As a concert-goer, it's always fun to see what songs an artist will play on any given night. I've seen a lot of acts right in the midst of their first tours, usually opening for a much bigger band, and in those cases you usually go knowing what to expect. When I got to see Matchbox 20 open for the Stones in '98 it was no surprise to see them play through basically all of Yourself Or Someone Like You. I haven't had a chance to see them since, but I'm guessing that nowadays their show is completely different from one night to the next. Most of the bands I go see have a fairly large catalog from which to choose. After going to many Counting Crows concerts over the years, I can safely say that I can never predict what their setlist will be like. And I can't imagine what it must be like for those prolific songwriters like Bob Dylan or Ryan Adams to narrow down their possible song choices into just a couple hours of music.
I've written less than 30 original songs in my short time so far as a songwriter, but, playing locally, there's also the understanding that we as performers will play lots of covers at our gigs. So I can add all of the covers in with those and I end up with a catalog of over 200 different songs that we've performed. Shows generally last anywhere from 1 to 4 hours, depending on the venue and whether or not you might be the opener or the closer. So I've come to understand that the art of the setlist is just as important as the art of playing the individual songs in that setlist. Putting together a show from so many choices can be a lot of fun, or it can be just another thing to stress you out. And I think almost every performer has their own way of going about it.
I know that a lot of our friends who like to play at local restaurants may skip the setlist altogether. Sometimes this is because they're planning to just go with the flow and/or take requests. When we first started playing at different eateries we would put out laminated lists of about 100 songs from which we would take requests. It's definitely a great way to make tips and it's always nice to be able to please the crowd in a very specific way, but there were a couple of problems with this for me. The first was that we would end up playing a few songs three or four times in a single night. I'm not a fan of doing that, and I always felt bad for those who had come to watch the performance and had to sit through repeats. The second problem was that sometimes there are songs that you just don't feel like playing. That's okay for some types of performances, but I feel like I have to put tons of emotion into my shows to make them entertaining, so if I'm not feeling a song it's just not going to sound good. So I learned after a few months that I probably wasn't going to be the "by-request" guy.
Another method that we've seen a lot of great local musicians use is printing out one long list of all (or a subset of) their songs and choose from those on-the-fly during the performance. What's great about that is that you come prepared but you still have lots of freedom to read the crowd and keep playing tunes that they'll respond to. (Again, tips are nice, but so is lots of applause.) I've found that this worked okay for me sometimes when I'd be playing completely solo and could think on my feet, but it wasn't always great when playing with my dad or anyone else because we always felt afterwards that there was too much discussion and down-time between songs. When you're playing solo and thinking ahead, you can put a pretty good spontaneous set together. But then there are nights when you have that indecision. I like having a setlist.
So every time we play I try and take the time to put together a show that I would want to go see. It can be a mis-fire because you never know what the ebb and flow of the crowd in any given venue will be. But I create every setlist with the (yes, completely misguided) philosophy that every person there has come to watch us perform from start to finish. Whether we're playing a stage, a restaurant, or a coffeeshop, I like to pretend that we're headliner material. That means we start strong and finish stronger. I like to put lots of highs and lows in there, and I try my best to keep people guessing. I figure that if we can get someone to like one song, they may hate the next one and stick around just to see what we'll do next. That's why we might go straight from Johnny Cash to Cee Lo Green to Third Eye Blind. And I like to do things that way. I want to play what I want to play.
One thing that's really important to me in our shows is that we do justice to every song in the setlist. Sometimes I'll compose the list with a theme in mind, whether it's upbeat, mellow, or just downright sad. I confess that the sets often follow my mood at the time of the show. That's not always a fun thing. I was having a weird night about a year ago and decided to play "You Can't Always Get What You Want" with our "Round Here"/"Use Somebody" mash-up. I remember that was one that I might have gotten a little too into, because I started shaking so badly that we had to take a short break before the next song. But, since I judge every show by how much I put into it, I would say that it was worth it to make the performance believable.
Doing justice to every song also means that sometimes you cut something when you get to it. This could be because you're not in the mood or because maybe you're not one hundred percent sure of just one little lyric. If I think something in the set can only end in disaster, then it's gone. Then there are times when get to a point in a show and I think of something that we absolutely have to play right then. If I ever get that feeling, that's what we do. (Sometimes we also have to do this if we don't plan enough songs to fill the time.) It's really cool when you get rolling in a show and songs just start coming to you out of nowhere. That usually means you're really feeling it, and for some reason it usually means the crowd is too. Those are great nights.
I just finished putting together a solo acoustic setlist for tomorrow night's short-notice show at the Purple Pig. It's got 34 songs, and there are a lot in there that I don't play very often. But hey, those are the ones I think I'm going to feel like playing!
So I'll close tonight's post with a video of one of my favorite songs by Counting Crows. The first time I ever heard this one was in concert at the minor league ballpark in Tulsa. Earlier in the night, Adam Duritz had mentioned (in albeit a fuzzy kind of way) that he hadn't had such a good day. The setlist that night seemed to perfectly reflect that, and the music did not suffer for it. It was like they just decided to pick appropriate songs. But when they came out and played this one (which wouldn't show up on a record until many months later) for an encore, it all just seemed perfect. It was one of the most intense performances of anything I've ever seen to this day. So here's the best live video I could find online of their amazing song, "Cowboys". Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
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