74 Songs in the Set

As I was getting ready for last Saturday night’s special Preacher Boy Trio show, it occurred to me I ought to sit down and try and recall how many songs I had available “in current circulation”; meaning, how many songs was I actively playing these days, that I could in theory call on for the show?

I don’t use set lists—preferring to make it up as I go—but it’s always good to refresh the memory every once in a while, because otherwise it’s too easy to start to fall into patterns of always relying on certain songs, while totally forgetting that I theoretically have other ones at my disposal as well.

Now, that said, certain songs I’m almost almost going to want to play. Songs from the new record, for example, or brand-new songs that I’m still working on. Or, that certain shortlist of songs that I’m just morally foresworn to keep playing until I die; those canonical life-blood songs that have kept me going through the good times and the bad: Death Letter Blues, Jesus Make Up By Dying Bed, Sliding Delta, Death Don’t Have No Mercy, etc.

Anyhow, I sat down and tried to write ’em all down from memory, and I ended up with 74 songs. To qualify for the list, it had to be a song that I’d played in the last year—if I hadn’t played it in that time frame, then I didn’t claim it as being “in circulation” (even if I COULD have played it if I’d wanted to!).

And so, presented in alphabetical order, here are the 74 in-circulation songs which could in theory show up at any given time in any given show:

1. a golden thimble
2. a little better when it rains
3. a little more evil
4. a person’s mind
5. a thief for every bible
6. at the corner of the top and the bottom
7. baby, please don’t go
8. black crow
9. blister and a bottle cap
10. broke and low
11. casey bill weldon
12. chop wood, carry water
13. coal black dirt sky
14. cold winter day
15. come back, baby
16. comin’ up aces
17. cornbread
18. de vamp
19. dead, boy
20. death don’t have no mercy
21. death letter blues
22. dip, dip, and swing
23. divin’ duck blues
24. down and out in this town
25. down south blues
26. down the drain
27. evil blues
28. fixin’ to die
29. gun
30. house of the rising sun
31. i just hang down my head and i cry
32. i shall not be moved
33. if i had possession over my judgement day
34. in the darkened night
35. jackson street
36. jesus, make up my dyin’ bed
37. levee camp blues
38. maggie campbell
39. mama, let me play with your yo-yo
40. milk cow blues
41. motherless children
42. my car walks on water
43. my gold canoe
44. need mo’ Blues
45. nehemiah james
46. new red cedar blues
47. ninety-nine bottles
48. obituary writer blues
49. old jim granger
50. one good reason
51. one-way turnstile
52. preachin’ blues
53. railroad
54. revenue man blues
55. rock skipper
56. rollin’ stone
57. setting sun
58. seven’s in the middle, son
59. shake ’em on down
60. shine on harvest moon
61. sliding delta
62. spoonful
63. stagolee
64. take me back
65. that’s no way to get along
66. the cross must move
67. the dogs
68. there go john
69. ugly
70. umbrella
71. watered down
72. whistleman
73. you been a good ol’ wagon
74. you rascal you

Something missing from that list you think I ought to work back in? Let me know!