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| Dave Matthews @ Shoreline (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
It was the return of the
Dave Matthews Band last night at the
Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. This was the third to last date on their summer tour, with just two more scheduled for the Hollywood Bowl this Monday and Tuesday. The band's been supporting The Nature Conservancy's Plant a Billion Trees program throughout their 2022 tour and impressively, have already donated enough to plant 1 million trees -- which you can read more about
here. They'll take a brief six-week break before heading out again for their Fall tour that'll start in Vancouver and find the band winding their way across the states to end in New York's Madison Square Garden in late November. But let's get back to our own Shoreline show!
Without an opening band, the DMB took the stage right at 7:48pm to what seemed like a very full house. If it wasn't sold out, it was pretty darn close! And the crowd in the lower bowl were on their feet just about the entire night from the very first sight of Dave walking out of the shadows of the right side of the stage. The band launched into "Minarets" to kick off the night and quickly followed it up with a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Fool in the Rain."
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| Dave Matthews Band @ Shoreline (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
An early highlight was Tim Reynolds guitar solo in the appropriately named "The Riff" -- their fourth song of the night. Jeff Coffin's sax had a couple of nice moments within the song, but let's face it, Tim's guitar was the whole reason for that song's existence.
After "The Riff", Dave took a moment to say how nice it was to be back at Shoreline. Saying it'd been a while since they'd been back, but there was a time where it felt like they were here every other week. Potentially referring to their many visits to Neil Young's annual acoustic 'Bridge School Benefit'. Dave went on to talk about the history of Shoreline, saying 'This was, I think, they put this on top of a dump, so when you were out on the lawn, every once in a while, a fire would go whosh, and come right out of the ground. Some of you probably remember! And then if you were the right amount of high, you'd be like, whoa! Did you see that fire? There's no fire. There's a fire! You're just high! No, cause I felt the heat too! And then over there, whosh! And we could see it from here (referring to the stage). Oh, there's a fire! It always kept us on the edge in case the whole thing went up, but now they've fixed it. There's no longer a risk of fire...' And as the crowd was laughing, Dave ended the story with 'thank you very much for coming!' before the broody "Madmen's Eyes" began with scenes of lightning filling the backdrop behind the band.
Dave spoke again after the song saying 'that song is a little bit newer than some songs, it's called "Madman's Eyes" and I think it's about, I think it's just another love song really. When you peel it back. But I'll leave that up to you.' Then saying, 'I think this is the same song, just a little bit different' before the band started to softly play "If Only."
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| Carter Beauford of the Dave Matthews Band @ Shoreline (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
As the night continued, I realized Dave was going to be pretty chatty, which was great! Dave's next interlude was when he said, 'so uh, I don't want to talk too much, but I just wanna say how nice it is to be here. I was just saying hello to a friend of mine just a little bit earlier. A friend of mine who I've known since she was tiny, and now she's not tiny... now, she's grown. And she brought a friend of hers with her. They went to college together. And then her friend, knew all of my old friends growing up. I just kept saying, 'what about them?', and she'd say 'uh huh', and 'what about them?', 'yeah, uh huh.' 'Which is weird, it's like
none degrees of separation and we just met today. Anyway, so. I want to send my friend and my new friend... it doesn't matter, I'm just telling you cause it was weird, not that weird, obviously. But I want to send this song for a different reason out to our other friend who brought her friend along who has a lot of mutual friends.' And the song was Grey Street -- which was great with the horns section and Beauford's drums. The horns were just blaring though!
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| Dave Matthews & Stefan Lessard of the Dave Matthews Band @ Shoreline (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
After "Walk Around the Moon", Dave started by saying 'Well, here we are!' as he launched into "Lie in Our Graves" which was probably the biggest crowd-sing-a-long up to that point. Definitely a crowd favorite with another great guitar solo by Tim Reynolds.
Concluding "Drive In, Drive Out", Dave said 'thank you very much it's nice to be here and I hope you feel the same way!' just before Buddy Strong led off with the keyboards on the Isley Brother's "It's Your Thing" and where he also took over vocal duties on the song -- giving Dave a bit of a break. The song was a perfect example of how strong the band is, with highlights from the horn section, the funky bass line which is such a staple within the song, and of course, the drums from Carter Beauford.
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Dave Matthews & Stefan Lessard of the Dave Matthews Band @ Shoreline (Photo: Kevin Keating)
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Overall, the band sounded great, and it was fun to hear how talkative Dave was throughout the night. They would take what felt like long breaks between each song, and Dave would continue to tell the stories throughout the night. But the night wasn't filled with their greatest hits! Looking at several other past setlists, the band has been changing up the set each night, and sprinkling the set with a couple of different cover songs, but not really the hits you might expect if you're just a casual DMB fan. It was still a great show though and be sure to catch them when they return! Let's hope it's not as long as this time was!
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