Dave Matthews Band

Note: I wrote this one more for myself than anything, so I won't be hurt if no one really reads it. It's quite long.

Anyone who's known me in the past 10 years knows that I am a DMB fanatic. At first I resisted when my cousin Tammy introduced my mother to the band. Then my good friend Chris, who is a superfan that puts me to shame, just wouldn't let it go and forced me to listen a little closer. Once I acquired the taste, I knew that I'd forever be a DMB-aholic.

I got into DMB pretty late in the game, and because of that I have an appreciation for the albums Everyday and Busted Stuff that a lot of the older fans will never have. Sure, Everyday is all electric guitar and the songs aren't as developed as the greats, but they were still GOOD songs. And yes, Busted Stuff is pretty much the same thing as the leaked Lilywhite Sessions that caused DMB to lose their greatest producer. But I didn't know that the first time I listened to it, so that bad taste never got into my mouth when I heard it.

When Stand Up came out, though, I was pretty disappointed. The album seemed shallow and empty compared to the gigantic library of deep, meaningful, emotion-evoking songs that I was already taking for granted.

Even so, the fact remains that no true DMB fan likes them for their studio work. We appreciate it, sure. Before These Crowded Streets is their greatest album in my mind. The perfect mix of bitter and sweet and those amazing between-track songlet intersessions that meld them all together. But, lets be honest here... the live performances are where it's at.

The studio albums are the skeleton of band. It provides them with a solid foundation of work that they can always rely on to be sturdy. The talent each member has are the muscles that bend the bones, molding the material into infinitely new possibilities. The shows, though, are the soul. You can't put your fingers on it, you can't begin to describe it effectively, but it's there.

It works with any single song. It's easy to describe a song positively as it is about death and manages to stay hopeful at the same time. But all that can tell you is that the song is good. When you add to it each members personal twist, the song starts getting better. When you see them perform it live, when whatever is going through their head is evident in their movements and in the direction the music is going, then the song becomes great.

Stand Up disappointed me. But the tour after it came out terrified me. My friend Chris is the person who I've been to the most shows with. We both remember leaving a show and silently thinking "Crap. This band is done."

We should have known better. Dave Matthews Band has always been better as the underdog or in the face of tragedy. Dave lost his father when he was 10... something he admits he may not have properly dealt with yet. Then, after years of touring, the band started to get some real recognition. Success was in site and things were going great. Their live album release, "Remember Two Things" came out before any studio work could be done, and still managed to sell extremely well. But everything paused in 1994 when Dave's sister, Anne, was murdered by her husband who then took his own life.

The band took only one show off before returning to the stage. Dave played a song called "Sister" the first show after the killing, which has never been played again. They finished the tour and then recorded their first (and one of their best) albums: Under The Table and Dreaming, which was dedicated to Anne. In the next 4 years, 2 other albums would be released: Crash and Before These Crowded Streets. Most fans consider these first 3 albums to be the best the band has ever done/will ever do in the studio.

Some of the best songs, lyrically, are pretty obviously derived from the death and loss in his life. They become great because the music reflects the emotions of the lyrics. So after 3 albums that most real fans of the band considered to be sub-par, and tours that felt nothing close to what we knew the band was capable of. I, for one, began trying to come to terms with the idea that my favorite band had peaked just before I could get into them.

Then LeRoi Moore, original member and the entire winds section of the band, passed away last year. He was in an ATV accident at his house in Charlottesville, Virginia (where the band originated) that resulted in broken ribs and a punctured lung and was was forced to leave the tour. When recovery seemed likely, he took a turn for the worse and died due to complications from the injury. In the documentary "The Road to Big Whiskey," Dave says that the monitors Moore had in treatment of his punctured lung failed to stop a blood clot from forming and traveling up to his carotid artery and suffocating his brain of oxygen.

The morning I heard, I was a little taken aback. I was good for nothing that day, and I couldn't really figure out why. I never met the guy, I don't know him or his family. It was completely selfish of me to be affected by his death. But when I started to think about it, it really isn't selfish. One of the 5 guys that have created the music sounds greatest to my ears is gone. He will never help create new songs nor will he decorate songs with his own twist on stage in front of me.

Every time I went to a show, I always wanted to hear one of the solo's where Moore incoporated songs from The Wizard of Oz. I thought it was neat and it was something to look forward to. I've never heard a sax player that played like LeRoi Moore. Dave said something on that "Road to Big Whiskey" documentary that went like this: "He plays like he's not there." That hit home, that's exactly it. The sax presence is there, but it's not shiny and loud and attention grabbing. You only really notice it when it's gone. It was a vital part of the song, and it's gone.

I thought, for sure, that this was going to be the straw that broke the camels back. But I was wrong. Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King is one of their best albums. Most DMB fans probably disagree, but I would put it up there with the first 3. From what I hear, they managed to use an incredible amount of Moore's recordings from previous sessions in the song. According to an interview in RELIX magazine, Dave said that only the song "‘Squirm’ was written after Roi had passed on. Otherwise, every saxophone solo moment on the album is LeRoi."

The album was great, and what's more impressive is that the tour has been great, even without LeRoi.

I'm going to write my review of Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King and of my experience at SPAC's second night of DMB this year on this blog.

I realize this was very long and in it I'm promising to write even more about the band, but I felt like an explaination was in order for anyone who reads this. Honestly, it could have been way longer... I really tried to keep it to a minimum.