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A woman, from a group which stood next to me at last night’s Dave Matthews Manchester gig, informed me she had flown in from America. And judging by the queue of Americans outside with tickets from fansite ‘Warehouse’ it seems likely this group were not the only ones who had.

For an artist well used to playing stadiums with capacities well over 30,000 Manchester’s Academy, which holds only 1,500, it must have felt like playing someone’s front room. Albeit a rather humid and sweaty front room. From his opening number ‘Bartender’ to the dying notes of the last of several encores Matthews sweated profusely, drenching his shirt, guitars and a fair section of the stage but never showed signs of backing off in his attacking vocal and guitar style.

Dave Matthews achieves vocal control few could dream of, breaking into percussive scats, moans and screams with intensity that brought a crowd already set to burst with anticipation up to fever pitch. His guitar playing was equally entrancing, through numbers ranging from delicate folk fingerpicking on a first play of new song ‘Sister’ dizzying fretwork on ‘Tripping Billies’ and some fantastic baritone guitar on ‘Some Devil’.

It seems strange the Dave Matthews Band has not achieved wider-spread recognition in the UK already, although attempts have been made in the past. He apologised profusely when a member of the audience brought up the abortive ‘Who is Dave Matthews?’ campaign which saw hundreds of posters posing the question covering a good part of London two years ago.

This was the opening of three nights of Matthews playing solo, to be followed by dates at Birmingham’s Academy and the Hammersmith Apollo on 15 May, and if as Matthews implied he will be bringing his full band over to England on tour soon the name will be on everyone’s lips.

Links:
DaveMatthews.com
Nancies.org
AntsMarching.com