Standing close to the edge

How do you go about being a covers band of one of the top acts in the world? According to guitarist Mick Kearns, from U2 tribute act The Joshua Tree, it requires a deep love of the music, boundless dedication and vast amounts of dosh.

“As most real music fans know, The Edge doesn’t simply use a guitar, an amp and a pedal,” he says. “We’re all serious fans of U2 in this band, and we wouldn’t be able to do their music any kind of justice unless we had the right gear to reproduce it. For me, the most important aspect of being in a tribute band is getting the sound right, because the fans who go to tribute bands gigs are usually more familiar with the details of their favourite band’s music than your average listener. Music fans these days are also used to top quality sound from bands playing live, so we have to go as far as we can, to sound as close to U2 as it’s possible to get.”
The genesis of The Joshua Tree came about pretty much by accident.
“We’ve all been in bands like Kick To The Heart over the years and we were playing around one night when somebody out of the blue suggested we do a U2 song just for a change. We did ‘With Or Without You’ and enjoyed it so much we thought we’d like to do more of it, and the idea for a full-on U2 band came from that. The rest of the guys were all big U2 fans at that time anyway. I was an admirer more than a fan back then – but the more I played the songs and got into the sound the more I got to love what U2 do.”
With a virtual army of U2 covers bands operating all over the known world, do The Joshua Tree have to keep an eye on what the competition are doing?
“All the time,” Kearns admits. “That’s why I’m a member of U2 Sound Forum. It’s a worldwide community of about 800 members and it gets you loads of information about U2’s sound, the equipment they use and how they use it to get the sounds they get. It’s free as well, and you can join up on u2sound-forum.com. We’re all constantly in touch with each other, talking about U2’s songs and their gear and effects, all the time. U2 use state of the art equipment in everything they do. They spend months in the best studios in the world, so in order to try to replicate that live, any U2 covers band has to have a detailed knowledge of what they use. What I use on stage is quite similar to The Edge, right down to the Herdim plectrums he prefers, and the same applies to the other members of The Joshua Tree.”
His stage arsenal includes five top-of-the-range guitars and amps.
“I have a Gibson Explorer, a Fender Strat, a Gibson Les Paul, a Rickenbacker 330 12-string and a Fender Telecaster. As for amps, I use a Vox AC30 reissue of the 1963 version. I got a custom job done on it, putting the original speakers back in. I also use a Fender De Luxe.”
But does The Joshua Tree man look forward to the release of each new U2 album with fear and trepidation, in that he will have to learn often complex arrangements of new songs note for note?
“Not at all. Learning the actual songs is the easy part. The hard part is trying to work out exactly how they got this or that sound and getting the feel of it right.”
He also admits that his band has to pay considerable attention to the visual side of U2. “I’ve seen U2 live loads of times, going back to the gig in the Phoenix Park, Croke Park and Slane among others. I’ve watched live videos of U2 hundreds of times, and I’ve become conscious of the moves The Edge makes when he’s playing. When the fans come to one of our gigs they’re really expecting to get as close as possible to the real U2 live experience, and we have give them that, both sound wise and visually. We’re now planning to introduce big screens onto the stage so we can use images and ideas similar to U2. The days of just using a few coloured lights are gone.”
And does Kearns know if his musical hero has ever seen his band?
“I don’t know if The Edge has ever seen us, but if he did I hope he’d be flattered by the effort we put into trying to emulate the amazing sounds he and the rest of U2 get. This is something we take very seriously, and I know that most of the U2 covers bands all over the world are equally serious about what they do too.”