Less is more

Doc Watson

When I was focusing on English traditional material, my repertoire of songs once bloated to nearly 200. This is not a boast but a warning. Trying to remember them all was like herding cats, and many songs were hardly performed and never perfected.

I get the impression that many professionals seem to be ready to sing songs only from their current album, so maybe 20-30 odd. Folk singers might need a few more to avoid too much repetition. At a festival I used to avoid singing the same song twice or even a song that I'd heard someone else sing. At clubs and sessions I didn't repeat a song in the same venue for at least a year. To keep that up I probably needed only about 50 songs, but I found it very hard to abandon songs that I had learnt. Anyway, I did manage to jettison more than half of them, cutting my English repertoire to about 70.

For my new interest in Americana, I have a current repertoire of just 24, most of which are now performable (on a good day). This number should be far more sustainable and, ultimately, provide a better performance level. Rather than adding more songs, I'm going to concentrate on improving these by developing melodic intros, turnarounds and breaks. I think that will be challenge enough.