In three and a half decades together, Dave Matthews Band had never done the whole "perform a full studio album in sequence" thing, but Saturday night they randomly decided to give it a go. Playing the second gig of a three-night stand at the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, WA — where they once recorded the live album The Gorge — DMB played straight through their third album, 1998's Before These Crowded Streets. That's the one with "Crush" (not to be confused with "Crash Into Me"), "Stay (Wasting Time)," and "Don't Drink The Water."
The full-album performance began five songs into the set. Bela Fleck, who appeared on several tracks, was on hand to perform with Matthews and friends. According to the DMB Almanac, it was the first time his full Flecktones lineup (also including Victor Wooten, Roy Wooten, and Howard Levy) played with DMB since August of 2006. The Flecktones joined in for "#41" just before the Before These Crowded Streets surprise began. Also per the Almanac, the only other time the band played every song from an album at a show was Nov. 30, 2012, when all of Away From The World made it into the set, but not in sequence and with other songs interspersed.
According to a Bluesky post from bassist Stefan Lessard, DMB only decided to do this four hours before the show. If you ask me, doing this by surprise at a regular show rather than promoting it as a special event is the way to go.
Whats funny is we didn't know we were doing this till four hours before the show 🤪
— Stefan Lessard (@slessard.bsky.social) August 31, 2025 at 4:30 AM
