In my extended sets, I have always included dozens of cover songs that I love to perform. It's a wonderful experience to connect with a piece of music by bringing your interpretation to it and bringing it into the present moment to share with an audience.

With the recent attention being brought to abusive behavior of some well known musicians, I have decided to begin the process of removing songs from my repertoire that were written by abusive individuals who never publicly and privately made amends with the survivors. I don't believe that a song written by a person who did bad things is automatically a bad song, and I wouldn't expect or even hope that everyone who plays cover songs would take this approach. However, I want to address the issue and this is one way I can do it.

If people ask me to play a song by someone I know to have unapologetically been abusive, I will politely explain why I will not play it anymore. So far I am removing all songs by The Doors, Hank III, and Aerosmith, but I imagine this list will grow as I do more research on the artists I cover. I am also planning to use this opportunity to incorporate more songs written by survivors of abuse as a way opening up a dialogue that can hopefully bring change for the future.