Dave Matthews Band at Nissan Pavilion

I mentioned what I didn’t like about the night yesterday, so now I come to praise DMB. First, I consider it highly unusual that they can begin and end the set with songs I’m quite ready for them to retire (“Don’t Drink the Water” and “Too Much”), but it’s still one of my favorite shows from them. The second song was a nice relaxed take on “Old Dirt Hill” (from their most recent album). I have to add the concert was enhanced by two important things – great seats (near the stage – side Leroi) that we were able to sit down in for some of the show and the addition of guitarist Tim Reynolds helped immensely. Tim’s known for touring with Dave as an acoustic duo, but he’s a great electric guitarist in his own right (his songs don’t do much for me, though) and I’d been really looking forwards to the show since I found out he’d be touring with them this summer (I’ve seen him with Dave four times, but never with the band).

“So Damn Lucky” (from Dave’s solo album) was next, and I would have sworn it was a new song from the band if I didn’t know it in its original form, a nice rocker. “The Dreaming Tree” I hadn’t seen since 1999, so that was a nice return. New song “The Idea Of You” is quickly becoming one of my favorites; “Corn Bread” was also good, though it doesn’t match the chorus of the other song. We were listening to “Corn Bread” from Dave and Tim’s last album in the car on the way there, and when Dave sang “But you ain’t ever had my corn bread, there’s a little bit of heaven and a little bit of uh-huh” Jill asked in a voice dripping with sarcasm if he was talking about something else. “No”, I said, “he’s a master baker”.

But I digress. A good take on “You Might Die Trying”, then only Dave, Carter (drummer) and Tim remained on stage to bring us a treat: the first “The Space Between” since 2004, and one of my favorite songs from Everyday. Even better was the surprise they had next – they’d been sprinkling some classic covers in this summer, including Pink Floyd’s “Money” (I was hoping for that), but we got their first ever take on Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”. Just amazing – see for yourself:

Another new song, “Eh Hee” (of the extremely weird video) was pretty good live, though “Louisiana Bayou” seemed to drag in places. With touring keyboard player Butch Taylor gone, Dave had a piano out for a soft beginning to “Out Of My Hands”, but that was the end of any sitting. I do like the title track from Everyday, but it’s based on “#36”, an older song (there are several numbered songs from DMB which are songs that just never got titles – “The Song That Jane Likes” was almost one) and I love it when the crowd sings the chorus to “#36” loud enough to tempt the band into segueing into it. I was pretty psyched when that happened, but then the band went for my favorite segue ever – “#36” into “Ants Marching”, and just a kick-ass version of “Ants”, too. Here’s my pic of them during it:

I thought that might be the end of the set (I’ve seen it end that way before), but they had a little bit of time left. Not as much as planned as they had to tease “Jimi Thing”, but then they did the big segue from Crash, “So Much To Say” into the brief jam “Anyone Seen the Bridge?” into “Too Much”, at which point we left to try (and fail) to avoid the great parking lot exodus.

If we’d stayed for the encore, we would have seen new song “Sister” and a cover of “Thank You” (Sly and the Family Stone, not Led Zep), which I was ok on, but I kinda wished we’d seen “Rapunzel”, I’ve got a soft spot for that one. All in all a great show, no regrets about anything that happened later.