Published July 25, 2002 in issue #25 of The Hook

BY LISA PROVENCE

Wendy Loo has hit rock bottom in her quest to see every show in the Dave Matthews Band 2002 tour. Someone stole her purse at the July 12 Charlotte concert, and her world without a cell phone has come apart.

But even in the face of adversity, Loo vows to continue crisscrossing America to see every one of DMB's 68 shows. She saw all of the band's 33 spring shows. She saw them perform at the Olympics. And by the time this hits the street, she'll be getting ready in Hartford, Connecticut, for number 14 of 34 summer concerts.

The Hook talked to Loo back in April when she kicked off her own personal DMB tour in Charlottesville. On July 15, 20,000 miles later, she was back in town between the Virginia Beach and the Camden, New Jersey, shows.

"It's been everything I thought it would be, both good and bad," reports Loo. She'd worried about getting sick of seeing the band perform, but that hasn't happened. And until someone stole her purse, the most stressful part of her adventure was getting from one place to the next.

Actually, Loo is recovering from the inconvenience of losing her license, car keys, and cell phone while far away from home. The good news is that she still has her credit cards, someone found her cell phone and the nancies have been there to help her out.

Nancies.org is the VH-1 award-winning DMB fan website created by Waldo Jaquith in Charlottesville. And Loo, aka Daveaholic, has been hooking up with nancies all over the country.

She created her own website, travelingnancy.org, that's racked up over 1.5 million hits and about 600 emails since she's followed the tour. "It's a lot of trouble to maintain the site," she admits. And after awhile, one concert review begins to sound like another.

A high point of the trip was when a DMB crew member invited her to a hotel bar in Portland. There she met saxophonist LeRoi Moore, bass player Stefan Lessard, and guest keyboard player Butch Taylor.

That high was dashed by a rumor that she was taking notes in the bar to use on her website. "I was upset that anyone in the band or the organization would think of me as a nuisance," she says.

So when she crossed paths with band members again in a bar in New York, Loo didn't approach them because "I didn't want to be perceived as a stalker or anything."

She was getting ready to leave when Moore said hi. "That was really nice," she sighs. "It was really special, and it made me feel I wasn't a nuisance."

In the course of her pilgrimage, Loo's attitude about the band has changed. "In the spring, my priority was to meet the band and crew," she reveals. "Now that I have, I'm going to sit back and enjoy the music."

And after that last show September 8 at The Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington state, will Loo be ready to toss all her DMB CDs and go cold turkey?

"Oh, god no," she exclaims. "I'll definitely never do this again, but I'll still go to several concerts a year, maybe 10 or 20 instead of nearly 70."

Sounds like Daveaholic still has a major DMB habit.

#

Wendy Loo takes on 68 Dave Matthews Band concerts

--PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO (She took them back in April, 4/18 issue)

>> Back to The HooK front page