2016 was a year of celebration as Dave Matthews Band marked its 25th anniversary. The band’s first performance of the year was in San Francisco, where DMB played a sold-out “Super Thursday Night” show as part of the festivities leading up to Super Bowl 50.
The band’s sold-out hometown benefit concert at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, VA on May 7 raised over $1.5 million for local charitable programs. Alongside the Charlottesville show, fans were able to take in the DMB 25 Pop-Up Show, a retrospective exhibit featuring photographs from the band’s first 25 years. It was a preview to the official exhibit, which opened in June at the famed Morrison Hotel Gallery in New York City. A portion of the proceeds from the band’s May 27 concert at PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, NC went to local organizations defending equality in the face of House Bill 2, which removed legal protections for LGBTQ individuals.
Dave Matthews Band played one long set without an opening act at each summer show, except for the Labor Day weekend concerts at the Gorge. Billboard hailed the band as “a must-see live act” and the Columbus Dispatch praised their music as “timeless.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted, “[DMB] provided its usual summer thrills…[and] let its free-wheeling, zig-zagging style, full of mood shifts and left turns play out during the set featuring oldies and new material.”Syracuse.com said, “Grown adults howled the lyrics to ‘Grey Street’ like they were losing their damn minds…Who could blame them? DMB made it obvious why they’re among the top touring acts in the U.S.”
In July, RCA Records and Legacy Recordings issued the first-ever vinyl edition of Crash, the band’s best-selling second studio album. Three volumes of Live Trax were released in 2016, beginning with Vol. 37, which captured one of the band’s weekly1992 performances at Trax in Charlottesville. In addition, RCA released DMBLive Trax, Charlottesville, VA 02/22/1994, the latest in the DMBLive series.
