Tune Squad likes to have a good time

EDITOR'S NOTE: Jason Butler's title has been corrected.

A restaurant doesn't serve only one dish for dinner, and the Cape Girardeau band Tune Squad takes the same approach to its music.

Tune Squad, composed of Chad Slaten on guitar, Shane Callahan on vocals, Drew Koeppel on bass and Craig Tetley on drums, is storming onto the scene with a blend of cover songs from rock to pop to hip-hop. Tune Squad also features Micah Agnew on several songs as a rapper.

Slaten and Callahan have been playing together since May, after a chance performance on a spring break trip.

"Me and Shane met, and a week later went on spring break," Slaten said. "We went down to this bar called Flounders, and there was a cover band playing. I heard that Shane could sing, and so I lied to the lead singer and told him that we were from St. Louis and in a band and that Shane was a finalist on 'American Idol.'"

Callahan took the stage with the band in front of about 500 people, and the band played Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive."

"He went up and killed it in front of all these people, and I was like, 'OK, this will work,' and it kind of just went forward from there, and we formed members around us," Slaten said.

The band's first show was in August at Mixing 10. Since then, Tune Squad has performed all around Cape Girardeau, and is now performing between four and eight gigs a month. Band members consider Mixing 10 to be their home base in Cape Girardeau.

Besides the bar scene, the group has also established a relationship with Black Diamond's Bootheel Harley-Davidson in Cape Girardeau and has performed several times there.

Callahan said Jason Butler, the dealership's marketing director in charge of community outreach, first saw the band play at Breakaway's.

"Then he asked us to do his wedding," Callahan said.

Callahan and Slaten are planning on writing some songs now that the band is established, as well as planning gigs outside Cape Girardeau.

"Chad is very creative; we take influence from Radiohead and Muse," Callahan said. "I want old guitar, like the Hendrix sound, because you don't really hear that anymore, but I would like to fuse more than one genre and put it all together."

Tune Squad boasts a variety of music on its nightly set list, from classic rock like Aerosmith through modern pop like Lady Gaga.

"Shane's got such a good voice that we can do anything, basically," Slaten said.

Callahan grew up singing and looks to rock 'n' roll groups as role models.

"As far as vocal influences go, I'm a big fan of Steven Tyler and [Maroon 5 frontman] Adam Levine," Callahan said. "I grew up with my dad listening to rock and my mom listening to pop. I sang in church when I was younger but never sang in a band growing up."

Slaten and Koeppel are not new to the Cape Girardeau music scene. They have performed with bands Oh for Audio, Vacuous and Candid Nightmare over the last five years, and Slaten has been in Surtsey and Improv of Seven Dying Men in the past as well. He's happy in Tune Squad, though.

"We're just a bar band right now, just having a good time," Slaten said. "Make some money and help drunk people dance."

Tune Squad will be performing its diverse catalog of cover songs at 9 p.m. today at Buckner Brewing Co. and 9 p.m. Saturday at Breakaway's.