My friend and I showed up at the Y100 radio station booth at the xgames on Sunday, and this guy standing nearby looked at my friend's DMB shirt and said, "Hey, that's our band." We both went "huh?" The guy goes, "We work for Dave Matthews Band." I turned around immediately and asked, "Where's Stefan?" The guy looked at some other guy standing next to him and went, "Yo, where's Fonz?" That guy shrugged, so the first guy picks up his cell phone and makes a few calls. At this point, I was pulling out my wallet and showing him all my dmb pictures in it, and my wad of ticket stubs, and I explained to him how I had missed Stefan the day before.
He says that our best bet is to go to the VIP lot and wait until Stefan's bus got in. We headed over and found that in order to get to the lot, we would have to pass through a HUGE ass line of people waiting to get into the First Union Center. We snuck around a side gate and I told a guard that I just needed to get something out of my car - he asked which lot and I told him "Lot D" with enough confidence that he let us right on in, even though I had just totally guessed a letter.
We waited around awhile until we saw the bus, and it pulled right up next to the curb where we were standing. Stefan was sitting in the front, about five feet away from us...I had covered my mouth with my hand from being in shock and I looked down at the ground for a second while my friend waved at him. I looked back up and he had this huge, ear-to-ear teethy smile and was laughing a lot.
The dmb guy from the radio booth showed up and got on the bus, said something to Stefan, and came back out to tell us, "Just stay put, he'll come over to you when he gets out." So we waited for awhile until he came over...my buddy did a great job of keeping me calm, not letting me get teary, and making me smile. She's one of my friends that I'm responsible for getting into DMB, even though she's not really all that into them, but she still got just about as excited as I did about meeting Stefan, so it was great to have someone to freak out with.
He came over to us and gave me a hug (YAY!), as I told him "You're like, my favorite person in the whole world...I told Dave that, too." We got a picture and I figured he might just leave after that but he stood there and kinda leaned back and said, "So..are you from Philadelphia?" And he actually stayed for a few minutes just to talk about..stuff. I thanked him for all the music and told him he's the reason I play bass guitar. "You play bass?? That's AWESOME, right on!!! You gotta like, get all into it..." and don't you know, he started doing his little dance for us...yes, the actual bassmutha dance. He told us that Tony Hawk had been on his bus the night before and "he signed my skateboard!! Yayyy!" He waved his arms around and jumped up and down. He had said something about my Phish shirt, so I brought up the new tour, and he didn't know about it! I was the first person to tell Stefan about Phish being back:) My friend started telling him about one of my slizzards, and I added that it had been at the same place we were at right then (First Union Center)...and he goes, "Ohh, that little one? It was on a keychain, right?" Haha! How incredible...he remembered my very own slizzard. I asked where all the slizzards had gone and he said that they were getting to be too much. "Everywhere I looked, it was like - lizards, lizards, lizards!! I felt like the Discovery Channel store." And we all laughed. He said the slizzards are on his bus, in his house, and in the studio, and that they are all very well taken care of. At one point, it just kinda hit me, what was going on, and I stood there for a second and didn't say anything. Stefan turned to me and touched my arm and said, "Aw, you're shaking all over!!" All I could say was, "You're my favorite one..out of all five of you guys..." He said, "Wow..thank you!" and smiled really big again.
After maybe five minutes, he said he had to get going. Before he walked away, he reminded me to keep up with my bass playing and wished me luck. And then he was gone!
Courtney's story
