding the word “cover.” While “covering” is simply performing music written by others, popular opinion defines Wright’s profession as copying or stealing. He is thought of as uncreative and unoriginal.

In a recent issue of Interview magazine, legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen made the following remark about cover bands: “I’d rather bomb making music that comes through me than be the world’s biggest cover band.”

Cover bands don’t get record deals. They don’t win Grammys or make videos. Most cover bands don’t even get a tour bus.

Instead, they get requests.

Night after night, cover bands are forced to answer to drunken bargoers thirsty for Skynard and “American Pie.”

No wonder Wright is ashamed.

The ‘Dirty Word’

People’s Bar and Grill owner Tom Zmolek is aware of the cover band reputation — he has been booking them for eight years.

“I will be talking with a group and they’ll say ‘We’re a cover band, but we’ve got 25 percent original music,'” Zmolek explains. “It’s almost like they’re apologizing for playing covers.”

Zmolek has seen many cover bands come and go and has a theory on why they seem to be getting less respect. He calls his theory alternative rock.

“With the whole indie thing, more bands have more opportunities to play original music,” he says, “which is good.” But not for the musicians who don’t care to play originals — who are being forced to face the music or write their own.

Jeff Schweybach, who has been playing covers in South Dakota and western Iowa since the early ’80s, says he believes younger generations are inadvertently responsible for the recent cover band plunge.

“People are a lot more accepting of original material now,” he says. “When I was younger, covers were the only thing you heard in a bar.”

Wright blames technology, which is brave for a man who spends his afternoons producing Iowa musicians in his basement studio.

“You can make a record in your home,” Wright said. “Bands are going to be more likely to do original stuff if they know they can record it.”

Recording a CD allows bands to play shows more cheaply, with the idea that merchandise sales can bring in a profit. And, with every CD sold, there is one more person who will likely know the band’s material next time around.

In a recent column titled “Why Is ‘Cover’ a Dirty Word,” Gig magazine editor Bill Evans accuses music journalists of cursing cover bands.

Evans deems most music journalists as writers with little or no education in music performance. Therefore, writing about image tends to take the place of writing about performance.

“Bands are perceived by the public as ‘happening’ when they get written up in the press,” Evans writes. “In order for them to get written up, they have to be perceived as worthy by the press, which means performing original material.”

When cover bands are reported on, Evans added, the “cover” tag is almost always avoided.

Turning cover

Blaming one group of people for the destruction of the term cover band makes little sense to Wright, however. “Cover bands have such a negative connotation because songwriters have such a positive one,” he says.

Wright knows because he was a songwriter once. “I quit school and did the whole move-to-L.A. thing,” he says. And like many cover musicians, he got frustrated with the politics of the industry and gave up.

Wright went back to school in 1993 and started playing cover gigs to pay for his education. He played his first show at Lumpy’s in Ames and has since logged more than 800 performances.

“Everything has been word of mouth,” Wright explains. “I don’t even have cards. When people ask me for one, I always lie and say ‘I forgot my briefcase.'”

Wright got the idea to play covers when he first witnessed a Swing Crew show at People’s. Dennis Reifsteck, the stand-up bass-playing frontman of the Swing Crew, has been a cover musician since he graduated from college in 1979.

Reifsteck, like Wright, first tried his hand at penning his own lyrics.

“I was no good at it,” he says. “I’m not a recording musician. I’m a live musician. That’s what Swing Crew is all about. Some bands strive to do well in a studio. We try to make other people’s songs our own by changing the arrangement and delivery.”

Schweybach and his current group, The Cartwright Brothers, take a similar approach to playing covers. Only the group’s delivery is based purely on comedy.

The Cartwright Brothers are known for uproarious impersonations of everyone from Axel Rose to Joe Cocker. Covers range from “Stinky, Stinky Fart” (“Achy, Breaky Heart”) to “He’s Got A Hairy Ass” (“Age Of Aquarius”).

But Schweybach and partner Mark Nelson do pen some original material and have released three CDs. The duo’s debut is conveniently titled “Serious.”

“A good song is a good song, whether you wrote it or not,” Schweybach says. “I enjoy the entire entertainment aspect of playing covers. If they leave happy, I leave happy.”

Cover bands 101

Original music has not always been the norm. Believe it or not, there was a time when popular musicians commonly crooned songs written by others.

“There was a major paradigm shift in popular music during the ’60s,” explains Rusty Poehner, music coordinator at The Maintenance Shop. “Where popular music used to be the Tony Bennets and Frank Sinatras, it changed to the singer/songwriters — the Bob Dylans.

“People who did other people’s music were suddenly not respected,” she adds. “Bands who did covers were lazy or lacked an imagination.”

However, the abundance of singer/songwriters during the ’60s served as a platform for a cover band boom in the ’70s. Musicians now had fresh material to play at wedding receptions, high school proms and bar theme nights. It was during this time when the seeds of Skynard and “American Pie” were planted.

The ’80s, on the other hand, were a different story.

“The early ’80s was the toughest,” Reifsteck says. “Dancing in clubs became the hip thing to do.”

Wedding singers, like the one portrayed by Adam Sandler in his recent comedy film, took over receptions and disc jockeys took their skills into the high schools.

Soon, cover bands were left with no place to play.

“It’s ironic,” Zmolek says. “An ’80s cover band would go over so huge now.”

Refusing to lie down

But the cover band concept didn’t die — it can’t.

Everyone in the music industry knows one thing about cover bands — the one reason why they will always exist.

Cover bands evolve into original bands.

“I would guess 90 percent start out as a cover band,” Zmolek says.

Blues Traveler. Savage Garden. John Mellancamp. Matchbox 20. All began as cover bands.

“Freddy Jones Band started as a mug night cover band,” Zmolek says. Now, local bands like the Sauce Monkeys are playing Freddy Jones Band tunes.

“Every band does a cover or two,” Zmolek says. “So if musicians are discounting cover bands, they can’t be sincere.”

Even Wright, who admits he doesn’t usually like going to see cover bands, believes there is a time and a place for covers — the right covers.

“I’m not embarrassed to play the classics,” he says. “I enjoy celebrating older music. A lot of people sing along, and that never gets old. But I would be embarrassed if I was trying to cop the latest stuff. The people who request Dave Matthews Band — they just don’t get it. I like those bands, but it would seem weird for me to play them. I guess it’s more out of respect for what’s going on now.”

What is going on now is cover bands, both locally and nationally, refusing to lie down

People’s commonly books one or two cover bands a week, while local musicians are getting their instruments wet playing anything from Grateful Dead to 311.

“I am pleasantly surprised with the number of cover bands forming,” Reifsteck says. “Most of my musician friends are working.”

National cover bands are also garnering attention.

Ripper Owens, who fronted the Judas Priest cover band British Steel, recently replaced Rob Halford as the group’s lead singer.

MCA made headlines this summer by offering a record deal to Krazi & Judo, who caught the ears of label reps with their cover of K-Ci & JoJo’s “All My Life.”

An all-star punk outfit by the name of Me First And The Gimme Gimmes scored rave reviews with its 1997 release “Have a Ball,” which featured 12 classic rock covers including “Uptown Girl,” “Fire and Rain” and “Rocket Man.”

Meanwhile, tribute records compiled entirely of Fleetwood Mac, Depeche Mode and The Clash covers have been mainstays on college radio charts.

“Covers are fun if it’s something you don’t expect — maybe a song you wouldn’t hear everyday,” says Zmolek, who tabbed Tina & The B-Sides’ rendition of AC/DC’s “Back In Black” as his favorite cover.

Covering into the future

What does the future hold for cover bands? Poehner, who has traditionally not booked cover bands at The M-Shop, says she has no plans to begin.

(Ironically, Poehner once fronted a cover band called The Stupids. “We never rehearsed,” she says. “We just got together and played the worst music ever written. But we were true to the original recordings.”)

Poehner believes there are further obstacles cover bands must overcome.

“There’s still the ’60s attitude of self-discovery and self-improvement,” she says. “People still feel insecure buying someone else’s product.”

Zmolek, on the contrary, plans to continue booking talented cover bands, in search of the next Freddy Jones Band.

“I’m not pretentious about what I do,” he says. “People’s provides entertainment. There’s not a perfect scientific formula for booking bands. If people want to hear cover bands on Wednesday nights, we’ll bring in cover bands.”

As for the bands, The Cartwright Brothers just finished “The Viagra Song” and will be celebrating the group’s ninth anniversary on Sept. 12 with a full tribute to the Partridge Family.

“We’re giving away a school bus painted just like the one from the show,” Scheywbach says. “I think it even runs.”

Reifsteck and The Swing Crew are venturing into new territory. “I’ve always wanted to do a Spanish song, so we just learned a Spanish song,” he adds.

And Wright, oh, he’s still searching for his place in the upside-down world of music.

“The day I can’t get a job is the day the music world went right,” he says.