3 reasons the Dave Matthews Band remains a hot ticket
If you can see through things, you can see them Friday.
For half a grand.
Tickets to the Dave Matthews Band’s stop at The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas — one of the most-anticipated shows of the year — sold out swiftly and now are commanding hefty prices on the secondary market.
How hefty? Even obstructed-view seats are going for $550 on Ticketmaster’s resale site.
The current top asking price for a spot in the mezzanine? A whopping $2,750.
All of this begs the question: Why does the Dave Matthews Band continue to be such a hot ticket? Let us count the ways:
Scarcity
It was the year Walter Cronkite died and “The Jersey Shore” was born — tragedies, both.
Flashback to 2009.
That was the last time the Dave Matthew Band played Vegas, headlining a two-night stand that spring at the MGM Grand Garden, whose capacity approaches 17,000, depending on how the venue is configured.
A little over a decade later, the band is playing just a single gig in a 2,500-seat room, even though DMB remains one of the top touring acts of all time.
So, 25 years after its first local gigs, opening a trio of Grateful Dead shows at Sam Boyd Stadium, the Dave Matthews Band will play its most intimate show here this weekend.
What’s the only thing rarer than seeing this bunch in Vegas? Seeing them in a venue this small.
Variety
Snowflakes, fingerprints, hangovers, Dave Matthews Band concerts, hangovers after Dave Matthews Band concerts — no two are ever the same.
One of the key factors in DMB’s longevity is the group’s ability to keep things fresh from one gig to the next. Die-hards can see the band multiple times on the same tour and never see the same show.
For starters, there’s the almost unfathomable array of songs that the band works up for each outing.
According to fan site DMBAlmanac.com, an online database of Dave Matthews Band shows, for the group’s summer 2015 tour alone it played a staggering 116 different songs, an incredible amount of material to master.
For years now, DMB has averaged 90 to 110 different tunes per tour, a remarkable number that enables the band to continually mix things up on stage, making spontaneity a key component of its live show and keeping fans guessing what’s coming next.
But it’s not how many different songs the band plays, it’s also how DMB plays them, even when it comes to fan favorites that the band has been airing for decades, such as “Ants Marching,” which the group has performed nearly 1,200 times, according to concert set list archive site Setlist.fm. The band continually explores the contours of its catalog in concert, jamming things out, mixing up the instrumentation, freelancing whenever the mood strikes.
And so when those ants inevitably do get to stepping, they seldom follow the same path.
Consistency
The songs have been around awhile — plenty of them, anyway — kind of like the man giving them alternately wizened and wistful voice.
“Let the children run the show,” Matthews sings on “Come Tomorrow,” the title track of his band’s most recent record. “Not too long and we’d be good to go.”
The song is about passing the torch to the next generation without feeling burned in the process. Matthews’ point is to be the opposite of the grumpy old man whose words open the song, begrudging the youth their day.
It’s a message that Matthews takes to heart on the reflective, ruminative record in question, which is another strong entry in the band’s nine-album discography.
Most of the record’s 14 songs were a part of the band’s live repertoire prior to being officially released — in some cases, for more than a decade. As such, “Tomorrow” has a lived-in feel, a sense of hard-earned optimism that ultimately powers the record.
The band’s seventh chart-topper in a row and the biggest-selling rock album in four years when it came out in June 2018, “Tomorrow” underscores how the Dave Matthews Band continues to be very much a contemporary act, even though the group turns 30 next year.
DMB is still putting out quality material with impressive consistency.
The takeaway?
Growing old and getting old don’t have to be one and the same.
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.