These guys play by their own rules -- and they're winning

Scoring big Where you can find Uncle Plum: Friday, Jan. 11: Milestones, 170 East Ave. 10 p.m. $5. Call (585) 325-5880 or (585) 325-6490. Saturday, Jan. 12: Froggy's on the Bay, 1129 Empire Blvd., Penfield. 10 p.m. $5. Call (585) 288-1080. Web: www.uncleplum.com.

By Jeff Spevak
Democrat and Chronicle

(January 10, 2002) -- R-E-C-Y-C-L-E. The local band scene is full-contact Scrabble these days. Everyone's scrambling for the right pieces. And we'll award you a triple-word score if you can name who's got the most points:

U-N-C-L-E P-L-U-M. That's right, Uncle Plum -- the town's premier cover band -- is playing to win. Give the crowd what it wants, balance it with what the band wants, spill a little blood.

''We had a plan from the beginning to get in front of a lot of people,'' Uncle Plum guitarist Mike Gladstone concedes. ''We have confidence in our performing ability, in our writing ability. We knew we could win them over with our original material, but it just might take a while.''

The first part of the plan appears to be working marvelously.

''The Tripping Billies probably draw more,'' Milestones owner Michael O'Leary says of the local Dave Matthews Band tribute. ''But they only play every six to eight weeks in town, whereas Uncle Plum plays every Friday and Saturday night in town.''

C-R-O-W-D-S. ''I can't think of another band in town, a local band, that can guarantee me 100 people,'' O'Leary says. ''They give the crowd what they want to hear. The Kid Rocks . . . all the modern-rock stuff.''

A night with Uncle Plum is Creed. Blink-182. Staind. Limp Bizkit. ''The energy is there,'' he says. ''It's very energetic stuff, very physical. I still like to sit down on my stool and play Dead on my acoustic guitar but. . . .''

But that's not gonna bring in the crowds. Uncle Plum is a real miracle these days: a working band, with at least one gig every weekend. Not too many bands are pulling that off these nights.

In fact, ''I don't think they come to hear the music as much as they come to hear the band,'' Gladstone says of the typical Uncle Plum audience.

C-H-E-E-S-E. You want Neil Diamond's ''Love on the Rocks?'' Uncle Plum serves that one up like cheese on a platter. ''We do it tongue-in-cheek, a joke,'' Gladstone says. ''Between us, we know so many songs.''

They should. On ''Other bands I've played with'' from the band's Web site, Gladstone, lead vocalist Elvio Fernandes, bassist Paul Akers and drummer Joe Lana list at least 17 groups among them. And that doesn't include Lana's cryptic inclusion of ''cigarettes and beer.''

''This band's got chemistry,'' Gladstone says. ''It's got a thing onstage.''

It's a chemistry that the 37-year-old Akers remembers from his days in the mid-'90s with Hard Rain, perhaps the last local band that could fill a big club.

''It's very similar as far as the energy level is concerned, similar as far as the level of musicianship onstage, and similar in the connection with the
audience,'' Akers says. ''There are no walls between the audience and this band. Something we always say is, 'Everybody's welcome to an Uncle Plum show,' and it sounds kinda corny, but it's true. We're there to please.''

B-L-O-O-D. But chemistry can be dangerous. Uncle Plum's most infamous moment occurred a few weeks ago at Spenders on Dewey Avenue, with about 300 people looking on. ''We were kind of moshing at the front of the stage, and Akers' head met with my Les Paul,'' Gladstone says. ''He stood up, his eyes rolled back in his head and blood started squirting from between his eyes. He started to fall over but, fortunately, I caught him.''

Akers is still alive. The lineup remains the same as the night the group debuted in November 1999, at Slammers on Dewey Avenue, taking its name from a real Uncle Plum related to Gladstone's mother-in-law. The band's repertoire -- as it is today -- was pretty much old rock and modern rock.

''I've been doing this for 15 years in this town, so I always take a suitcase full of songs I like,'' says the 40-year-old Gladstone. ''Beatles covers, Tom Petty songs, things we can make our own.''

Neil Diamond aside, Uncle Plum generally takes other people's songs seriously. Songs such as Tom Petty's ''American Girl,'' which Uncle Plum used to open a recent set. ''We'd never done that before,'' he says, ''but we rehearsed it for an hour in sound check and it went real, real well.''

So, why see Uncle Plum, and not one of the dozens of other bands that know the words to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' ''Give It Away?''

''They're all great musicians,'' says April Laragy. She's a musician herself and a friend of a couple of the band members. But while April Laragy and the Atomic Swindlers play mostly original songs, she sees no problem with Uncle Plum's cover versions.

''People mainly go out to hear cover bands because they want to hear songs they remember,'' Laragy says. ''They're all fun guys -- I'm sure that's a lot of the appeal onstage. It's not like watching a wedding band, where they're all standing around.

''They're having fun doing it, they play the songs great, plus they're really cute.''

That plays in nicely with the first part of the band's plan, to play familiar songs that'll draw crowds. Phase II of the plan was quietly launched six months into the band's career, when Uncle Plum dared play one of its own songs for a live audience.

That was ''Stephanie,'' which you can hear on the band's Web site: It has the upbeat pop sound associated with the '80s, accented with the kind of '70s-rock guitars that were reinvented in the '90s. Uncle Plum plays about five originals now over the course of an evening. The lush power ballad ''She's the One'' has the kind of pure-scrubbed pop you'd find in Richard Marx, while Uncle Plum goes acoustic on the gentle ballad ''Everything.''

''I remember seeing them at Velocity a year or so ago,'' O'Leary says. ''They said up onstage that they were gonna do some original tunes. And they damn near got booed off the stage. But they were here a few weeks ago and mentioned they were going to play an original tune, and they got a nice little round of applause.''

S-O-N-G-W-R-I-T-I-N-G. That's something Akers experienced all of the time with the all-original Hard Rain. ''Seeing people saying my words back to me, that's a great feeling,'' he says. ''We have people at shows now who sing the whole song.''

Gladstone points out that the band sold 500 copies of its all-original CD in just two weeks. ''I think people really want us to cross over as an original band.''

Most local bands aren't going to sell 500 CDs. They'll sit in cartons in the garage, like all of those high-point tiles you're left holding after the new Scrabble champ goes out at the end of the game.

''It's really tough to start with just originals, and get yourself heard by a lot of people,'' Gladstone admits. ''There are not a lot of forums for original music in this town.''

But Gladstone insists on finding creative outlets. ''Sure, I would much rather be playing my own material. But I'm stubborn enough that I'm gonna play a song my own way, not the way I hear it on the radio.

''A lot of young guys kinda stake their lives on making it in the music business. The quicker you realize that's not gonna happen, the happier you're gonna be.''