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We went to see the Dave Matthews Band concert at Meo Arena on May 5th. The American group has not been playing in Portugal since 2019.
The band, born in Virginia, USA, has had a career spanning over 30 years, and it’s no secret that they really enjoy playing in Portugal. It’s not the first tour European event that the Dave Matthews Band closes with a concert in Lisbon, which raised expectations, both among musicians and spectators, high. And, in our opinion, they were very well responded to.
Full of energy, the seven members of the band took the stage and, without any type of introduction, they immediately started playing, opening the concert with two old songs. “So Right” and “When the World Ends” were attended by an audience of thousands of people accompanying the melodies, full of vivacity and enthusiasm.
This enthusiasm is, in fact, very typical at Dave Matthews concerts. Although most of the band’s members are already in their 50s, the determination with which they conquer the stages and deliver versions of songs that always seem new to their fans is impressive. The improvisations they perform (and which are already a trademark) fill all of the group’s concerts with a lot of originality, and this performance was no exception. Whether in the typical “41” and “Crush”, where playing with the instruments is always inevitable, or in pauses between songs, as happened with the bass after “Idea of You”, it is very common for there to be times when a musician from the band band discovers notes and creates new sounds. This group’s willingness to “discover” music ends up filling the atmosphere between the seven with a joy that always infects the audience.
A funny moment of the concert was when Dave Matthews explained that, in one tour European club they had played many years ago, Portugal was not the last country they had played in. The vocalist commented to the audience that, at the time, the band had been very impressed with the country, the city, and also the energy of the fans. “Why didn’t we choose Portugal to close the tour?” was one of the things said between the band, according to Dave, at the time. From then on, when the band came to play on the European continent, they always decided to end with a concert in Lisbon. Dave ended this short monologue by commenting that Portugal was the “caviar” of European countries, which generated a wave of enormous excitement among the fans.
After the classic “Ants Marching”, the band left the stage to the sound of applause and deafening screams of people asking them to play more. So, minutes after leaving, Dave returned alone and played part of an original and a cover, before the musicians all returned and finally closed the concert with “The Last Stop”. With great improvisations over oriental-sounding music, the Dave Matthews Band ended a night that left nothing to be desired.
We leave here a clip of the band performing in Portugal in 2015, and we advise you to watch it. You can see in it the energy and sound so typical of these musicians who love coming to play in our country.
