By Devon J. Cavanagh
Jan. 29, 2002
From one high school kid's experiment with HTML to a pillar of nancies.org's content, the Dave Matthews Band Tour Archive has grown to be one of the most prominent setlist archives on the internet. This month, the Tour Archive turns five years old. And so, we thought, what better time for a little trip down memory lane?
The well-told story of the Dave Matthews Band's success revolves around constant touring, grassroots promotions, and active trading of live shows by fans. For a band whose success was so tightly interwoven with the growth of live music trading as a hobby, it was as intuitive as it was imperative that there be a meticulously created record of each show the band played. The first to step up to the challenge was Yale University's Matt McClure. Starting in 1993, McClure began to assemble a complete list of all of the shows the band had played to date. His HTML-based archive enabled users to scan shows by date, by song played, or by guest. It contained shows dating as far back as 1991 -- the back-population facilitated by a massive undertaking by McClure and his friends to identify and validate the archive from tapes and setlists that were circulating amongst fans. McClure's site, dubbed the Setlist Warehouse, became the preeminent resource on the internet for Dave Matthews Band tape traders; in fact, it was the only such resource. As a result, the Setlist Warehouse became the only trusted system of record for historical setlist information.
By August 1996, the Setlist Warehouse had successfully created the largest and most trusted archive of Dave Matthews Band setlists on the internet. But the Warehouse was not without its limitations. While it was a most impressive resource for tape traders, the Warehouse lacked a key element that was sought both by tape traders and by non-trading fans of the band: a forum to discuss the shows themselves. The conversations that had created the buzz around the Dave Matthews Band's music were never really about what songs were played (in fact, by early 1995 fans were already speaking out against so-called "stagnant" setlists). Instead, it was how the music was played that was so exciting to fans. People sought sanctuaries to discuss what had happened in the previous night's show -- opportunities for those in attendance to let others know what they missed and, to let traders know whether the show was worth a trade. Also by late 1996, a small but growing listservice of approximately 400 people was the internet's primary forum for discussing the band's music. This mailing list, named Nancies by its creator, originated dozens of concert reviews for every day that the band toured.
Enter 16-year old Dan Konigsberg.
One of the more active members of the Nancies list at that time, Dan noticed the limitations of the Warehouse and wanted to develop a means of capturing the great feedback that fans had about each show. "I had wanted to make a contribution to the DMB online community for some time, but I didn't want to follow the footsteps of all the other sites on the web that offered the same news, tabs, and lyrics," says Dan. So, he went to work. With a none-too-flattering cartoon caricature of the band and some reviews he had saved from Nancies, Dan began to build the "Dave Matthews Band Tour Review Archive," later shortened to the DMBTA. By the end of 1996, the Tour Archive was completed. Rolling out to the public on January 4th, 1997 the TA's unveiling could not have been better timed. As the 1997 Dave and Tim Acoustic Tour was about to get underway, Dan's forum had an immediate opportunity to be put to the test. The site rolled out to a warm reception and quickly gained a following in the Dave Matthews Band's internet community.
If it can be said that Dan gave birth to the child affectionately known as the "TA," then Christine Baginski became its stay-at-home mom in late 1997. Dan spent his summers as a camp counselor in Maine, with no access to a computer. He teamed up with Christine -- then pre-med at UIUC in Illinois -- to maintain new additions, setlist validations, and corrections. "It was totally natural for me to step in when Dan went to Maine that first summer," says Christine. "I'd been around for the Tour Archive's birth, so it seemed like a logical (though terrifying) progression to take care of it when he couldn't." Also in 1998, a new site with a funny name went live on the internet: nancies.org. After a few months online with little in the way of content -- months where nancies.org was actively courting the TA -- nancies.org persuaded Dan and Christine to join the crew and officially merge their site into nancies.org. The original cornerstone of content for nancies.org, the TA helped form the basis for nancies.org's user community.
The synergy between the TA and the rest of nancies.org was immediate. Through a collaborative effort, the Tour Archive soon became home to an active discussion forum for conversations about the band's tours. The boards were so well received by fans that they were soon detached from the TA itself and integrated with the rest of nancies.org's site. To this day, nancies.org's Discussion Boards remain a featured portion of the site. With almost 10,000 members, the boards continue to grow in popularity with Dave Matthews Band fans.
By 1999, the playing field was beginning to change. In the years since the TA had started, the Dave Matthews Band online setlist environment had seen some significant transformations. The Setlist Warehouse had become idle. In fact, due to increasing weights on his time, Matt McClure stopped updating the Warehouse altogether in 1996. Instead, McClure effectively passed the torch to the DMBTA. Shortly after the TA got off the ground, Matt partnered with Dan and Christine to help validate data, back-populate setlists, and generally make the Tour Archive even more robust. With the assistance of both Matt McClure and his brother Dave -- after a short but intense period of development time -- the TA became one of the most visited fan-based music resources on the web. This status was acknowledged by the band's management who, when building their own setlist library for the official site, used the setlists in the Tour Archive as the basis for their annals.
In 2000, the official site upped the stakes on what it means to be a setlist resource with real-time setlisting. Setlists on the band's site would now be updated song by song during each show, from crewmembers on stage at the show. The Tour Archive took this in stride. Acknowledging that time-to-market was not the site's goal, Dan and Christine continued to maintain the TA's reviews, as well as a setlist announce list for users who preferred receiving setlists in their morning email to checking the band's website for real-time updates. Also in 2000, the TA took on yet another set of helping hands. Dan's friend and roommate, Adam Krakowsky, began helping with the site's maintenance. "Because of my knowledge of the band and familiarity with the tour archive, " says Adam, "I felt that I could help Dan and Christine keep the site up to date." Adam continued to help Dan with the TA, and officially joined the nancies.org staff in January 2002.
From a small-time attempt to capture great conversations, to the nancies.org flagship, to the single most active resource for historical Dave Matthews Band setlists and reviews, the Dave Matthews Band Tour Archive has continued to progress with the times. "It's hard to come up with something totally new, and Dan did that," explains Christine. "We've done our best to make it the best resource out there, and we're continually kicking around ideas to make it better." So what exactly does the future hold? There are already substantial upgrades on the horizon. A fully searchable database, greater site integration, and content validation/updates deriving from the over 3,000 email corrections we currently have on file from our users compose just a glimpse of what looks to form a bright future ahead.
Thanks to all of you who have made the TA such a valuable resource over the years. By contributing reviews and by reading the reviews of others, you have all shaped the site's success.
nancies.org | January 29, 2002