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August 15th, 2005

San Francisco Chronicle - Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic

When Dave Matthews sings, he gets so worked up, veins bulge on his neck. His songs start slowly, but invariably end with his band crashing huge waves of sound behind him, while he pours on the passion.

What exactly he's so worked up about is not all that easy to divine, but there was no doubting the connection he made with the more than 55,000 fans that thronged both his appearances this weekend at SBC Park, not sold out, but still easily the biggest shows of the lackluster summer season.

Blending some of the world beat explorations of Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel with the elasticity of the Grateful Dead, the Matthews band has become the only major new rock act to emerge in the past 10 years that can sell out stadiums. All this has been accomplished almost entirely on the band's own terms, without great support from radio or many concessions to the so-called conventional wisdom of the record industry.

The Boston Globe - By Steve Morse

MANSFIELD -- Finally, perfect weather for a show at the Tweeter -- and a perfect host in Dave Matthews. He drew a sold-out crowd of nearly 20,000 fans, but what made the event shine was a continued sense of musical discovery.

The Dave Matthews Band gets away with perhaps the widest variety of music on the summer shed circuit -- from mountain hoedowns to African dance-pop, pretty love ballads, and mellifluous bebop. Call it part Woodstock, part Tanglewood Jazz Festival, with a bit of Telluride thrown in for good measure.

Matthews was clearly up for Boston (no surprise given a history that dates back to playing Nantucket's Muse club), and he pulled out ''#34," a suite-like gem that marked its first live performance in 12 years, according to the group's website, davematthewsband.com. The well-oiled crowd roared approval of old favorites ''Crush," ''Drive in Drive Out" (with LeRoi Moore excelling on baritone sax, after playing soprano sax earlier), and political anthem ''Don't Drink the Water," about the exploitation of Native Americans. That brought out Matthews's most emphatic vocal.

September 1st, 2003

In an entertainment event sponsored by America Online (AOL) to benefit public schools, Dave Matthews played Wednesday before a New York Central Park packed 70,000 strong.

AOL, in conjunction with the Dave Matthews Fan Club and Ticketmaster, distributed the majority of the (free) tickets to students and fan club members. The event, initially intended to be a small gathering of Dave Matthews fans in Central Park, was opened up to the public at the urging of AOL, who, over the past year, have given more than one-million dollars in support of public education.

Matthews, due to release a solo album entitled "Some Devil" on Tuesday, steered clear of these debut songs during his two-hour-plus performance. Dave's band, who've been behind him and his sometimes lengthy instrumental encores, was not hired to back Matthews' production of the album. Nonetheless, the sheer enthusiasm and intensity of Wednesday's performance conveyed no ill-will between the Band and Dave.

Bill Giduz

Dave Matthews rocked the arena at Davidson College this week, for a sold-out crowd that filled the Baker Sports Complex Tuesday night. It was a mild evening as cars and vans funneled in from the interstate, filling the parking lots and overflowing into the neighborhoods that surround campus.

“Rent in January, John Mayer last fall, Dave Matthews this spring—who knew a year ago that I could be doing this stuff on my college campus?” said Cat Youell, a freshman from Altamonte Springs, Florida.

Dave and guitarist Tim Reynolds played for three-and-a-half hours during the acoustic concert, for an audience of Davidson students, faculty, staff, townspeople, and Dave fans from up and down the Eastern seaboard. “Let’s fill this arena with a little peace,” Dave said, and rested his voice between numbers with a funny, rambling tale about being thrown from a horse.

The Tweeter Center, Chicago, IL, August 29, 2002

The Allstate Arena, April 26, 2002

By Anthony Kuzminski

The Dave Matthews Band may be the biggest enigma in the entire music industry. How did a jam band whose sound is forged through non-traditional instruments become the largest touring act in all of America? I still have no idea, but they owe a large part of it to their live shows. People flock to their shows year after year and consistently go see the band again and again. Nobody else could do this. Not the Stones, Springsteen or U2. The Dave Matthews Band is the highest grossing act in North America over the last five years. People like the Stones, Tina Turner, Cher and many others wow us with their gross intake for live performances. Something overlooked is the price of concert tickets. Not only is the Dave Matthews Band the highest grossing over the last five years, but also it is also the most attended. This is utterly beguiling. Every year, they come to town and play amphitheaters, arenas and stadiums and constantly fill them. They fill them whether they have a new album to plug or not. No other band could do this, year after year, not even the Stones.

May 31, 2002

It's a typical situation: A rock band takes the stage and simply runs through a predictable list of its biggest singles. Such concerts can turn a $50 ticket into a virtual greatest-hits album populated by live musicians.

Too bad Tuesday night's show at Madison Square Garden wasn't billed as "The Very Best of Dave Matthews." While I own five recordings by the South African-born, Virginia-based guitar-strumming vocalist, I found myself struggling to identify most of what I heard. The brightly rendered "Jimi Thing" and "Two Step" were familiar, but the preponderance of new songs left me scratching my head.

As I review concerts, I usually scrawl song titles in the dark (made easier this night by Fenton Williams's lovely lighting design, accented with notes of tangerine, cobalt and snow), then scribble observations about intriguing things on stage and off. Throughout my notes for this show, the words "mystery tune" appear over and over again.

Of the 19 songs Matthews and his five sidemen played during their two-hour, 35-minute set, five were from his latest album "Everyday," while four appear on the cleverly titled recording, "Busted Stuff." It doesn't hit stores until July 16.

The youthful, well-groomed, and snappily-dressed crowd drifted a bit as the unknown compositions poured through the crisply mixed sound system. (The most casual patrons wore T-shirts labeled "Abercrombie & Fitch," as if those inside them needed to be so identified.) Several guests near me, when they were not yapping on their cell phones, had trouble telling me the titles we heard.

October 13th, 1993

by Philip Van Vleck
Herald-Sun correspondent
Durham Herald-Sun 

Dave Matthews Band climbed on a bandstand in Few Quad, plugged in and knockedback a set of stellar tunes for a quad's worth of al fresco Dukesters. Theyburned up 100 minutes with some of the most ruthless over-the-top fusion rockthat anyone has ever heard.

Every song was a Matthews original (score excepted); every rendition was definitive. Early in the set, LeRoi Moorekicked out the jams, pushing a tenor sax line that winked at rock and peeled out into jazz terrain--the man set us back on our heels and kept us there for several minutes. Dave Matthews was mixing it up with Moore, working two instruments at once:  a tasty, fluid guitar and an awesome singing voice. The number bopped and floated above Carter Beauford's slick busywork on drums. Moore grabbed a soprano sax and,cool enough, put a stinger in this tune, just tearing up the high end with another ripe solo.