The Road To 200 and Beyond: Phish Summer Tour Leg Two Preview

The first leg of Phish's Summer 2012 tour provided its share of fine improvisational moments and some great musical highlights, but in my opinion, the real headline of the summer has been the commitment to diving deep into the band's storied catalog.  In a (nowadays) rare moment of candor in the press, Page McConnell told Rolling Stone before the tour began that the band would be aiming to play 200 songs over the course of the summer.  Taken at face value at the time, the comment didn't appear to be describe anything overly ambitious -- the band has routinely crossed the 200 song mark on a yearly basis during the 3.0 era, though the limited 2012 schedule did provide a small challenge to accomplish this feat.

Soon after the tour kicked off, it became clear that this was not just an off-the-cuff remark.  The band had set that their sites and set out on a  campaign to not only reach that goal, but to shatter it; leg one ended with 207 unique songs performed.  While previous years followed a measured approach to adding songs to the repertoire, in 2012 the band seemed to trot out unplayed songs like it was their obligation.

I thought I'd visually compare the cumulative song totals, by show, to the trajectory of the other years in the Phish 3.0 era.  This graph gives a feel for the pace at which songs were added to the playlist year over year.  While the other years show a steep climb, but then a steadying of the repertoire (except of Halloween shows in 2009 and 2010) , the 2012 plot shows an increasing, purposeful climb all the way until the end of leg one.

So where do we go from here?  Will we see 2012 debuts at the same rapid clip as Leg One?  Using a linear projection function (orange line), I tried to show where we might end up at the end of leg two [333 unique songs] and a hypothetical (unannounced but heavily rumored) four show New Year's run [360 unique songs].  Then just for fun, I included the projection if the 2012 tour schedule had the same workload (48 shows) as 2009, the most heavy touring year in 3.0 -- at the pace they are on they would be approaching 495 unique songs!

While those number seem ambitious and the linear projection could probably be tweaked for accuracy after a few more shows, remember, Phish has accomplished what they already have in leg one with no new original debuts and only one new cover (Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler").  There have been 140 songs played since 2009 that haven't year seen performance in 2012, and the band hasn't been shy about reaching back to pre-3.0 material to round out this years' setlists.

Here are songs performed each year of 3.0 that haven't seen action in 2012 yet.

Where do you think they will end up? What songs will we likely see?  What are you wishing for?