[Harp-L] Re: Set Lists - I'll Show You Mine if You Show Me Yours!

[Bob Loomis <miltloomis@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm in two bands and we have a variety of set lists depending on who's playing a particular gig and what the gig is. For a historical society gig last year we alternated early American songs like Yankee Doodle and Billy Boy with songs from later periods, thus working our way through 200-plus years of pop music. In our regular sets there's a lot of overlap in material, but we generally work it this way:

If the lady singer can't be with us there there are about half a dozen songs she is featured on that we will jettison. If our harp player is absent, we'll dump two or three of his spotlight blues songs. Other than that, the sets stay fairly consistent. We try to put all our players/singers in the spotlight in each set, with different singers taking lead vocals and different soloists taking the breaks. Our bigger band has 6 members, our smaller, 2 to 4.

We found that at our coffeehouse gigs, except for maybe half a dozen or so folks who were taken with the music and had nothing better to do, people didn't stay long. They were there to get coffee, drink it, and leave. Sometimes they took the coffee and split ASAP, on their ways to somewhere. This sort of thing doesn't happen at weddings and private parties, of course. You have a captive audience then. At bar gigs, you got your walk-ins and your regulars. Usually the regulars stay longer, but sometimes you capture a few walk-ins who stay to hear the music or whatever. We haven't had a bar gig in a long time because several of us don't care for playing in bars, even though they are probably the best venues in many respects. One of our best gigs was a private farewell party for a guy at a bar in Oakland where the party-goers mingled with the regulars and walk-ins. Huge crowd, good reception!

That said, here are a couple of set list samples. We tailor our sets to be 40-45 minutes long, usually and of course if we only do two sets, we choose from among these or the other songs in our book:







Set 1:

Donât Ease Me In

I Think It Was the Wine

Brown-eyed Girl

Here in CA

Bye Bye Love

Summertime Blues

Hush, Hush

Love Has No Pride

Titanic Blues

Sometimes

Yuppie Courtship Song*

The Weight

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Set 2:

Roll In My Sweet Babyâs Arms

Down on the Corner

Cowboy Blues**

Dream A Little Dream of Me

Colours

Deep Elem Blues

Obviously 5 Believers 

Windowpane*

Last Time

NYC Blues

Everyday

Pretty Good**

Â

Set 3:

Jambalaya

Lord Wonât You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz

Act Naturally

Paradise

Bad Moon Rising

I Fought the Law

Margaritaville

Get Together

La to the Left

Kauai**

Jamaica Farewell

You Ainât Going Nowhere

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* = Original by our guitarist, Colin Sacks

** = Original by Bob Loomis

All that said, we currently are not gigging regularly for a number of reasons having mostly to do with the logistics of getting people together for practices and gigs. Our lady singer, for example, lives in Sonora, about two hours from where the rest of us are. We were having so much trouble arranging practices what with summer vacation schedules and so on, that we are taking July and August (normally busy months for musicians) off. All except me work regular, full-time day jobs, too.

We'll resume regular practices in September. Or at least that's the theory. We have about three or four yearly benefit gigs that we do for local organizations that we think are worthwhile. The core of us have been playing together for about a dozen years, so we don't lose too much (except the opportunity to learn new songs and polish the ones we know) by taking time off.

Meantime, I'm getting ready to record my own CD of my own tunes. I hope to call in bandmates to add tracks as fits.Â
Cheers, Bob Loomis