Photo via Jeff Coffin’s Facebook page

Last night, Dave Matthews Band returned to the road following a brief break for a performance at the Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek in Raleigh, NC. The Virginia-bred group has been shuffling its setlists quite a bit this spring and last night the group kicked things off with the Under the Table and Dreaming standby “The Best of What’s Around.” Though the tune remains in regular rotation and, while Raleigh is a frequent stop on DMB’s tour schedule, DMB Almanac pointed out before the show that they had not performed the number in the region since 1997. 

Then, partway through Dave Matthews Band’s set, fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves emerged, joining DMB for the first time for the classics “Lie In Our Graves,” “Satellite” and “Tripping Billies,” the latter of which featured a Lost In Space interpolation. Hargreaves, who currently lives in the area and teaches bluegrass and improvisation at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, grew up playing with her her brother Alex Hargreaves, who is part of Billy Strings’ band, as well as Brittany Haas (Punch Brothers), Sarah Jarosz (I’m With Her), and Dominick Leslie (Molly Tuttle). 

During last night’s encore, Hargreaves returned to the stage to sing and play alongside Matthews on a duet version of “Papertown,” the new original Matthews contributed to the film of the same name and had only played one previous time. She is the latest in a series of guest fiddlers to join DMB durinng the past two years, the first time they have regularly brought in guests to play the instrument since Boyd Tinsley parted ways with the group in 2018.