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Dave on the 2022 Midterm Campaign Trail

Posted by Joe M in Tour News at 11:30am on Saturday, Oct 22nd, 2022

No, Dave’s not running for office, but he is performing at several Get Out the Vote events in support of senate midterm contests, taking place the following week on Tuesday, November 8th. For anyone that’s followed this band for a while or attended a show this year, Dave’s message of voting importance won’t come as a surprise. Dave will join 3 events. The first is on Monday October 24th in Columbus, OH. The second the following day in Raleigh, NC. And the third the day after that, the 26th, in Pittsburgh, PA. The events are free, with asks to RSVP (however admittance is first come, first served in most cases if demand exceeds capacity.) With elections happening everywhere, it’s not unlikely there may be other events in the days leading up to election day. More details on the 3 events with RSVP links are available on davematthewsband.com
   
   



Dave Matthews Band 2022 Fall Tour

Posted by Joe M in Tour News at 11:28am on Saturday, Oct 22nd, 2022

The band is getting back out on the road for a run of indoor shows this November, and this time it’s coast-to-coast even with some love for Canada. The Dave Matthews Band 2022 Fall Tour will be 11 dates starting in Vancouver, British Columbia and ending in the Big Apple, with the only 2-night stand of the tour, at Madison Square Garden. Dumpstaphunk has been announced as “a very special guest AND opener” for the Chicago show. (Dumpstaphunk played similar role for MSG shows in 2021, including few members guesting on Corn Bread, Jimi Thing, and I Want to Take You Higher.) No support act has been announced for this year’s tour ending MSG shows at this point. MSG has consistently had an opener when other shows haven’t, except in 2018 which instead was filled with string of different guests.

The fall tour dates mark the end of planned full band commitments for 2022 (and beyond at this point.) Add the shows you plan to attend via the DMB Hub app or via Tour Central. And get ready for fast paced, no room for error, up for the taking, Fall Setlist Game.

  • Nov. 2 – Vancouver, BC
  • Nov. 4 – Seattle, WA
  • Nov. 5 – Portland, OR
  • Nov. 8 – Nampa, ID
  • Nov. 9 – Salt Lake, UT
  • Nov. 12 – Omaha, NE
  • Nov. 13 – Minneapolis, MN
  • Nov. 15 – Chicago, IL
  • Nov. 16 – Fairborn, OH
  • Nov. 18 – New York, NY
  • Nov. 19 – New York, NY
   
   



Tour Prep and Playlist: Freshen Up 2022

Posted by Joe M in Tour News at 9:30am on Friday, Apr 29th, 2022

Tour Time is here! And we want to make sure you are prepared before you walk through the venue gates, and also share ways to stay current to the tour as it progresses. To start, we wanted to offer something a bit different than we have in the past to Freshen Up.  Let's be honest if you're here then you're in it for the 'deep tracks only'.  Instead of (or in addition to) warming up with the "staple" songs (or 'yellow' songs if you are deep into the Dave setlist selection developments of 2019), we've compiled a playlist of the songs not quite as traditional, but also not so obscure. These are lesser consumed songs that have some real potential for you to hear, given they all are from performances in the last year. We hope to help you Freshen Up with this playlist and then give you a few other important tour prep items.

Let's start with the playlist, maybe for lack of naming creativity: Freshen Up 2022. A collection of 30 songs from the past year featuring the new songs, and lesser played songs or ones that took on changes, geared to prepare beyond the 'staple' songs.

To kick it off the 6 new songs, in order of most recent, starting with brand new this year Something To Tell My Baby, and the late last year (and very well received) Madman's Eyes. And from there, the playlist includes songs that made returns in 2020 or played selectively, and also the songs that took on changes (which we highlight in the playlist below.)

How to listen: Stream straight from the DMB Hub app! Stickied to the top of the feed. If you don't have the app yet, grab it, if not for this, for some of the other tour prep items below.

  • 01. Something To Tell My Baby (DM w/strings 4-17-22)
  • 02. Madman's Eyes (DMB 11-5-21 Columbus)
  • 03. Walk Around the Moon (DMB 7-30-21 WPB)
  • 04. The Only Thing (DMB 8-27-22 Pittsburgh)
  • 05. The Ocean and the Butterfly (DMB 8-6-21 Chicago)
  • 06. Singing from the Windows (DM 8-13-21 Deercreek)
  • 07. Grey Street (DMB 7-23-21 Raleigh)          (Return of the 3rd verse!)
  • 08. Sweet (DMB 9-10-21 Irvine)                    (Return, but also with new Tim & Buddy Outro)
  • 09. Trouble (D&T 2-19-22 Mexico)
  • 10. Warehouse (DMB 8-13-21 Deercreek)    (Return of the stop time / 'woo!' intro)
  • 11. Dive In (DMB 11-5-21 Columbus)
  • 12. When I'm Weary (D&T+Buddy 2-20-22 Mexico) (First time D&T&B, strong version)
  • 13. Big Eyed Fish (DMB 8-27-21 Pittsburgh)
  • 14. Broken Things (DMB 11-5-21 Columbus)
  • 15. Death on the High Seas (D&T 2-19-22 Mexico)
  • 16. Seek Up (DMB 9-10-21 Irvine)           (New intro progression)
  • 17. Rye Whiskey (DMB 9-17-21 SPAC)
  • 18. Dodo (D&T 2-19-22 Mexico)
  • 19. What You Are (DMB 9-17-21 SPAC)
  • 20. Hello Again (DMB 7-23-21 Raleigh)
  • 21. Good Good Time (D&T 2-18-22 Mexico)
  • 22. Everyday (DMB 8-20-21 Mansfield)              (Everyday 2.0, credit Buddy)
  • 23. Sweet Up and Down (DMB 8-20-21 Mansfield)
  • 24. Too High (D&T 2-18-22 Mexico)
  • 25. Stay or Leave (DMB 8-6-21 Chicago)
  • 26. Write a Song (DMB 8-13-21 Deercreek)
  • 27. Up and Away (D&T 2-18-22 Mexico)
  • 28. Black and Blue Bird (D&T 2-20-22 Mexico)
  • 29. Recently (DMB 7-30-21 WPB)
  • 30. Bismarck (D&T 2-19-22 Mexico)
 

Other Tour Prep:

There's so much on the table for this year. For one, "new album" rumblings have continued (are we on to year 3 now? ha.) There are promising updates from time to time. Biggest of which is a "new mix" of Madman's Eyes that was shared amongst the band inner circle at the end of March. Both a confirmation of active mixing happening, and Madman's Eyes is shortlisted.

Since this time last year, we did get 4 new original songs. But we know from past leaks that there are others out there, including song with working titles of Monster, Stay Hungry, and Heart. And partial working names that include Young, Uke (presumably as in ukulele), and 70's Song.

As tour kicks off, make sure you have the DMB Hub app ready to go if you're interested in live show updates and/or push notifications. If you're not familiar, when enabled you can be alerted what the band is playing as they play it. You can also stream show recordings (thank you tapers!) to stay current with band performances and new songs.

But also, do you know which shows you're attending? Then you should "Add" them to your personal tour stats ("I'm Attending"), either via the DMB Hub app or Tour Central webpage. Doing so will automatically track and update your personal DMB stats, but also a couple other reasons.

With the live setlist portion of the app, you will get personalized live stats relative to the song that's playing at that time. Whether you're on the couch or even better at the show, you can determine the last time you heard the song playing, or if it's your first time.

Additionally, when you add your shows you earn and collect DMB Hub Stubs, which based on your DMB statistics you are awarded Stubs as a form of "achievement unlocked." And this is no longer DMB Hub only! Now on the website, in addition to offering your personal Tour Stats at the top-right of every page, you can also now view your Stubs via browser too.

The Setlist Game will be back once again this year for the summer. Bragging rights on the line. If you haven't played, join in on the fun and try to predict what the setlist will be for upcoming show(s). Earn points for correct or close guesses and take the trophy, either on a single show or the whole tour. You can make picks either via the Ants website, or right in the DMB Hub app, no matter where you are.

Wondering what special treats you may be in store at the show, in particular liberations? In the last year there were 9 liberations. Are there bound to be the same amount, more, or less? Check out the songs up for DMB liberation, including Alligator Pie, Cry Freedom, Black and Blue Bird, Bismark (of last three that were recently played D&T in Mexico.) Or *cough* Shotgun?

And probably one of the most powerful features on the site, take advantage of tour central advanced search. The Ants DMB Tour Central Search Engine allows you to search for a single song, or multiple. You can stipulate that any song is an opener, a set closer, in the encore, or the encore closer. Or, you can string multiple songs together and turn up shows where those tunes were played in order. All of these options can be filtered by further metrics, such as guest, venue, artist and show date range. On top of that, you can also have it only display shows that are streamable on DMB Hub app, or available to download on Ants. You can even check the box to only search against shows you've seen, so you can create a lot of personal queries. And when you've built your favorite searches, you can save them to your Tour Stats, so they're always accessible (and sharable!).

Even if you don't have an iOS device, follow (with notifications) @dmblive for live show song updates, and @SetlistGame for game fun. And don't forget to subscribe to the AntsPodcast. Lastly, enjoy some debate or banter over in the Ants DMB forums. Looking to meet some new DMB friends at your next show, or want insight/tips about a venue? Head over to the Tour Forum and the associated venue thread to chat with others attending.

Happy tour time everyone!

   
   



Watch: Dave performs Something to Tell My Baby with strings

Posted by Joe M in TV Appearances at 11:42am on Sunday, Apr 17th, 2022

Dave Matthews appeared and performed on the CNN show State of the Union in support of refugees as a result of Russian’s invasion of Ukraine and fighting in other parts of the world. As part of the appearance Dave performed his newest song Something to Tell My Baby along with a string trio (violin, viola, cello.) Dave first performed the song solo to open the wild night 3 of D&T Mexico that featured 27 songs, a triple encore, and included Buddy, Trey, & Pandeiro Repique Duo. (D&T 2.20.2022 - Moon Palace Golf & Spa Resort, Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico).

Seeing that an actual string accompaniment has been written/composed for the song (as minor as it is), we’d say the song is more than a live tune. Of note, the “live” video was recorded from the Village Studios in Los Angeles, CA, the home studio of John Alagia, long time DMB inner circle (producer, composer, lyricist, recording engineer, friend) and in own right successful career. Surly you don’t show up in an LA studio with strings and only record a single song for a TV appearance. :-p

Watch the video here via CNN.
   
   



Ants Podcast 107: The Show Must Go On

Posted by Matt Yette in Podcasts at 9:40am on Saturday, Sep 4th, 2021

The very unfortunate news mere hours before the start of Labor Dave Weekend at the Gorge sends the DMB community on a roller coaster of major lows to major highs. We call an emergency podcast to recap and discuss all the implications. Unique barely describes it. Long time friend, Ant and contributor Mark T joins the pod (from the pool) and provides perspective from on the scene.

While Apple's built in Podcast app is a great app for listening to the Ants Podcast, an alternative that some might enjoy has emerged: Overcast. Overcast is a great, free podcast app that has gained a lot of popularity since its release. If you're looking for another app for your Ants Podcast fix, give it a try!

We are also now on Spotify! Check us out!


   
 Link       22 Comments  
   



Special Photo Gallery - DMB Northerly 2021

Posted by Joe M in Tour News at 6:13pm on Tuesday, Aug 17th, 2021

For many it has been way too long since there were Dave Matthews Band shows. Some have been lucky enough to see one of the first 11 shows. Some have no choice but to be more patient and wait a bit longer. You may have forgotten what it's like to be at a DMB show, or even what the members look like, ha. (How's that Carter COVID beard looking?) Ants has you covered in pretty much every other aspect, we figure might as well cover you from that perspective too.

So we enlisted the help of long time Ants member Boywonder44 to help us capture some of the energy from this band returning to touring in a special photo gallery. (In a more professional settings Boywonder44 likes to be referred to as Brett Bergen. [We don’t get why either.]) He recently attended the Northerly Island (Chicago) weekend, joined our Ants tailgate (Thanks to everyone that came out!), brought his camera, and we’re lucky enough that he’s sharing some of his shots from the concert with the community. (If you want to check out his other live concert photography, you can see them here. He's previously shot TR3, Umphreys McGee, 311, STS9 and a slew of others (ie, DMB, ha.))

Click on the Dave image to the left to go through the gallery of ~60 great photos.
(To view from DMB Hub App, click on the Dave thumbnail after you click here .)

Thanks to Brett for sharing! Let the reminiscing begin. And for those still waiting to attend upcoming show, may the countdown go a bit speeder for you!
   
   



Tour Central Liberations

Posted by Matt Yette in Site News at 8:43am on Monday, Aug 9th, 2021

With a song catalog that now claims north of 200 songs not including covers, there's a lot of potential for variety in a Dave Matthews Band show from night to night. Things would get stale pretty quickly if the band played the same 20 songs every night, and that variety is part of what keeps us coming back as fans year after year. One side quest for the frequent DMB concert-goer is hearing rare songs. The band's most played song? That'd be Ants Marching, which has historically been played at nearly *half* of all shows since its debut (which results in a rarity index of nearly 49%). So what's up with the fact that any given show will likely have an average rarity index of something around 30%? There are a lot of songs that get played that show up far less often than once every two shows. And occasionally, the band busts out a song that hasn't been played in a significantly long time. With that in mind, the DMB fanbase came up with a term for those long lost songs that were perhaps once staples, but spent some significant time on the shelf, only to finally return: liberation.

Allowing the term some creative license for a play on the literal definition, in this context "liberation" is meant to indicate that a song has been "set free" of "oppression;" aka "It's been a long time since this song was played." The power of our Tour Central database has allowed us to dig deep and offer up dynamic insight on this phenomenon. Thanks to Tour Central, we're able to show not only every liberation ever achieved, but also what each tour's historical liberation list looked like, and what songs were liberated during that run of shows in a "point in time" style. And we've taken it even further: we treat liberations relative to their performer, so you can track Dave & Tim, or Dave solo as separate liberation lists. We've even integrated liberations with your My Tour Stats page, so you can view all the liberations you've ever witnessed (even ones you might have not been aware of!), and others can also view your list. Even the DMB Hub Stubs have gotten into the act, awarding you stubs based on not only how many liberations you've seen, but if you've seen some variant of an "uber" liberation.

With that in mind, what constitutes a liberation? Admitting that it's a very subjective measurement, a line needs to be drawn somewhere, and we've drawn that line at 150 shows. While we go into the criteria more deeply on the Liberations area of the site, 150 shows represents somewhere around three full years of concerts in the band's modern era, and that feels right to us when determining how long a song should go before being considered "liberated." It's also what drives our "liberation factor." 300+ shows are considered a 2x liberation, while something that hasn't been played in 1200 shows would be an 8x! While we also track number of days since a song's last performance, that metric isn't deterministic in our system. The band's brief 2017 hiatus, and last year's cancelled tour come to mind as two recent examples that push us to value shows over days. We're sure this will continue to be the subject of debate, and that's cool with us. We aren't saying it's the only way to view things, just that it's our way of looking at it for the sake of the feature on Ants!

You'll find liberations front and center on our updated Tour page in Tour Central, and from there you can head over to the Liberation area, where you can break down the data by artist and sort by all manner of metrics to view the data how you prefer. We hope you enjoy the additional insight into just what makes a Dave Matthews Band (or Dave & Tim, or Dave solo) show so special, as well as our recent addition of DMB Hub Stubs and Tour Central Advanced Search, and thank you for your continued support of Ants!
   
 Link       19 Comments  
   



DMB Hub Stubs on Ants

Posted by Matt Yette in Site News at 7:36am on Thursday, Aug 5th, 2021

It's hard to believe it's been five years since the we first released DMB Hub for the iPhone. In that time, we've added countless features to the app, like playing the Setlist Game, streaming hundreds of show recordings, keeping track of your stats and, of course, collecting DMB Hub Stubs. DMB Hub Stubs were a fun way to game-ify your show statistics, awarding Stubs as a form of "achievement unlocked." Sure, everyone's Tour Stats offer a unique picture of your show attendance history, but the Stubs offered you ways to take it a step further than just raw numbers, and have a little fun while you were at it! Up to this point, DMB Hub Stubs were limited to the iOS app only. That changes today.

DMB Hub Stubs are now integrated into the antsmarching.org website, so anyone with an Ants account can earn, view and share their stubs! Every Ants member already has a link to their Tour Stats at the top-right of every page on the site. Once there, you'll now find a new section on the left hand column for your DMB Hub Stubs. Clicking the Stubs icon will bring you to a page dedicated to displaying your Stubs "trophy case," and there's also a link to generate the same Stubs Passport that you can share from the app, but now you can do so right from Ants!

We're excited to expand this feature from DMB Hub to the site as a whole. With a new DMB tour comes renewed energy, and we hope you all enjoy the new features that we continue to add to antsmarching.org. In that vein, we wanted to give a special shoutout to our Ants+ members, without which we couldn't continue to operate. Your support is greatly appreciated! As Ants approaches its 20 year anniversary, we strive to continually create innovative features, providing Dave Matthews Band fans with the best experience next to actually being at a show!

If you have an iPhone and aren't familiar with DMB Hub, give it a download! It's completely free, ad- and tracker-free, and plugs you into the latest DMB shows via our Live Setlist push notifications. And as we mentioned, there are hundreds of live recordings available to stream, in no small part due to our amazing taper community!
   
 Link       49 Comments  
   



Tour Central Advanced Search Now Available

Posted by Matt Yette in Site News at 8:41am on Tuesday, Aug 3rd, 2021

If you were to go back in time, and read the first notes scribbled down on paper that would serve as the seeds to what has eventually grown into the largest single band-focused website on the Internet, you would find two little words in the margins of that crumpled note: "Search Engine." Nearly 20 years later (my goodness!), we're so proud to finally release it.

Sure, Tour Central has always had "search" since its inception. Technically. But for once, technically correct is not the best kind of correct. It was a very basic version that let you search show data fields as if they were text. Sometimes it would work; often times it didn't offer the flexibility to be any sort of useful. It had been on our list, literally, for years (decades?), and we actually managed to put it together in the summer of 2019, but then life happened, and it got put on the back burner.

Ants Tour Central has always been the foundation of the site, with an advanced database that was built from the start to be a powerful and flexible means of storing data about the band's performances. It's been tweaked and extended over the years, but at its core, was intelligently designed to scale as it has over the better part of two decades. The power and flexibility of Tour Central has enabled us to bring this advanced search engine to the site!

The Tour Central Search Engine allows you to search for a single song, or multiple. You can stipulate that any song is an opener, a set closer, in the encore, or the encore closer. Or, you can string multiple songs together and turn up shows where those tunes were played in order. All of these options can be filtered by further metrics, such as guest, venue, artist and show date range. On top of that, you can also have it only display shows that are streamable on DMB Hub, or available to download on Ants. You can even check the box to only search against shows you've seen, so you can create a lot of personal queries. And when you've built your favorite searches, you can save them to your Tour Stats, so they're always accessible (and sharable!).

With a new tour comes renewed energy, and Ants is getting a ton of work poured into it, in various areas (more to come on that!). Stay tuned to Ants for the latest as we roll out more features, and we hope you're enjoying the tour so far!
   
 Link       22 Comments  
   



Ants Podcast 106: Back in the Game

Posted by Matt Yette in Podcasts at 1:11pm on Sunday, Aug 1st, 2021

The band is back! (In more ways than one.) Dave Matthews Band is back with new songs, album recording sessions, and are six shows into a long-awaited summer tour. So it's only fitting that the Ants Podcast with Matt and Joe is also back. We dust off the cobwebs and get right into all the details. We recap where we left off, what's happened over the last year, and the latest developments. There's a lot to be excited about, and as usual, we take the discussion and the debate off the beaten path. We're so glad to be back!

While Apple's built in Podcast app is a great app for listening to the Ants Podcast, an alternative that some might enjoy has emerged: Overcast. Overcast is a great, free podcast app that has gained a lot of popularity since its release. If you're looking for another app for your Ants Podcast fix, give it a try!

We are also now on Spotify! Check us out!


   
 Link       7 Comments  
   







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