Reviews of Dave Matthews Band Concerts Past

The highlight of the show may have been the version of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" in which opener Ben Harper joined the band. The song's somber sentiment didn't fit the scene at RFK, though. The place had taken on the atmosphere of where DMB works best: a big college party. Well, a big wet college party.

Patrick Foster
The Washington Post

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December 24, 2002
The Dave Matthews Band finished its current tour Sunday night at MCI Center before a sellout crowd of remarkably clean-cut fans who knew all the words to all the songs and were not hesitant in singing them at the tops of their voices from 8:20 to 11 p.m. Such is the phenomenon of the Charlottesville band, which, given its humble origins and limited gifts, is made up of five of the luckiest men in show business.

Certainly the fans would argue, but there are no virtuosos in the Dave Matthews Band, no matter how dramatically violinist Boyd Tinsley saws his fiddle. Matthews's singing range is limited to a single baritone register; drummer Carter Beauford overplays.

But as a whole, the unit performs the perfect contemporary rock music for an arena setting. The elliptical lyrics are easily shouted, there is no threat of dancing to the drowsy tempos, and there's little happening onstage to distract the eye from the players as they take the extended solos that come along with the regularity of a city bus.

But if a song runs for eight minutes, as most of DMB's do, there are bound to be flashes of excitement, if not wit. "Crush" finally exposed the band's funk roots, with sax player LeRoi Moore taking charge; "No. 36" picked up the rhythmic energy, at least temporarily; and "Don't Burn the Pig" provided a whimsical title in a concert that was otherwise whimsy-free.

Buzz McClain
The Washington Post