Dave Matthews Band (Eventually) Found Its Groove at Dos Equis Pavilion

Even a band renowned for its groove can occasionally take its time finding it. So it was on Saturday night for the Dave Matthews Band, making its annual pilgrimage to Fair Park and Dos Equis Pavilion, a venue the group has visited — under its myriad monikers — every year since 2005 (with just two exceptions, one being the COVID-19 pandemic).

It's been a little over a year since the band's last trip through town, and the cast of characters on stage was as before: loose-limbed singer-songwriter Dave Matthews, steadfast timekeeper Carter Beauford, endlessly buoyant bassist Stefan Lessard and fretboard wizard Tim Reynolds. And there were (relatively) new kids on the block: trumpeter-backing vocalist Rashawn Ross, saxophonist (and University of North Texas alum) Jeff Coffin and pianist Buddy Strong.

Together, the septet entertained a near-capacity crowd that spilled out into the farthest reaches of the venue’s lawn. The band spent two and a half hours amid some lovely springtime weather as it roamed the breadth of its formidable back catalog, although getting to the good stuff was an exercise in patience.

The band is, theoretically, touring behind its 10th studio album, last year’s Walk Around the Moon, but it wasn’t of primary concern Saturday. (In hindsight, perhaps the audience should’ve taken Matthews at his word: “We’ll just ease into the evening, ease into it,” he said after “You Never Know” concluded, before veering into a typical non sequitur: “I hope your ass feels good. It matters — we don’t talk about it enough. We should.”) The show opened with “When the World Ends,” which was followed in quick succession by “Funny the Way It Is” and “You Never Know.” There was a sinking feeling that, on this night, DMB would be forsaking its omnivorous sonic style and signature, discursive jam sessions for the short, tight and bright version of the band — the gleamingly commercial, three-and-a-half-minute songs that often stop just as they’re getting going.

The set loosened a little with the introduction of “#41,” but it wasn’t until a nearly 10-minute, full-bore rendition of “Warehouse” — blessedly shorn of many of the fan-added filigrees from the last decade; no protracted “Woo!”-filled intros here — that the proceedings really got going on a stage dressed with a series of LED panels pressed into various configurations throughout.

That ecstatic peak soon gave way to another, albeit one situated at the other end of the spectrum: a smoldering, jazzy “Lover Lay Down” that was capped with a gorgeous, extended alto sax run from Coffin, earning him a fist bump from Lessard.

Aside from a head-scratching cover of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” sandwiched between “Lover Lay Down” and the equally gentle “Stolen Away on 55th and 3rd,” the closing stretch of Saturday’s set was sustained ecstasy. A muscular “Grey Street” gave way to a sinuous, pungently funky “Everyday” (the latter showcasing Strong’s superb organ playing), with the band’s staple “Ants Marching” closing out the main set, capped by a playful roundelay of solos among each member of the group. (The encore, tacking on a solo Matthews rendition of “Some Devil,” a moody, bluesy shard of a song, and a full band, powerhouse cover of “All Along the Watchtower” to close things out, was icing on the cake.) It was the sort of spark that had been tougher to find early on but proved to be more than worth the wait. The advantage and challenge of a group with such longevity (recently nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) is that those in attendance each have a preferred version or era of Dave Matthews Band they want to hear live.

There are those, for example, who were ecstatic “Black and Blue Bird,” a sweetly waltzing cut from 2018’s otherwise so-so LP Come Tomorrow, was aired out Saturday. Matthews and his collaborators are savvy enough to know they can’t linger too long in one period or another.

Too many tracks from the mid-2000s onward, and they’ll probably lose the old-timers, but ignore anything after 1998, and you’ll alienate the recent converts. It’s a tricky tightrope to walk, one made all the more difficult by the fact that the core of the group (Matthews, Lessard, Beauford and Reynolds) is entering its third decade of doing this — fatigue is bound to creep in around the edges at some point. But at its best, there are moments where the musicians slip the bonds of time and find pockets of transcendence.

To watch Matthews and his bandmates tearing into tunes older than many of the young faces in attendance, scaling the heights of improvisatory glory and locking into a wavelength improbably sustained for so many days and nights was to be reminded of another aside Matthews offered midway through Saturday’s set: “We doing what we doing,” he said, fiddling with his acoustic guitar. “We can’t do anything else. You gotta do what you can do.”