Song Selection - you can help!

If you come out to see a Funk:30 show, you will hear a variety of songs, some you know, some you are not so sure about. That's ok, in fact, it's kind of the plan. There's lots of great music out there that doesn't get much exposure. In our small, tiny way, we hope that we can bring some exposure to some of our favorite artists. Names like Robben Ford, Larry Carlton, Coco Montoya, Tommy Castro, Jeff Golub...

But there is a flip side to this - sometimes we see blank looks out there as we play some of the more obscure tunes. I can assure you, that doesn't help the set, nor does it get people in the mood for dancing. Familiar songs always work better. But, how familiar do our songs have to be for us to be considered a "good band" by our listeners? I can say with certainty that we are not interested in just picking the most popular songs you have heard a million times before. Where's the fun or challenge in that? Still, we definitely want our guests to come out of the gig feeling great about the time they spent with us. So how do we do that? It's a question we ask ourselves a lot, and something we ponder at just about every practice.

Unofficially, we've come up with a formula that we use when we decide what songs we will add to our set. I'd like to share that formula, then ask you to contribute any ideas that might get generated from this discussion. Let's see where that takes us, shall we?

So here we go.

The song must be danceable - that can be at any tempo, so slow songs still work. But ideally, it has a good medium tempo beat, could be bluesy or funky, but not metal, not punk, not grunge...there could be exceptions, if we can "funkify" the tune to make it our own. But put simply, sing the song to yourself and ask "could I, or would I want to dance to this?" If the answer is "yes", it has a chance.

Familiarity. This is a toughy, and is always up for debate. Trust us, we have had many! Too popular and it tends to lose our interest. Too obscure and we face the ordeal of losing the dance floor. We've made that mistake, believe me, and are doomed to make it again and again. The ideal song is probably something you have heard in the past, but that you really don't hear much anymore. The kind of song that comes on and you say "Yeah! I used to LOVE this song!" (if you are over 40, replace "love" with "dig"). We started playing The Spinners "I'll Be Around" which is a great example of a song that worked really well. We also do The Rolling Stones "Honky Tonk Woman", and it qualifies as too popular, but darn, people seem to love dancing to it, so we keep playing it. Tommy Castro's "My Kind of Woman" is up tempo, very funky, loads of fun to play, great for dancing. Quick vote: How many of you know the original?

See? This is a tough business, I'm telling you.

Now it gets even harder. Now that you might have a handful of ideas in your head, you can further filter them down over their playability. Keep in mind, we are a four piece, with only three full time instruments (Guitar, bass, drums). We're going to be in trouble if you throw a song that is 100% keyboard/piano driven. Or maybe one with a big orchestra backing that is essential to the song. Or that needs a horn section to pull off. Get the idea? We have to translate most songs to fit our instrumentation; some work, others don't. Sometimes we don't know until we try it. So feel free to suggest it, be prepared for rejection solely on the fact that...we can't play it!

Have I thrown enough obstacles in the way yet? There are probably others, such as the key of the song. Some songs REQUIRE they be played in a certain key in order to work musically on the guitar (songs in the key of E or that use lots of open strings, for instance, cannot be easily or often successfully transposed to another key). But let us worry about that for now.

So, come on America, toss some ideas our way and I'll try to give you an objective response as to why they might or might not work for us. This could be fun. Use the Comments option to reply.

--Terry