Today we’d like to introduce you to Giovannie Cruz.
Giovannie got her start as an Opera singer with a Bachelor’s of Music from the University of North Texas. Never really satisfied with the medium, she turned her eyes to doing vocal studio work in Denton, and later Dallas. While on a gig she met musician Ross Redmond who mentioned he had a cover band in its early stages, and they were looking to incorporate female vocals. After agreeing to meet the rest of the group, Giovannie became an easy fit and the band, High Definition, & brand began to take off from there. That was in 2010. Since then, Giovannie and the rest of the team (Musicians Mike Urness, Brian Mulholland, Gary Edwards, and more) have become one of Dallas’s go-to wedding bands; able to stand out in a saturated market due to their low overhead (the band is self-managed) and therefore more affordable cost. High Definition Band has played crowds from about 5o to about 15,000. They are a staple at Garland’s Firewheel 4th celebration, and for a long time played publicly in venues all over DFW. Today most of their client base comes from weddings, private parties, and public city or municipal events. Giovannie acts as the bands only female vocalist, party MC, and Marketing Manager.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In the beginning the band had a huge learning curve to adjust to. No one knew how to manage the band correctly, and we didn’t have any start-up funds from investors. The endeavor was truly “ground- up” and the guys struggled to sort of iron it all out. When Giovannie came along, she introduced contracts, a way of sorting out costs so that all the extras were paid for, and she schooled the guys on the appropriate dress for gigs. Before her, some of the players would show up to a club gig in Khakis and hightop chucks! Not only that but, while all the guys are excellent musicians, most of them listened to exclusively Jazz (hailing from UNT’S Jazz program) and so an effort to sort of find out what all the “cool kids” were listening to and incorporate those songs into our play list had to be made. It wasn’t hard once started, but these “no brainers” just hadn’t been done. Happily, after 8 years, we have a better understanding of what it takes to run and manage a band that works several times a month, and we’ve gone from a 5 piece jam band to an eloquent 8 piece band with 2 staff.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about High Definition Cover Band- TX – what should we know?
We are a Dallas based Wedding & Special event cover band with over 8 years’ experience! What that means is, once contracted, we do our best to get to know our client and the crowd they are hiring us to entertain. Sometimes we’re literally “wall paper” music, and sometimes, we’re the main event! Every contract is different, so we really have to be attentive to the crowd size, the role we must fill, and the type of crowd that will be in attendance. Once we have this information, we build a custom play list of tunes we kick butt on to play at the event. All of our musicians have training in music from a higher learning institution (most of us are UNT grads), and the few who do not, are shed masters that don’t miss a beat! We’re proud too, that we are definitely like family. We’ve been together so long we really can read one another on stage- 4 hour gigs can get exhausting, and sometimes we just know by listening when one of our vocalists or players needs a moment to catch their breath. We definitely have fun, but sometimes, like at shows where we have to play in the Texas summer heat, it can feel like work too! So there’s definitely sort of a synchronicity about being involved in a group of musicians that knows one another intimately.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
We’re humble! We don’t try to compete with the big corporate bands of Dallas. First of all, we play EVERYTHING live. Some of the corporate bands in Dallas don’t. Having the caliber of musicians that we have is important to us, and we don’t like to cheapen that by adding tracks so thick that a player could walk off the stage and the music sounds like nothing’s changed. Every player we hire is not just for show, they are integral to our product. Funny story, we were playing a wedding just last week at the Dallas Arboretum when the wedding co-ordinator had to talk to our keyboardist Ross who was, that night, the MC. When he walked away, we all definitely missed his part, so without hesitation, our bass player walked up to the keys and started playing left handed on the piano, while still playing right handed on his bass. It blew my mind that I had to take video of it. That’s really hard to do. So being quality players and quality humans is really important to us, and I think anyone who meets us can see that we are.
Pricing:
- 8 person band plus 2 tech (light & sound) for 4 hours of entertainment start around $5,500
- We travel all over the DFW metroplex at no additional cost!
- What you see is what you get! When we say LIVE MUSIC, we mean LIVE!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.highdefband.com
- Phone: 214-585-2941
- Email: Ross@hidefband.com, info@hidefband.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HighDefBand/
- Yelp: https://www.theknot.com/marketplace/high-definition-dallas-tx-442477
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1WBpQCTmik
Image Credit:
Band photos by Johnathan McInnis Photography, by Rocio Yepez
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