March 14, 2010

Traveling for DMB in Europe

Posted in Music, Show Review tagged Dave Matthews Band, dmb, Alberta Cross, Stefan Lessard, Carter Beauford at 1:52 am by Matt

I’m back home from an amazing week of traveling, friends, and four Dave Matthews Band shows! Here’s a recap of the shows, my own experiences, and the Europe tour in general.

With their Europe tour, DMB is promoting their latest album, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King. That means they always play around eight songs from the album at every show. It’s a great album, but when seeing four shows in five days, you hope to see many different songs. Although, it’s not that I’ve seen any of their songs too many times! Dave Matthews Band is known for lots of variation in their sets, as far as I know, they haven’t played the same set twice in their almost 20-year-long journey.

The tour started in Hamburg, Germany, then went to Italy via Berlin, Vienna, and Munich. Stefan Lessard, the bass player of the band, has shared lots of photos along the tour. It is nice to see pictures of the touristy stuff they do! Finally, Cologne was the first show for me. They played a venue called Palladium, which is in the middle of an industrial neighborhood, right next to a smaller venue called E-Werk where Dave played in 2007 with Tim Reynolds. It was a stormy day in Cologne, arriving three hours before the doors opened, we were one of the first ones there. Luckily, there was only a few drops of rain when we were standing in the line.

Alberta Cross from Brooklyn, NY was the support act for all the shows. They’re an okay band, but their stage setup in Cologne was terrible. The lead guitarist had his amps pointed straight at us, and they were so loud that we couldn’t hear anything but the guitar all the time he was playing. Without earplugs it was pure torture, you couldn’t enjoy the music at all. In my opinion professional musicians should know better, that’s not how you win fans over.

DMB opened the show quietly with the first verse of Still Water, then wham, and into Don’t Drink the Water, which really got the show going. That night it was so great to hear every song as it had been awhile from my previous show. Having looked at the setlists from other shows of this tour, the set didn’t contain any surprises to me, except for the Sugar Will tease, which was cool and so unexpected! The sound wasn’t that great for DMB either, but it worked for most of the songs, just didn’t do justice for quiet songs like Satellite and You & Me. I liked the audience, except for yelling for songs. It was just a perfect night to start the shows for me.

The next show was in Antwerp, Belgium the following day. We got there an hour before the doors opened, expecting a long line, but finding only a handful of people at the doors. My expectations for the show weren’t high at that moment, but in the end, it turned out to be just the opposite! I loved the mellow opening with Proudest Monkey into Satellite. After that the upbeat Shake Me Like a Monkey really got me going, jumping really. We were once again in the front row and had nicely some space around us, so you could move a little. I like that, many times preferring being farther back where there’s more room to move. But seeing DMB from the front row is something so amazing that I couldn’t even have imagined it a couple of years ago! The highlights of the show were the real fan favorites #41 and Two Step. They play those songs quite often, still I’m always surprised to see them.

The following show was in Amsterdam with a day to rest in between. I had my expectations up for this one. They played the same venue last summer, and it’s a show where many people travel to, so I was expecting something special. Not so much promoting the new album here, I was thinking, but how wrong could I be. Still, it was a good show (might have been even a great one had I not loaded it with high expectations). The best song for me was Squirm from the new album, the energy toward the end was purely amazing. Other highlights were Jimi Thing, Crush, Burning Down the House, and Don’t Drink the Water. The worst thing was that it was getting pretty crowded with all the people trying to sneak in the front during the show.

The following morning I took an early train back to Germany to catch my last show of the tour in Frankfurt. I had my doubts how it was going to be seeing the same songs again and didn’t have any expectations for the show. I arrived at the venue early enough to make it near the front again. I was very excited again. When DMB opened with an old song called Granny, which nobody would have expected, I was so blown away right from the start! That’s a pretty short song, but then Bartender that followed was so amazing. Getting an opening like this gave me so much energy to enjoy the hit songs once again. And the amazing people around me helped in that regard too being so much into the show.

The real highligts of the show were The Stone and Loving Wings, both big surprises on the setlist. Once again, people around me knew the band well enough to appreciate the beauty of these songs. At this show my feet were killing me from all the standing and my throat was sore, but I didn’t let it let me down one bit. During Ants Marching I was singing along as loud as I could to every word. I was happy to get the song at every show, I could never get bored with it. The band has such a good time on stage every time they’re playing the song.

And the positive vibe the band has is so contagious! The audience catches it and then it just spreads among the crowd. The best expression what it’s like to be at a DMB show I can come up with is actually from a Jason Mraz song: “reveling in energy that everyone’s emitting.” That’s how I felt. Of course, I was always in the front where people knew the band, so it might have been completely different further back. Seeing the band for the fourth time in five days, I felt I had so much of that “positive energy” stored in me.

The live music experience is at its best when you are in the moment. By that I mean that you are taking in the show, being completely present there instead of thinking other things. Participating in the show, which means different things to different people. It might be dancing around, singing along, smiling, nodding your head, or just letting the music in. All is good, as long as you’re there also mentally.

So much writing and no talk of how they were playing? They were amazing! Carter Beauford smiling behind the drums while playing that amazingly complex stuff. I know he’s great but he still gets me at every show. How Carter plays when the others are soloing is some of my favorite stuff, you can really hear them feeding off each other back and forth!

After Frankfurt they continued the tour in the UK and Ireland. Now there are still two shows left, Copenhagen and Stockholm. All the photos here are by Linda Stuurman, who has also build the amazing Robin Williams Fansite. You can see her other pictures from the shows on Flickr.

To sum it up, seeing DMB was again such an amazing experience! Surprisingly, the shows I was expecting least from turned out to be the best. But maybe that also means that your expectations play a big role in how you experience a show. The humbler your mind, the better the experience.

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