Dave Matthews Band Caravan Highlights and Lots of Photos

By: Brady Lavin

As I’ve already detailed, the festival grounds for Dave Matthews Band Caravan in Chicago left a lot to be desired, including not having to dig wood chips out of my shoes every two minutes. Other complaints were transportation, food and beverage prices (although that’s a constant for every festival ever), sound bleeding, and scheduling, but the lineup is most definitely not on that list.

The Chicago edition had a great lineup of artists over the three days and three stages, and here are the highlights!

The Wailers

These guys, a couple of whom played with the late, great Bob Marley, have Marley’s sound down. They sound almost exactly like recordings of the reggae master, who brought reggae to the world and inspired countless people to love.

It makes sense that they would sound just like the original, though, because they are led by bassist Aston “Family Man” Barrett and his brother Carlton Barrett, who both recorded the rhythm section for much of Bob Marley’s music. Carlton’s drumming has that jerky smoothness to it; never being show-y, just grooving. Aston is believed to be behind many of Marley’s greatest basslines, and he calmly lays them down easy, forming the backbone for the vocalists to sing those iconic melodies over.

As soon as they started their set, multiple bowls were sparked up just in my view, as is expected. Good thing the Caravan security staff were fairly 420 friendly; as long as people didn’t shove their bags in security’s face, they were left alone to toke in peace. With that friendly aroma wafting through the crowd, songs like “One Love” and “Stir It Up” really hit home, reminding everyone to connect to their fellow human beings.

The Wailers

Mariachi El Bronx

No one expected hardcore punk rockers The Bronx to form a mariachi band; it was a bold move from a bold band. While keeping The Bronx together (would they really give up their beloved punk band for a mariachi group?), Mariachi el Bronx has been touring around, opening for the Flaming Lips, and converting doubters into believers for a while now.

Their particular unique brand of mariachi includes a bunch of guitar-looking instruments, a trumpet (obviously), a violin, a standing “drum set,” and the ever-charismatic Matt Caughthran on vocals. While mariachi music is usually sung in Spanish, because of the whole, you know, Mexican-ness of it, Caughthran didn’t learn Spanish for this project. He sings entirely in English, which really helps turn doubting audiences around.

While I have no experience or background at all in mariachi, it seemed like Mariachi El Bronx play a relatively standard style with a bit of modern influence. It’s definitely no “Punk Goes Mariachi.” It’s more of a “Punk Band Plays Mariachi, Has Great Time.” They all were having a blast on stage, and that energy translated to the audience, most of whom were there for the Flaming Lips, who followed them at that stage. Caughthran said it best: “This is amazing! I never thought I would be at Dave Matthews Band Caravan playing mariachi music!”

Mariachi El Bronx

The Flaming Lips

The Lips, who are festival headliners in their own right, played at the Lakeside stage after Mariachi El Bronx, but didn’t play any of their own music. Instead of “She Don’t Use Jelly” and “Fight Test,” the audience was treated to “Money” and “If I Only Had A Brain,” which made for some excellent weirdness.

They were billed as “The Flaming Lips play Dark Side of the Moon,” but Wayne Coyne and company surprised us by inserting music from The Wizard of Oz as well, playing off the old stoner pastime of watching the movie with the sound off while listening to Dark Side.

After some technical issues were resolved, The Lips started late with a noise-fest that included iPhone panic alarms and synthesizer apps, plenty of incoherent screaming, and, of course the SPACE BUBBLE. The crowd at Caravan was so nice and respectful that Coyne had to ask people to push towards the stage more so he could actually be held up by the audience while in the bubble.

Although they only got to play a few songs from Dark Side of the Moon because of the late start, they played the hell out of them, of course adding their own sonic twists exactly how you would expect. The problem, however, is that Dark Side isn’t really a rockin’ album, so the crowd wasn’t throwing down as much as they wanted. At one point, Wayne pleaded, “C’mon people, smoke some weed, get drunk, do SOMETHING. Take control of your lives! This is the last day of a festival, you should be going crazy.” He apparently didn’t think the audience was getting into it, but from my perspective, everyone was loving it, just not jumping up and down.

Wayne Coyne in his Space Bubble

The Flaming Lips

Wayne Coyne

Steven Drozd

On-stage dancing girls at Flaming Lips

G. Love & Special Sauce

Many have written off G. Love & Special Sauce as gimmicky and contrived, but gimmicky and contrived bands don’t tend to last very long, and certainly not the almost twenty years they’ve been around.

As they are wont to do, G. Love and company got heads bobbin’ right away with “Milk and Sugar,” a great example of their distinctive brand of bluesy, country-y hip hop. While G’s guitar and vocals are good, it’s really Timo Shanko’s funky upright bass and Jeff Clemens’ drumming that make G. Love & Special Sauce so infectious. They are such good musicians Garrett could almost do anything up there and sound great. Keyboardist Mark Boyce wasn’t able to make it, but the band made it work with a sparser sound, because Garrett’s lyrics and magnetism are really what all eyes and ears are focused on.

G. Love & Special Sauce

G. Love

Dave and Tim

I didn’t get to see Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds (Dave’s lead guitarist) do their acoustic set, but GI photographer did and here’s what he had to say about it:

“As adept as Tim is on electric, his beautiful lead work and ingenuitive lines and textures really shined on acoustic. Opening with ‘Where Are You Going,” the acoustic rendition was moving and very well done. Dave Matthews proved that even in this quaint stripped-down setting, he can fill a stage with his presence and unique brand of shtick.”

Dave Matthews Band

I have to admit it, before going to Caravan, I wasn’t a huge Dave fan. I liked their stuff, but never enough to buy an album with my meager budget. Just like seeing poor performances has changed my mind about bands in the past (cough The Vines cough), watching Dave Matthews Band play for almost nine hours over the course of three days has converted me into a believer.

There were some concerns from fans I talked to about how they would play for so long and keep everyone engaged, but their sound is so eclectic and far-ranging that it at least seemed effortless. At the beginning of each night’s set, they started playing fairly softly, with the bass not really resonating very much, but gradually over the course of the night would increase the volume at key parts of songs to build energy. By the end of each set, even the folks sitting in lawn chairs in the boonies could feel the bass in their chest.

If DMB were just playing one night, they could probably play hits and hits only for the whole show, but no band has enough hits to fill nine hours, so we got a healthy dose of deep tracks every night with the hits interspersed. This worked out great because they have a bunch of good songs that aren’t big radio hits. Of course, the last couple songs of each night were huge hits, with all the middle school girls jumping and singing along. Where did all these middle school girls come from, anyway?

The best thing about DMB’s live show is how although Dave is the namesake and lead singer of the band, all the other members shine just as bright. In this extended setting, the band jammed songs out much longer than on their records, accommodating plenty of solos from all. Lead guitarist and long-time friend of Matthews’, Tim Reynolds got to show off his incredible chops, and although there were some “shred cliches,” he also had some really interesting melodic and rhythmic ideas in his solos.

The horn players also consistently played great solos as well. Saxophonist Jeff Coffin admirably filled in for the late LeRoi Moore, switching between tenor, alto, and soprano sax, and also busting out a flute on Sunday night. Trumpeter extraordinaire Rashawn Ross, who guested with Mariachi El Bronx, killed it as well. Boyd Tinsley was the least impressive soloist of the bunch, recycling his violin licks and keeping time poorly, but he was still able to build energy in his solos to a crux where the band would come back in.

Out of all these world-class players, though, Dave Matthews’ vocal solos were the best of the bunch. While we can get a glimpse of his scatting abilities in recorded material, he really whipped them out at Caravan. Mimicking the sound of guitars, keyboards, and saxophones, Dave developed his solos like a seasoned jazz musician, hitting seemingly impossible notes at the peak.

The question, then, is after playing for nine hours throughout the festival (and more for Dave and Tim), how does one close the last night at Caravan? After they played “Ants Marching” and stayed on stage, people were murmuring, “What could he possibly play? He already played all his popular songs…” But then bassist Stefan Lessard started playing the bassline to funk anthem “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” by Sly and the Family Stone. Dave let it go for a while to let the anticipation build, but the crowd couldn’t wait. Before Dave came in with the vocals, the audience was already in full chant mode, singing the chorus line over and over. By the end of the song, the line was chanted probably more than thirty times, and it didn’t stop there. As the mass exodus of Dave fans marched to their cars/buses/taxis, still riding the high of the evening, the line was chanted a good hundred times more.