Yeah, Bill, I've been there.  More perplexing to me is sharing a song with different audiences with one group going apoplectic over it and another having no reaction at all (even when both audiences seem to be the same "type").

Sometimes I'll a song for a group one time and get no reaction and do the same song later for that same group and get an excellent response!  But then, new song sometimes grow on me, too.

If I'm being paid to perform, I sing mostly what my audience wants to hear (what's common to their tastes and mine.)  But if you really like a song, why not throw it into the set occasionally?  I don't think you should chuck a song that you like just because it wasn't an audience favorite the first time you sang it.

Funny thing about my own songs, though.  I've gotten ho-hum reactions to songs written by Nanci Griffith, Tom Paxton, "trad.", Iris DeMent, Kris Kristofferson, and others at one particular song circle where other songs get "ooh"s, "ah"s, and "let's do that one again"s, and that does not keep me from presenting the song on another occasion.  But if I present one of my own that I like (always without drawing attention to my authorship) , and I get no visible reaction, I'm intimidated about doing it again for that group.  Doesn't make sense, rationally, now does it?

Genie