The Dave Matthews Band Plays Gospel

I grew up in a small suburban/ rural town, which means you could probably call it a rural suburb of Minneapolis. My family lived 55 minutes west of Minneapolis when I was born and now they live 30 minutes from downtown in the same house because of the wonderful, God-given invention of freeways. Being from a rural suburb has a ton of good things going for it; I can see a Twins game anytime I want, go to a coffee shop with all the weird people down by the Lakes anytime I want, as well as drive two minutes to watch amateur Polo played on an infrequently used airplane runway. (What?) Exactly what I thought growing up, but hey, that’s home. Maple Plain, Minnesota or otherwise known as The MP.

I also grew up as my father’s son, playing baseball and basketball, knowing that crying wasn’t cool, especially if the only thing that was hurt was your feelings. School was fun because I was smart; one teacher that I regrettably never challenged myself to take actually called me bright, which I in turn told her I thought she heard wrong. To this day I don’t know who had things more accurately. I loved math and the “sciences” because I could reason and logically steer my way through them, relying more on my God-given gifts than actual learning methods. The arts drove me crazy. Trying to connect emotion to a piece of clay that wouldn’t stay on a spinning wheel was arguably the dumbest and most ludicrous thing I had ever seen. Music was just as bad. I could see the need for structure but not all the “why” questions behind all the “what” questions.

For instance; what is the sound of that instrument there? Hand goes in the air and little Jason yells out a violin. Good job little mathematical Jason, now why would the composer choose to play that note with a violin? I don’t know, because it sounds good? Yes it sounds good, but why does it sound good? I don’t know because my ears tingle and I get little shivers when it screeches like that? Okay, but what emotion is the composer trying to make you feel? Love and happiness. Why? Are you kidding me? Didn’t we just go around and around two seconds ago? Let me listen to the piece, memorize what it sounds like and who composed it so I can regurgitate it back to you three weeks later for my “A”. That in a nutshell is my grade school, middle school and high school experience with the arts, and it only got better from there.

Now in middle school, I was corrupted for a long period of time. My youth group showed a video called “Hells Bells,” a pretty famous documentary on “evil” music from the late 80’s early 90’s that was leading young people to hell. They had interviews with the satanic high priest, excerpts from very disturbing concert performances, and interviews with devil worshipping band singers and guitarists. Basically, anything and everything that was scary to a 13 year-old rural suburban kid from the MP was used to show how the devil would take your soul if you listened to this kind of music. I couldn’t sleep for two nights after this video. I missed school the next day and even spent a couple nights on my parents floor because I was so scared the satanic high priest, who I now had a mental picture of, would come take me to hell at night if I closed my eyes.

Then it got even better the next week. (Why I went back, I’ll never know.) The next week they showed Part II of this wonderfully demonic video that was meant to scare kids away from the radio and reading Rolling Stone magazine. I think the reason I went back was because I had to show the other kids I could come back and that I was a man, and also because I convinced myself that the first video really didn’t affect me because I had never listened to “that” music before. Than part II starts, 'why main stream music is also of the devil,' including my mom’s favorite Whitney Houston. If the first half didn’t scare me enough, the second half sent me three years back in my music listening. Not only was the devil leading people to hell through music, but my own church-going, stay-at-home mom was buying into the lies that he was selling. I honestly didn’t listen to the radio (except for wonderful Focus on the Family) for three years, not until high school. Instead of the radio, I was subjected to the ungodly sounds of contemporary Christian music, the closest thing to death ever published in a recording studio.

It’s interesting how far back our separation of pop-culture and Christian culture goes. For me it was middle school, I knew then that some things were right and others were wrong. If you smoked you were wrong, if you drank you were wrong, if you danced frivolously you were wrong, if you swore you were wrong, etc. I also knew that if I read my bible everyday, prayed everyday, went to church on Sunday, I was right and God liked me because I did these things; even though I knew that those things weren’t why I was going to heaven, they did bring a smile to God’s face and every face that I cared about in the world.

The backyard of my friend Drew Roddy’s house was a safe and fun place for the guys in the neighborhood as we grew up in the rural suburb of Minneapolis. He had a pool and a trampoline, making his house the best place in the world. His mom made lunches that always tasted better because it was someone other than your own mom making you eat the same stuff you had every day. His dog Dusty liked to eat everything; shoes, towels, swim trunks (on or off the person) and especially Yard-O-Beef which gave him some monstrous, nasty gas. Drew and my best friend Aaron also liked this cool band called the Dave Matthews Band. We swam, jumped, and listened to Dave for about two straight summers towards the end of middle school and the beginning of high school. All the while, I had no idea that this music wasn’t on Focus on the Family radio, I didn’t even really listen to the lyrics for about a year-and-a-half when I finally saved up $15 and bought my first real CD (after the wonderful Jars of Clay CD I got in middle school).

I appreciated the sound of Dave’s music and liked his edgy lyrics, not knowing if he was a Christian or not (naïve middle schooler). I bought every new album he and the guys came out with, Crash, Before These Crowded Streets, Live at Red Rocks, Tim and Dave Live at Luther College, Busted Stuff, and more. I’m still buying everything that comes out; to the extent I got a boot-leg from a concert in San Francisco. But it wasn’t until I was a senior in college that I realized the Dave’s Matthew’s Band played gospel.

I was driving from the campus of Bethel College in St. Paul two hours north to meet my fiancé at our friend Hannah’s house where we would be spending the night before heading further north for the football game that weekend. As I was driving I listened to the entire Busted Stuff album, with its final cut being the wonderful song Bartender. The song is a series of requests from a patron to the bartender to fill his cup with whatever drink Jesus had that raised him from the dead and to take away whatever drink Judas drank before he betrayed Jesus. The song speaks of the patron being down on bended knee praying for the bartender to fill his cup for him. It ends with the music and Dave’s voice slowly building over a three minute climax where finally the entire band explodes into an emotional peak of ecstasy and bliss with vocals and instruments being played in perfect harmony and dissonance all at once.

When I drive my car with the Dave Matthew’s Band, I tend to let the speedometer be dictated by the emotional pitch of the music combined with my own performance in my private little moving stage on four wheels. After the first playing of the song Bartender I instantly hit rewind to play it again, I felt like I messed up my performance of a few verses and could use a second go round. The second time I did better on the verses, but realized there is more potential for performance during the final climax, where Dave let’s his voice soar, no words, no phrases, just sound at one with the instruments. It was in the third playing that I chose to put words to that sound, to put phrases where Dave had just let his voice soar. It was in this moment that I felt chills explode through my soul, emotions pouring through my very core. I actually couldn’t finish what I had started, I began to well-up with tears and my voice, already way off pitch and out of tune, began to crack and break as I let the Dave Matthews Band connect me with praises to my Father up in Heaven.

As my 1990 Geo Prism with a sunroof and rust slowly made its way back down to 70 mph from the vibrating 90 mph that I had incidentally moved it, I thought how amazing it must be to sing and play music like an angel and not even know the power and emotion that can be used to praise the one who created music. To think that life can be looked at through such a harsh lens of “right vs. wrong” leaving no room for the wonders of such majesty as the voice of Nat King Cole, the emotion of Pearl Jam, and the musical talents of Led Zeplin.

White, yellow and green rode signs flew past my window as I slowed the car on reaching the end of my trip on I-94 West, the last 16 miles would be covered going slowly through small towns on a two lane highway that Californians see only in old movies made in the 50’s. As I gaze ahead, following the straight and dashed yellow lines on the rode I had begun to question and wonder; is there more to life than right and wrong, isn’t God bigger than the boxes I’ve grown up putting him in, how can a sound that brings me near tears and allows me to connect with God in a whole new way be bad? It was in this moment that I finally had an answer to the “why” behind the “what” of music; why does it sound so beautiful and make me feel so much?
Because God can be glorified.