Why Did We Play This? A Series: 10/17/26 and 10/20/26... A Setlist Comparison

[This is (maybe) an ongoing series looking at older and newer gigs by my band The Wolf Tones, which places a strong emphasis on improvisation and does not pick a setlist in advance... so why did we play these songs this time? Let us explore...]

Occasionally, we'll play some shows close together, and it's always interesting to look at those setlists and see what (if anything) they have in common.

These two are interesting because they represent us playing to two fairly different audiences, and is a good illustration of how we balance our creative urges with the recognition that we need to play to the crowd if we want the tip jar to start filling up.

As far as creative urges go, our monthly engagement at the Thunderbird in Pittsburgh is where things typically get good and weird. We've got a nice built-in crowd, they come for the jams and they know we like to try stuff out. It's a great testing ground for new ideas.

This first set, however, is from 10/17 at Fermata, where we only play a couple times a year and you never really know what the crowd make-up is going to be. Let's get into it:

Early set: Loved You Enough, Georgia On a Fast Train, Honey Babe > Johnny Too Bad, Big River, Neon Moon > Raleigh & Spencer > Keep On Moving > 9 to 5

Late set: Leaning On a Travelin' Song, Drivin' Nails in My Coffin, Rider in the Rain, Tulsa Time > That Was Your Mother, Traveling Mood, Such a Night, My Gal, Positively 4th Street > Pound On Me*, Rag Mama

*Original

Those first three tunes are aimed directly at people who came expecting to see a full-on bluegrass show. In unfamiliar situations, we've found it's best practice to keep it traditional in the early going and just show people they can trust us with the music... that even if it's not always what they expect, it will still be entertaining. 

See, you get 'em on your side, and then you hit 'em with the reggae cover on bluegrass instruments, haha!

Really though, this entire setlist is primarily true-to-form bluegrass with a handful of reggae, country and Dr. John tunes tossed in for good measure. That's a far cry from our last Fermata show, where the hippie quotient in the audience was high and we busted out dubbed-out Bob Marley tunes, Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" and I'm pretty sure a Lady Gaga encore, courtesy of Nemo's encyclopedic musical recall.

My own personal bit of weirdness came in the first Dr. John tune, "Traveling Mood" from his Right Place Wrong Time album. Its chord structure allowed me to tease a little bit of Phish's "Bathtub Gin" during a solo. It's got some cool little chromatic riffing that's a lot of fun.

But by Wolf Tones standards, it's a pretty tame group of tunes. 

Contrast that with the setlist from our fifth annual HOWL-O-WEEN party at the Thunderbird, which shares only three songs with its predecessor:

Early set: Clap for the Wolfman, Columbus Stockade Blues, Drivin' Nails in My Coffin, Sittin' On Top of the World, Loved You Enough, Rag Mama, Chase the Devil > Already Over Me, Midnight Moonlight

Late set: Ghost Train > House by the Sea > Right Place Wrong Time, Jam > Long Journey Home, Learning to Fly*, Jesus On the Main Line, Isis > Werewolves of London > Isis > Werewolves Reprise > I Got Five On It > Bananas & Blow > Bertha, Althea, Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad

*feat. Joe Kolenda

First off, at the Halloween gig we're constantly looking for songs with wolves or ghosts or minor keys, so the setlist typically strays from the usual repertoire. That said, the early set is pretty straightforward bluegrass again until I called a Max Romeo tune about putting on a suit of armor and kicking Satan's ass into outer space (not a joke).

I also called a brand-new tune that worked exactly the way I hoped it would. "Already Over Me" is one of the few good songs from the Rolling Stone's late-'90s Bridges to Babylon record. It's got a structure that doesn't show up much in our songbook: Minor-key verses and a big lift with a major-key chorus. That's the kind of peak-and-valley thing we really enjoy, and can work to the hilt in a jam.

But at a place like Fermata, I'd never call Bob Dylan's "Isis," with its extreme abstract lyrical weirdness and shout-y lines at the end of every couple verses. The Thunderbird is the perfect place to pull out that kind of tune for the first time. People who recognize it go apesh*t because it's not a very common cover, and it's got enough energy to drag along people who don't know it.

It's also got the same basic chord structure as Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London," a truly frequent flier in our late sets. That, in turn, offered me the opportunity to do an extraordinarily-obscure double-song tease that I've only ever heard once.

On an old tape from one of the Dave Matthews-Tim Reynolds acoustic duo tours, they eventually work their way from a Dave tune into that D-C-G pattern that "Isis" and "Werewolves" share. It's also the pattern for "Sweet Home Alabama." But instead of teasing that song, Dave sings a verse of Neil Young's "Southern Man" over the "Sweet Home Alabama" chords. If you don't know, "Southern Man" was the reason that Lynyrd Skynyrd name-checked Neil Young in one of the "Alabama" verses:

"Well I heard Mr. Young sing about her / Well I heard ol' Neil put her own / I hope Neil Young will remember / A 'Southern Man' don't need him around anyhow..."

I always thought it was a really neat little bit of symmetry and a cool little inside joke for people who notice it.

The Fermata audience, despite being firmly on our side by the late set, would not have been in the mood for the chorus of the Luniz's "I Got Five On It." That's strictly for our hippie friends who, like us, grew up alongside the rise of rap and hip-hop in the '90s and 2000s.

Late in the evening, we caught the downstairs crowd leaving the Melvin Seals & JGB show, which accounts for all the Dead at the end of the set. I miss playing a lot of those tunes.

When the Wolf Tones first started, we were just one of the many permutations of pickers at the early Thunderbird Tuesday Bluegrass Sessions. During the first year, those gigs operated on kind of a "who's available next Tuesday" basis, and there wasn't specifically a Dead-grass night, so we were playing a good bit of Dead covers because they were common knowledge. That fell away as Joe started up his JGBG ("Jerry Garcia Blue Grass") band that just played all Dead/Garcia tunes. But I really do miss our arrangement of "Standing On the Moon," and might lobby to bring it back.

Why Did We Play This? A Series: 8/27/24 Thunderbird Tuesday Bluegrass Sessions, Pgh., Pa.

[This is (maybe) an ongoing series looking at older and newer gigs by my band The Wolf Tones, which places a strong emphasis on improvisation and does not pick a setlist in advance... so why did we play these songs this time? Let us explore...]

I like to listen back to shows that have big jams in them, or where the tracks extend out into double digits. It's usually a good sign that we were doing some exploring, including some things I forget in the moment. This is one of those shows. Let's get into it:

Early set: Jam > Old & In the Way, I'll Never Get Outta This World Alive > Lonesome Road Blues > Jam > Ophelia > Dreams > Jam > Steam Powered Aereo Plane, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, My Gal, Smells Like Teen Spirit > House by the Sea

It starts with a jam. The entire mid-section is one continuous jam. And within that, there are some lengthy segue jams. The only thing missing is peanut butter and bread.

We started out jamming on a few of the chords from the first tune. Nemo called some Hank Williams, and after "Lonesome Road Blues" we started breakin' things down, moving through a couple keys before settling on C for The Band's "Ophelia." We ground the gears a little bit getting into the right key, but it worked out nicely. And as we jammed our way out of that tune, Nemo proved once again that he's always listening for new possibilities. He got us started on a simple F-G jam that turned out to be all we needed in order to add Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" to the repertoire.

[Side note: I don't think anyone should be allowed to name a song "Dreams" anymore. I can think of three right off the top of my head... this one, the Allman Bros. tune and a bluegrass tune we cover in Sweaty Already String Band.]

That same F-G structure got us to a nice introspective place on the jam out of "Dreams," then we ramped the energy back up, shifted gears down into G and plowed through John Hartford's "Steam Powered Aereo Plane." 

I often confuse Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street" with "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" until I get a glance at the first line of the song. Covering Dylan tunes can be a lot of fun, because you really have no choice but to make up at least part of the melody. You can't just go up there and sing-shout stuff the way Dylan did. At least I can't. It feels like walking a very fine line between tribute and caricature. The arrangements for much of his classic material are so bare-bones (for the most part) that you can usually put you own spin on them. Both of these tunes are doomed-romance songs that we've turned into a nice emotional shift in our sets.

The sincerity didn't last too long. We did some cheesy fake-jazz shiznit in "My Gal," with some verbal hi-hats and banjo brush-drumming, which is always a good time.

Nemo struck again with Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," a simple chord structure that's surprisingly well-suited to a bluegrass rhythm, and retains its semi-haunting sound. To round things off while keepin' it spooky, we finished the early set with "House by the Sea," and even changed up the ending to bring the post-jam energy down and finish the song quietly at the end of the final verse.

Late set: Loved You Enough, Possum, Natural Mystic > Columbus Stockade Blues > Glass Onion > Jam > 'Til the End of the World Rolls 'Round, Shuckin' the Corn

I didn't look back at the calendar, but a lengthy early set and a short late one usually means there was a show downstairs in the main room. When that happens — especially if it's a band with some crossover potential — we time our late set to try and snag some audience members on their way out. One of my favorite things is to see someone accidentally jam up the exit line because they like what we're playing and stop to listen.

We gave 'em a good reason in the late set. "Loved You Enough" might be my favorite Yonder Mountain/Jeff Austin Extended Universe tune. It's damn near a perfect bluegrass song, in my opinion. 

In a similar vein, "Possum" is damn near a perfect Phish song: Bouncy, goofy and fun. From there, we launched into a half-hour jam that kicked off with Marley's "Natural Mystic"... and for some reason I just stopped paying attention to the chart and sang whatever-the-f*ck. I think I did the first verse twice, forgot the part where it just hangs on the root for a few bars... but it worked out fine.

We put together a menacing little jam in E-minor, flipped it up to A-minor and railed off "Columbus Stockade Blues." That tune's been a mainstay in the repertoire, and it's fun to pull out when traditional-bluegrass heads are around. The old-school version that gets played at bluegrass jams is all major chords, but we do the Leon Russell/New Grass Revival version that flips it into a minor key.

During 2023 and '24, we were also really feelin' The Beatles' "Glass Onion." It's got just the right amount of weirdness and really perks up the ears of folks who aren't familiar with it. Transitioning from another A-minor song also gives me a chance to play one of my all-time favorite chords, an A-minor-9 with a gorgeous jazzy dissonance to it. 

After "Glass Onion," it was off into nearly 10 minutes of jamming, gradually peaking-and-valleying in A-minor and cooling things off by shifting up to C and doing what I now recognize as almost a "Knocking on Heaven's Door" jam. Nemo used some melodic bass to kick the energy back up and we took off into the old bluegrass chestnut "'Til the End of the World Rolls 'Round" to finish the late-set jam. 

Then it was a quick "Shuckin' the Corn" and we tipped on out.

I think this show is a great example of our philosophy of "play eight bars and then play something different" when it comes to jamming. Joe and Nemo are great at coming up with transitional jams that either help us move between songs or bring us to a place where we can change the key in a natural-sounding way and get into a new song.

Why Did We Play This? A Series: 9/29/26 Thunderbird Tuesday Bluegrass Sessions, Pgh., Pa.

I'm not sure how the Wolf Tones' Rolodex of bass players is so deep. But every time we find ourselves in a jam (the unavailable-bass-player kind, not the musical kind), we end up finding yet another hella dope bassist to sit in.

This time, Kyle was under the weather, Nemo was doin' family stuff, and the first three people we reached out to were also busy. Mind you, this is less than three hours before the gig.

Enter our homeboy Dave Busch, bassist on probably my favorite album ever by a Pittsburgh band, Wreck Loose's OK, Wreck Loose. I can't recommend it highly enough. That being said... it's very much a pop-rock record. No bluegrass in sight. 

Now listen, I'm not gonna sit here and act like bluegrass as a musical form is super-complicated. It certainly can be at times, but one of the best bluegrass bassists I know has a basic mantra of, "It's all the same song." Lotta fifth intervals in bluegrass bass. But it does have its little nuances, and if you're not used to them, it can trip you up.

Like I said, though: We just keep finding hella good bassists to sit in.

As soon as we kicked into the first classic bluegrass rhythm, I knew things were gonna be good. At the same time, Dave was doing us a huge favor, and I wanted him to enjoy himself rather than sitting back there learning a ton of songs on the fly.

That meant being a little more conservative than usual as we randomly pick the setlist. Our homeboy Glenn Strother from Norside Organ Trio was sitting in for the whole evening on guitar. And that meant we could dip back into the blues tunes we started pulling out last week when Glenn stopped by. Let's get into it:

Early set: Whiskey, Woodpecker*, Jambalaya, Kiss & Tell > House by the Sea > Burning & Looting > Breathe > Colt 45, Big River, My Sisters and Brothers

*Semi-original (1st verse by S. Silverstein)

We started nice and easy with Charlie Daniels' "Whiskey," my expanded, reggae-fied version of Shel Silverstein's two-sentence poem "Woodpecker" and Hank Williams' "Jambalaya" to get our feet underneath us.

These are all pretty deliberate choices. "Whiskey" is a slightly modified version of the standard blues progression. "Woodpecker" is what we call a "1-4-1-5," referring to the song's numbered chord progression. It's an extremely popular song form in bluegrass and folk music. And "Jamabalaya" is literally just two chords (D and A) repeated over and over. These are all song forms I know Dave and Glenn will be familiar with, and this gives us all a chance to settle in, figure out the overall vibe and decide where to go. Again, Dave's doing us a last-minute favor, so I don't want him to feel like we're just tossing him in the deep end and seeing if he can swim.

From there, however, it was off to the races. G. Love's "Kiss & Tell" employs the same basic structure as "Whiskey," and then we shifted the jam down into E-minor and banged out Iron & Wine's "House by the Sea," Marley's "Burning & Looting," Pink Floyd's "Breathe" and Afroman's "Colt 45," which are typically all late-set tunes when we're stringing a big long jam together. 

In this context, that means two things:

• #1: Things are going well and it doesn't feel necessary to stop playing and explain the next tune for Dave or Glenn. 

• #2: Maybe this is a musical trick I shouldn't give away, but every song in the jam aside from "Kiss & Tell" kind of leads well into the next one, in terms of chords and structure... "House by the Sea" is E-minor and D... "Burning & Looting" is E-minor and A-minor... "Breathe" is E-minor and A-major and so is "Colt 45." It allows us to subtly change the jam to keep things interesting as we go along, and to improvise our way into the next song. This is also where being able to vamp is helpful. If I do need to tell the other band members something, I can do it as we're transitioning out of one song, usually by playing over two, perhaps three chords.... "This next one has a weird little hitch at the end of the verse," or "This one goes to the four when the chorus comes in," or "We're about to go from D to E-minor, I'll cue you."

Archie got everyone hyped with "Big River" and then we rounded out the early set with a tune we haven't done for a while, Jerry Garcia Band's "My Sisters and Brothers." Things felt good and we were pretty geeked going into the...

Late set: Don't Let Your Deal Go Down, Georgia On a Fast Train, Drivin' Nails in My Coffin, I Got My Mojo Workin' > Sweet Heaven When I Die, Shady Grove > The Cisco Kid, The Vape Machine*, Big Black Train, Columbus Stockade Blues, In Tall Buildings** > Werewolves of London

*Original / **feat. Carrie King (vocals)

The early part of the late set was some pretty standard 'grass tunes, and then we started getting funky with Muddy Waters' "I Got My Mojo Workin'." I thought it would be an easy pivot back to bluegrass with "Sweet Heaven When I Die," but something got miscommunicated and it took until the second verse for everyone to really lock in. I'm listening back to the recording right now, and I still don't really understand what happened... I think maybe someone was going to the four when the rest of us are going to the five. 

But no matter. We got it together and then made up for it by diving deep into D-minor with an extended jam on "Shady Grove" and War's "The Cisco Kid." 

Joe called our newest original, "The Vape Machine," a true story about the Thunderbird replacing the jukebox with a literal vape vending machine. Midway through, I realized I was singing this song with one of the venue's owners in the crowd, possibly the person who made the decision to buy the vape machine. Whoops. Alas... we press onward.

We hit a couple more regular-repertoire tunes and then had the emotional centerpiece of the evening. Last week, Carrie King came up and sang a lovely version of John Hartford's "In Tall Buildings." She did so again last night, but it was also her last night in Pittsburgh. Today she's moving to Colorado, so this version turned out to be a beautiful little goodbye for one of the people who've been coming out to see us almost from the start. 

Then it was "Werewolves of London" to round out a super-fun evening of music. Go listen to OK, Wreck Loose. It's f***ing awesome.

A Shameless Plug for My New Beat Tape!

More beats!

The past few years, I've gotten back into beatmaking, a hobby I indulged in heavily from about 2004-2015. When I got an iMac in '04, it came with Garageband and I discovered that I essentially now had a built-in sampler and at least a rudimentary recording studio, and I went bananas. 

Somewhere amid this process, I started getting the urge to actually release some beats as a record, and quickly ran up against the terrifying specter of sample clearance. I had no interest in that, despite most of my favorite beats coming complete with at least one sample, if not more.

Looking back, that's probably good, because it forced me to get more creative.

In recent years, I started revisiting those tracks, eliminating the samples and rebuilding with the remaining parts, which also gave me a chance to play the Les Paul Studio ("L.P.S.") electric guitar that I essentially cast aside in 2016 when Charlie Hustle & the Grifters morphed into the Sweaty Already String Band. It's so much fun to play, and I discovered I had a whole new control over it with 6-8 years of additional guitar playing under my belt.

In parallel with this, I was also sampling live recordings of The Wolf Tones to create a separate series of original "bluegrass beats." Throughout, I started thinking more about how to create a consistent sonic atmosphere and especially about some of the post-recording/polishing/mastering things that I really hadn't gotten into in the early days. 

Vol. 1 of L.P.S. Breaks was called Saturday Breakfast Buffet, a reference to the overall sound palette and how it reminded me of going to the neighborhood breakfast spot on a weekend morning. This new volume is called Electrosonique, which is in fact a fake French-sounding word that does not mean anything. But I do think it somehow fits the outer-spacey vibe of this collection. 

It will be available on all major streaming services in the near future, but you can listen and buy a copy now at Bandcamp.com.

Why Did We Play This? A Series: 9/5/26 Unity Brewing, Latrobe, Pa.

[This is (maybe) an ongoing series looking at older and newer gigs by my band The Wolf Tones, which places a strong emphasis on improvisation and does not pick a setlist in advance... so why did we play these songs this time? Let us explore...]

I was bemoaning the state of my soloing ability last time. As punishment for my self-pity, the music gods threw one high and inside, and gave me a gig where I had no choice but to play solos. 

This gig was originally going to be at the Beck-Ringland Tavern down in Washington County, but they unexpectedly closed earlier this summer. We quickly pivoted and booked this Unity gig, but the memo did not reach all members of the band, and Joe had already booked a gig with Org Dröl, his dark-wizard heavy-metal-and-flute ensemble. 

Archie was out at Nelson Ledges in Ohio, so it was up to Kyle and me to hold the fort down for a gig in Latrobe. This shouldn't really be terrifying to me, because I started out playing three-hour solo gigs. But those really didn't involve taking solo breaks. It was more just singer-songwriter stuff and doing some fun stuff with percussive rhythm and chord inversions.

To be fair, I wouldn't be on my own, and technically Kyle was bringing multiple musicians because he had a series of looping pedals that he uses at his solo gigs. But my shortcoming with breaks, especially in bluegrass tunes, is the speed. I can slowly find my way into a chord progression and start feeling comfortable moving more quickly around the fretboard. But just banging out a 120bpm, two-times-through-the-form bluegrass break is a real challenge for me.

Early set: Jam > Tipitina, Feelin' Alright, Jam > Columbus Stockade Blues, Deep River Blues, Digging a Ditch, Jam > Fishing in the Dark, Georgia On a Fast Train, Jam > Keep On Moving, Positively 4th Street, Pound On Me*

*Original

I wanted to lean into my strength (such as it is), and I had my pedalboard with me as well, so I could provide a whole palette of textures for Kyle to loop over. We started a lot of the first-set songs with a looper jam, Kyle setting up a bassline and some rudimentary percussion while I picked between the phaser, tremolo and various wah-wah effects to do little funky intros to a bunch of the tunes.

Was it perfect? No it was not. But it certainly was not the Donk-a-Palooza that I had feared, in terms of hitting clunker notes. Playing with only a bass offers the guitarist a lot of opportunity to move the music to a new place without clashing against the rest of the band. I could move very easily between the major and minor, for example.

Late set: Possum, Neon Moon, Sweet Heaven When I Die, Traveling Mood, Breathe > Colt 45 > Breathe, Way Downtown, Wild & Wicked World, Woodpecker*, Whiskey, Such a Night, That Was Your Mother, Salty Dog Blues, Buckets of Rain, Glass Onion > Money, Rider in the Rain

*Original

Phish must have been occupying some extra real estate in my brain for this gig. We opened the late set with "Possum," and during Dr. John's "Traveling Mood," my break quoted heavily from the goofy chromatic section of Phish's "Bathtub Gin," owing to the off-kilter D-Am7 chord progression. 

I would never have expected that we could crank out a 12-minute sandwich with Pink Floyd's "Breathe" as the bread and Afro Man's "Colt 45" as the meat. It sounds kind of gross when you put it that way, but in person it turned out surprisingly funky.

As the late set progressed, I started to feel a little more comfortable taking some more-traditional breaks, even if some of the time they were just extra-syncopated rhythm parts.

Speaking of Dr. John, I don't do "Such a Night" as often as I'd like. It's such a fun tune, with a deceptively simple structure that sounds complex and jazzy. I'd also like to do Paul Simon's "That Was Your Mother" more. On the Graceland record, it's a zydeco tune, but that's just bluegrass with an accordion and a washboard!

We did a ska-ish version of "Salty Dog Blues," similar to the version Joe and I did on our reggae-bluegrass record (not a joke). Then I pulled out Dylan's "Buckets of Rain," which we haven't done since Howl-O-Ween 2025 when we played the whole Blood on the Tracks album.

I wouldn't want to do this type of gig all the time. Especially since I was stuck singing every song the whole gig. But for one night, it was a pretty good time.

Why Did We Play This? A Series: 8/30/26 Allegheny City Brewing, Pgh., Pa.

[This is (maybe) an ongoing series looking at older and newer gigs by my band The Wolf Tones, which places a strong emphasis on improvisation and does not pick a setlist in advance... so why did we play these songs this time? Let us explore...]

My prediction was mostly accurate.

Playing a bunch of closely-grouped gigs in the past couple weeks had us primed to form like Voltron and put together a strong set for Allegheny City Brewing's Post-Pedal-PGH Party. It wasn't a big jam-fest, likely because we didn't run fully plugged like I was anticipating. 

But that just offered more opportunities to listen closely to each other and create in new ways. We ended up blending a good deal of reggae into this setlist, which I'm all for. I got a chance to do a Lee "Scratch" Perry cover, which is not something I would've thought possible a few years ago. Let's run it down:

Early set: Crawdad Song, Way Down in the Hole > Sweet Heaven When I Die, Salty Dog Blues, Don't Let Go, Keep On Moving, Tipitina > Fishing in the Dark, Georgia On a Fast Train

This set turned out to be a good general mix of what you get at a Wolf Tones gig: An old-school bluegrass opener, followed by the theme from HBO's "The Wire" that gets jammed into another old trad tune, followed by jam-band grooves, a reggae song, some Professor Longhair, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Billy Joe Shaver.

For me, the unexpected set highlight was "Don't Let Go," a Jessie Stone tune that jam-band fans know from Jerry Garcia Band setlists. I'm honestly not sure why I even have it in the tablet... it rides on that Bo-Diddley-type rhythm that doesn't really hit the right way without a drummer. We've done it once or twice, trying to speed it up, and it just didn't work the way we'd hoped. So this time, I figured let's just try the OG tempo, and our bassist Kyle came in with some nimble little bass runs that augmented that Bo Diddley feel and kept us grooving at a slower speed. We worked the jam up and down, energy-wise, and it turned out much cooler than I anticipated. 

Yet again, I was not able to establish the right tempo for "Fishing in the Dark," and it was a lyrical race to the finish. Dammit. 

Bob Marley's "Keep On Moving" has become a reliable vehicle for jamming over the past handful of gigs. There are a good number of reggae tunes that kinda just work the 1 and 4 chords the whole time, and that leaves a lot of open space for musical fun. I would work that same structure in the late set to sneak a bonus reggae tune into the setlist. To wit:

Late set: Traveling Mood, Raleigh & Spencer > Soul Fire > Raleigh & Spencer, Big River, Tulsa Time > 9 to 5 > 54-46 Was My Number, Columbus Stockade Blues, High On a Mountain, Money > Bananas & Blow, Sittin' On Top of the World

More Dr. John!! I gotta pick and choose Dr. John covers carefully. Back in my electric-band days, we did "Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya" a good bit, and there's a real fine line between capturing that eerie swamp vibe and just doing a bad caricature of Dr. John. But he's got plenty of stuff in the repertoire, including "Traveling Mood," that has the potential to be countrified or grassed up.

"Raleigh & Spencer" is always fun, and I was able to sneak my Scratch Perry cover, "Soul Fire," into the middle. I mainly picked this song for the line "Soul fire, and we ain't got no water," and now I'm wondering if Rockmaster Scott & the Dynamic Three heard this song and cribbed part of that line, which of course led to the only Bloodhound Gang most people know.

Archie finally gave me a break from singing lead and took the reins for "Big River," and then it was off into one of my favorite new tunes we've been doing, Don Williams' "Tulsa Time." I thought it would lead nicely into a quick key change and then our Dolly Parton tribute, "9 to 5." Joe wanted to take a break between the two... and then when it came time to do that, he changed his mind, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise... it gave me time to realize that, for the second show in a row, I thought I put the chart in the tablet and didn't, and had to look up the lyrics on my phone. Dammit. ("Dammit" is turning out to be a common theme for me during this gig.)

While we were doing number-based songs in the key of A, I swiped the tablet over to Toots & the Maytals' "54-46 Was My Number," which follows the same 1-4 structure as "Keep On Moving"... and, as it turns out, the same structure as Bob Marley's "Bend Down Low," which we also tossed in for good measure before circling back to Toots for a reprise.

You already know about "Columbus Stockade Blues" by now. This was a standard version, nice little 3:30-minute banger.

We took a rare request and did an old trad tune, "High On a Mountain." I whiffed a little at the outset because it's a pretty high vocal lead, and at least once things got a little froggy, but it turned out alright.

Back to reggae! This time it wasn't me being pushy. We put a hypnotic spin on Cornell Campbell's "Money," doing a little manual dub-echo work on guitar. I almost prefer doing the "dub" effect manually as opposed to my tape-delay pedal. The jam worked up into my first chance to cover a tune that Nemo usually sang, Ween's "Bananas & Blow." It's super-dumb and super-fun. Was it entirely appropriate for a Sunday afternoon on East Ohio Street in the North Side? Who could say for certain? I know at least a few people were singing along... "Stuck in my cabana, livin' on bananas and bloooooow..."

We rounded out the set with Joe singing "Sittin' On Top of the World" and introducing the band with everyone taking a quick solo. 

I've kind of resisted talking about my guitar breaks on here, because quite frankly, I'm not very proud of them. I've managed to scrape together a decent few pickin' lines on a trad tune like this, but I don't take breaks in either of the bands I'm in. I much prefer to be a rhythm guitarist who slides in and out with little solo lines or new musical ideas. On a slower tune like "Walking On the Moon" or "Money," I have the confidence to try and take a break, but bluegrass breaks are too fast for me. We were movin' at too many BPMs for me to play anything good, so I resorted to whistling, which I am very good at. If only I could make the guitar do that.

One thing I also haven't actually done that much is talk about how we're picking the next song, and it's really situation-dependent. For example, "Raleigh & Spencer" is in the key of A, and we usually end up doing a big fat jam in the middle before circling back for the final verse or two. All I had to do was push the jam into A-minor territory and bring up "Soul Fire" on the tablet. We'd never played it before, but I started bringing the dynamics down, started doing some reggae guitar chukking and we were good to go.

Sometimes I'll hear Joe or Archie play a lick or a line that reminds me of another tune, and I'll start wondering how close that song is in terms of keys. If we're playing in E-minor, for example, it's easy to make a quick transition to D, A or G. I don't know the music-theory terminology for it, but it sounds very natural to transition to any of those keys, and that opens up the songbook to literally hundreds of options.

When we were nearing the end of late set and playing "Money," I knew I wanted to do "Bananas & Blow" at some point. "Money"'s chord structure is just Am and G, so I cued everyone to hold on G for a second, then move down to E-minor, and just like that, we're in position to play some Ween.

It's a fun puzzle to solve, and even more fun when we can pull it off seamlessly.

Why Did We Play This? A Series: 8/28/26 William E. Anderson Library Live Music Series, Penn Hills, Pa.

[This is (maybe) an ongoing series looking at older and newer gigs by my band The Wolf Tones, which places a strong emphasis on improvisation and does not pick a setlist in advance... so why did we play these songs this time? Let us explore...]

This one is gonna be a lot easier to write, because it's fresh in my mind from last night. Let's run it down:

One set: Jambalaya, Don't Let Your Deal Go Down, Goin' Down > Fishing in the Dark > Jam > House by the Sea > Natural Mystic, Southern Flavor, Loved You Enough, If I Had a Boat, My Gal, Woodpecker*, Positively 4th Street, 9 to 5, The Harder They Come > Jam > Columbus Stockade Blues

*Semi-original (see below)

It's always a tricky spot for The Wolf Tones to play for an audience that is predominantly older. Make no mistake, we do a lot of old-school, traditionally-structured bluegrass songs... there's no shortage of Flatt & Scruggs and Stanley Bros. tunes in the repertoire. But we're upfront with the slogan: We're wolves. We play bluegrass. It gets weird.

It always gets weird. A good deal of the time, we're a jam-band that plays on bluegrass instruments, and that offers a lot of versatility. But we're also not morons. You gotta play to the room, or at least get 'em on your side before you try to pull them into a musical area where they're less familiar or less comfortable.

Hank Williams' "Jambalaya" and a little Flatt & Scruggs ("Don't Let Your Deal Go Down") set the mood nicely, but I was already in my own mood to throw a curveball or two, so I called Freddie King's "Goin' Down," which is a standard blues form, not uncommon in bluegrass, but it's got some pentatonic riffing that puts a little extra stank on things.

One of the nice things about this band is that because we're listening to one another, we can all take turns pushing and pulling the music in different directions. But no matter where you're going, to my mind a good improvisational band needs to be able to jam on the tonic, the root note of whatever song you are (or were, or are about to be) playing. And not every band can do that. Some bands try, and they end up just sort of vamping — which is also an important skill, for sure, that can buy you a few seconds to tell everyone where you wanna go, or talk to the crowd and introduce the band or the next tune. But truly building a jam on the tonic chord, adding a new chord or being able to change keys quickly is something that takes time to hone, and musical trust that everyone is going to participate and not let things fall apart.

That being said... I neither properly communicated nor initiated the proper action to slow our jam down by enough beats-per-minute when I called the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Fishing in the Dark." 

Y'know... sometimes you don't think about how fast you're playing until you have to spit the first line of lyrics out. "Fishing in the Dark" is a wordy song, and as soon as I tried to get "Lazy yellow moon comin' up tonight" out and nearly did the vocal equivalent of tripping over your own feet at the line of scrimmage, I knew it was too fast. Alas. We press on. It turned out fine. It usually does.

We took our first detour into some minor-key jamming and churned up "House by the Sea," and then I couldn't resist the temptation to keep slingin' curveballs. We were in E-minor and bringing the energy down a little, so I called Bob Marley's "Natural Mystic," which we always start as full-on acoustic reggae. But with its lyrics about the first and last trumpet and call for justice, it takes on a very Pentecostal-revelations quality when you we 'grass it up, and that's familiar territory to old bluegrass heads.

I was hoping we would blast right through into "Southern Flavor," but Joe wanted to stop first, and then we played some Lyle Lovett ("If I Had a Boat")... Archie did his signature tune, which we've always called "My Gal," but every time I try to look up the lyrics, the song that comes is an old blues called "Charmin' Betsy." (This is a thing that sometimes happens with older songs, bluegrass standards in particular, and also folk blues. You find different variations on songs, phrases and verses that show up in multiple peoples' tunes. I'm getting off-track.)

We did our latest "original" tune, "Woodpecker." I'm putting it in quote marks because it's only semi-original. The first verse is a four-line poem from Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends," one of my favorite childhood books. And to be clear: The poem does not need expanded upon. It gets the point across about human manipulation and destruction of the environment very concisely. But the melody came to me almost immediately, and I thought, "Well, I can't just sing the same verse three times." So I wrote the additional ones, and it's been very well-received.

Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street" has been making regular appearances in our setlists over the past year or so. This is another example of the great musical synergy between Joe and me that got this group to its current state. I've wanted to play that song for a long time. I put it on the tablet but for months, I hadn't brought it up as a possibility at a show. Then one night at the Thunderbird, Joe picked it randomly, and it's been a mainstay in the repertoire ever since.

We paid tribute to the queen, Miss Dolly Parton, once again with "9 to 5." I don't have the vocal range to cover "Jolene," so Nemo had to help us out with that one this past Tuesday night at the Thunderbird. I was speed-learning "9 to 5" on the way to the gig, listening in the car and trying to get the lyric timing down. Structurally, it's a run-of-the-mill bluegrass chord progression, which helped a lot and let me focus on trying to get the verses right, which I did. Mostly. The song is structured weird in the sense that the chorus is twice as long as the verse. That doesn't happen very often but then again, that lift up to the 4-chord as they hit the chorus is the best part of the song, so I can see why they kept going back to it. Matter of fact, we might keep goin' back to it; it's a lot of fun to play and sing.

We took one final detour into reggae with Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come," which is a great jamming vehicle, and has some dope hits that really rev up a good crowd. Kyle's bass solo coming out of that tune led us into a little jam flipping back and forth between E-minor and A-minor... and you know when A-minor is hangin' around... it might just be "Columbus Stockade Blues" time, and it damn sure was, a nice way to wrap up a strong one-setter. 

A lot of nights it'll take us a few tunes to really get going, and sometimes with one-set gigs it feels like it's over just as we're hitting a nice strong groove and ramping things up. But when I was writing about the Berry Bush setlist, I mentioned that it came at the tail end of a bunch of close-together gigs, and this is a similar situation. This was our third gig in the past week, and we have a two-set gig coming up on Sunday afternoon where we're plugging in and using effects rigs — so needless to say, I'm pretty excited.