Dave Matthews Band “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King”
Fuck. I should have known better. I put it off too long and now it’s come back — looking for payment with interest. If only I’d dealt with it when I was younger. In middle age, I don’t know if there is an entry point. I’m forty seven. Maybe I should just take up snowboarding or backpack around Europe instead. That sounds easier. Otherwise, there’s all the layers to peel and the baggage to unpack. Honestly, I really thought I’d lost them. Or that I’d been given a free pass. But, apparently, like death and taxes, there is simply no getting around the Dave Matthews Band.
Probably simpler to start with my own shit before I say anything about Dave’s. You see, I am almost completely illiterate when it comes to DMB. In almost every way, I am not qualified to consider the man, his band or their music. During the one week I spent going through their catalog on Spotify, I confirmed that I knew exactly five of their songs -- about as many as I would have predicted. “Crash Into Me,” “Ants Marching,” The Space Between,” “You and Me” and “What Would You Say.” That was it. Everything else was Greek. Or Martian.
As a writer, I am not proud of my ignorance. But, as a human, I have been unnecessarily proud of it since my college girlfriend confessed that she thought Dave was “really hot” in 1995 after I passive aggressively turned off “Crash Into Me” in favor of Sonic Youth. For as long as I can remember, I have steadfastly recoiled from Jam Bands. It’s not so much the music, although there have been some legendarily bad Jam Bands. The Spin Doctors, Widespread Panic and dozens of lesser, easier targets, packed frats and littered college towns for many years, without any obvious merits. But, I actually kind of like jams. Television is one of my favorite bands and they are famous for their length and girth. More than one person has called them the “Grateful Dead of Punk.” Speaking of which, I saw The Dead happily and willingly several times in the 1980s and even quietly snuck in a couple of Phish shows in the 90s. My favorite parts of The Stones’ “Sticky Fingers” are the jams. And when I press play on the thirty minute, live version of The Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray,” I close my eyes and go to a very special place.
But I sensed that the Dave Matthews Band was different. For one, they were more commercially successful than all the other Jam Bands. And then there was the drunken prettiness of their lead singer. With little evidence, I decided that I had a problem with their music -- that it was free to the point of being unmoored. There was probably some truth in all of the above. But, in hindsight, the reason for my animosity was mostly the pretense of it all. I’m not talking about Dave’s pretense -- cute, horny, drunk, overaged, romantic, peace loving and vaguely funky. Nope. And I’m not talking about the pretense of his fans -- white, funkless, collegiate and unable to handle their drugs. No. I’m talking about my own pretense -- studied, thoughtful, occasionally smug, slighly athletic, but more so unfunky and highly precious in my musical taste.
In my mind, “we” had all heard Pop music and Classic Rock. But I had chosen The Clash and The Replacements and they had not. I had not chosen their music. In fact, I assumed they had not even chosen their music. And, for much of my life, I took great pride in my choices and the music and culture I discovered as a result. But, without question, these were choices of pretense. They were not choices of objective merit. I can say what I want about “Marquee Moon” being superior to Phish’s “Junta,” but that does not make it so. I was every bit as pretentious as Dave Matthews and his fans. Only my pretense was less popular. And being sub-popular has its benefits. They had their bootlegs and I had my seven inches. They had their weed and I had my sobriety. They had baseball caps and I had cardigans. One thing I’ve always known is that the thing that we cannot stand to see in others, is that thing that we dislike in ourselves.
So, yes, some of my disdain was born out of typical self-loathing, imposter syndrome and the like. But, also, some of it was based on what the Dave Matthews Band signified. My biases, though unkind, were not my own. They may have been unfair or irrelevant, but that does not mean that they were inaccurate. For many years, the joke has been that DMB is the band for people who don’t really like music all that much; that the scene and the concerts and the polo shirts and the shitty beer and the just past adolescent sexuality was the thing. It’s been written that fans of DMB like all of their songs and all of their albums and have musical tastes an inch wide and a few feet deep.
More complicated, perhaps, is the unerring whiteness of the crowds, praying at the altar of a sufficiently talented, similarly white, front man and his much more talented, black bandmates. And then, of course, is the matter of Dave’s favorite lyrical subject -- sex. More than any singer not named Mick Jagger or Prince, Dave Matthews has made a career singing about sex. Unlike Mick, however, Dave is rarely cheeky or knowing when it comes to carnal desire. In DMB songs, sex always sounds like it’s the first time. It’s clumsy and awkward and overwhelming and mythical. It’s everything teenagers hope and fear about it.
In his insistent depiction, Dave has a unique appeal to younger women and to the men who want to be near younger women. This rare combination of being both styleless and incredibly appealing to young people makes DMB the Hollister or Abercrombie Fitch of Rock bands. Or, to try it another way, the Dave Matthews Band doesn’t really signify Ivy League or East Coast or Liberal Arts colleges so much as they signify the basic idea of “private college.”
Since the very beginning, it seems, fans have referred to Dave Matthews simply as “Dave” -- as though he is their buddy. In 1992, when Dave was twenty-five and his fans were twenty-one, this was an almost expected norm within Jam Band culture. Jerry, Bob, Trey, etc. But as Dave aged and his fans stayed the same age, the intimacy began to feel pronounced. When post-Boomer fans talked about “Jerry” they were referring to their rotund, bearded, grey haired, burnt out uncle. When they called “Dave” by his name, it could sound familiar to the point of inappropriate.
I’m guilty of believing these projections more than I should. So, before I waded into the music, it was worth grounding myself in the facts. First, I’d be remiss if I did not confirm the obvious -- Dave Matthews Band has been enormously successful. Whereas Phish and The Dead were always known for their live shows more than their studio albums, DMB has had seven consecutive albums debut at the top of the sales charts. No other band has ever accomplished this feat. Not The Beatles or The Eagles or ABBA, for that matter. Nobody.
Additionally, this success is not by chance. DMB have been relentless in their touring, recording and fan service. They were so successful in the direct to fan experience, in fact, that Dave and the band’s manager, Coran Capshaw, founded several adjacent businesses based on DMB’s innovations. And while it is hard to talk about the band without noting the almost singular age and class of their fans, that homogeneity betrays the actual fabric of the band. There is no other group I know of that was fronted by a white lead singer who collaborated with a black drummer, sax player and violinist. That was the core and longstanding quartet. And, for every fan I have heard proclaiming their affection for Dave Matthews, the man, there are ten more who have assured me that drummer Carter Beauford is, in fact, the heart and soul of the group. A common defense of DMB is something like, “I understand why you may not love Dave, but Carter is one of the best drummers to ever play.” Based on the little I know and even less I’ve heard, they may be onto something.
Over the years, though, other, more complicated, facts emerged. Dave Matthews opened up about his politics. Some fans liked what they heard. Others did not. And some still didn’t understand where he stood. Dave also continued to drink too much, decades after it was cute. In 2001, he parted ways with his friend and producer, Steve Lilywhite, in favor of Glen Ballard, in order to write more concise songs. The results were not well received and apparently kicked off a brief mini-slump for the band. It turned out that the slump was the least of Dave’s worries.
In 2004, violinist Boyd Tinsley’s tour bus dropped half a ton of human waste onto innocent bystanders in Chicago. Years later, Boyd was accused of sexual harassment and was let go from the band. In August of 2008, between Boyd’s famous shit and the worse shit, LeRoi Moore, the band’s beloved saxophone player, died in an ATV accident, just three months shy of his wedding day. LeRoi wasn’t exactly the Clarence Clemons to Dave’s Bruce Springsteen, but, according to many, it was close enough. He was a rock of consistency, a celebratory flair, a Jazz man, a Soul man and a fan mascot.
All of these facts were completely lost on me. Basically from the day I left college, I managed to steer clear of DMB. Never got dragged to a show. Never really heard them on the radio. Never came up with friends. When acquaintances offered up the topic, I demurred. I had unfair and unkind thoughts, but I mostly kept them to myself. In 2017, however, Dave came back into my life. Greta Gerwig, somebody I admired, included “Crash Into Me” in her film “Lady Bird.” Her fairly strident and entirely empathetic defense of the song made me wonder. It also made me feel like a pretentious shit for presuming the placement was simply ironic. I mean, I always thought the song was cloying and actually kind of creepy — that Dave sounded like he was on the cusp of an orgasm and a shit at the same. There’s definitely a name for that in the urban dictionary and it might even be called a “DMB” or a “Crash” or something.
But, I was wrong. Greta Gerwig genuinely loves the song. It was the song she wanted to make out to as a teenager. And everything that I disdained about it, which was partly rooted in my own snobbishness, was also what appealed to her. My Indie world was fully colliding with Dave and his world. Just one year earlier, The National, The War on Drugs and about a dozen other bands that I adored, had lovingly assembled a massive Grateful Dead tribute album. I had no problem with The Dead. But this reclamation seemed to bring my world one step closer to John Mayer. And that, I was not prepared for.
I was well past forty. A husband and father of three. I was holding onto some distinction that no one else seemed to care about any more. And I had this project here where I was writing about and searching for meaning in the music that men make in middle age. I had skirted the issue for over a year. But it was time. I hadn’t lost the tail. Dave was nearby the whole time. I suspect, in fact, that he was in front of me while I was nervously looking back.
And so there was the question of where to start. There are only nine DMB studio albums and I implicitly resisted the early stuff. For one, Dave was not yet in middle age, which disqualified those albums. But, also, I don’t eat cheese. But if I ever am going to, I am not going to start with the old, blue, stinky stuff. The choice, it turned out, was quite easy. Dave turned forty in 2007. Check for age. He had his third child that year. Check for fatherhood. LeRoi Moore died in 2008. Very sad check. In 2009, DMB released “Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King” in tribute to their former sax player. Bittersweet check. Critics seemed entirely enamored with the album. Whether it was out of sympathy or genuine affection, I did not know. But...check for pretentiousness. It was supposedly a feel good, “man cry” of an album. Check for existential searching. And by this point, Dave had the lines on his face and the grey in his hair and beard to almost resemble somebody I might know. Check for familiarity. It was done. I would spend a week of my life with “Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King.”
To be clear, I was not happy about this. In fact, I spent much of the first day anxiously procrastinating. But then, after the kids went to bed, I put on my headphones and pressed play for the first of many listens. Initially, all I could hear was my own confirmation bias. It was “Roots Music” that was rootless. At one moment it would sound like Pearl Jam if they liked Funk more than Punk or Metal. At the next moment, it reminded me of Iron & Wine but with Neil Pert on drums. The only artists I knew who had previously tried this reckless mix of arena-sized scale with Funk and Jazz were Phil Collins when he did not require a jacket and Sting when he dreamt of the blue turtles. The former succeeded where the latter stumbled. But I remember thinking that both outcomes were impossibly dangerous.
Upon repeat listens, I began to battle through my own desire for cognitive closure. It had to suck. It just had to. Right? If it didn’t, then where were my bearings? And, who was I? But, in fact, it did not suck. It was many things -- hard, soft, horny, dumb, curious, moving, amazing, funky, heavy, weird -- but it definitely did not suck. In general, I remained irked by Dave’s voice. His falsetto pushes too hard and lacks the grace of, say, Chris Martin, whom he occasionally resembles. And his carnal preoccupations still sound a little creepy, perhaps even more so as a middle-aged father singing to much younger fans. But that’s as much my problem as it is his.
My loud inner critic wondered why there are nearly thirty strings accompanists on “Big Whiskey.” That felt and sounded unnecessary and was a long way from the folksiness of The Dead and the jazziness of Phish. The overall impression I had was of a band that is so successful and so indulgent that they can literally do anything they want to on any song. Want seven violas? Done. Want to write a song in three time signatures just because? Why not? Want to hear a middle-aged dad sing about licking his woman from back to belly? Definitely no, unless Dave says so. Then, yes?
Before I ever heard it, I expected “Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King” to be weighed down by death -- its nominal subtext. Instead, it sounds much more like a celebration. The band and their music might be unnervingly free, but they are free nonetheless. It doesn’t sound noisy or adrift. It doesn’t even sound especially jammy. It sounds unexpected and frequently gratuitous, but it also sounds confident. And that confidence, I suspect, is mostly a tribute to drummer Carter Beauford. I am not the sort of person who understands or is enamored of virtuosity. And Carter is clearly a virtuoso. But what surprised me most is that his playing is not especially showy. The rhythms frequently sound complex, but there are no drum solos are ecstatic flourishes or dramatic fills. Rather, the percussion is simply the heaviest ingredient in the band. Carter is not the lead or the bottom of the band. He’s the band’s leader. Dave is the singer and the face, but, at least here, DMB is Carter’s band.
After several listens, the water felt warmer but I still suspected that I was being slowly boiled. Following a short, posthumous invocation from LeRoi Moore, the album dares the casual listener with “Shake Me Like a Monkey.” The song opens heavy, calling to mind Rage Against the Machine, before making a Coldplay turn to the stars. Live, it’s probably a headbanger, but on record, it sounds like overseasoned, if occasionally impressive, mush. As I presume is the case with most DMB records, they can lose their rudder and let songs get away from itself in favor of a (I really don’t want to use this next word but it fits the music) “vibe.”
DMB sounds most confused when they try to toe the line between the Jam band that they mostly are and the Funk band that they sometimes want to be. This is the case with “Seven,” a song named for its 7/4 time signature that amounts to nothing more than an interesting beat and a sweaty singer barking about sex. It’s a horny, overly-complicated, bad hook-up. But it is also the exception on “Big Whiskey.”
If Funk is the banana that Dave keeps slipping on, ballads are his original sin. Given his start as a sensitive troubadour and the great success he had with “Crash Into Me,” it makes sense that he returns to the scene of the crime. But, in fact, they are not his band’s super power. On “Dive In,” we get the lighter side of his balladry, complete with strings and windchimes. And, on “Tim,e Bomb,” we get the slower, darker burn. Both are highly competent, Modern Rock songs that nurse a melody towards an expected breakthrough. However, as an instrument, Dave’s voice lacks the prettiness of Nick Drake and the power of Bono. As a result, these songs come off as pleasant and suitable DMB songs, but suffer greatly in their most obvious comparisons.
While my criticisms were entirely predictable, the joys of the album were absolutely not. The first single, “Funny the Way it Is,” caught me by surprise. On the surface, it’s a feathery, modern power ballad that turns heavenly in the chorus. Lyrically, it is also a spiritual cousin of Alanis Morrisette’s “Ironic”:
Funny the way it is, and if you think about it
Somebody’s going hungry and someone else is eating out
Funny the way it is, not right or wrong
Somebody’s heart is broken and it becomes your favorite song
Dave’s generalities can be maddeningly trite and evasive. Even in an apolitical song like this, he makes it clear that he is not taking sides. Remarkably, though, it all works. It’s grand and pretty and easy on the ears. And whereas U2 or Coldplay might go from small in the verses to big in the chorus, DMB kind of goes sideways, with the drummer in front and strings that sound organic rather than decorative. It’s not “Yellow” or “One,” but it’s probably just as good as “Ironic.” And that is pretty darn good.
“Why I Am,” the second single also succeeds, in spite of its insistent funkiness. The hook is irresistible, the band stays on “the one,” and the electric guitar brings some actual heat. Whereas many DMB songs take the party too far and sound drunk on hard ciders and edibles, this one feels like the buzz earlier in the evening, when it’s all still good.
“Alligator Pie” is a Bluegrass stompalong that builds on the energy and manages to stay on the right side of the high. Dave imagines a father and his daughter waiting out the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, surviving on (yes) alligator pie. Objectively, it’s an oddly touching subject for what is an impassioned, almost Punk Rock, take on a form of Country Music. It sounds at times like The Pogues or The Mekons in its force and it is more interesting than most anything The Dead recorded after their early heyday.
None of these winners, however, prepared me for the triumph that is “Squirm.” Since I don’t know much about the band or their fans, I cannot say how this track has been received. But, from my vantage, it sounds unlike anything else on the record and anything that I have since discovered in their catalog. Weird, nervy and forceful, the track is at once like vintage Radiohead and Led Zeppelin. Dave’s vocals are both furious and unsettled. Meanwhile, the guitar and bass are elemental, like the exotic Blues that Jimmy Page mastered. The singer squirms while the song builds and builds until, finally, the levee breaks. The more I listened to it, the more I asked myself, “Is it really this good?” I found it hard to answer “no.”
Candidly, I was not sure how to deal with the discomfort of enjoying “Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King.” I’m still not sure what to think about Dave, as a singer, as a writer or as a leader of young people. And I remain ambivalent about the stadium parking lot pre-games and the popped collars and the lust of it all. But, at least on this album, Carter Beauford led an unusually assured and unfettered band. There are some duds, to be sure. But there are a handful of songs that would go toe to toe with British bands like Doves or Elbow. And most of the album outpaces Hootie, Matchbox 20 and the cohort that tried to redefine Modern Rock as the opposite of Alternative. The fact that Greta Gerwig chose “Crash Into You” and not “One Week” or “Semi-Charmed Life” says something. It says that I’d probably rather be on team “Lady Bird” than on some team of record collectors who look and sound like me. And, while Dave may not be my guy and DMB may not be my band, they are also not my enemy. And they are definitely not my problem. At least not anymore.