Shotgun was the third song to debut on the
2006 Summer Tour. It was one of the first songs that Dave played on his Veillette soprano 12-string (
The Idea of You being the first). Its first two performances were the main riff repeated in
Loving Wings and
Proudest Monkey style from start to finish. In
Hershey on
June 23, 2006, after work in soundchecks, a new intro and outro were played with the core riff remaining to form the meat of the song. While the performance was uncomfortable and the song just sort of ended, the new potential was obvious. Shotgun was absent from setlists, but present at more than a handful of a soundchecks until it finally "re-debuted" on
August 16, 2006 in
Antioch with a new structure employing the intro and outro. The recording of this version foreshadows the enduring love that the song would garner. After the new soft intro, when Dave played the main riff and the rest of the band came in, the audience popped large with more appreciation than most fairly unheard originals receive. It stayed strong until the end of the tour and several versions also repeated a light reprise of the bridge by Butch and the horns after the song ended.
After several starts and stops with new songs previously (most recently when most of the 2004 Summer songs did not return in 2005), Shotgun was brought back on the 2007 tour in fairly regular rotation. From this run, the
8.26.07 Alpine Valley version was released on the Piedmont Park bonus disc
2007 Summer Tour Sampler disc. It currently stands as the only officially released audio version of the song. It was during this stretch that most of lyrics became somewhat standardized, but there are still no set lyrics and they change from performance to performance.
It was only played once in 2008 at SPAC on
6.21.08 as part of a run with other tour one-offs
A Dream So Real and the first full band complete
#40 since 1995. But it wasn't until
Squirm (and its use of the Veillette guitar) entered setlists following the release of
Big Whiskey in Summer 2009 that fans began chanting for Shotgun whenever the guitar came out. Dave responded to several of the chants with teases that grew longer with each version culminating in Noblesville. Night one
7.31.09 Dave teased a full verse and a half before it gave way to Squirm. But the
next night, it finally came back in its full glory. It was played at six out of the next eight shows before being abandoned for the rest of the tour and all of 2010.
It was brought back for the Summer 2011 Caravan tour and was played at each of the five stops, then at a handful of shows during the 2012 Summer Tour (one of which -
6.29.12, was released on the Away From the World bonus DVD). As evidenced by leaked material, the song was known to have been recorded in studios sessions with Mark Batson in 2006 following the Stand up album.