Rhode Island many scenes within the music community. While there are a ton of bands playing original music, there are others who put their own spin on either classic tunes or contemporary hits.

One example is Nothing Personal, a Providence group that plays all over southern New England. With Patrick Devin and Rich Pare both on vocals and guitar, Mike Hill on vocals and bass and Chris Manfredi on drums, this band have a vast repertoire featuring renditions of songs like “American Girl” by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, “Chicken Fried” by the Zac Brown Band and “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind just to name a few.

On February 21, Nothing Personal will play live at Pub on Park in Cranston starting at 9pm.

Rob Duguay: Nothing Personal started back in 2020, so who had the idea to start this project and how did you guys all come together to make it happen?

Patrick Devin: The timing of it was not a coincidence. We’ve all known each other for quite some time. Prior to the pandemic, I had played for a couple of other local cover bands. I just floated the idea to a couple friends that this was what I was doing before the pandemic, and it was a lot of fun to see if they had any interest in doing it. We pieced the band together with four members and we started rehearsing when the lockdowns lifted.

Everybody was taking precautions, but you could rent a rehearsal space to get together for a few hours a week and start to learn some music. Then as the world kind of opened back up, we were able to get into a couple places that were willing to give a new cover band a shot and it’s kind of been a blur. We’ve really been going nonstop since then.

RD: When it came to the initial rehearsing, was there anything done virtually? Did you guys have a lot of Zoom chats to hash out ideas?

PD: No, I think based on my previous experiences in bands, they were pretty comfortable with giving me the reins to let everyone know the time and place to know these songs. We started with a giant master list of songs that we wanted to learn, and just because we had all been playing for a decade, maybe two, we already knew at least 20 of those songs immediately. We didn’t have to rehearse “My Own Worst Enemy” by Lit because we all learned it when we were 10 years old, so we were pretty comfortable with that, but we didn’t know how to play “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” by Whitney Houston. We broke it up into groups of what we could get done in a night and what would take us a rehearsal or two to get under our belt, but nothing was really done virtually. There were a lot of texts back and forth, we have a 10 mile long group chat that we talk in throughout the week and that’s really been there since day one.

When everything started, it was done in person. We communicated a lot about the planning that went into it, what we wanted to do and what we wanted to sound like. The creative element of being in a cover band is putting your own spin on it and that’s a lot of what we discussed during those early days.

RD: When it comes to putting together a setlist, you guys play a range of material from pop, country and rock, so when it comes to choosing which songs you want to play, is it always a group decision or do one of you guys bring in an idea to try out a particular tune?

PD: There are a few questions we ask ourselves, and probably the biggest one is “Do I just want to play this song or will anybody want to hear it?” The things that I find the most interesting to play put audiences to sleep. There’s a really big divide between music you like and music that everybody likes and everybody will enjoy. We try to ensure that if you’re eight years old or if you’re 80 years old, when you come to our shows you’re going to hear at least a handful of songs that you really like. We try to cast a wide net so everybody can have a good time and it’s not necessarily a group decision because we usually have one guy who absolutely hates doing whatever song is suggested. Eventually, they either stomach it or come around to it, but we really encourage the mentality of asking ourselves “Do we want to play this song because we like it, or do we want to play it because we know other people will like it and they’ll enjoy hearing it at one of our shows?”.

We try to approach learning new music as all gas, no brakes. We don’t want to incorporate too many of what we call “bathroom break” songs where it’s really fun for us, but it’s the point in the night where everybody looks at each other and realizes that it’s a good time to use the restroom or grab another drink. Whenever we’re learning a new song, we want to make sure that it’s going to keep somebody engaged and it’s a song they actually would want to hear.

RD: That’s a good mindset to have. The band itself has four different versions where you have the full band, you have the wedding band, you have the “Emo Night” band and you have the acoustic duo with you and Rich. When it comes to having these various aspects, how much planning goes into each one?

PD: When it comes to the planning that goes into it, I would say that it’s too much. I probably spend more time than I should scrutinizing every element of all four of those things. The full band setup is what we do, that’s our foundation and then everything else stems off of it. We really try to make each one of those things a different experience. When we play a wedding, we work really closely with the bride and groom to make sure that it’s everything that they wanted it to be. We present very differently for a wedding, we wear suits, we make sure that we’re putting on a show that fits a wedding and not a show that fits playing a bar, club or any other type of venue.

We have a different logo that we use for weddings, which is a little more classy. It’s kind of designed to be a little more formal than our normal set, and then for “Emo Night”, we all grew up going to Warped Tour, some of us have played Warped Tour, and that’s the music we grew up on. When we play those shows, again our logo is different and when you walk in the room, you don’t feel like you’re going to see a cover band, it feels like you’re going to a show at Lupo’s in 2007 where All Time Low and Fall Out Boy are playing. For the acoustic shows, we wanted to do that as an extension because we want to use it as a way to get people to see the band as a whole, so a lot of planning goes into each of those elements.

RD: I can definitely tell. What are your thoughts on this upcoming show at the Pub on Park?

PD: It’s pretty much going to be the same for us as every night. We take a week to plan out how we want to do it, and we also take the room into consideration and whether or not a good chunk of our following is most likely going to be there. We wouldn’t usually play the same set at a place like Pub on Park like we would at Moonshine Alley in Providence, Splitsville in Foxboro or any of the other venues that we play. We tailor to the room and what the bartenders want to hear and some of the folks who are going to be coming there want to hear. My biggest thing for every show is just making sure that we sound good in the room. Every room is a little bit different, so we’ll get there a few hours early to do a rigorous sound check to make sure the drums aren’t too loud and the guitars aren’t too quiet so anybody can walk in while not feeling overwhelmed but also feeling like they’re watching a band.

Pub on Park is really one of the first venues that we’ve played. I’ve played there with previous cover bands and we really enjoy playing there, it’s a nice little stage with a big dance floor, so when we go into a room like that, we expect that folks are going to want to dance so anything we have that they can dance to is going to go in the set.