u/Patton_Tank82

4 for me. Nashville twice, Columbus, and Pikeville (KY). Once every year since 2023. I'd see them 10x I a year if I could!

Drop your count!

I present to you my Turnpike stats for nerds.  I am an analyst by trade, so I put a lot of things on spreadsheets and analyze them.  Recently, I decided to track the setlists for concerts my wife and I have attended.  I wanted to keep track of the songs, how many times they were played, where they were played in the show, etc.

As of Friday night, my wife and I have seen Turnpike live 4 times.  (Should have been 5, but the WV State Fair show in 2024 was cancelled because of weather.)

The shows were:

08/10/2023 at the Ryman in Nashville

06/23/2024 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus (Buckeye Country Superfest abbreviated show.)

10/09/2025 at Appalachian Wireless Arena in Pikeville, KY

07/24/2026 at Ascend Amphitheater in Nashville

Over that time, two new albums have been released.  Mean Old Sun and the Price of Admission.  I mention that because bangers like Brought Me, On the Red River, and Heaven Passing Through were released between shows.

So here we go –

We have heard 31 unique songs live.

There have been 11 songs played at all 4 shows.  They are:

Tornado Warning

Good Lord Lorrie

Every Girl

7&7

The Bird Hunters

Mean Old Sun (played the first time before release)

Unrung

Gin, Smoke, Lies

Whole Damn Town

Kansas City Southern

Long Hot Summer Day

This list did not change from the 3^(rd) show to the 4th.

We heard 10 songs only once.  They were:

Nashville 2023 –

The Mercury

Chipping Mill

Diamonds & Gasoline

For the Sake (When it Comes to Loving You)

Something to Hold Onto

Pikeville 2025 –

Nose to the Grindstone (Tyler Childers cover)

Nashville 2026 –

A Lie Agreed Upon

A Cat in the Rain

Feelin’ Good Again

Four of the seven songs played twice are from The Price of Admission –

Wrecked

Shreveport

The Winding Stair Mountain Blues

On the Red River

Be Here

Heaven Passing Through

Ruby Ann

Finally, the songs played 3 times:

Before the Devil Knows We’re Dead

The Housefire

Pay No Rent

Brought Me

Only one song opened the show twice: The Bird Hunters.

However, the song played earliest in the show by average is Tornado Warning.  It was the first song we heard them play live, having opened the 2023 Nashville show.  It was played 3^(rd), 6^(th), and 7^(th) in the following shows.

Only one song has closed the show twice is The Housefire.  It is also the song that is played latest in the shows by average.  The next closest is Long Hot Summer Day.

Unrung usually falls the middle of every show, being played 12^(th) (2), 13^(th), or 14^(th).

Unlike a lot of bands, Turnpike usually doesn’t do encores.  The only exception was the Pikeville show when they came back out to play the Housefire.

Show by show observations:

Nashville 2023 - When we saw them at the Ryman, we could see a countdown timer on the side of the stage.  They finished the last song at the exact moment it hit 0:00.  Also, Evan seemed a little more reserved at that show and did not express much emotion.  The Mother Church of Country Music had the best acoustics of any venue I’ve ever visited.  Every single person at that show loved Turnpike and sang every word to every song.  They had just come back from a years-long hiatus and we were all hungry for the Boys from Oklahoma.

Columbus 2024 – We also saw Charley Crockett and 49 Winchester at this show.  Turnpike was 3^(rd) on the bill and were followed by Billy Strings and the headliner, Zach Bryan.  When I bought the tickets, I thought Turnpike was co-headlining based on the original poster.  I was disappointed that they only played 13 songs.  When they went on, it was still daylight and the stadium was only about 2/3 full.  They got a decent reaction, but the crowd was clearly there to see Zach.

Pikeville 2025 – Pikeville is the kind of place you have to intentionally visit to even be there.  I love the town, but the hometown of Dwight Yoakam is very out of the way.  For us, it was the shortest drive to see the band.  It’s hard to say that one Turnpike show is better than another, but I feel like this was the best one.

Nashville 2026 – As another Redditor put it, Nashville is full of woo girls and college drunks.  I’m officially sick of that phony place, but it was the closest place with a date that we were available to see a show.  It rained a little before and during the show, but that didn’t seem to affect the crowd much.  We had an idiot behind us talking the whole time and that seems to be a theme from other die-hards that were in attendance.  Muscadine Bloodline was the best opener I’ve ever seen for any show.  The boys absolutely tore the house down and the show was electric!  It was worth enduring Nashville to see them and we had an excellent time. 

Seeing them (for the 4th time) in Nashville tonight. Anyone have the setlist for last night?

Do you guys think we'll ever get a new version of the Classified series 1 Snake Eyes with the visor (1985 style). That one could really use a Retro update with more accurate weapons and a larger build. I know we've gotten a few visor Snake Eyes, but they weren't primarily black.

Do you like or dislike removable glasses? Vote!

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The Time:

Let me take you back to the mid-00s.  No iPhones, no Tik Tok, no influencers, and Facebook was in its infancy.  It was years before everyone in this country was gripped with main character syndrome.  It was a different time.  Perhaps a better time.  Toy Biz owned Marvel Legends and we did not know at the time, but the figures would not age well.  Lacking the ability to see the future, Marvel fans went nuts for them.  I was in my early 20s and I was, indeed, nuts for Marvel Legends.

The Story:

Late one evening in mid-2004 I stopped by Wal-Mart in South Charleston, WV.  The location of the store is also referred to as Southridge or Corridor G. Marvel Legends series 6 was just beginning to hit stores and it was my lucky evening.  Juggernaut sat on the peg, and I quickly snagged him.  I scanned the other pegs for that series’ chase, Dark Phoenix, but did not find her.  I began walking toward the front of the store to check out. 

As I was passing the pharmacy I looked up to see 3 guys about my age walking in the direction of the toys.  One of them noticed that I was holding Juggernaut and began sprinting toward the toys.  As he passed by, I turned around and yelled “There’s no Dark Phoenix!”  To which he replied what sounded like “F*ck you!”  I dismissed him as a scalper, checked out, when home, and went to bed.

The next day, I visited ADCTalk.com’s message boards, a board in which I was very active.  (ADCTalk would become ToyNewsI, a name it still holds today.)  I was eager to share my store about the scalper who cursed at me for giving him the bad news.  I typed out the story, posted it, and went off to work.  I’ll remind the younger folks that may be reading this that we did not carry the internet around in our pockets back then.  We needed a computer.

When I returned from work, I checked in on the message board to find that the “scalper” was a member of the boards.  He responded and told me that he did not curse at me, he merely shouted “f*ck” because he was looking for Dark Phoenix.  Little did I know that chance encounter would turn into a friendship.  We added each other to our AIM buddy lists, and I found out his name was Rick.

Rick was from the Charleston area but was attending college.  If I remember correctly, he went to school in Ohio and he was majoring in something that had to do with amusement park management.  It could have been hospitality, but I’m positive he told me he worked summers at a theme park and wanted a career there.

He and I would talk about toys over AIM and in early 2005 I switched jobs and worked at night.  This made it very hard for me to toy hunt.  When series 7 and 8 were hitting stores, I was missing out on them.  Even though Rick and I had only met in passing one time and he lived in a different state, he still hooked me up.  He picked up Vision and Hawkeye from series 7 and Doc Ock from series 8 and held onto them for me.

The last time I saw Rick was in 2006 when he met me at the Toys R Us also in South Charleston.  He gave me the figures and I paid him for them.  We went our separate ways and talked a few times over AIM after that.  I did not have internet at home in those days, so we lost contact.  AIM was disabled several years later, life went on, and I never heard from my friend again.  Oddly enough, Rick was the first person to ever tell me about Facebook, but I wasn’t a college student at the time so I couldn’t sign up.  Had I been able to, I wouldn’t have needed to type this long post.

I know this is a long shot, but I thought I’d share the story here to see if this rings a bell for anyone and maybe I could reconnect with him.  I’d be interested to find out how his life has turned out. 

Details:

Name: Rick

Current age: Early-mid 40s.

Originally from, or at least lived in, the Charleston West Virginia area around 2004.

May have earned a degree in Theme Park Management or something similar from a college in Ohio.  The degree could have been in hospitality.