Billy Corgan 2019-11-09

November 9, 2019 – Nashville, TN, US
Live performance by Billy Corgan
United States 2019 tour
Date	November 9, 2019
Venue	CMA Theater
Coordinates	36°9′30″N 86°46′34″W
Location	Nashville, TN, US
Venue type	Theater
Capacity	776
Personnel	Billy Corgan, Katie Cole, Sierra Swan, Hilary Williams
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Setlist

Set one

1. "Hard Times" (acoustic) 
2. "To Scatter One's Own" (acoustic) 
3. "Apologia" (acoustic) 
4. "Cri de Coeur" (acoustic) 
5. "Buffalo Boys" (acoustic) 
6. "Dancehall" (acoustic) 
7. "Anon" (piano) 
8. "Cotillions" (piano) 
9. "Zowie" (piano) 
10. "Archer" (acoustic) 
11. "Aeronaut" (acoustic) 
12. "Little Maggie" [traditional] (acoustic) 

Set two

13. "Wound" (acoustic) 
14. "Thirty-Three" (acoustic) 
15. "Spaceboy" (acoustic) 
16. "Violet Rays" (acoustic) 
17. "Tonight, Tonight" (acoustic) 
18. "Ugly" (acoustic) 
19. "Endless Summer" (piano) 
20. "Another Bridge to Burn" [Little Jimmy Dickens] (acoustic) 
21. "Hangin' On" [The Gosdin Brothers] (acoustic) 
22. "Long Black Veil" [Lefty Frizzell] (acoustic) 
23. "Travels" (piano) 
24. "Disarm" (piano) 

Encore

25. "Black Lung" (acoustic) 
26. "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" [Hank Williams] (acoustic) 

Notes

• "Buffalo Boys" and "Dancehall" with Katie Cole on backing vocals
• "Long Black Veil" with Sierra Swan on lead vocals
• "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" with Hilary Williams (granddaughter of songwriter Hank Williams) on lead vocals
• "Half-Life of an Autodidact" and "Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts)" were on the setlist but not played

Banter

Hard Times
To Scatter One’s Own
Apologia
BC: Thank you very much, thank you. It’s worth norting - it’s worth no-ting, it’s worth noting that these new songs were recorded here in Nashville. So if you don’t like them, it’s your fault.
Cri de Coeur
BC: Thank you. Like to bring back to the stage Ms. Katie Cole.
Buffalo Boys (with Katie Cole)
Dancehall (with Katie Cole)
BC: Thank you. Lucky to be back here in Nashville with you. This beautiful venue, it’s a [unintelligible word] place. So just a few more songs from the new album. It’s out November 22nd. We used to - we used to beg you to buy things, now we just beg you to press a button. And not press the other button. Okay.
Anon (piano)
Cotillions (piano)
BC: Ow! So how is everyone, you all okay?
Guy in crowd: Thanks, Billy, how are you?
BC: I’m William now. Heh heh heh heh heh. Everywhere I go, “Is it William, is it William?” Yes. Why my mother ever agreed to call me William, I’ll never know...because she despised my father. That was his name. Maybe it was to remind her. Little Gothic humor for you there. (Southern accent) I’d think y’all know what that is around here. (normal) Man in the front row who paid for an expensive ticket, you don’t get to shout requests, thank you very much. It ain’t that kind of party.
Zowie (piano)
BC: Yeah. It’s dry, right, I’m not crazy back here. People always ask me what’s in that and I always say the same thing: cocaine. Everyone laughs every time. Believe in it.
Archer
Aeronaut
Little Maggie
BC: [2 unintelligible words.] Thank you so much, this is beautiful, thank you. That’s the end of the first set and on the second set in 20 minutes, I’ll be back out to play some songs that you...did drugs to, lost your virginity to...whatever.
[set break]
Wound
Thirty-three
BC: Thank you. Thank you so much. You know, it occurs to me, little thoughts coming from the heavens, it occurs to me that what’s kinda cool about this is you get to hear the songs the way the band first heard ‘em when I played ‘em for them. Played them? Played them? In that first moment where we sit down, “Oh, I got this new song, it goes like this.”
Spaceboy
BC: Thank you kindly, thank you.
Violet Rays
Guy in crowd: Cocaine.
BC: No, we’ve moved to morphine now. Trust me, when I see those people ridin’ those...things downtown...makes me wanna do a lot of drugs. That is some end of the world shit right there. Sign of the apocalypse right there.
Guy in crowd: They call them the woo girls.
BC: The woo girls? What’s that?
Guy in crowd: The woo girls.
BC: The woo girls. I was once recognized by people on one of those things and there was a lot of wooing in there. Now, as I was telling somebody today, this next song, uh...eh, it’s a bread crumb. In the beginning, all I had was this part: (plays 4 chords similar to beginning of next song). It’s all I had. (plays 4 chords again) I thought it sounded kinda shit there so then I changed it to this: (plays first 4 chords of actual song). Then I went back to this: (first chord of original song). Then I met a woo girl. She broke my heart. She left me for a driver, one of those things. But um, seriously, thank you for coming tonight. Technically speaking, every song is dedicated to you but this one’s especially dedicated.
Tonight, Tonight
Ugly
BC: Still having a good time? There’s a lot of wooing going on, I’m not sure. What do they drink on those things, tequila? Bourbon? Whiskey, right? Heh heh heh heh. Glitter, I hope they drink glitter. Why don’t they just drink a bunch of glitter and explode? And have a rainbow holocaust, just.... Heh heh heh, that’s kinda cruel. As I tell my friends: word assassin, word assassin. So, since you’re on this musical journey with me, it’s from a band - it’s from a band that Jimmy and I had after the Pumpkins for a little while. Originally I wanted to name the band Swan but of course there was a great band called the Swans.
Guy in crowd: Swans, hell yeah.
BC: Yeah. So then I got a funny idea: Zwan, Z, edgy, Zwan. And then we put the record out and then we found out there was a - in Belgium, they make a Spam and it’s called Zwan. Gotta be careful what you name your kids. So...I hope you all have a...endless summer, like the song says.
Endless Summer (piano)
BC: Thank you so much, thank you. Now, in my kitchen, I have a old 1953 jukebox filled with country, bluegrass... That’s what my - I listen to with my kids every morning. Mostly from the ‘50s and ‘60s. So I’d like to play you a few songs from my jukebox if that’s alright. This first song is a song that I uh, I didn’t write it, but Waylon Jennings sang this song.
Another Bridge to Burn
Hangin’ On
Long Black Veil (with Sierra Swan)
BC: Ms. Sierra Swan! Was that alright? Not enough wooing, I think. So we’ve rovid um - ugh - we’ve almost reached the end. You don’t sound that disappointed, heh. You know you have places to go and honky-tonks to tonk in. But I appreciate you listening, thanks so much, thank you. So only a few left. This song, this song is interesting because, you know, you hear these stories of songwriters like, you know, “God spoke in my ear and this magical thing happened.” But it does happen sometimes...
Girl in crowd: Yeah.
BC: Heh heh heh heh. Is it okay to tell a story? I don’t wanna keep you from your tonkin’. Anyway. So I was in Los Angeles making this record with Rick Rubin, Shiny and Oh So Bright, James and Jimmy and Jeff.... Thank you to the five people who - who bought the record, I really appreciate you, heh. (cracking up) And uh, I started feeling unwell. I didn’t realize that I was coming down with a vicious flu that would last a month, actually, it was horrible. But um, so I’m kind of half dead, tired from working and for some reason, I grabbed a guitar and started playing this song and it just came out in this mad rush, so I literally wrote this song like.... And I would play it for you like that if I could. I can’t tilt the piano. So...kinda sums up my experience. And the backstory to this song was I was staying with a friend, a longtime friend, probably somebody I’d known for about 15 years. And because I got sick, she threw me out. It’s true, she threw me out of her house. Destroyed the friendship. So this song was the delineating point from one world to another. From heaven into hell.
Travels (piano)
Disarm (piano)
[encore break]
BC: Thank you, thank you for coming, thank you. You probably wanna sit back down. Heh heh, I would get disappointed in the middle of the song I wrote if we just....
Black Lung
Guy in crowd: William!
BC: Thank you. (silly accent) I were Billy. (normal) Like to bring out one more special guest. Now, this young lady has been through some trials and tribulations. And yet, she’s in the perfect place with you tonight. Before, when I was talking about my jukebox...well, got some Hank records in there too. And um, young lady I’m about to bring out is Hank Junior’s daughter and Hank Senior’s granddaughter. So I’d like to play for you that her grandfather wrote. Brilliant, I mean, staggering genius of a songwriter. And um, it’s amazing a lot of music brings us together, it’s so simple and it’s so complicated. Couple chords, couple lyrics...somebody yelling at me for Bullet with Butterfly Wings. It’s so simple. Oh! I guess about 14 years ago, this young lady was in a car accident that almost took her life. 31 surgeries later, she’s here to represent herself and her family. And uh, I’m from a musical father. She obviously is. Sierra’s father is Billy Swan. And uh, then I have another young lady in the back who’s also from a great musical family. And I was trying to find the right words to say because you can talk about Hank all day. You can certainly talk about her trials and tribulations but the thing that unites us is that jukebox, this idea that you make this little piece of plastic or whatever we make now...zeroes and ones. Whatever that is, faith in that thing, the faith that you give us back in that thing, that’s what brings us together and it - it creates this, this energy in our families that’s hard to explain. And so, what’s so beautiful is, I sit there with my four year old son and one year old daughter, I press the jukebox and uh, it plays a song that we’re about to play for you, you know. It’s so mind-blowing when you think about it. If Hank only knew, if I only knew, what our music does - I mean, you tell me and I appreciate that but we can never truly understand ‘cause on one hand, you can’t understand what we go through and that’s not pity, that’s just the journey we’re on. The bullshit, the contracts and all the rigmarole, the bands breaking up, the bands getting back together. And there’s the faith you place in our music. You can’t totally understand what makes you walk down an aisle or lose someone to our songs so I think it’s really beautiful that Hilary’s here tonight to sing this song for you and uh, please give her a warm Pumpkin welcome. Hilary.
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (with Hilary Williams)
BC: Thank you everybody! I’ve had a really good night, thank you so much, thank you.