Planning the Set

Here’s our set list for Thursday night:

Signal Chain
Kiss Us Goodbye
A Sovereign Nation Sleeps Beside Me
I Think It’s You
She Goes
Unplug
Young Man
The Tide

It’s interesting to have to rethink your set, and retool it for an “Unplugged” show. What from the original arrangement stays? What goes? What makes a song, a song? It’s just Corey, Erica, and me on this one, so no bass, no drums. This fundamentally alters how one plays any given song, as typically the bass and drums are the foundation upon which our Fortress of Rawk is built.

So, for Signal Chain, for example:

The bass and drum groove is signature to the tune. In fact, those few notes will be the first one will hear on our record. There’s really no way to recreate that without those instruments, so we just created an alternate intro. It’s much prettier.

On the rest of the tune, you can sorta bang away at it as if the bass and drums were there. The parts are basically unchanged. The vocals remain fundamentally unchanged, except for perhaps dialing back the intensity and just sheer decibel level of your output.

We’re also trying to shake things up a bit, swapping instruments from time to time. Erica is playing her Strat for 3 of the tunes, and Corey’s on his acoustic. But then, she’s switching to play the Rhodes on “I Think It’s You,” so that I can focus all of my attention on singing high like a girl. Corey, at this point, goes over and grabs the strat, so he can do some of his signature Corey-tastic washy guitar swells.

Then the fun begins. Ya’ll remember She Goes, right? So, with the band, we purposefully dialed it back to a sort-of “Sitting around the campfire” vibe. However, with just the three of us, we decided to try something different. Corey, Strat in hand, slowed the tempo a few clicks and started really digging out the funkiness of the tune, and all of a sudden it’s this swampy, sultry thing, and Erica and I just focus on singing. It’s… pretty great. I think it’ll be the musical highlight of the night. (Also… this is still the rough mix… not Stick’s supa-sexy-finished product… if anyone cares.)

The cool thing is this: We tried to write these songs so that they could be played any number of ways… with a band… without a band.. with a polka band… etc. I am happy to report that it seems like we have succeeded, at least these few tunes.

See ya thursday!