About Rightinthefeels.ca

Here's a myth worth killing: the best setlist is the one with the best songs. It isn't. The best setlist is the one that survives the gap between songs — that three-second silence where a room decides whether to stay on the floor or drift toward the bar. I've watched that gap open a few hundred times. My name is Mason Brooks, and this site is about closing it.

A while back I played a winery patio where the only thing dancing for the first hour was a very committed Labrador. Then I moved one slow song from slot one to slot three, and forty people stood up. That was the day I stopped trusting taste and started trusting sequence.

What you'll find here

Rightinthefeels.ca is written for people who load in alone, play to a half-listening room, and still want the floor full by the second chorus. Most of it lives in the middle of the market — pub Fridays, tasting rooms with a stone wall and no real stage, the occasional wedding where the brief is "please, just make them dance."

• Setlist construction that treats tempo, key and silence as working tools
• Booking approaches that hold up on pubs, wineries and small rooms
• Gear that earns its footprint on a two-metre stage
• Honest post-show notes on what landed and what emptied the room

The way I try to work

Fill the floor without flattening it. Play to the room you actually have, not the one you rehearsed for. Ask the venue what the neighbours can hear and respect the answer, because a winery that collects one noise complaint can lose its permission to host music at all. Protect your ears — playing louder than a small room needs is a habit that follows you home. And take the break. A crowd dances harder for someone who looks like they're enjoying themselves.

Come have a look

Start with the latest posts if you want the practical material, or send me a note about a room that simply won't dance — those are my favourite puzzles. Thanks for reading, and good luck with the load-in.