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.