Sure, the study of date, city, state and venue, otherwise known in academic circles as the science of itinerology has its roots in our home base located in Fresno, California. However, truth be told, we rely on many other schools of knowledge in order to deliver routings for U2 and The Rolling Stones to your desktop. In fact, hardly a day goes by when we don’t consult with various laboratories, universities and testing facilities before we incorporate a single new concert date in the massive touring database known as Pollstar.com.

For instance, since all life emerged from the sea, we constantly rely on the accumulated knowledge of Santa Barbara’s Nelson Oceanographic Institute so that we may better understand the intricate currents found underneath the surface of the routing for Paul McCartney, as well as the depth that is so apparent in the schedule for the Backstreet Boys. Whales, sharks, jellyfish and Foo Fighters – the mysteries of the sea and the intricacies of tour date science all come together at the fountainhead of oceanographic knowledge founded by the famous submariner Admiral Harriman Nelson (retired).

However, the Institute is only one of the many resources from which we draw the experience and knowledge needed to help maintain the world’s largest third-party concert database. For example, when questions of speed, strength and endurance are involved, as exemplified by the routings for Bright Eyes and Styx, we turn our eyes to the Rudy Wells Bionic Research Facility located high up in the Rocky Mountains, where they’ve rebuilt many a concert itinerary in order to make a routing faster, stronger, and better than it was before.

Of course, other sciences come into play when researching show dates for all acts great and small. An expertise in electricity, including magnetism and lighting formed the underlying bedrock of the Motley Crue routing. Along those same lines, one would be hard pressed to make any sense out of the latest set of dates for Bruce Springsteen without applying the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. Of course, it goes without saying that experts in chaos theory helped us piece together the calendar for the Taste Of Chaos tour.

We could go on and explain how the study of gravity was responsible for the 311 schedule, or how acoustical engineering helped make up the string of dates for Elvis Costello, but we think you get the point. For when it comes to the science of tour dates we often rely on those who have come before us. Learned men and women whose expertise in atomic physics, relativity and super conductivity help contribute to the thousands of concert schedules that appear on this Web site each day.

In fact, when you get right down to it, we rely on all of the sciences in order to maintain the high degree of itinerology excellence for which this Web site is known for, and we constantly stay in touch with laboratories, universities and other scientific facilities so that we may properly prepare and present concert dates for bands like Oasis and artists like Mel Tillis and Jimmy Buffett.

That is, every branch of science except for one. For while we are on a first name basis with eggheads representing everything from amusement park ride physics to artificial zoology, we have never had an occasion to converse with the experts at NASA.

That’s because, even though the collection and preparation of tour data can be described as many things, it’s hardly rocket science.