Dave Matthews Psyched to Play Outside Lands

Posted on Aug 11th 2009 11:30AM by Benjy Eisen
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When Dave Matthews Band headlines Outside Lands on Saturday, Aug. 29 in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, expect Matthews himself to be in a festive mood. "It's a lot of fun to be in an environment that seems like a bit of a party," Matthews tells Spinner. "For me, it feels like more of a party for the performance as well."

Matthews is no stranger to throwing parties, of course. He's headlined some of the largest, most respected festivals in the world, from Bonnaroo and Rothbury in the past to Austin City Limits and Mile High Festival this year, and that's in the US alone. For more than a decade, however, DMB have characteristically headlined their own annual amphitheater and stadium summer tours across America, reserving many festival gigs for events abroad.

"There's an air of excitement that's different," says Matthews. "There's a real energy, a real electricity that's more present in the festival environment, and I'm glad they're coming back more and more in the States." Matthews says that on his seasonal summer jaunts, he already knows everyone backstage and is already intimately familiar with the opening bands. He usually tours with one, sometimes two, openers. At Outside Lands, however, there will be 22 other bands from a variety of different genres such as indie rock (Portugal the Man), rap-rock (Street Sweeper Social Club), Brazilian (Os Mutantes), Cambodian (Dengue Fever), and Americana (Conor Oberst) performing on the same day as DMB. Bands that ordinarily would be headliners (the Mars Volta, Black Eyed Peas) are just peas in a pod leading up to Matthews' main course, but then there are other attractions as well from wine tasting to a craft fair.

"In a way, I prefer when there's many bands on the bill, that it's in a single place and that there's a variety of ... different kinds of music," says Matthews. "There's assumptions made by all of us as listeners, you know, as to what kind of music we like and what kind of music we don't like, and I think sometimes we're right. But often, unless we make an effort, we just sort of decide what musical group we belong to and exclude ourselves. Festivals like this are exciting because you get to hear and be forced to be exposed to other, different kinds of music."

That kind of sounds like something a music fan would say. Oh, right...