What's a song you absolutely LOVE, but would NEVER play at a gig? Maybe it doesn't suit your voice, it's too obscure, goes on for nine minutes, has 14 chord changes before the first chorus, or you already know the audience would stare at you like you'd just started reading from the electricity bill. We all have songs we'd love to play if audiences weren't involved. What's yours, and why doesn't it make the setlist?

Hey gang! Just wanted to share a little good news from a gig last weekend. I played a new venue, a barbecue restaurant with a full bar. They normally book country solo performers, and I was the first act they’ve had who is primarily classic rock (with a little country mixed in). I thought the first set went pretty well, but when I stepped off stage for my first break, the owner/manager came rushing up to me and said he wanted to book me for more dates — without even hearing the rest of my show! Needless to say, that made me feel pretty darn good. The rest of the night just kept getting better and better. It looks like I’ll now be playing there once a month. Always nice when a new venue turns into a regular gig!

I'm working on a new app at the moment and I'd really like some feedback from the gigging musicians in here before I go too far down the rabbit hole. The idea is deliberately simple. A lyrics and setlist app for musicians who DON'T need 400 features and an engineering degree to work out how to use it. 😂 It won't have MIDI or a heap of complicated automation. The focus is on making the things most of us actually need onstage really easy: - Create and organise setlists - Lyrics with simple autoscroll - Easily change the font size - Add chords directly into your lyrics - Clean, simple interface - Quick to set up and easy to use during a gig Basically, build your setlist, open the song, hit scroll and play. I'm already building it, but I'd love some input from people who actually gig. Would you use something like this? And more importantly, what ONE feature would you consider essential in a simple lyrics/setlist app? I'm deliberately trying to avoid feature creep, so don't turn it into the cockpit of a 747 just yet. 😂

When you download backing tracks from Kareoke, do you ever pay for the license fees that they offer?

Sometimes, if I think the crowd is feeling it and would enjoy it, I sprinkle in a few TV trivia questions. I give them a few clues like, “The family in this show has a dog named Tiger. They have a housekeeper named Alice. They had a string of bad luck on a trip to Hawaii.” After someone yells the Brady Bunch, I play the theme song. I’ve never had to give more than a few clues. Someone always knows what show I’m talking about. Other TV themes I do include: Love Boat, WKRP in Cincinnati, Welcome Back Kotter, Cheers, Three’s Company and Mary Tyler Moore. Sometimes I get more people singing along to these than my normal set songs. Often I run into people days or weeks later and they tell me they loved remembering and singing those old TV songs. Anybody else do fun things to mix it up or get the audience engaged?