1. Who controls the radio/iPod/CD player in the van? Is there a process? A dictatorship? A democracy?
We actually have a very specific hierarchy in the van. The driver is known as the Pilot. To his right sits the Executor, who makes all the decisions, controls the climate and listening environment, and helps navigate. Then in the back you have the Strategy Team, whose job is to gather information and present evidence to the Executor on various matters. We rotate these positions daily, but in general I think 75% of the band prefers silence / conversation in the airwaves to music.
2. How do you decide on setlists every night?
We used to sit down and write out an actual list, but that got a little tedious–plus rooms and audiences didn’t always turned as we expected. These days we usually elect one guy to decide which song comes next for the night. We’ve tried a lot of different ways to mix it up…at one point we carried 3 dice around, with a different song written on each face. Periodically during shows we’d roll one of the di and play whatever came up.