Harry meets Dave Matthews,Dave Matthews autographs Scrollworks Card

From Harry:

Since December 12, 2002, the night I first heard Dave Matthews Band's #41, I've just been completely unable to see the world as a normal place anymore. When music that beautiful struck my ears for the first time, I didn't have to sense to realize it would change my outlook so drastically on music, art in general, or perhaps the world. To this day I still don't think I realize just how much the music of Dave Matthews Band enhances my life on more than an hourly basis. When I originally wrote this, it was about 10 times more elaborate, but there's not enough cyberspace in the world to express my appreciation for this band, so I had to leave it short.

Now, nearly six years of hearing Dave's voice through a microphone through a disc through a pair of stereo speakers makes the experience of hearing his voice from a foot away extremely surreal. This has been an ambition of mine for that long and it took me until this past Saturday, the day of my 18th Dave Matthews Band concert, to accomplish it. I'm still shaking from the adrenaline his real voice evoked in me.

So after the show on Friday night, we consulted our contact from within Dave Matthews Band (his name is Rob the Legend, he is good friends with Carter's bus driver), and found that the Band would be staying in the hottest new hotel in Indianapolis, a 5 star place that started with the letter "C". That's all he could tell us. So we drove around Indianapolis for hours until finally, at about 2:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, we found those unmistakable buses that I had seen a few months ago in Pittsburgh. They were parked just outside of the Conrad hotel, indeed the newest and hottest hotel in Indianapolis. This time I wouldn't let it slip through my fingertips.

We returned at 10:00 a.m. to wait outside the hotel for the band to come out. They had to, at some point, walk out of the hotel and onto the buses. We tried not to look conspicuous, but by 11:00 two other Dave Matthews Band fans saw us standing there and they started inquiring. We couldn't lie. We would have to form a team; we were now all there to meet Dave Matthews Band. These two clowns got a bit too excited, though, and started calling their friends. Then their friends arrived and started calling friends of their own. By 2:00 p.m., at least 35 people were outside of this hotel waiting for Dave Matthews Band to come out. My associate and I had the best spot on the sidewalk, though; we were the closest to the door.

I became completely numb when I looked through the window of the front door and saw Dave's body guard, Darryl, in the lobby of the hotel. Seconds later, the Dave Matthews came out from the elevator to join him. I've never felt this sort of adrenaline in my life.

It all went by pretty quickly, but I walked away with an autographed Scrollworks card and quite a picture of him. There's even a picture of Dave and me in the same frame. Stefan Lessard (bass guitar) came out and met us, Rashawn Ross (trumpet), Boyd Tinsley (violin); but Carter Beauford was the last to come out. By this time, there were so many people around that it sounded like a concert crowd screaming at him as soon as he came out of the hotel, so he flinched, waved, and scampered onto his bus. All we could do was wave back. He and I will meet on better terms sometime. I hope. He's my hero. He tells me things with those drums.

Earlier on Saturday, though, before anyone else was there, Jeff Coffin (interim saxophone in LeRoi's absence) came out to stroll around, so we had a nice and pretty long talk with him. I told him that during his solo in #41 he told me a serious story. He replied, "I'm glad you were listening". That was so powerful to me for some reason. He asked me my name! He asked me if I play an instrument! Why would he care? He doesn't, but it was so nice of him to do that. We talked about ambitions in the art of recording and how the business is becoming so easy that everybody can do it. He told us, "Expertise, man. People are always going to need someone with the expertise." It was awesome.

Saturday was a blur. It happened to be the third of 4 Saturdays this month that I found myself waiting outside for hours for something to happen...

7/5- Waited 12 hours in a field for some front rail at a general admission Dave Matthews Band concert.

7/19- Waited 7 hours on the sidewalk of the Summit to get an iPhone 3G.

7/26- Waited 5 hours on the sidewalk by Conrad to meet Dave Matthews Band.

Looking back on July 2008, I've done some serious standing around, but some awesome stuff has happened on account of it. Glad I had the opportunity.

Not such a coherent or interesting story, but I'll not forget it.