Dave Matthews Band's blissed-out jams pack 'em at Blossom Music Center

Dave Matthews Band's blissed-out jams pack 'em in for sold-out show at Blossom Music Center.

Announced plans Dave Matthews Band to take a break from touring in 2011, so it came as no surprise to find Blossom Music Center filled to capacity Friday night for a 2½-hour going-away party.
When other acts at a time are struggling to fill seats, nothing still packs ’em in like the promise of blissed out jams (incorporating rock, jazz, funk and other genres) under a full moon on a perfect summer evening.
Fronted by singer guitarist Dave Matthews, a former bartender from South Africa (by way of Virginia), this Grammy winning group got the sold out bash started with “Big Eyed Fish,” a midtempo tune with a touch of bluegrass.
Matthews, 43, told the crowd it was good to be back at Blossom.
“A lot of wood,” he noted, completely at home beneath the pavilion’s soaring rafters.
Fans were glad to have him back, too. They greeted the opening bars of “Shake Me like a Monkey,” “Warehouse,” “Ants Marching” and other songs like old friends. They thoroughly enjoyed Matthews’ crazy hot coals dance during “Corn Bread.” And they laughed knowingly at his inscrutable banter.
“Once upon a time there were three bears,” Matthews said at the start of “Stand Up (For It),” seemingly apropos of nothing.
With eyebrows arched and eyes closed, he cooed and occasionally caterwauled, tilting back his head and opening his mouth wide enough for 19,000 plus concertgoers to admire his dental work.
Slipping a few bars of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” into the middle of an emotional rendition of “Don’t Drink the Water,” Matthews struck a topical chord when he lingered on the line about Gulf Stream waters. The BP oil spill immediately came to mind.
As on previous outings, the band’s core lineup -- Matthews, violinist Boyd Tinsley, bassist Stefan Lessard and drummer Carter Beauford -- was abetted by Matthews’ songwriting partner Tim Reynolds on guitar, Rashawn Ross on trumpet and Jeff Coffin on sax.
Tinsley dignified “Dancing Nancies” with some of the most well received fiddle playing this side of the Charlie Daniels Band, while the spry horn section of Ross and Coffin vamped in unison during an epic version of “#41.”
The latter song stretched over 15 minutes. It started out at a mellow simmer, then boiled over when Coffin cut loose with a scorching sax solo. Matthews nodded approvingly.
It’s not going to be the same around here next summer without a visit from these guys. After years of memorable performances like this one, though, Matthews and friends deserve a hard earned break.
SET LIST:

Big Eyed Fish
Grace Is Gone
Seven
Stay or Leave
Don’t Drink the Water
#41
Stand Up (For It)
Squirm
Eh Hee
Shake Me like a Monkey
You and Me
Dancing Nancies
Warehouse
Can’t Stop
Corn Bread
Ants Marching
ENCORE:
Little Red Bird
So Right
So Damn Lucky

The Dave Matthews Band and Some Final Thoughts

The Dave Matthews Band wound up Bonnaroo for the jam band faithful, still head bobbing and flinging glowsticks after four days.
I miss the old Dave Matthews Band. That was the eccentric five piece lineup of acoustic guitar (Mr. Matthews), violin (Boyd Tinsley), electric bass (Stefan Lessard), drums (Carter Beauford) and saxophone (LeRoi Moore, who died in 2008). With only one chordal instrument, the guitar, that lineup forced itself to come up with inventive ways to do what most rock bands take for granted. And it did, devising nimble, pointillistic arrangements that could lean toward country or acoustic funk, Celtic music or jazz. Mr. Matthews’ songwriting — visions of trouble, battles with inner demons and openly amorous vows of love, full of zigzagging tunes and meter shifts — was inseparable from the sound of the band.
Even before Mr. Moore’s death, the band was adding keyboards and backup singers to its onstage lineup. Now, the touring group includes a saxophone (Jeff Coffin), trumpet (Rashawn Ross) and electric guitar (Tim Reynolds, who also has a long running duo with Mr. Matthews). Two more horn players joined them for some songs at Bonnaroo, to make the sound “a little bit fatter,” Mr. Matthews said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Actually, I do mind — not the horn players, who did their jobs pretty well, but the fattening. With this lineup, there are standard ways to arrange songs: using lead and rhythm guitar, bass and drums, with a horn section or violin for soul or country flavor. And with those possibilities, clichés arrive: the bass vamp under the wailing lead guitar, the boom chunk beat with the power chord. The band doesn’t always evade them.
Mr. Reynolds often dominates the music, taking solo spots that might have gone to violin or saxophone and filling them with blues rock clichés, bending or trilling every note. After hearing other guitarists at Bonnaroo, like Jeff Beck, or Dean Fertita of the Dead Weather (he’s also in Queens of the Stone Age), or the sidemen in various country bands, Mr. Reynolds sounded like a student player, fast but still learning the finesse of phrasing.
More instruments mean more possibilities, a springboard for Mr. Matthews’s extraordinary voice. Sometimes the fatter band did mesh. The funk of “Shake Me Like a Monkey” was angular and aggressive, and the prog-rock-hoedown-whatever of “Tripping Billies” let Mr. Matthews moan and howl. And it wasn’t a matter of how many instruments were being played; when Danny Barnes on banjo joined the band for three songs, somehow the arrangements made room to let his quicksilver picking gleam through the counterpoint. But to hear the brisk, transparent syncopation of an older song like “Two Step” give way to the wah wah and whammy bar abuse of an electric guitar solo was a letdown. One thing the Dave Matthews Band doesn’t need is the finger exercises known as shredding.
For the festival’s finale, the band played Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” with the horns quoting “Stairway to Heaven” and golden fireworks blooming overhead. It’s the three chord apocalypse for all occasions, except perhaps this one: Pearl Jam used the same song for its last Bonnaroo encore in 2008.