I can understand a person working up a set-list and sticking to it if they're on the road; that is, performing the same songs, same sequence, in different locations each performance. Among other things, this is a good way to polish a selection of songs in preparation for doing a CD. But once you've done it, you've done it. You need to keep a list of the programs you've sung and the locations in which you sang them and be sure not to repeat the same program in the same place. Just makes good sense.

I did concerts and a modicum of touring, but more often than not, I was singing in the same location (club or coffeehouse) two or three nights a week for as much as six months at a shot. In these circumstances, one had better have a pretty big repertoire. I did my damnedest to go through my entire working repertoire (adding to it all the time) before I repeated songs, and then went to great pains to make sure that I didn't repeat them in the same order. The only exceptions would be if I got requests for particular songs. Fortunately it happened a lot, so that helped stretch the interval out some. Also, it gave me a bit of a nice reputation:   I knew a few hundred songs (300, 350 maybe), but people thought I knew thousands! Good for the old image!

I kept a stack of 3" x 5" file cards with one song title per card, plus info like key, tempo, general mood (humorous, tragic, etc.), type (love song, ballad, sea chantey, etc.), duration, a word or two about the history of the song, and where I learned it. On my own time, I was constantly shuffling and dealing, programming sets—no two consecutive songs in the same key, variation of tempo, mood, et al., then writing the list on a slip of paper and keeping a stack of such lists handy to tape to the side of my guitar (don't use Scotch tape. Masking tape works pretty well:   the "goo" wipes off easily and it doesn't leave a mark on the finish.). BUT—always be ready to depart from the list if circumstances seem to call for it. Or if the mood strikes.

I have been to places where someone sang four sets an evening and each set was exactly the same! Song for song, word for bloody word! These people are not earning their pay.

Don Firth