Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Were getting ahead of ourselves.
Can you imagine how annoyed Dave Matthews bartender must be inThe Lillywhite Sessions?
The only harm hes doing is to himself.
But its someLeaving Las Vegassloppy-drunk poetry.
After hes picked up, you kinda feel awful for making the call.
And everybody left at the place just does the live-action shrug emoji and moves on.
Hell be back next week.
I think fans who got ahold of this shelved record on Napster heard something else there below the murk.
I think sonically and lyrically these tunes almost get there.
And if finished, maybe there was a true revelation awaiting DMB and its fans.
I totally get it.
DMB was and is an American institution for lots of midwestern kids from near ghost towns.
DMB was your first concert, your first wasted-at-a-concert concert.
DMB gets so much flack from independent music critics and fans.
Lots of people betraying their musical journey, rewriting their personal history to keep their record clean.
Well, no ones record is squeaky-clean.
I guess we wanted to say, Enough of that shit.
Thats not an easy journey.
Most people dont make it which is okay, too.
Thats one reason why we did this.
And if you really think about it, the leap fromThe Lillywhite Sessionsto cool kid isnt so far.
What is Bartender but a heady Swans ripper?
And what are Grey Street and Raven but Gastr del Sol remade to fill an amphitheater?
Or what is Kit Kat Jam but the amphitheater Jim ORourke?
The main riff on JTR isnt so far removed from Jack Rose or David Grubbs.
Sometimes I think Captain is the skeleton key to this whole thing.
DMBs version sort of sounds like a sex jam, kinda similar to Crush fromBefore These Crowded Streets.
We stretched and bent the song a bit into something like Ry CoodersParis, Texas dehydrated, cactus-trippin desert-jazz.
It gets at the deeper warmth beneath the dark that Rust was talking about.
Its more heartbreaking than Grace Is Gone in some ways.
But his fist is tighter here.
This is an exercise in camaraderie, a real bridge builder.
We wanted to capture the imagination of DMB fans, not necessarily our fans.
These (albeit even in their sketched form) are the versions the heads hold on to.
So this is dedicated to the heads.
ToAntsmarching.org, with love, Ryley Walker.
