Our set list for KVMF 2012
So, 4pm, Sunday, July 29 at the Kispiox Valley Music Festival, we’re scheduled to play on the River Stage. Here’s our set list, with a few annotations.
Highway 49
Shopping Blues
I Want To Break Free
I Ain’t Superstitious
I’m In Love
Everybody Knows
Justice
Call It Democracy
Raise A Little Hell
Highway 49
A classic blues song by Big Joe Williams, recorded by Howlin’ Wolf. We play this one pretty often, for two reasons: 1) it’s simply a really good blues song and 2) it lets us show off two things that set us apart from most other local bands, slide guitar and blues harp.
Shopping Blues
This is one of the songs I wrote shortly after I got married. Sylvia and I are an example of an instance in which a cliché holds true. If there were few such instances, I suspect that the associated clichés wouldn’t persist. I’m not interested in shopping; I just like to buy stuff. On the other hand, she enjoys shopping and actually buying something may not be essential to the experience.
I wrote the original version in the key of A and played it in standard tuning. After we started incorporated some slide guitar into our performances, we transposed it to G and I started playing it on my old Ovation semi-acoustic, which I keep tuned to Open G these days. That guitar has some neck issues and the cost of correcting them is more than I’m willing to pay, so I raised the action and started using a slide on it. It’s a nice looking guitar and it has a good tone.
I Want To Break Free
This is the song recorded by Queen, written by their bass player, John Deacon, and was released in 1984 on their album, The Works. As I’ve written in previous set list posts, Deacon’s purpose in writing it was, apparently, to promote the rights of women.
I Ain’t Superstitious
This is a Willie Dixon song, recorded by Howlin’ Wolf, featuring a really cool guitar riff. Plus, it makes fun of irrationality. At least, that’s how I hear it. 
I’m In Love
Here’s another song I wrote not long after Sylvia and I got together. Unlike “Shopping Blues”, it’s definitely not a complaint.
Everybody Knows
Leonard Cohen. ‘Nuff said. I’m not going to change the words when I sing it but, when I sing “everybody knows the boat is leaking”, if you want to hear “pipe” instead of “boat”, that’s up to you. 
Justice
One of my all time favourite Bruce Cockburn songs, which contains one of my all time favourite lyrics:
Everybody
loves to see
justice done
on somebody else
Brilliant or what?
Call It Democracy
Cockburn again. The Canadian government is holding hearings about a project that is very likely to result in significant environmental damage (Enbridge’s “Northern Gateway” pipeline bullshit) but you know damned well that that government is going to try to push the project through no matter what might come from the hearings. Still, they go through the motions and they call it democracy.
Not that I’m a big fan of democracy, mind you. If you oppose the pipeline now, would you change your mind if a majority of Canadians voted in favour of it? Do you believe that a popular vote is a legitimate means of deciding what is right or true despite the evidence that majority views are often wrong?
For example, most people believe in some sort of God despite that fact that there are no good reasons to think that any such critter exists or has ever existed.
Raise A Little Hell
Yeah, the song by Trooper. I’d guess that this is usually seen as more of a party song than a political song. Well, in this instance and in our hands, it’s pretty political.