Digging Through the Vault: What Building a Setlist Taught Me About My Own Music

I used to think building a setlist was basically just picking your best songs, putting the banger at the top, and calling it a night. Maybe toss a slow one in the middle so people could catch their breath. Easy, right?

Wrong. So completely, embarrassingly wrong.

The first time I sat down to build a real setlist — not a coffee shop open mic shuffle, but an actual show — I pulled up every song I'd ever written and just stared at the screen. There were tracks from five years ago that I barely remembered finishing. Demos that never made it to a release. Deep cuts that a handful of superfans would know by heart but that most people in the room would be hearing for the first time. It was overwhelming in the best and worst way.

What I didn't expect was how much that process would teach me about myself as an artist.

Songs Are Time Capsules (And Some of Them Sting)

Here's the thing nobody tells you: going back through your own catalog is basically therapy without the co-pay. I found songs I'd completely forgotten I wrote. Not forgotten like oh, I misplaced my keys — forgotten like I'd emotionally sealed them in a box and slid them under the bed.

One track I came across was something I wrote after a really rough stretch in my early twenties. I hadn't performed it in years. When I played it back, I felt this weird split — like I was watching someone else's home video. The melody was still good. The lyrics were raw in a way that my current writing sometimes isn't. And I had this moment of thinking: does this song deserve to be heard live again, even if it costs me something to sing it?

The answer was yes. It's now one of the most talked-about moments in the set.

That's the archaeology part. You're not just picking songs — you're excavating who you were when you wrote them, deciding which versions of yourself deserve a seat at the table tonight.

The Architecture of a Set

Once I got past the emotional layer, I started thinking about structure. A setlist isn't a playlist — it's architecture. There's a roof, a foundation, and a bunch of load-bearing walls in between.

I think about the show in sections rather than individual songs. The opener has one job: make the room feel something immediately. Not necessarily hype — sometimes it's intimacy, sometimes it's an unexpected left turn that says we're not doing what you think we're doing tonight. I've opened with a quiet song before, just voice and guitar, and watched the room go completely still. That silence is its own kind of electricity.

The middle section is where I get to stretch out. This is where I'll play the deep cuts, try something new, or revisit that older track that surprised me during the vault dig. The audience has already decided they're with me by this point, so there's more room to breathe.

The closer is everything. It needs to be the song that people carry out the door with them — the one they're still humming in the Uber home. I don't always end with the biggest hit. Sometimes I end with the truest song. Those aren't always the same thing.

When the Audience Rewrites the Plan

Here's what no amount of preparation can fully account for: the room itself.

I've had nights where I walked in with a locked setlist and threw out three songs by the second song because the energy was completely different than I expected. A crowd in Nashville on a Tuesday is not the same as a crowd in Brooklyn on a Saturday. The same setlist can feel electric in one room and flat in another — not because the songs changed, but because the conversation between performer and audience is different every single time.

I started leaving what I call "flex slots" in my sets — two or three spots where I give myself permission to read the room and pivot. Maybe that means pulling up something I haven't played in months because I can feel it's what the night needs. Maybe it means cutting a song entirely because the pacing is already perfect and adding more would tip it over.

Learning to trust that instinct took a long time. I used to grip the setlist like a lifeline. Now it's more like a suggestion.

What the Setlist Is Really Saying

After going through this process a few times, I've come to believe that a setlist is a kind of argument. You're making a case — for who you are, what your music means, and what you want people to feel when they walk away.

My live show isn't just a collection of songs I happen to have written. It's a specific story I'm choosing to tell on a specific night. Some chapters are from the past. Some are brand new. Some are still being figured out in real time, right there onstage.

The archaeology metaphor holds up because it's not just digging — it's also deciding what's worth bringing to the surface and what can stay buried a little longer. Both choices say something.

If you've ever been to one of my shows and wondered why I played what I played, or why I put things in the order I did — now you know. There's a method to it, even when it looks effortless. Especially when it looks effortless.

That's kind of the whole point.