New songs, new setlist

Putting together a new setlist is fun but can be extremely annoying. You could spend days learning and practicing a song you love only to realise it just won’t work live. So you will need to include several ‘punter'-friendly’ songs, most of them will not be to your taste.

Unfortunately for cover-song setlists, your audience will ultimately decide what you play. No matter how much you like a particular song, if the venue’s patrons don’t want to hear it you’ll be playing to an lonely room of waiters and bar staff.

Know your audience! You’ll need to have a variety of tunes ready to go when building a repertoire of cover songs for live gigs. I’m aiming to have about 80 to 100 songs performance ready in a few months. Each gig will require about 50 songs, but 20 of them will need to be interchangeable depending on the type of gig.

For example, a Friday night pub crowd is not going to want to hear the same songs as a wedding reception. A winery or café will will want more instrumental and if you’re busking at a market you’ll need upbeat tunes.