Cover band gives audience The Worx

By all accounts, these are hard times to earn a living playing music in Central and Southwest Virginia. Tell that to Steve Prusak.

Despite the sour economy, which has thinned out the number of music venues nationwide, Prusak’s band, the Worx, is busier than ever.

Just go to their website (www.theworxband.com), During the rest of August, the five Worx members have jobs scheduled in Culpeper, Covington, Montvale, Greensboro and Roanoke, as well as several “private event at undisclosed location” gigs. In September, the itinerary includes Forest, Smith Mountain Lake, Roanoke, Covington, Stoneville, N.C., and Maryland.

“I hear, ‘What’s so special about them?’” Prusak says, with a chuckle that indicates he knows the answer.

The term “cover band” is to music purists as “romance novelist” is to the literary set. It means that a group plays other peoples’ songs almost exclusively.

Which is, as Prusak readily admits, a tradeoff. Cover bands generally aren’t approached by talent scouts offering to take them to the next level. They don’t put out a lot of CD’s, or get radio airplay. They aren’t famous.

To which Prusak might add: “So what?” These days, the Worx is unfamous all the way to the bank.

“We’re pretty expensive,” Prusak said in a recent telephone conversation, “and we’re worth it.”

For several reasons. With the exception of bass player Justin Tolley, who joined in 2003, the current Worx lineup has been together since 1997. That longevity has blended them as tightly as a single-malt Scotch.

“When one of the members hears a song he thinks we could do,” Prusak said, “we e-mail the song to each other and everybody works on his part for a couple of weeks. Then we try it together, in practice, and usually have it down after four or five run-throughs.”

Three of the five Worx members contribute vocals, which vastly expands their potential repertoire. During a recent show at the Sedalia Center in Bedford County, the band tossed out everything from the Eagles’ honeyed-harmony “Seven Bridges Row” to Metallica’s gruff and growling “Enter Sandman.” As a long-time Virginian, Prusak is well away that the latter has become the battle cry for the highly successful Virginia Tech football teams.

“We even change the name sometimes,” he said. “Where the song says ‘Back to Never Never Land, we sing ‘Back to Hokie, Hokie Land’. And the crowd goes wild.”

Prusak likes it when the crowd goes wild. So does frontman Jerry Wimmer, a native of bluegrass-accented Floyd County.

“Jerry is one of the best I’ve ever seen at interacting with an audience,” Prusak said. “If things are slow and nobody’s dancing, he’ll go out into the crowd and sit down next to somebody while he’s playing his guitar, just to stir things up.”

Along with Wimmer, Prusak (keyboards) and Tolley (a former Army paratrooper), the band includes drummer Todd Cooper and guitarist/vocalist Rob Campbell. Collectively, they have bought into the philosophy that the customer comes first.

“I have a lot of respect for people who write their own material,” Prusak said. “We could do that. The thing is, that’s really not what most audiences want. They want to hear songs they know, and can dance to, and can sing along to.”

Apparently, he’s right -the Worx has acquired a following that shows up virtually everywhere they play. They have embraced social media, building on that community with a Facebook page.

A card-carrying member of the lighting and sound workers’ union, Prusak owns the equipment and the truck that hauls the gear. The oldest band member by a wide margin (“I’ve been playing music for 40 years,” he said), he also calls the shots.

At the same time, however, he considers the band members to be friends.

“I’d had other bands over the years,” he said. “In 1996, I cleaned house with one of them, got rid of everybody. Then I scouted around among other local bands, looking for guys who had that gift of interacting with the audience.”

He and the other members chose “The Worx,” Prusak said, “because we wanted a name that didn’t really say anything specific, to go along with the fact that we play all different kinds of music.”

Originally, it was “The Works,” until Prusak happened to walk by the cleaner section of a supermarket.

“There was a toilet bowl cleaner called ‘The Works,’” he recalled, “and we really didn’t want that as an identification. So we added the x.”