Dave Matthews, former bartender at Miller’s in Downtown Charlottesville, posted to his Insta on Friday, his 59th birthday, about how good he has it.
Dave, also known to tell a good story with his guitar, is 59.
Man, Dave Matthews is 59.
We’re all getting old.
“I think about how lucky I’ve been in my life here in this land, and so I then I think of how I repay it, and the way I repay this land is my taxes,” said Matthews, who lives in Seattle now, but makes it back to Central Virginia every so often to play the guitar with his band.
I don’t think he makes drinks for strangers anymore, though, because it sounds like he’s doing OK in life these days with the music thing.
“They can raise my taxes, far as I’m concerned,” Matthews said, telling us, yeah, he’s doing OK in life with the music thing.
“But – the big but, big, juicy but – that’s if they spend my taxes on, you know, bridges, and the national parks, and maintaining the highways, and libraries, and raising the minimum wage, you know, or at least, you know, paying nurses, free university for those who can’t afford it, free healthcare, things that are reasonable, school lunches, for God’s sakes, feed our children, at least school lunches. Maybe breakfast should be always available, if they need it. That’s what my taxes should be. I would be happily paying taxes.”
These might be thoughts you’ve had before.
I know I have.
Another big, juicy but was coming from Dave Matthews, as he talked to his phone, on his trek through his neighborhood.
“I don’t want my taxes to pay for invading foreign countries under false premises, kidnapping presidents to steal their natural resources, threatening to do it to more countries, claiming that somehow sovereign nations belong to us, or something’s owed to us, you know, we’re a superpower, so therefore we deserve whatever we want. God, how entitled and revolting is that? It’s revolting, it’s disgusting, it’s so unimaginative, it’s so small-minded.”
Birthdays can get you to muse.
“I don’t want my taxes to pay for a genocide in Gaza, you know, I don’t want my taxes to pay for ICE to mask thugs to roam our streets and terrorize our communities and rip families apart.
“We should be taking care of each other. We should be minding each other. We should be housing the homeless. We shouldn’t be, you know, throwing people to the ground.”
“Which brings me to Renee Nicole Good, murdered in front of her fellow citizens in Minneapolis, murdered in the streets.”
ICYMI
Here’s where the few of you who read this far who aren’t fans of Dave Matthews – and/or aren’t fans of me, a former grocery-store stocker and fast-food cashier who is now doing OK in life – are going, here we go.
You think Renee Good deserved what she got.
I, who you don’t like, told you it was murder, now Dave Matthews, who you don’t like, is telling you it was murder – but Donald Trump, JD Vance and Kristi Noem, who you do like, told you the widow/mother of three/ODU alum/poet is a far-left lunatic/domestic terrorist who tried to run the ICE agent with a cellphone recording the scene for content in one hand and a gun drawn and pointed at her in the other, and while you can see for yourself that what Dave and I are telling you is what happened, and that she was in fact a victim of murder, you can’t concede the point.
ICYMI
- ‘Where those two meet’: May Renee Nicole Good not have died in vain
- ‘I don’t know how we recover from this’: Trumpers realizing they can’t keep lying to us
“No matter what narrative this administration is trying to sell us, we can see the videos,” Matthews said. “Maybe, if they show you one, and they slow it down, they tell you where to look, you might think maybe there’s a chance, maybe there’s a chance, that the gunman felt threatened, but from most angles, near and far, looks like she was trying to get away, and he shot her three times in the head, murdered in cold blood.
“This administration, these people who are trying to tell us not to believe what we see, it is so horrific. I don’t understand how you can claim that she was ramming their cars or that she was attacking them. There’s nothing to suggest that, and it’s mind-boggling, and it’s deeply upsetting to me, and to so many people, and we can’t just let it slide, to Trump, to Kristi Noem, to Stephen Miller, to Pete Hegseth, to Patel, to Bondi, to all of them, just deeply, deeply dishonest people, just cowardly, shameful dishonest people. Fuck them. They are revolting.”
I mean, yeah.
And I can hear a couple of you out there tsk-tsking about the language, which you don’t do when it’s Trump dropping an f-bomb, but that’s OK; we all know your pearl-clutching is performative.
“Walking my beautiful neighborhood, around my beautiful neighbors, I’m grateful to be here, but I’m deeply ashamed of this government, the way they’re treating our neighbors, outside and inside this country. It is horrific,” Matthews said, as he wrapped his message, stopping to address barking dogs as he made his trek through his neighborhood.
“I hope you all are having a good year so far, and that you’re taking care of each other, and that you’re loving each other,” Matthews said. “I’m sorry if I went a little dark, but these are dark times. Fuck ICE. Yeah. If that language offends you, come on, we all heard it before. I hope you know where my heart is. I don’t like these monsters that are running the show right now. They are ungrateful, greedy monsters. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.”
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Chris Graham
