They’ve never let me live it down. Hah. As if it’s my fault that they thought a “Set List” was a list set in stone. My fault that they arranged their cheat sheets in their binders in the order I’d put the songs on the list, rather than in alphabetical order so they wouldn’t have to go frantically shuffling the pages when I went in a different direction for song three.
A setlist is a guide. It’s a series of reminders. A place to start the evening, a place to finish up. Some suggestions for where we might touch down along the way. But it’s my job to suss the crowd – would another slow one be best now? Or are they ready for a rocker? Better skip this next one on the list, move it to later. Oh, I know! There’s that one we were having fun with last night. It didn’t even get on the list, but I think it’s perfect for right now. Don’t roll your eyes at me!
We’ve learned. They’ve learned to be ready for anything. I’ve learned not to call it a “Set List”.
When the Bearded Pigs started out, we played songs from the lists I used for my solo gigs. I called it singer/songwriter stuff; now it’s all “Americana”.1 Lots of Dylan, Billy Joe Shaver, Dave Alvin. Smattering of Neil Young, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle. Paul Simon, Johnny Cash, Kristofferson. Stuff like that. I’d kick something off, the rest of the band would fall in, we’d ride it out. More often than not, to our repeated astonishment, it’d work.
Over time, as we became a band, the list adjusted to our different tastes and styles. Russell appears to know every CCR song ever recorded as well as much of Tom Petty, Cream, and the Grateful Dead. TomCat covers a wide range of country rock and we’ve picked up some of his originals along the way. We used to half joke that if one of us knew a song we could pull it off, the rest tumbling along. Then there was the time we fumbled through Roadhouse Blues, which none of us knew; but SG pulled the familiar bass line out of the air and I remembered some words, made up what I didn’t, and we thrashed our way. It felt great.
Look, I’m not claiming we sounded good. I have never claimed that. But we have always been joyously rambunctious. We don’t ask for more. And, perplexingly, neither does our audience.
The list evolves. There are some old favorites (White Room, Perfectly Good Guitar) that we won't attempt in Rockfish Holler since BtheA won't be able to get here from Cyprus after all. There are some that rely too much on the guitar I can't play anymore, like my Springsteen-inspired rearrangement of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance. We'll add a couple more TomCat originals. I've got two or three in mind that we've never played that I'd like to look for a way into and I'm sure the others will be coming with new ones to try as well.
The gig is three weeks away. I keep tinkering with the list, moving songs around, thinking about how they flow into or bump against one another, how we might build from ballads up to a high energy peak and then move our way back down into something cathartic and true. Different routes along those well-worn forest paths.
Here's one possible sequence. Think of it as an imaginary setlist that has a mythological relationship to what will be realized on the 8th of June. There are too many here for us to get through over the course of two hours, so some will get dropped, others will get tossed in. But there’s a very good chance that we’ll end up playing many of these. You might even recognize some.2
Angel from Montgomery
Tower of Song
Keep Your Hands to Yourself
Helpless
Fortunate Son
Wondering Why
Long As I Can See the Light
Folsom Prison Blues
Deep Elem Blues
Roadhouse Blues
Johnny B Goode
Copperhead Road
Knocking on Heaven’s Door
Summertime
Amie
Long Train Runnin’
Highway 61 Revisited
Dixie Chicken
Brown Eyed Girl
Margaritaville
Wagon Wheel
All Along the Watchtower
American Girl
I Shall Be Released
Up On Cripple Creek
Rockin' In The Free World
The Weight
Around the time of Car Wheels... Lucinda Williams objected to being labelled a “folk” artist: “That’s what they call those of us who play rock and roll but don’t make any money at it.”
I am deeply opposed to attempting to replicate the recorded versions of songs I love. If we can’t make ‘em our own, what’s the point?
