“I can’t tell you that this is not an unusual gig for me,” Dave Matthews confessed on a hot Saturday night in East Hampton, where he and Tim Reynolds were playing at the Hampton Social, an over-the-top concert series held at the posh Ross School. “Unusual in a good way.” With champagne flowing, lobsters cracked and chaise lounges in full effect, the star-studded crowd saw the duo crunch out DMB faves, fresh cuts like “Corn Bread” and, for the first time ever, “#27.” But they opened with “So Damn Lucky,” from Dave’s 2003 solo album, Some Devil — arguably the best tune Dave’s ever written. Dave agrees: “I was jumping up and down screaming, ‘This should be the single!’ But it was like shouting into a cushion.” So download “So Damn Lucky” for 99 cents, and head out to East Hampton in late August for another Ross School show, featuring Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers — two tickets will run you only $6,000.* * * *
Guitar phenom Kaki King’s unique slapping, finger-picking and fret-hammering style turns up on new albums by Northern State, Tegan and Sara, and the Foo Fighters. “She’s a fucking genius,” says Dave Grohl, who tapped King for “The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners,” a Foos instrumental. King is currently in the Catskills cutting her fourth album, with producer Malcolm Burn (Emmylou Harris, Daniel Lanois), but she’s hoping for a reunion with Grohl, who wants them to cut a whole album together. She reports, “When he realized that I also played drums, he said, ‘This is ridiculous! I’m a guitarist-drummer too!’” When January recording plans fell through, she says, “It became, ‘Hey, let’s do the record in one night at my house in L.A. – it’ll be better than Guns n’ Roses!’” Faster, too.