The Doors tribute band

What’s a The Doors tribute band?

You probably heard about The Doors, the most awesome Californian psychedelic rock band from the sixties. Founded on Venice beach in 1965, Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore enriched the world with six legendary (and platinum) rock albums, with timeless classics such as Light My Fire, Break On Through, Touch Me, L.A. Woman and Riders On the Storm.

Nostalgic longing for The Doors in their prime

After Jim Morrison’s untimely death in 1971, the remaining band members released two more studio albums – but their sound never really went back to that shamanic acid rock sound of The Doors’ earlier years, resulting in a worldwide nostalgic longing for the psychedelic sound and appearance of the original The Doors. That’s where The Doors tribute bands come in. The Doors tribute bands try to fill that longing for experiencing The Doors live on stage.

The Doors tribute band versus The Doors cover band

Make no mistake, The Doors tribute bands are not The Doors cover bands. The Doors cover bands simply play songs from The Doors, while The Doors tribute bands respectfully pay tribute to their Californian acid rock idols and try to keep The Doors’ legacy alive by carefully recreating a live concert from The Doors. That's so much more than a The Doors cover band.

Authentic Doors tribute band

There are a lot of The Doors tribute bands out there, but The Doors in Concert is the most authentic The Doors tribute band of them all. We (The Doors in Concert) fell in love with The Doors' live albums and bootlegs, which show a much purer The Doors sound than on the studio albums. That is why our The Doors tribute band is named after the eponymous live album.

Being an authentic The Doors tribute band means that we recreate the exact same live sound and appearance as The Doors in their prime. Meaning that we simply put way too much effort in all the tiny details that made The Doors the most iconic psychedelic rock band that ever walked the earth. But all those little details together make a big difference from other The Doors tribute bands. Even our band van is authentic!

The exact same instruments, amplifiers and microphones

We keep The Doors’ legacy alive by exclusively using the original, authentic instruments, amplifiers and microphones that The Doors used on stage in the sixties and early seventies.

Same organ and piano bass as The Doors’ Ray Manzarek

Being an authentic The Doors tribute band means that our organist (Willem Vonhof) is also our bassist. Just like The Doors’ Ray Manzarek, Willem plays the same Gibson G101 organ (1967) or Vox Continental organ (1966) with his right hand, whilst playing bass on the same gold sparkle Fender Rhodes piano bass (1966) or silver sparkle Fender Rhodes piano bass (1966) with his left hand. Of course Willem plays The Doors’ later works, such as Riders On The Storm, Queen Of The Highway or L.A. Woman, on an authentic Fender Rhodes stage piano (1971), just like Ray Manzarek did in The Doors’ later studio recordings and live concerts. Only with the exact same instruments, we can recreate the exact same live sound and appearance as The Doors in their prime.

It’s certainly not easy to combine those enchanting bass lines with the haunting organ melodies that characterize The Doors’ music. Just like Ray Manzarek, Willem is a trained classical pianist and blues fanatic since he was a little boy. As a result, you can totally hear Ray’s authentic “Bach meets Chicago blues” style in Willem’s playing. If you’re lucky, Willem even sings Ray’s signature blues song “Close To You” during one of The Doors in Concert’s shows. We haven’t heard of any other The Doors tribute band that does that. Maybe because it’s so damn difficult to play bass, organ and sing at the same time. Hats off to you, Ray.

Same guitars as The Doors’ Robby Krieger

On stage, our guitarist (Sander Compeer) completely morphs into The Doors’ Robby Krieger, playing the same iconic spooky riffs and licks with only his fingers (so no guitar pick), on an original Gibson SG (1970). On The Doors songs that require slide guitar, such as Moonlight Drive and Who Do You Love, Sander switches his Gibson SG for a Gibson Les Paul Custom, just like Robby Krieger did during The Doors' golden days.

The difficult thing about Robby’s style is that he played guitar like it’s the door of perception itself – connecting this world with the unknown. Sometimes Robby’s guitar doesn’t even sound like a guitar anymore. More like an eerie flash and thunder, which is exactly what our guitarist is trying to recreate on stage. Robby’s guitars, together with John’s drums and Ray’s organ and bass, was the foundation on which Jim Morrison could create his shamanic ritual – leading his audience to liberating places beyond this world.

Same drums as The Doors’ John Densmore

The rhythmic shamanic power behind The Doors came from John Densmore and his Ludwig Downbeat drum kit with Supraphonic snare drum and barking and growling toms. And we couldn’t call ourselves the most authentic The Doors tribute band if our drummer (Leon Damhuis) didn’t have exactly the same drum kit as The Doors’ John Densmore in his golden days. So we’re very proud to say that we do! In the signature Mod Orange color, of course.

John Densmore specialized in drum dynamics, which just happens to be our drummer's thing too! As John once said in an interview with Drummerworld:

“I drop these cannonballs on the tom-toms–in a real quiet section! What the fuck am I doing? I didn’t even know. But later I listened and thought, oh, that heightened the tension, didn’t it? Bridges and verses–contrast them, loud and soft.”

We like to create that same tension during The Doors in Concert’s live shows. That feeling of “something wrong, something not quite right”. It makes you think about what you are and what you’re going to do. That’s what The Doors were about and recreating that feeling is what makes us an authentic The Doors tribute band. Don’t believe us? Just check out our tribute to The Doors’ The Celebration Of The Lizard.

Same microphones as The Doors’ Jim Morrison

As an authentic The Doors tribute band, our singer (Danny van Veldhuizen) sings through Electro Voice EV-676 chrome microphones (1966), which are the same microphones as the ones that The Doors’ Jim Morrison used on stage and in the studio. We’ve even got multiple versions of the Electro Voice EV-676 microphones: silver and gold – same as with our sparkling piano basses. Willem occasionally sings his backing vocals through the silver one, while Danny recites Jim Morrison’s mind blowing poetry through the gold one.

Needless to say, The Doors’ success depended on Jim Morrison’s eccentric and shamanistic appearance. Leather pants, white shirt, leather boots, long curly hair, being too hot to handle and dancing on fire as it intends. We (and the audience) feel very lucky that our singer Danny works as a personal trainer in his daily life, so he can actually keep on dancing for 3 hours straight, whilst entertaining the ladies.

Same stage appearance as The Doors

To be an authentic The Doors tribute band not only means that we need to have the exact same equipment as the original The Doors, also our stage appearance has to be exactly the same as it was like at a The Doors concert in 1968. From leather pants and shamanic dances to candles and lots of patchouli incense. We recreate the whole thing and take our audiences to places they’ve never been before, whilst remembering our Californian idols.

Same setlist as The Doors’ live performances

Also our choice of The Doors songs is authentic. The Doors aren’t the band that you hear on the studio albums. The Doors are the band that you hear on the many live albums and bootlegs that you can find. The Doors were obscure and made you think about where you were and where you were going.

As The Doors tribute band, we call ourselves The Doors in Concert because we want to pay tribute to who The Doors were on stage, The Doors’ live legacy, as you can hear in the eponymous live album from 1991. That’s why our setlists aren’t “hits only”. We also pay tribute to lesser known songs, such as Universal Mind, The Celebration Of The Lizard, Baby Please Don’t Go and Mystery Train. And we really like to give organ and guitar solo’s that are longer than 5 minutes. Maybe 10. Just like The Doors did back in 1968.

Relive the authentic live sound and appearance

Same as with The Doors’ live performances, you need to experience our live performances to really understand what we’re trying to achieve. We know that The Doors’ music is sacred ground, and we are as skeptical towards (other) The Doors tribute bands as any other – but with the amount of detail that we’re putting into our shows, our instruments and our choice of The Doors songs, we’re trying to fully respect The Doors, pay our tribute to the most iconic psychedelic rock available and keep The Doors’ legacy alive.

Wanna see The Doors in Concert in action? Maybe we’ll perform near you! Click the button below to see our upcoming tour dates. We hope to celebrate The Doors’ music with you very soon!

See our tour dates