Just like the two of you, I’m not interested in the singing part either. I have looked at fingerpicking where you can play both chords and melody (like your Metallica song). I remember that I started with House of the Rising sun too a few years ago 
Brian, @rileyman I totally understand what you mean when you say that fingerstyle songs are more difficult to get under the fingers and memorize. Since you are an intermediate player, you may use the Moise website to make your campfire songs more interesting. It allows you to remove the guitar from your favorite song and build a backing track for it. So you keep the singer and the drummer from the original band, but you add your guitar. You can check 2 examples of the software in my AVYP : 1) Jingle Bell Rock 2) There She Goes .
In a way, Moises allow you to play with a band just like the JG app, but for intermediate songs. For beginners, JG app is much more user friendly.