Were not following the set list!

[Lazylion]

You mean to tell me that he doesn't know at least half of your 60 songs already? Is this a change of genre for him?

Yes, he knew a good portion of them already, but overall we are not in his wheelhouse.

so did he get the call two days before the gig?

Yes, and he graciously consented to help us out, even though he is the type who likes to prepare, which he knew he wouldn't be able to do.

(this assumes your setlist isn't 3 sets of "mustang sally", "last dance with mary jane", "sweet home alabama" and "what i got", stuff any gigging bar rock player should already know in his sleep.)

As it happens, we did play Mary Jane and SHA! How did you know??
He did a good job considering, and the band liked him, so again!

But we did NOT stick to the list. At all.

 

[Bassin']

We played a gig on Friday night where we had 3 sets of music with a total of 39 songs. One of the songs on the first set was Elvis Presley's live version of See See Rider. There was a rumor that there might be an Elvis impersonator showing up sometime in the evening and since he hadn't shown up by the time that song came up, we skipped it. Elvis never did show so the song didn't come back up. The second set we stuck to 100%. The third set, since it was later in the evening and we had played for the time we were contracted for, we skipped one song. So out of 39 songs, we played 37 in the same order as what we had planned and it worked great.

 

[Thrash3r]

We have set lists & we stick to them, with tuning changes & patch changes it's not really practical to be changing the song order during the gig.

 

[GregT]

I have to be soundman and musician and vocalist, so I have a lot of information on pages. Every song has a page. I make a setlist of sorts most every time by putting them in order for different venues. That doesn't mean I have to follow it, but it is there because I hate dead air. My way wouldn't work for a lot of people, but it has served me well for more than forty years. Sometimes my notion of what I think a night will be is dead on; sometimes not so much.......

 

[iriegnome]

We don't use set lists. 14 years haven't seen one. Just us though. We chose to not use them to make the show more spontaneous and on your toes.

 

[aprod]

I hate dead air time so a set list is needed for my current project. That being said, my last band had a great front man that called the tunes and we did not need one.

 

[bassgeezer56]

My rockin' 3 piece power trio of 30 years has a healthy roster of probably 400 songs, any of which could be pulled in an instant. Will sometimes leave this list at the front of the stage so the frothies can leaf thru it, won't have to worry about a set list. The audience loves it and it keeps ya on your toes.