High expectations preceded the 2010 Summer Tour when rumors, then confirmation, came that the band would be taking 2011 off from touring. Expectations grew due to Twitter posts from Stefan asking what songs fans would like to be brought back from moratorium and references to “cult” favorites. While the band did bring back many such songs (see below), not all of the changes this tour saw had to do with the setlists. One major change this year was the seating at amphitheatre shows. Several larger stadium shows had general admission seating going back to the 2008 tour, but pavilion seats at amphitheatres had always been reserved; this tour, each amphitheatre had a general admission pit section. Some were as small as 5 or 6 rows, some were as large as the entire floor section, like at Alpine Valley. The touring band kept the same personnel as the last year and a half, with Rashawn Ross, Tim Reynolds, and Jeff Coffin supplementing the core four.

The tour opened with two nights in Hartford (the 30th and 31st shows at the venue) and mirrored the 2003 tour openers in Columbus by featuring the returns of 5 songs that hadn’t been played in over 1000 days. Leading that group of returns was Busted Stuff, which hadn’t been played in over eight years. Another surprise of the weekend was the public debut of an older song, Break for It. This song and another that debuted later in the tour, Black Jack, were written several years earlier; while Break for It (formerly known by the fan-dubbed title Run While We Can) was sound checked on several occasions in 2006, neither had been released or played live in front of a crowd in any form. The weekend also featured Dave playing Neil Young's The Needle and the Damage Done for the first time at a full band show. The solo tune was played late in the main set and that spot became common placement for different solo songs such as Sister, Little Red Bird, and Baby Blue.

Returns and one-offs were the themes of the tour and why this tour will be remembered. In fact, the band played 94 different songs that at least qualified as partial. This destroyed the previous high of 75 in Summer 2008. Due to the length of the tour, and average of nearly 20 songs per night (17 + 3), they also performed over 1000 different songs for the first time. The tour featured 18 songs from 6 albums that had not been played by the “full band” in over 1000 days. Similarly, 18 songs were only played once (5 songs fall in both categories: Cortez the Killer, If I Had It All, American Baby Intro, Fool to Think, and Christmas Song). This was a dramatic change from the 2009 Summer Tour, which featured no songs that returned after 1000 days and only 5 songs played once.

One aspect that did not change was the setlists featured a healthy dose of songs from Big Whiskey. For the second year, performances from this album greatly outnumbered those from each of the other albums. The only proper song from the album that was not played was Dive In (only played at a one-off Dave & Tim show in July). Shake Me Like a Monkey, Seven, and You & Me — all from Big Whiskey — were the three most-played songs of the tour (#3 and tied for #4 last year, respectively). Of the ten songs played the most times in Summer 2010, the only new song to a Summer Tour top 10 was Stay or Leave.

For venues, the tour featured a return to Concord Pavilion (first since 1999) and Idaho (first since 1998), and a free show in West Valley City (to make up for canceling there each of the previous two years). They played at three festivals and four Major League Baseball stadiums. The last was a two-night stand in Chicago at Wrigley Field to end the tour. The shows and tour culminated in a most unique encore: Dave opened with the first non-Winter Tour performance of Christmas Song at a full band show since July 1995 and closed with the recently-returned and popular The Last Stop.

Late in the tour, management announced a smaller Fall Tour, comprised of mostly east coast venues meaning fans in the United States would have one last chance to see the band before the 2011 break.