Dave Matthews: Pretty Bird

Dave Matthews has a gentle vulnerability to his voice that comes out more and more as he gets older.  As an artist who defied what alternative music was in the nineties against a backdrop of grunge rock with an unusually formatted rock band sans lead electric guitar, Matthews rolled into the spotlight with his own approach to songwriting and orchestration…and never apologized for it.

However, if you had the foresight to break through the catchy horn melodies, rip roaring violin, and the sea of cargo shorts and bucket hats dancing in the lawn, you found a complexity and vulnerability in the lyrical content and a collection of early softer songs that would become the true glue and catalyst for possibly the most “hard core loyal” fan base in modern music.  (Think songs like “Pay For You Get”, “Cry Freedom”, “Spoon”, & “I’ll Back You Up”).

As the decade changed, we got to absorb the only Dave Matthews solo album, Some Devil, which gave us some cripplingly vulnerable tunes like “Gravedigger” and the title track, “Some Devil”.  But still, this record was stacked with the likes of Trey Anastasio and Brady Blade and while it didn’t have the sound of the traditional Dave Matthews Band, it’s still at times hard to call it a true solo album.

Fast forward now to “Pretty Bird” which is a cover of a traditional song written and originally released by Hazel Dickens in 1973.  Dickens’ version of this song is pure acapella and performed in the old mountain style she had learned as a child from her father in West Virginia.

Dickens, who passed in 2011 after 86 years on this earth, was not only known for her uniquely lonesome and powerfully sweet vocal, but also for her pro-Union, feminist protest songs.  These songs were backed up by her own reputation for being unwilling to back down from what she believed was right for humanity.  

Cultural blogger John Pietaro noted that “Dickens just didn’t sing the anthems of labor, she lived them and her place on many a picket line, staring down gunfire and goon squads, embedded into her cause”.

There’s no better place to find inspirational songs of power and protest than the traditional folk world and on the heels of the most recent Dave Matthews Band album, Walk Around The Moon, it seems as though Dave has found a lot of connection to this segment of the American song book.  

Listening to songs off of Walk Around The Moon like “Something To Tell My Baby” and “Singing From The Windows”, these songs are more sonically akin to modern folk and Americana records than they are the traditional Dave Matthews Band. 

Fast forward to February 23rd, 2024 and with little to no advance notice, we are reintroduced to a powerful protest song by Dickens entitled “Pretty Bird” thanks to a single release by Dave Matthews.  

He approaches this song with nothing but his voice and his signature constant strum approach to the acoustic guitar.  Knowing the history of the song, it’s stunning how you can hear the hopeful worry and honesty in Dave’s intimate vocal delivery on this version.  It is as if this is his subtle way of saying to us all that we need to be careful with humanity’s delicate beauty.

Going deeper, a lyric like “I cannot make you a promise, love is such a delicate thing, fly away little pretty bird, for he’ll only clip your wings”, hits extra hard in these unprecedented times.

Releasing a cover of a song about a bird flying away, originally written and recorded by a historically strong American feminist, with lyrics harkening the clipping of wings, and flying “far beyond this dark mountain”, makes a statement this listener cannot ignore.  It’s hard to think it is a mere coincidence.

It is assuredly possible that Dave Matthews (whom is no stranger to taking a political stance), this time in a subtle but vulnerable way, is standing up for women and their rights during a time where political battles may take many of them away.  

The song is potent.

The recording beautifully shines a light on the intimate and subtle genius of Dave Matthews’ performance technique.

The message is powerful

“Fly Away Little Pretty Bird, Cold Runneth The Spring”. (Hazel Dickens)

(By Virgil Levi Erickson)