Dave Matthews, Charles Cross honored at Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony

It’s not everyday a guy who entertains tens of thousands of fans for three hours a night on stage gets nervous. But an endearing Dave Matthews seemed to have some jitters on an evening when he and his famously freewheeling band received one of music’s highest honors.

Dave Matthews Band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday alongside Ozzy Osbourne, Cher, Mary J. Blige and other music legends during a star-studded ceremony broadcast live on Disney+. If being feted in company with generations of some of the most influential and inspirational artists wasn’t enough pressure, the Virginia band led by the longtime Seattleite was tasked with closing out the 5.5-hour parade of legends at Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse.

As the marathon ceremony of all-star performances and lengthy acceptance speeches wound down, celebrity superfan Julia Roberts took the stage to introduce what she called the “personally life-affirming” band. Roberts’ firsthand testimonials mirrored the experiences of many DMB die-hards who tuned in and turned out in-person to see the jammy roots rockers enshrined in the Rock Hall.

“It’s no wonder that they have arrived here at the Hall of Fame. The musical talent, the originality, the sheer quantity of genres they perform, it’s mind-blowing,” Roberts gushed.

Roberts wasn’t the only famous friend to have her mind blown by DMB’s mix of folk, rock, bluegrass, progressive jazz, funk and just about every other form of American music. The actress’ monologue was spliced with a video presentation that included some words of praise from Matthews’ Seattle pal Brandi Carlile.

“Dave Matthews Band is a freight train,” Carlile said in the prerecorded video. “It is a symphony in and of itself. You separate any of it, it won’t make sense. You put it all together and it is mind-blowing.”

“Dave’s poetry isn’t fortune cookie poetry,” she said in another clip extolling Matthews’ singer-songwriter side. “He’s not a one-liner guy. We do live in a catchphrase time and Dave’s songwriting, it serves that whole four and a half minutes.”

Who knows, maybe one day Matthews can return the favor for Carlile, who as a young unknown artist, once performed in the Gorge Amphitheatre parking lot outside of one of DMB’s annual “Labor Dave weekend” shows at the landmark Washington venue.

After a 10-minute introduction, Matthews & Co. came out to do what the jammy giants do best, performing four of their biggest tunes (albeit less expansive takes, running on TV time), including a peppy “Ants Marching” that sparked a singalong among the DMB faithful in the crowd. In a loving salute, saxophonist Jeff Coffin, who joined the band after original member LeRoi Moore died in 2008, played a saxophone that once belonged to Moore.

Other DMB classics “Crash Into Me,” “So Much to Say,” “Too Much” also made the cut before a show-closing encore after Matthews’ somewhat rushed acceptance speech.

“I had so much written down and the poor teleprompter driver is like ‘What is happening?!’” Matthews joked.

Matthews recalled meeting his future bandmates while bartending at a Charlottesville bar, Miller’s, describing Moore and drummer Carter Beauford as “my heroes.”

“I, for years, was a fan of these musicians before I ever told them that I played the guitar,” Matthews said. “That bar was a great place for musicians.”

Leading up to Dave Matthews Band’s induction, many wondered whether longtime violinist Boyd Tinsley would appear with his former bandmates. Tinsley split from the band amid sexual harassment allegations levied by a Seattle-based musician in 2018. Matthews acknowledged the onetime fan-favorite violinist while thanking several people who weren’t present.

“Not here, obviously, Boyd Tinsley. Wherever you are, we hope you’re finding the happiness you seek,” Matthews said.

DMB’s Rock Hall induction came on their second try after falling short when they were first nominated for the 2020 class, despite winning an online fan vote. Thanks to a massive cultlike following that’s made DMB one of the biggest live acts in the world, DMB took the fan vote again this year, which a wisecracking Matthews alluded to while thanking their fans.

“I wanted to get the most important thing that I think matters to everything about this band, and probably every band here, is our fans,” Matthews said to erupting applause. “I mean it. It’s bananas. I blame it on their persistence, not on the quality of anything, but we won the fan vote when we were first nominated, but we didn’t get in. … We won [again] this time … and we got in — which is amazing, thank you to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But I thought it would’ve been pretty cool if we didn’t get in again, because then it’d be like ‘Huh. Look at that.’”

Thank yous out of the way, DMB returned to their instruments for a funky encore of Talking Heads “Burning Down the House” to end the marathon ceremony. Matthews actually got his first taste of the Rock Hall stage much earlier in the night, paying tribute to the late great and fellow inductee Jimmy Buffett with a tear-jerking rendition of “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”

Matthews wasn’t the only Seattleite honored at the Rock Hall ceremony on Saturday. Renowned Seattle journalist Charles Cross, 67, appeared in the Rock Hall’s In Memoriam segment alongside recently fallen music heroes including Kris Kristofferson, members of MC5 and The Spinners, John Mayall, Steve Albini and more. The acclaimed rock biographer, editor of Seattle’s essential grunge-era music magazine The Rocket and founder of Bruce Springsteen fanzine Backstreets died in August.