Back in April, the Dave Matthews Band celebrated the twentieth anniversary of their very first performance together. Ironically to commemorate the occasion, the group decided to take the summer off for the first since that very first show in the band’s hometown of Charlottesville. Dave and the boys are playing four festival shows in Atlantic City (June 24-26), Chicago (July 8-10), New York), August 26-28), and their annual Labor Day weekend at The Gorge in Washington (September 2-4). Head over to DMBCaravan for more details for full lineups (act ranging from Ray LaMontange to The Roots to The Flaming Lips performing Dark Side of the Moon at different sites) and tickets.
If you cannot make it to one of the show but still need your Dave Matthews Band fix aside from all the Live Trax concerts you own, writer and DMB enthusiast Nikki Van Noy is celebrating the band’s vigintennial with her book So Much to Say: Dave Matthews Band – 20 Years on the Road
. And if you are going to one (or more) of the festivals, the book makes for a great read in between sets as you brush up on your DMB history before the band writes its next chapter. After starting off the book with her own history with the band (An Evening Spent Dancing) where she went from a reluctant concert goer to an instant fan, Nikki goes into a chronological history of the band starting with their formation (Getting Started) to the start of heavy touring schedule (The Little Red Van). The book then veers into the studio with their best known music (The Big Three), then the Lillywhite Sessions and the two albums born directly out of it (The Album That Wasn’t), and the following album Stand Up (Searching for the Sound). Then there is the tragic death of the band’s saxophonist (LeRoi Holloway Moore) and the album that was born from his death (LeRoi’s Legacy).
Yes the band’s history is the core of the book, but So Much to Say is as much about the band is it is about the fans of the Dave Matthews Band. Van Noy included personal accounts from every stage of the band’s careers from those that were there at the launch and talk about the shows from their weekly engagement as the now defunct Trax to fans as far flung as Australia where the band has only visited twice in the band’s career. The book even includes more than thirty-five original fan photos.
What really becomes clear throughout So Much to Say is there is no band out there that harnessed the internet better than the Dave Matthews Band and their fans. In the early years, word of mouth traveled easy from the early users of the new electronic-mail: college student. Then came mailing lists, message boards, blogs to today (seriously, type “Dave Matthews Band” in YouTube and see just how many performances have been uploaded); Nikki pulls quotes and talks to users and the people behind the sites frequently in the book. She even makes an apt comparison that the stat heavy national pastime is similar to DMB fans, just go to sites like DMBAlmanac to see just how true it is. Really the final two chapters in the books are pretty much just about the fans.
Some great tidbits throughout the book include a section on how some of the song titles came about (like how Dave liked to number the songs he wrote in order yet #27 was actually the 133rd song he wrote) to a part on wrong names that were dubbed by soundman Jeff “Bagby” Thomas (I’ll Back You Up labeled Let’s Get a Beer and rarity Heathcliff’s Haiku Warriors actually keeping its wrong name). There is also plenty of mythology sprinkled by fans during the book (a couple pages get devoted to the holy grail of DMB songs: Machead) which reminds me of the time my college roommate told me a tale of how his sister who went to Virginia saw Dave Matthews Band and Hootie & The Blowfish at the same frat house on the same night. And of course a good portion of the book is devoted to the band’s taping culture, which may have as much to do with the band’s success than anything else, and how it evolved over the years.
It’s hard to recommend So Much to Say to anyone not already a fan of Dave Matthews Band because there is no deep introspective passages of the band or even any new interviews with band members themselves. So Much to Say is a book written by a fan for fans and about fans. A newbie can read the book and have a deeper appreciation for the band and the fandom while longtime fans will enjoy the trip down memory lane even if they know all of the stories behind the band. Here’s hoping after this summer off we will get another twenty summers worth of shows where we can eat, drink, and be merry.
Full Disclosure Notice: This book was given to me by Simon and Schusters for the purpose of reviewing it.
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