The setlists, show notes, and other similar show-related information you see on Phish.Net are the product of several decades of work by countless people, including Mike Gordon and Phish Archivist Kevin Shapiro. The vast majority of this information was taken from the second edition of The Phish Companion (“TPC2”), but there have been thousands of additions and revisions made to that data since TPC2 was published in 2004.

The creation and entry of the setlists, show notes, song notes, soundcheck, and venue data, and the revisions and additions to the data, were achieved in 2009 thanks to Scott Marks, Steve Paolini, Marco Walsh, Ellis Godard, Jeremy Welsh, and Charlie Dirksen. Very special thanks are due to Craig DeLucia and Adam Scheinberg. Craig’s work on the setlists over the years, and Adam’s work to breathe new life into Phish.Net, has been invaluable and substantial.

Since The Phish.Net Setlists File is largely based on the setlists file of TPC2, a variety of explanatory information about the setlists is primarily taken from TPC2 as well. Craig DeLucia is the principal author of most of these words, but they have been revised as necessary to reflect recent changes that have been made to the setlists file, including that it is now being published online rather than in print.

Documents detailing the setlists of Phish shows have been around since the early 1990’s. One such document, “The Helping Phriendly Book” (the “HPB”), was originally compiled via the Internet by Phish fan Shelly Culbertson. This name was inspired by the “Helping Friendly Book,” referred to in versions of “Icculus” as containing all of the knowledge in the universe – everything the Lizards ever wanted or needed to know. The setlists project was undertaken for the free use of fans and out of love for the band. Shelly’s HPB was compiled with assistance from John Friedman, Richard Stern and other friends.

Lee Silverman took over the editing and compiling of the HPB for about a year in 1992. Richard “Chip” Callahan, with the help of Shelly and Sean Kennedy, helped to collect setlists for 1992 and the summer of 1993. In the fall of 1993, Ellis Godard, also known as Ellis of Lemuria, made significant revisions and additions to the document, and began to manage the online version of the HPB. Updated setlists and show dates, along with corrections and show notes from scores of helpful netters, were added to the file. Special notice should be given to Brian Bettencourt, Mike Pollack, Ben Miller, Harry McQuillen, Joe Rioux, Chris Bingham and Patrick Sprowels, who all made considerable contributions. After Ellis began concentrating on developing other areas of Phish.net, Michael Weitzman and Dan Shoop began to administer the online HPB.

In 1994, Charlie Dirksen began to use a copy of the Godard-edited HPB, dated January 17, 1994, for his setlist information. Charlie sought out tapes of every show, and he revised and appended the document using setlists for the tapes he acquired. With the assistance of setlists distributed by Mikey Perrott, which were obtained via a mailing list run by Shelly and Sean, Charlie continued to add more shows to his setlist file. This file was compiled separately from the online HPB. Charlie passed out several dozen printed, three-hole-punched, binder-clipped copies of this file for free to fans at the Sugarbush shows during summer 1995.

Late in the fall of 1996, when the Mockingbird Project was in its earliest stages, Dan Purcell assisted Charlie in making significant changes to the document he had compiled. These changes were based on hundreds of Phish tapes gathered primarily from the collections of Dan, Charlie, and Bill Bowman. Also, several rare setlists were gathered from fans Dean Budnick, Matthew King and Jason Rose. It should be noted that the setlists obtained from Dean were from Dean himself, and were not taken from the setlists listed in his book, The Phishing Manual.

In January 1997, Charlie’s setlist file was sent to Craig DeLucia. This document became the base for the setlists that eventually appeared in the first edition of The Phish Companion in 2000. Craig spent hundreds of hours editing and appending Charlie’s setlists file into an original format, making song names and abbreviations consistent, and developing show notes. What Craig created bore very little resemblance to the file that Charlie had originally given to him. When Craig felt that the document was consistent in presentation and ready for other eyes, he and Charlie assembled a group of eleven fans to further update the document. This group consisted of Craig, Charlie, Benjy Eisen, Charles Franz, Herschel Gelman, Matthew King, Phil Nazzaro, Dan Purcell, Jim Raras Jr., Dan Seideman, and Darius Zelkha. These eleven fans remained in constant contact and performed massive and continuous updates to the document, including the verification of older shows and the addition of many show notes. Dan Hantman, Keith McCrary, and Phillip Zerbo also contributed substantial information to the setlists file. The second edition of The Phish Companion was published in 2004.

The Phish.Net Setlists File is based on the setlists within the second edition of The Phish Companion, but it includes thousands of revisions and a lot of new information. This setlists file would not exist but for the work of countless fans over almost twenty years. Deserving special mention, in addition to those individuals already mentioned above, are those who helped to enter setlists data into the 3.0 version of the Phish.Net site, and to revise and append the setlists file, in 2009: Scott Marks, Steve Paolini, Marco Walsh, Jeremy Welsh, Ellis Godard, and Charlie Dirksen.

See also, Why not call the setlists the Helping Friendly Book?