GIG PREP

Gearing up for our show next week at The Triple Door in Seattle!

You would not believe how much time Elaine Summers and I have devoted to crafting our setlist for next week’s show at The Triple Door. Then again, if you know me, you might not be all that surprised to hear that I’m not phoning it in. Elaine jokes that my slogan should be “Caring way too much since 1969.” I reckon it’s not a bad thing to care a lot about putting together a solid set.

One show in particular inspired me in the set list department. Elaine surprised me with tickets for my birthday in 2016 to see John Prine at Seattle’s Paramount Theater. The set construction was masterful. (It doesn’t hurt to have Prine’s catalog as your building blocks.)

In this post from October 11, 2024, I briefly wrote about our process of putting the set together. At that time, I said I thought we had narrowed it down. Ha! Here we are still futzing almost three weeks later.

Last night, we thought we had it all buttoned up, so we ran it down from top to bottom. But it didn’t feel right. It opened and closed strong, but the middle was a craggy mess. So this morning, we tore everything down except the first two songs and the set closer and started fresh.

I’ve got my system down. Each song gets its own piece of paper. The title goes in the middle. Song length is on the left. Guitar tuning and capo info are on the right. A highlighter pen indicates which guitar. Yellow indicates my blonde Gibson J-200. Magenta denotes my sunburst Gibson Hummingbird. Other notes go below the title—things like “Elaine Ukulele.”

These scraps of paper are littered all over the top of our grand piano. The set takes shape as a column up the middle. Songs that don’t make the cut get pushed to the right while contenders pile up to the left.

I didn’t want to spoil the surprise, so I blurred the image.

Rehearsals have moved from unamplified in the living room to the studio where we can pipe guitar and vocals through speakers. Since we haven’t been gigging much in recent years, getting acclimated to amplified sound is important. This is of particular benefit as we use mic technique to balance out the mix and blend of our harmonies. On some songs we want the vocals to sound like a duet with each voice right up front. On others, we want Elaine’s harmony to sit behind my lead vocal like a halo.

Moving into the studio also gives me time to dial in and refine my acoustic guitar sound while getting used to how direct acoustic feels under my fingers. This post from March 1, 2024, details my guitar rig.

We are still narrowing down the final setlist, so feel free to cast your vote in the comments.

Now it's time for band practice!

Peace & Love Songs,

Pete