When I listen to "The Space Between" on the Dave Matthews Live at Folsom Field album I am instantly taken to my spot on a bench high up in the crowd. It was July 11, 2001, the world had not yet witnessed planes flying into buildings and a Manhattan covered in dust and despair. I remember parking my car on some side street in front of a very typical Boulder, lived in by college kids house. Music was playing, the sun was shining, I'd seen the band before and I knew we were in for a good show. As I locked the door to the car and turned to walk toward the stadium I remember seeing a man walking right down the middle of the road. He was barefoot and had on some hippie style pants with a drawstring, he had the longest dreads and no shirt on, he looked like he lived in the light. Dirty sure, but I remember thinking, "I could get used to this place."
As folks filed into the stadium and waited for the show to start, clouds rolled over and settled right over the stadium and all of Boulder, it didn't take long for the rain to start pouring! We wondered if the show might have to be cancelled but before we knew it the band was taking the stage. I don't think I've ever stood in a more elated crowd. I remember the way the boy in front of me had taken off his drenched t-shirt and started flying it around his fist like a helicopter, with every whip around it sent water flying off in a different trajectory path then the rain that was pouring straight down on us.
I remember when "The Space Between" started playing, it had quickly become one of my favorite DMB songs, probably because every time I listened to it I obsessed over a boy named Will who up to that point, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell had loved me more naughty and made me more weak in the knees than any other boy before. I would drive everywhere listening to that song, remembering him parked beside my car, laying on the hood of his own, drenched in sunlight and waiting for me to get out of class; remembering him sneaking into the poetry reading in that tiny coffee shop and me wondering if he was really there for poetry or if he was there for me; and lastly remembering the night he invited me over to his place and we drove to the gas station where he proceeded to steal a bundle of firewood... you know where that's going. This boy had plagued my thoughts for months and I knew he was probably in that same rain soaked stadium as me, so when I heard Dave Matthews sing, "You shall not quit me so quickly..." I was thrown back into that tailspin of memories.
Now, when I hear Dave sing, "like will it rain today?" and I hear the crowd cheer I mostly just remember that concert and the way it felt to be in a stadium, soaked to the bone, and to love a band so much. It's by far and away my favorite concert of all time.
I was there! I remember it so similarly, too. Such a great night.
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