The eternal tour of the Dave Matthews Band finally made it to the Festival Theatre in the Kingdom for their first ever visit. After a month delay for the Australian Tour I was itching to see them & damn, I was not disappointed.



To a crowd of less than 2000 (capacity of the Theatre) Dave & his incredible entourage ploughed their way through a set which kept most people on their feet for over two hours & in a place normally reserved for orchestras & opera performances, that's quite impressive. While I overheard a few in the foyer questioning the potentially disastrous sound quality from such a big band in such a small venue, everyone was impressed, including the band. However, it did seem to freak out Dave who had to talk a bit more than normal due to the crowd falling to silence between songs. It was quite easy to hear the band talk to one another on stage as well, but they enjoyed the fact that they had a crowd who actually listened with Dave mentioning how American crowds tend to spend the night talking on their phones.



& here's the set list;

Still Water (partial)
Don't Drink the Water
Crash Into Me
Seek Up
Dream Girl
Hunger For The Great Light
Crush
When The World Ends
Pantala Naga Pampa
Rapunzel
Stolen Away On 55th & 3rd
The Maker
The Idea Of You
Louisiana Bayou
Down By The River
Two Step

Sister (Dave solo)
Everyday
Ants Marching

The highlights of the show... well there's plenty, practically the whole thing! "Seek Up" was a marathon 22+ minutes with everyone getting a lengthy solo spot. Carter proved his incredible drumming prowess throughout the show & Boyd sawed at his violin trying to cut it in two while dancing around the stage during all his energetic solos. The addition of Rashawn Ross on Trumpet complemented the band well. He's a big guy with big lungs & shared some nice horn sections with LeRoi.

It was good to hear some new music from the band as well in the form of "The Idea of You". Really nice song but some of the crowd started sitting down at this point because they didn't know it & then stood up again at the start of "Louisiana Bayou".

At the start of the encore, I was hoping Dave would play "Gravedigger" solo but instead it turned out to be a newish song called "Sister" & what an amazing piece! It's the sort of song which is completely flawless in the way it was written & played & damn I wish I could write like that! It completely overshadowed my need for Gravedigger.

In the intro to "Everyday" I was quietly singing "Honey, Honey, come & dance with me" & stopped at one point to hear the same being sung really faint from various directions around me which proved there were some real fans of the band in the audience. It was a very cool moment.

Support by Xavier Rudd was fitting but while he is disgustingly talented enough to play multiple instruments simultaneously, it's not quite my "thing". It was still good however to see someone able to fill a venue with music completely on their own.



While I'm typing this I actually have a bootlegged copy of the entire Dave Matthews Band performance which was recorded by someone who managed to get some equipment on the stage itself without any security (which was out in force) noticing! The guy next to me held his mobile phone up at one point early on to share his experience with someone on the other end only to have a couple of security swarm in our direction & give a rather severe warning. How someone managed to record the show is beyond amazing & the quality is superb so thanks to the members of "Antsmarching.org" for putting up for everyone!