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| If you said goodbye to me tonight, there would still be music left to write | added on 10/14/2022 | The band has been taking the stage about 30 minutes earlier than normal this year, and while most shows haven't quite been pushing the usual 11:00 curfew, the shows (as we track them, by total song time) have still been longer than usual eight shows into the tour. After incoming storms forced the band to leave stage early on Friday night in Chicago, they played an especially long set for the same crowd on Saturday night. Here's a look at all of the shows the band has ever played that had at least two hours and 45 minutes of total song time (to our knowledge).
Not surprisingly, 2015 is dominant on this list due to the two-set format the band used that year; 2014, the other recent year in which they played two sets, is not nearly as represented, though.
Interestingly, there are no shows from earlier than 2006 on this list. The 3.6.93 show from Washington & Lee's Kappa Delta chapter clocks in at 2:41:34, and since it's unknown whether the setlist we have is complete, it's possible that it broke the 2:45 barrier as well.
| # | Date | Song Time | Venue | City, State | | 1 | 7.25.15 | 3:05:25 | Alpine Valley Music Theatre | East Troy, WI | | 2 | 7.7.12 | 3:02:45 | Alpine Valley Music Theatre | East Troy, WI | | 3 | 11.20.10 | 3:01:29 | John Paul Jones Arena | Charlottesville, VA | | 4 | 7.26.15 | 3:00:39 | Alpine Valley Music Theatre | East Troy, WI | | 5 | 9.4.16 | 2:57:33 | The Gorge Amphitheatre | George, WA | | 6 | 10.11.15 | 2:57:30 | MEO Arena | Lisbon, PRT | | 7 | 7.4.15 | 2:56:53 | Saratoga Performing Arts Center | Saratoga Springs, NY | | 8 | 6.26.15 | 2:56:35 | Susquehanna Bank Center | Camden, NJ | | 9 | 7.5.09 | 2:54:16 | Piazza Napoleone | Lucca, LU, ITA | | 10 | 9.30.08 | 2:53:35 | Vivo Rio | Rio de Janeiro, RJ, BRA | | 11 | 5.21.14 | 2:53:12 | Bank of Oklahoma Center | Tulsa, OK | | 12 | 8.9.08 | 2:52:59 | Alpine Valley Music Theatre | East Troy, WI | | 13 | 6.28.14 | 2:52:58 | First Niagara Pavilion | Burgettstown, PA | | 14 | 6.3.15 | 2:50:23 | Tuscaloosa Amphitheater | Tuscaloosa, AL | | 15 | 7.14.10 | 2:50:00 | Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain | Scranton, PA | | 16 | 8.7.21 | 2:49:46 | Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island | Chicago, IL | | 17 | 7.1.15 | 2:49:28 | Xcel Energy Center | Saint Paul, MN | | 18 | 6.12.15 | 2:49:20 | Xfinity Theatre | Hartford, CT | | 19 | 7.3.15 | 2:49:04 | Saratoga Performing Arts Center | Saratoga Springs, NY | | 20 | 7.6.12 | 2:48:55 | Alpine Valley Music Theatre | East Troy, WI | | 21 | 7.15.15 | 2:48:52 | Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre | Maryland Heights, MO | | 22 | 6.9.15 | 2:48:42 | Nikon at Jones Beach Theater | Wantagh, NY | | 23 | 7.12.14 | 2:48:29 | Xfinity Theatre | Hartford, CT | | 24 | 7.9.22 | 2:47:28 | Saratoga Performing Arts Center | Saratoga Springs, NY | | 25 | 7.19.09 | 2:47:06 | Alpine Valley Music Theatre | East Troy, WI | | 26 | 7.13.12 | 2:46:59 | First Niagara Pavilion | Burgettstown, PA | | 27 | 9.1.12 | 2:46:56 | The Gorge Amphitheatre | George, WA | | 28 | 9.6.15 | 2:46:15 | The Gorge Amphitheatre | George, WA | | 29 | 9.18.11 | 2:45:53 | Randall’s Island Park | New York, NY | | 30 | 6.5.15 | 2:45:43 | Riverbend Music Center | Cincinnati, OH | | 31 | 9.23.06 | 2:45:23 | John Paul Jones Arena | Charlottesville, VA | | 32 | 9.12.15 | 2:45:00 | Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre | Irvine, CA |
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| | It's been seven hours and thirteen days since you took your love away | added on 9/21/2022 | Almanac rarity
One of the most important characteristics the Almanac attempts to maintain is objectivity. Something that comes up often in discussion about Dave Matthews Band is ranking things: which songs are best, which shows are best, which tours are best, etc. Clearly, the concept of "best" is an inherently subjective one, but are there any objective ways of ranking tours? From an "on-paper" perspective, there are two variables that tend to come up when people discuss which tours are better than others: song selection and setlist variation. Quality of song selection is obviously not possible to quantify objectively, but it does seem possible to do so with setlist variation. A common observation about the band's setlist variation is that they don't vary their setlists as much as they used to. Is that true? Let's see if we can find out.
Different Songs Played
The easiest way to rank tours against one another is to look at how many different songs were played over the course of each.
Here are the rankings (with total different songs played in parentheses):
1 Summer/Fall 2021 (120)
2 Summer 2015 (116)
3 Summer 2022 (111)
4 Summer 2013 (110)
5 Summer 2014 (107)
6 Summer 2012 (99)
T-7 Summer 2018 (97)
T-7 Summer 2019 (97)
8 Summer 2010 (96)
10 Summer 2016 (88)
T-11 Summer 2008 (78)
T-11 International Summer 2009 (78)
T-13 Summer 2006 (72)
T-13 International Fall 2015 (72)
15 Summer 2007 (71)
16 Summer 2003 (68)
T-17 Spring/Summer 2001 (61)
T-17 Summer 2005 (61)
18 Spring 2002 (57)
T-20 Summer 2000 (56)
T-20 Summer 2002 (56)
T-20 Summer 2004 (56)
T-23 Fall 1998 (50)
T-23 Summer 1999 (50)
25 Summer 1998 (44)
26 Fall 1996 (42)
27 Summer 1995 (41)
28 Spring 1998 (39)
29 Fall 1994 (37)
T-30 Spring 1994 (34)
T-30 Winter 1995 (34)
T-30 Spring 1995 (34)
33 Summer 1997 (33)
34 Winter 1994 (31)
There are some problems with this way of comparing tours, namely that the band's song catalog has grown greatly in the 31 years they have been playing together, so it is not really fair to compare a 1994 tour to a 2015 tour. Another problem is that the band often plays some songs only one or two times on a tour but plays others far more often; this means that a higher number of songs does not necessarily indicate greater setlist variety.
Percentage of Catalog Played
To overcome the size-of-catalog problem, let's rank the tours by the percentage of the then-current catalog that was played on the tour. Here we are excluding defunct songs once their evolved versions debuted, and we're also excluding covers and segues.
Here are the same tours ranked by total percentage of catalog played (with total played/catalog size and percentage in parentheses):
1 Fall 1994 (34/40; 85.0%)
2 Summer 1995 (37/45; 82.2%)
3 Spring 1994 (30/37; 81.1%)
4 Winter 1995 (32/40; 80.0%)
5 Fall 1996 (38/50; 76.0%)
6 Winter 1994 (28/37; 75.7%)
7 Spring 1995 (32/43; 74.4%)
8 Fall 1998 (43/60; 71.7%)
9 Summer 2003 (61/86; 70.9%)
10 Summer 2000 (47/68; 69.1%)
11 Summer 1999 (43/63; 68.3%)
12 Summer 2013 (102/151; 67.5%)
13 Spring/Summer 2001 (54/81; 66.7%)
14 Summer 1998 (38/59; 64.4%)
15 Summer 2010 (88/138; 63.8%)
16 Summer 2015 (97/155; 62.6%)
17 Summer 2014 (94/151; 62.3%)
18 Summer 1997 (31/50; 62.0%)
19 Summer 2012 (91/150; 60.7%)
20 Summer 2006 (68/113; 60.2%)
21 Summer/Fall 2021 (101/170; 59.4%)
22 Summer 2002 (50/86; 58.1%)
T-23 Spring 2002 (48/85; 56.5%)
T-23 Summer 2004 (52/92; 56.5%)
25 Spring 1998 (33/59; 55.9%)
26 Summer 2018 (92/165; 55.8%)
27 Summer 2022 (94/171; 55.0%)
28 Summer 2008 (65/121; 53.7%)
29 Summer 2016 (83/159; 52.2%)
T-30 Summer 2007 (62/119; 52.1%)
T-30 Summer 2019 (86/165; 52.1%)
32 Summer 2005 (55/106; 51.9%)
33 International Summer 2009 (64/136; 47.1%)
34 International Fall 2015 (68/155; 43.9%)
Looking at the tours this way makes it slightly more apples-to-apples when comparing an early tour to a more recent one, but it still doesn't account for the band's tendency to play certain songs far more often than others, thus causing the number-of-songs-played figure to be a bit misleading. Furthermore, it creates a new problem: the band played about 85% of its catalog on the Fall 1994 tour, which required them to play 41 different songs; by comparison, they would have had to have played 145 different songs in 2021 in order to play the same percentage of their catalog. Finally, it's a bit subjective to determine which songs should count as being "in the catalog" at the time: do songs from Some Devil count, even if they've never been played at a DMB show? Does Captain count from 1996 onward, or only from 2000, 2001, or 2002? Which, if any, cover songs count? It's certainly a judgment call.
Average Rarity
Since adjusting for one skewed variable creates another skewed variable, and vice-versa, let's take a different approach. Our website assigns each show a rarity index number, which represents how often the average song in that show's setlist was played on the tour. For example, if a show has a 2.000 rarity, that means that the average song in that show's setlist was played once every two shows on that tour. Averaging all of the rarity index numbers for a given tour provides a rarity value for the entire tour.
Here's what the rankings look like this way (with average rarity in parentheses):
1 Summer 2022 (3.419)
2 Summer/Fall 2021 (3.399)
3 Summer 2013 (3.341)
4 Summer 2015 (3.198)
5 Summer 2012 (3.048)
6 Summer 2014 (2.978)
7 Summer 2019 (2.956)
8 Summer 2016 (2.783)
9 Summer 2018 (2.731)
10 Summer 2003 (2.665)
11 Summer 2010 (2.634)
12 Summer 2006 (2.581)
13 Summer 2008 (2.452)
14 International Fall 2015 (2.253)
15 Summer 2007 (2.234)
16 Summer 2002 (2.213)
17 Summer 2005 (2.204)
18 Summer 2000 (2.190)
19 Summer 1999 (2.147)
20 Spring 2002 (2.101)
21 International Summer 2009 (2.066)
22 Spring/Summer 2001 (2.047)
23 Summer 2004 (1.943)
24 Fall 1998 (1.805)
25 Spring 1994 (1.764)
26 Fall 1994 (1.759)
27 Winter 1995 (1.746)
28 Summer 1998 (1.657)
29 Spring 1995 (1.623)
30 Summer 1995 (1.540)
31 Winter 1994 (1.527)
32 Spring 1998 (1.476)
33 Fall 1996 (1.470)
34 Summer 1997 (1.321)
While the previous two ways of looking at this are flawed-yet-acceptable proxies for setlist variety, this method is a true measurement. The average song on the Summer 1997 tour was played once every 1.321 shows, while the average song on the Summer/Fall 2021 tour was played once every 3.399 shows.
Conclusion
So what's the takeaway here? Are the band's recent setlists as varied as they were in the early days? No, they are in fact much more varied! But these statistics aren't what truly matter for most people—what matters are the actual performance and quality of the songs themselves, and those are impossible to quantify. It's likely that people who complain about a lack of setlist variety are actually referring to their own subjective perspective on setlist quality.
Stray Observations
Please note that the data above feature only tours with 20 or more shows whose setlists are known. Short tours over- or under-inflate certain statistics, so we have chosen to ignore those tours. Additionally, some of the data above has been adjusted to account for unknown setlists.
We often see people misinterpreting our site's rarity index numbers and rankings as a quantitative assessment of how good a show was. Just because a show has the highest rarity index number for its tour does not necessarily mean it was the best show of the tour. That's for you to decide. It just means that the songs at that show weren't played as often as the songs at other shows.
The most recent major tour whose average rarity index value is less than 2 is Summer 2004 (1.943), when Crazy Easy, Hello Again, Joyride, and Sugar Will were all played at nearly every show. Summer 1997 has one of the lowest average rarity index values of all time (1.321), due mostly to nearly every encore being identical. Many people consider these two tours among the best the band has done, which is good evidence that rarity (and, by extension, variety) isn't everything.
The single rarest show of all time (again, from tours with 20+ known setlists) is 9.1.13, with a rarity index of 5.025. Remember, though, that a show's rarity index number is only good for comparing a show to others from the same tour. We made a big deal about the rarity index value for 9.8.02 back when that show became the rarest of all time; its score is a meager 3.825!
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