Between verses he busted out the Dad-at-a-weddingest dance moves you’ve ever seen a professional entertainer do on television-duckwalking away from the mic during the penny whistle solo, raising the roof, the whole deal. In a minute Oprah Winfrey would bring out Simon himself for a victory lap, but before that Dave played what might be the most Dave Matthews of all Paul Simon songs, “You Can Call Me Al.” And he didn’t just play it-he played it with his whole body, his whole face, really becoming the man who’s gone soft in the middle and wants a shot at redemption. And then, during the guitar break after the first chorus, out came Dave-dressed in a black suit, acoustic guitar slung so high it could technically qualify as a very large medallion, knees and ankles wobbling, dancing downstage to join what became, with his arrival, not just a duet but a party. Last December on a CBS special called Homeward Bound: A Grammy Salute to the Songs of Paul Simon, the Beninese diva Angélique Kidjo began to sing “Under African Skies,” from Simon’s megahit 1986 solo album, Graceland. ![]() Salek heard “Crash Into Me” at age 12 and has been defending Matthews ever since. On Salek’s podcast, Bandsplain, superfan guests narrate marathon tours of their favorite artists’ discographies, celebrating high points and defending the indefensible. “So what do you think my soundtrack is? And I’ve had friends literally at my table, eating my food, drinking my drinks, and mocking my music.” Her friends understand, but they don’t get it. That Matthews couldn’t help calling out Floyd’s murder as the national disgrace that it was is part of why she loves him-why she, a grown woman, has slept on sidewalks and in cars for a chance to be in the front row. Hackney has written about being one of the only Black faces in the crowd at more Dave shows than she can count. Would it be better for him politically or for monetary reasons just to get up and sing? Sure. I know that rubbed some fans the wrong way-but that’s one of the things I appreciate. “Dave was doing this live-stream concert, and he just called it shameful. “I was thinking back to after George Floyd was killed,” the USA Today columnist Suzette Hackney tells me. Plus he’s never been afraid to risk alienating some of the folks under his big tent when it comes to things that actually matter. ![]() ![]() ![]() Especially since Matthews is ultimately more of a brooding bohemian than anything else. Most of the time, though, if someone tells you they don’t like Dave Matthews, they’re really voicing a deep tribal aversion to the type of person they picture when they picture a Dave Matthews fan-spiritually incurious trustafarians, pumpkin-spice basics, fleece-vest IPA bros, or whichever straw-man stereotype offends their imagination most.īut it’s as unfair to judge Matthews himself by the perceived predilections of his audience as it is to judge David Lynch by the most insufferable dorks at a midnight Inland Empire screening. A lot of it has to do with Dave Matthews himself, an acquired-taste vocalist even in those moments when the words fall away and he’s keening into the mystic without losing the common-man touch of the college-town bartender he used to be, when he becomes the American Peter Gabriel, or more to the point Peter Gabriel if Peter Gabriel were also somehow Lloyd Dobler, a schlub beatified by the very ordinariness of his longing. Some of that hate has to do with aesthetics-either you’re down with DMB’s amalgamation of soul-stirring Joshua Tree anthem rock and smooth jazz and bluegrass-fiddle hoedown and hacky-sack funk or you aren’t. Of the varyingly extemporaneous guitar-based rock groups that emerged in the ’90s to fill the cultural gap left by the decline of the Grateful Dead-I won’t say “jam bands,” because the term annoys Dave, a person I liked from the moment I met him, for the record-they’re far and away the most successful, and maybe also the most loathed. The first five Dave Matthews Band studio albums have all been certified multiplatinum and the last seven have either reached the number one spot on the Billboard 200 or debuted there.
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