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Me and Sylvia (April 4, 2002)

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🦋 One hour set

I am trying to put together a one-hour set of songs that I can play on guitar and sing. This afternoon I played a 45-minute set and it sounded pretty good -- the songs were generally not what I would call "tight" but they were all good enough that I could play them at an open mike and not be embarrassed. I have a sort of plan going to do several open mikes and then ask Randal (owner of The Dancing Goat) if I can play a set there on one of his slower nights.

Here is the set from this afternoon:

  • The Ballad of Hollis Brown
    I've been working on this one for a while now, one of the songs that really made me a convert to Drop-D tuning. Dylan plays only D-minor chords throughout the entire song, but I play D-minor/G/A7. My picking pattern is fairly elaborate and in another song would run the risk of being too repetitive -- but in this song that's the whole point.
  • You Can't Always Get What You Want
  • Stagger Lee
    This is the first song I played in Drop-D tuning and I think of it as a critical juncture in my guitar-playing career. It was a year and a half ago or so, and after 3 years of listening to John Hurt I finally got up the initiative to try and copy one of his songs from the record.
  • C.C. Rider
  • Rocky Raccoon
  • House of the Rising Sun
  • Prodigal Son
  • Palette on your Floor
  • No Expectations

The order is just what order I thought of them in when I was writing the set list -- if I were playing an actual set I would fiddle with it some. "No Expectations" is however a great song to end on. Some other songs I reckon should go in there:

  • Freight Train
  • Tell Old Bill
  • Hobo's Lullaby
  • Barbara Allen

Also today I worked out Dylan's "North Country Blues" (not to be confused with "Girl from the North Country"), which is very easy to play and sounds beautiful -- once I know the lyrics I will add it to the list too and when all these songs are put together I think I will have about an hour.

Gotta go -- come back later, I am going to add links and comments for each of the songs.

posted evening of Saturday, May 22nd, 2004
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