batmanicure-deactivated20150810 asked: Which albums are you playing songs from on your current tour?

Most of them, I think? I write out a set list in the dressing room before we go on every night. There’s always significant bleed-through from one night to the next, I’m working from a big list of what-about-these that I keep, but there’s usually a few traded out from night to night and a few more maybe thought of in the moment onstage or the occasional answered request. We haven’t practiced anything from the first tape, because nobody actually wants to hear anything from the first tape except Nall, whose claim to want only and exclusively to hear the first tape is legit and fair. In Poland last year we did “Going to Kansas” from the second tape, we haven’t rehearsed that for this tour but we used to play it all the time so I’m sure we could scare it up if the spirit moved us. We’re trying to mix it up a lot, which is kind of a challenge because when you play the super-old stuff next to the new stuff, it becomes kinda clear that the charm of the oldest stuff was largely in the presentation: as songs, they don’t really give you much as a player to work with. To me the songs start to get interesting around The Coroner’s Gambit, that’s sort of the dividing line for me, though there’s stuff on every album that I’ll admit to still being fond of if cornered.

It’s a big challenge for me and I think a lot about it, because I know there’s people who’d really like to hear stuff from the YoYo EPs, or from the singles comps, you know, and I want those people to feel like they got something cool and unexpected…but at the same time, there’s no way to deny that the main reason a room as big as the 9:30 Club is sold out in advance (which, by the way, oh my God, DC I am completely blown away by this and I can’t wait to see you all tomorrow) is the work we’ve done from 2005 forward. I make sure to make room for The Sunset Tree: that is the album that has connected with the most people. But I also try to throw in surprises, even though they’re sometimes things not many people in the room will actually know. Or, in the case of at least one song on the list tomorrow, one song from 2001 that I know for a fact nobody in the room has ever heard.