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.
The Dave Matthews Band line-up that they will perform three large outdoor concert which take place at the Atlantic City.
