Mason Brooks — Writer, Analyst, Occasional Cable Wrangler
The best setlist I ever built started life as a spreadsheet: 47 songs, three columns, and a colour code for “kills the room” versus “clears it.” I’m not entirely proud of that. But it worked, and I’ve been chasing the reason why ever since.
Two Habits, One Notebook
I’m a writer and an analyst, and the split shows up in small ways. After every gig I keep a running log — what I played, the moment the floor thinned, which song made people set their drinks down and move. Then I sit with those notes and try to explain them in plain language, because a pattern you can’t describe is a pattern you can’t repeat. That’s the work: noticing, testing against a room full of strangers, and writing it down so someone else skips a few dead ends.
What You Can Expect Here
Most of what I know came from loading a hatchback at four in the afternoon, negotiating load-in with a pub manager, and learning that a winery crowd at sunset wants something very different from a Friday-night tavern. Gear advice only means something once you’ve carried it up a flight of stairs and found out which cable fails first.
- Test it in a real room before recommending it
- Explain the reasoning, not just the verdict
- Write for the third gig and the three-hundredth alike
- Say “it depends” only when I follow it with what it depends on
If you’re staring down a room that won’t dance, a booking email you keep drafting and deleting, or a pedalboard that hums, send it my way. I answer these myself, usually with more detail than anyone asked for.
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