Special Edition: Making the Setlist

If you were in a band with twice as many songs in your repertoire than you can fit into the three sets comprising a typical gig, how would you choose what songs to place where? What song do you start the first set with to pique the sober audience's interest? What song do you end the night with make sure you leave a lasting impression to the party animals who stuck it out to the end?

In this special edition of "We're In A Band!", we answer those questions while we build the setlist for our upcoming gig. You'll experience our process; the reasons we choose certain songs and put them in a certain order, as well as the problems and solutions that placing certain songs in certain places throughout the sets can create. 

Being a cover band puts us in a unique position: Ostensibly and ideally, a cover band will have nothing but songs that everybody loves all the time. Three hours jam-packed with bangers. Some bands, in fact, will only play Billboard #1 hits.

However, the reality is that most cover bands, especially ones initially starting out, will also choose to play some songs that can only be described as filler material - what we call "low-hanging fruit" - songs that are easy to play, don't require a lot of work to get sounding good, or are jam songs that can be extended indefinitely to fill time with solos/noodling. So many bands in their first couple years will have only a handful of songs to choose from or swap in and out since they barely have enough songs to cover a 3-hour gig.

That's not us. At least, not anymore. 

We used to have to play songs that we knew were lackluster just to have enough songs to fill the time. These days, we have nothing but songs that we love, the audience loves, or both; we have no filler songs and we are constantly adding new songs; often, when we make a suggestion to one another during rehearsal, the suggestions are met with excitement, instant recognition, and a sense of chagrin that we haven't been playing that song all along. So, our struggle the opposite: It's difficult deciding which of our favorite songs from our massive list of bangers won't make the cut that night!

In this somewhat more business-like episode, join us as we place songs to account for vocal pacing, to work the crowd, for the convenience of instrumentation as Mike and I (Jase) trade guitar and bass back and forth, and to plan for the inevitable encore. But how can we choose an encore when there's still dozens of songs that we haven't played that we really want to?

Run For Cover is in a great place with our song selection. As a democracy, we all have veto power for songs the other suggest and, on the other end of the spectrum, we all can suggest songs. The net result is a repertoire of fan favorites and band favorites that we simply love playing for you. 

Credit where credit is due, Mike does the most work when it comes to building sets. His instinct with pacing and finesse with arrangement means that Nick and I, while technically having as much say as we want with set-building, rarely have to say anything more than "Set looks good, Mike; maybe we can fit _____ in if we get time," while looking at the set, excited to play it all and more at the next gig. This episode was probably most foreign to Mike, as this is usually his own personal, internal process that he let Nick and I in on.

NOTE: Sorry for the serious show notes. I usually mention dicks or balls or pedophiles or shoving bowling pins in said dick; but for this special episode, I figured I'd deliver a more informational and editorial message. In the end, as you'll hear, the show this set was built for was rained out, so we never got to play it as ordered, but that's always a risk with live music, particularly live music played outside. Shout out to our hardcore friends at Peekskill Brewery in Peekskill, NY who stuck it out between the rain and finished the night strong with us, even though it ended early. We love you guys and we'll see you next time!

Now then. Enjoy those dicks and balls, you bowling pin-wielding pedophiles!