Dave Matthews Band Did This To Me
My journey from shame to self- acceptance
I knew something was wrong when I started listening to Dave Matthews Band. The sound was turned up so loud, the windows reverberated from the shitty bass in my shiny, white, Equinox. I hadn’t listened to DMB since college but here I was screaming at the top of my lungs with water spilling out of my eyes. I was weepy. I was emotional. This was not like me. I am a person that likes to be in control. Control is my friend, emotions my foe. Feelings are allowed in journals and therapy. Not in leased cars while listening to a jam band who’d had its heyday during my high school years.
I don’t think anyone would care that I was listening to the musical stylings of Dave Matthews Band but I was judging myself as equally hard as I was enjoying it. This song had no business being this good. To save myself from embarrassment, I quickly rolled up my windows every time I came to a stop — which was a fair amount of times. I couldn’t allow anyone to know what I was listening to (or that I was really into it).
The shame was annoying but I still allowed myself to sing out loud at the stop lights because the windows were closed. My favorite way to listen to music is with the windows down and my mouth wide open, bridging the lyrics I do know to the ones I don’t. Hair whipping my face and not caring that it kinda hurts because I feel like a badass — a superhero in my dumb car that isn’t a corvette.
Today felt so different than all the days before because Dave Matthews Band (and his sax) was digging deep into my soul and pulling out memories I hadn’t thought of for a while. I texted my friend Anne to out myself. “I can’t stop listening to Dave Matthews Band, “Typical Situation.” She laughed and assured me it was okay, sharing her secret love of “Two Step”. But even my confession to Anne wasn’t helping to quell my roller coaster of an emotional response.
“Everybody’s happy
Everybody’s free
We’ll keep the big door open
And everyone’ll come around
Why are you different?
Why are you that way?
If you don’t get in line
We’ll lock you away”— Dave Matthews Band, “Typical Situation”
I am transported. I close my eyes and my shoulders instantly settle into a non- anxiety state. One that usually only a good therapy session, marijuana or a good cry will unveil. A deep instinctive breath followed by a long transportive exhale. It is automated, no manual needed. I’m at the beach, I’m with friends. I am relaxing. Drinking. No shoes. Warm sand between my toes. There are no mortgages or children on this beach. Only crushes and making out and a previous, simple life from long ago. And the smell of banana boat suntan lotion which is either from actual suntan lotion or piña coladas made by a shitty blender in a constant state of stickiness that I don’t have to worry about cleaning. I can’t end this memory without adding the smell of sweet tobacco. Though I haven’t smoked in over a decade, the smell instantly transports me back to college, when life seemed full of possibility. That was also the apex of my DMB fandom. I went to a concert in North Carolina — about an hour from where I was born, grew up and attended the University of South Carolina. Back then, everyone I surrounded myself with cruised with music like his. Jam bands. Widespread Panic was another. I became a huge fan of WSP when a boy that I had a movie star crush on was their biggest fan. I even went to a concert which ended up being not the same as listening to their album because these bands play five hour shows that only true fans think are fun.
My CD binder from college included these classics: “Wyclef Jean Presents The Carnival”, Pearl Jam (“Ten”, “Vs.”, “Vitalogy”), “Tidal” by Fiona Apple, Dave Matthews Band (“Under The Table and Dreaming”, “Crash”), “Evita: The Complete Motion Picture Music Soundtrack”, “Steve Miller Band Greatest Hits 1974–78”, “Send Me On My Way” by Rusted Root and various 90s bands from High School that only a mother (and apparently me) could love. In addition, “You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon, a song that would send my 20 year old body into a frenzy whenever I heard it at our sophomore year watering holes. In fact, I went so far one Tuesday night to call a local radio station from Sharky’s (a shithole my friend worked at). I shut down the night dancing on the bar (or very near it) mimicking Chevy Chase’s music video moves. It’s a wonder I ever dated.
I know what you’re thinking. That I don’t know good music. I should confess to you now: currently, my other favorite Sirius XM radio station besides Dave Matthews Band Radio, is Yacht Rock. Also in heavy rotation are Pearl Jam Radio and Lithium. Although my husband refuses to believe that Lithium can be a guilty pleasure because they play Nirvana. In fact, now that I’m really laying it all out there for you, I can sort of see that things haven’t been right for a while.
Though given what I’ve just shared here it’s unlikely you’ll believe me, there was a time I listened to respectable music. Eclectic. I would check out shows by myself of bands that friends in-the-know would recommend. Like that one time I drove to downtown Charleston from Mt. Pleasant after a new friend told me to check out Calvin Johnson. To indie rockers, he’s a God and to everyone else, he’s a dude with a weird ass, drony voice. A group of us enveloped him in a circle on the fresh cut grass. That afternoon I felt like I was discovering the Beatles (mainly George). How could there be just thirteen of us in attendance?
All of this has me wondering, how did I get from being a DMB listener in earnest, to being embarrassed that I knew all of the lyrics? It didn’t happen overnight. I mean, this is a band I used to love. I paid for a ticket to see them in the summer of my junior year of college, dragging my friend Allison who didn’t want to go, driving all the way to Blockbuster Pavilion in Charlotte, NC where I danced like no one was watching and sang out loud, no windows to roll up. Free-spirited Beth and Dave Matthews. Is there a FaceBook group for us? Secret listeners of DMB? If my friend Anne also privately enjoyed one of their songs, there must be others. How do we come to the point where we judge our former selves? And now, since rediscovery, judging my current self (essentially relegating it a guilty pleasure). Moving to Los Angeles played a big role. Even though most people that I met in LA weren’t from LA, they still didn’t listen to DMB. They listened to people like PJ Harvey — who I initially thought was a man. Not so.
Shortly after landing in Los Angeles, I got a job at the P.F.Changs in Pasadena. I was a server. There, I met a gal who was in a band (and had been in the music world for most of her life). She grew up in the evangelical churches of Alabama. And while she wasn’t allowed to really associate with TV sets or boys, she was allowed to check out Christian bands like StarFlyer 59 and JoyElectric. Even though we were babies back then — just 23 — she knew music. Now I will never be simpatico with music like her — it’s her life’s passion. But even being close friends with someone like that for the better part of the aughts, you will be rubbed off on. Musical things will stick to you. A best friend in the music world means you, too, will know about the music world.
I went to all of her band’s shows — traveling to Orange County, Long Beach — music venues from The Smell to The Troubadour and everywhere in between. The Satellite, The Echo and The Silverlake Lounge were my third home. LA Weekly was something I devoured each Thursday. My roommate and I would walk to Chango coffee shop in Echo Park, drink coffee and plan out what remained of the week based on who was playing where.
This part of my life was filled with cool bands that I was introduced to by the boys I dated, boys who were in those bands who would make me mix CDs. Even if I didn’t like the entire album I could always appreciate the music. Most times, they would become my new favorite band and I would figure out how to attend their next live show. I even started collecting momentos from said shows and would enthusiastically wait around for the drummers to sign their drum sticks. Once I started getting into better music, I hosted Record Club at my house — hell, I even got invited to other people’s Record Club. The climax to it all, I ended up being a drummer in an all-girl band. I had been anointed. I could easily pass as a cool girl in the LA music scene. But I didn’t want any of that right now. I wanted comfort food in the form of music. What was the tipping point, I wondered. Where had it all gone wrong? I searched my brain: What had happened in my life that I ended up here, in my white, late-model SUV weeping to Dave fucking Matthews Band?
I looked at the date that I texted Anne. It was only a few weeks after I quit drinking. Which makes sense. I was emotionally raw, unmoored, open but craving the familiar. Retreating to simpler times was necessary (before the 3,000 mile move to LA and the transition from college to becoming a half-adult). Before grown-up life took its toll; A spouse between projects, in a creative field at an unstable time. Add to the mix a toddler at home, house payments, my desire to change careers but not knowing what I want to do… I can’t omit the selfish want to have another child (at an advanced maternal age) but not feeling like we could or should. And I’m not alone in what takes up a lot of my time; the daily routines of housework, meal-planning, life arrangements for the entire family and my very own generalized anxiety disorder. When your world feels like it’s falling apart — you dig up your past. You try and squeeze yourself into the world you already know. And I guess, for me, that included Dave Matthews Band. Note to readers. If you quit drinking, you will not automatically start listening to DMB. And the reality is, NO ONE CARES what I’m listening to. People aren’t (usually) judging me — they’re thinking about themselves.
Dave Mathews Band has taught me that self acceptance is key. I am learning ever so slowly that I have to trust myself and be secure in what I like. Even if that currently involves a lot of saxophone solos and time travel back to 1999.
