The Paper Trail of a Tour: Eight Bonnettes Setlists, Annotated by the Road

A setlist is not a contract. It is a note to self, written in biro, folded into a back pocket and then tested against a room full of people. On 11 November 2026, with the year's UK dates behind us, we spread eight handwritten Bonnettes running orders across a table. They come from Glasgow, Leeds, Bristol, Norwich, Manchester, Cardiff, Newcastle and Brighton. They are not pristine. They have arrows, crossings-out, tea rings and one unexplained drawing of a tambourine with legs.

Read together, they do not tell you which gig was best. They tell you what the band was learning. A setlist is a diary with chord changes.

The opener is a weather report

The first sheet, from a small Glasgow room in February, opens with 'Tea and Tambourine'. By the Leeds show in April, that song has been bumped to third and 'Zip Snap Sparkle' takes the first slot. The margin note beside it is blunt: 'room still filling, need the fast one'. In Norwich, the opener changes again. This time it is 'Three Taps', with a scribble underneath: 'works when the queue is still coming in'.

The pattern is not random. In smaller rooms, Bonnie tends to start with something conversational, almost like she is warming the front row up by hand. In bigger rooms, the first song has to do more lifting. The setlist becomes a way of reading the building before the band has even finished soundcheck.

Arrows, brackets and the art of moving a song

Setlist three, from Bristol, has an arrow dragging 'The Kettle Song' from slot seven to slot four. The note says: 'too early, room still queuing'. Setlist four, Manchester, has a bracket around two songs and the words 'either/or — watch crowd'. Setlist five, Cardiff, has 'Glitter Drawer' crossed out entirely, then reinstated in pencil with a question mark. It stayed in that night. In Newcastle it moved to slot ten, just before the encore, and the margin says: 'better here — gets the lights'.

This is the unglamorous work of a tour. Songs are not just written and then played. They are placed. A running order can make a familiar song feel like a new one, or bury it under a bad lighting cue and a restless bar queue. The Bonnettes seem to treat the setlist as a movable room, not a fixed list.

The encore question

Across the eight sheets, the encore changes more than anything else. The early 2026 shows carry a two-song encore, usually 'Half-Past Heartbreak' followed by something rowdy. By the summer dates, the second song is often bracketed with 'if curfew'. By the autumn, 'Half-Past Heartbreak' is standing alone on most sheets, with a note beside it: 'last song, no messing'.

One Cardiff sheet has the clearest instruction of the lot: 'No encore if curfew. Do not argue with the door.' Another, from Brighton, has a small asterisk next to the encore slot and the words 'check room — if chatty, go early'. That is not defeatism. It is stagecraft. The Bonnettes would rather leave a room wanting one more song than fight a clock and lose.

What Bonnie scribbles in the margins

The margins are where the tour really lives. 'Talk less' appears twice. 'Thank the door' appears once, underlined. 'Slower' sits next to a song title in Glasgow. 'Key up' is scrawled beside another in Leeds. In Manchester there is a note that reads 'front row knows every word — let them'. In Norwich: 'monitor crackle — ignore'. In Newcastle: 'room hot, drop jacket'. In Brighton: 'confetti after bridge, not chorus'.

None of this is grand. It is the sort of detail that makes a gig feel human. A setlist with 'room hot' on it is not a piece of merchandise. It is a working document. It reminds you that the person singing is also the person checking the temperature and wondering whether the tambourine is going to survive the next four minutes.

The broken tambourine clause

Setlist six has a note that deserves its own plaque: 'tambo #2 died in soundcheck — borrow from support'. The next sheet has 'tambo #2 lives' circled twice, which feels optimistic. In the running order, one song is moved because of it. The margin says: 'swap — no tambo for the middle eight'.

This is the kind of thing fans never see unless they are standing near the monitor desk. A broken instrument does not just remove a sound. It changes the shape of the night. The Bonnettes seem to absorb that into the setlist rather than pretend it has not happened. The paper trail shows a band making small, practical decisions in real time.

What eight sheets add up to

By the end of 2026, the Bonnettes have a setlist that looks less like a fixed routine and more like a conversation with each room. 'Half-Past Heartbreak' has become the anchor at the end. 'Glitter Drawer' has travelled from early-set sparkle to late-set release. 'Three Taps' has become a useful hinge, sometimes before the encore, sometimes just after the first big cheer. The songs have not changed much. Their jobs have.

That is what makes these eight sheets worth keeping. They are not a greatest-hits list. They are a record of a band learning how to read a UK crowd in 2026 — one arrow, one bracket and one dead tambourine at a time.