The State of DMB: Part Deux

The Dave Matthews Band. Where do I begin? I guess from the beginning. Here goes:

So, I first became acquainted with the Dave Matthews Band the summer before my senior year of high school (the summer of 1996). I remember the exact moment, too. I was in my friend’s car, and she pulled out a CD, popped it in her player and tuned to track #7 entitled ‘Ants Marching.’ I listened to it, and I loved it. I made her play it over again. I made her play the CD every time I was in her car or at her house. The band came to town later that summer, and a group of us skipped marching band practice to go to the concert. (This was during the time it cost $20 for a lawn seat at Deer Creek Ampitheater. These days, it’s $45 - $50 for a lawn seat.) I honestly don’t remember much about the show itself, but Dave was wearing flannel pajama pants and a yellow t-shirt. After that show I finally purchased the CD ‘Under the Table and Dreaming’ and listened to it over and over again. I remember the moment I fell in love with the song ‘Warehouse.’ We were driving to my grandparent’s house in Mississippi (from Indiana), and I had fallen asleep in the front seat of my mom’s navy blue Ford Explorer listening to the CD. I woke up to this eerie tune that almost frightened me, but as I kept listening, the melody changed into this very unique, rhythmic song. From that moment on, I was hooked on the Dave Matthews Band.

I attended the show at Deer Creek the following summer on the Crash tour in 1997. I had purchased the Crash CD and ‘Two Step’ became an instant favorite. I anxiously awaited the release of Before These Crowded Streets my freshman year of college. The summer of 1998 is when my tour frenzy began. That summer, I attended back to back shows at Deer Creek, and then drove to Birmingham, Alabama (where I was in school at the time) for a 3rd show. Something extraordinary happened at that show. Something exciting. Something crazy. Something that doesn’t happen to people you know and certainly not yourself. My friend and I were sitting on the lawn (my usual seats at the time) and a man with back stage credentials walked up to the people in front of us. He asked the people in front of us if they would like to exchange their lawn seats for second row seats. They were hesitant so I jumped up and began shouting “I’ll switch my seat! I want to sit in the second row! I’ll switch!” Then they ask why this man was offering to switch tickets and he said “Dave likes to see a variety of people in the front rows.” I immediately began jumping up and down shouting “We’re variety! We are variety!” The next thing I know, we had exchanged our lawn seats for second row seats. I called my mom, I called my sister, I called anybody I could think of to tell them what had just happened! Second row seats for a Dave Matthews Band concert! Does life get any better than this?

The few years following that experience were spent obsessing over the Dave Matthews Band. I knew the history of the band, I knew the band members birthdays, I knew their musical influences, I knew their family status. I knew everything about this band. I couldn’t get enough. In December of 1998, I joined the DMB fan association properly entitled ‘The Warehouse.’ The initial reason for joining was to gain advanced access to tickets and the few other perks that were promised with membership. Little did I know what was to come.

In June of 1999 I discovered the warehouse chatroom. The chatroom was a place to go to talk about the band, the shows, the experiences we had, etc. But it evolved into something different over the course of the summer. It turned into a place to go talk with friends. Friends who didn’t think you were crazy for being into the band, because they were into them as much, if not more, as you were. People in the chatroom began meeting up with each other at shows. I, myself, met up with other fans at shows during summers, and often went far out of my way to see the band. It was just this incredible atmosphere with a very specific group of fans. It was truly unlike anything else that I had ever experienced. The fan following, of which I was part, was compared to that of the Greatful Dead or Phish (but with fewer hippies). We met at shows and would camp out, or we would pile 14 people to a hotel room to save money so everyone would be able to buy that ticket for the third show in a row at the closest venue. Most of us saw between 7 and 10 shows a summer, if not more. We were having the time of our lives.

And then Everyday was released.

The release of Everyday changed the entire course of the band and had a major effect on the fanbase. All of the sudden DMB went from this independent jam band with a very unique sound to an everyday, run-of-the-mill pop group. (Which, I suppose, makes the title of the CD quite appropriate.) Once that CD was released, the feel of the warehouse changed. The feel of everything changed, really. Most of the ‘old crew’ (as we liked to call ourselves) stopped chatting, because the people now attracted to DMB were kids who claimed to love the band simply because it was the cool thing to do and were annoying to the rest of us. The fanbase turned into a large group of teeny-boppers, fraternity members, and kids who thought they were cool. Phrases like “I love Dave! Dave is so hot! I am going to marry Dave!” and the attitude that ‘anything Dave does is cool because he’s Dave and he plays guitar and he growls into the microphone and I like Dave because everyone else likes Dave’ turned a lot of ‘old crew’ fans off. People kept joining the warehouse making it impossible for long-term members to enjoy the perks once available simply because it was becoming unmanageable. Good tickets became harder and harder to obtain through the Warehouse, the special packages stopped coming, too many people had taken an interest in this band and joined the fan association because it was ‘the cool thing to do.’ What was once something special and unique to the few of us who had discovered this band in the early years was now incredibly mainstream and not unique in the least.

Most of the older fans hung on for a while, hoping the band would overcome this and return to their old selves. We longed for the days when we knew we had a secret that most of the world didn’t know about, and we could enjoy the music with fellow fans who liked the band for the music itself. DMB did make an attempt to return to their roots with the release of Busted Stuff, but for some reason it just wasn’t the same. The secret was out, and the entire world was in on it. I don’t know if it’s that the fans have changed, that the band has changed, that I have changed, or a combination of the three, but the experience just isn’t the same as it once was.

I don’t criticize the band for evolving. Every band experiences growth and change over time. They do what’s best for them. Their music is influenced by their lives, and their lives change over the years. But as those things occur, the fanbase changes, and that is what has happened to my DMB experience.

At one point in my life, I was willing to fly anywhere to see the Dave Matthews Band perform. I would pay any price to meet up with my ‘Dave friends’ and catch a show in any city in the country. Today, I won’t see them if they’re not in a few hours driving distance. I listen to my DMB CD’s once in a blue moon. Perhaps eight years of hard core obsession and touring have burned me out on the band, or perhaps it’s that the experience isn’t what it once was.

Is this the end for me and DMB? Not at all. It is, however, the end of something incredibly unique and special that will never return.