Mistaken identity: the life of a Rod Stewart tribute artist

FOR most people, being mistaken for a celebrity might be a novelty.

For Rob Caudill, it is simply part of everyday life.The internationally acclaimed Rod Stewart tribute artist, who will bring his Tonight’s The Night show to Twin Towns later this month, said his striking resemblance to the British rock icon has seen strangers mistake him for the real thing for decades.

“Every day of my life… you hear the murmurs when you’re walking by…” he said.

“Sometimes people come up and they think you’re Rod, and you’re in a rush to do something … and they go, ‘We love your music!’ I don’t go through the whole explanation because sometimes it’s too time-consuming.”

Caudill said the comparisons began long before he ever considered performing as Stewart.

“I was playing bass, and even when I was in high school, people came up and told me, ‘You look like Rod Stewart’,” he said.

“I didn’t even know what Rod Stewart looked like. I remember the first time I ever heard him on the radio because I thought, ‘That’s the weirdest sounding voice I’ve ever heard’.”

Before becoming a tribute artist, Caudill built a career as a bassist, songwriter and recording artist, playing in bands around Memphis. The turning point came after seeing Legends in Concert in Las Vegas.

“I was playing music and then I went to Vegas and saw Legends in Concert,” he said.

“It was the biggest tribute show there is, like Elvis and the Blues Brothers and all these different acts, and I thought, ‘You know, I could do that’.

“So I put down the bass and just started doing it.”

Although his natural voice closely resembles Stewart’s, Caudill said recreating the singer’s performance is about far more than simply sounding alike.

“I don’t try to sound like Rod Stewart. My voice just sounds that way,” he said.

“But I do listen to the way he phrases things. I speak with an English accent on stage, which is funny because I’m basically a southern guy.”

He said there was an irony in performing as Stewart, given so many British rock stars drew inspiration from American blues and soul.

“It’s so funny because these English guys wanted to be blues or soul singers from the South,” he said.

“And I am, so it’s easy for me to sing this stuff.”

Despite portraying Stewart for decades, Caudill said perfecting the performance remained an ongoing challenge.

“It’s almost as much an acting gig as it is a singing gig,” he said.

“I still always say that I’m a work in progress because you never feel like you have it completely mastered.”

While the resemblance helped launch a successful tribute career, Caudill said it also complicated his earlier ambitions as an original musician.

“I was a songwriter, I was a bass player, I made my living playing bass and I was a recording artist, so it hindered that whole thing,” he said.

Caudill will perform Tonight’s The Night at Twin Towns on Friday 17 July from 8pm. Tickets are available through Twin Towns.