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Dave Matthews Band and St. Vincent Team Up for Talking Heads Cover at Riverbeat Festival
At Riverbeat in Memphis, St. Vincent joined Dave Matthews Band for “Spoon” and a live cover of Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House,” extending a recent streak of Byrne-connected performances.
Sunday night at Memphis’ Riverbeat Music Festival delivered one of those crossover moments that sounds unlikely on paper but made perfect sense onstage. During Dave Matthews Band’s headlining set, St. Vincent stepped out from her immediate-support slot to join the band for “Spoon,” then stayed for a charged run through Talking Heads’ 1984 staple “Burning Down the House.” Fan-shot clips from the set are already circulating.
The pairing wasn’t random, even if it looked surprising on the lineup poster. Dave Matthews Band has been playing “Burning Down the House” for years, including its performance at Talking Heads’ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2002. St. Vincent, meanwhile, has deep Byrne-adjacent history of her own. She has collaborated with David Byrne for more than a decade and reunited with him at New Orleans Jazz Fest the previous weekend.
At Jazz Fest, Byrne and St. Vincent performed another Talking Heads track, 1986’s “Wild Wild Life,” a song they also played together during their 2013 run. That recent appearance gave extra context to her Riverbeat cameo: this wasn’t a novelty guest spot so much as a continuation of a long-running conversation between artists working inside the Talking Heads songbook.
