The Stone (Dave Matthews Band song)

Song_infobox
Name = The Stone


SorA = album
Artist = Dave Matthews Band
Album = Before These Crowded Streets
Released = April 28, 1998
track_no = 7
Recorded = The Plant Studios, Sausalito, CA & Electric Lady Studios, New York, NY
Genre = Rock
Length = 7:28
Writer = David J. Matthews
Composer = Dave Matthews Band
Label = RCA
Producer = Steve Lillywhite
Chart position =
prev = "Halloween"
prev_no = 6
next = "Crush"
next_no = 8

"The Stone" is a Dave Matthews Band song from the album "Before These Crowded Streets". The song is about a guilt over death which one may have caused, and the "stone" in the song refers to a gravestone. The song originally held the working title "Chim Chimeney."

Other interpretations of the song include a theme of Dave Matthews' fear of asking his wife for marriage, as well as the life of Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus in his final days.Fact|date=February 2007

The song is written in a 6/8 time signature and features orchestral arrangements by John D'earth with the Kronos Quartet on strings. A 28-second studio jam in 2/2 is heard at the end of the track.

Live performance

In concert, especially at acoustic shows, Matthews has been known to interpolate Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" towards the end of the song (Leroi Moore's saxophone can be heard playing the melody of said song on the album version). During live performances of the song, the band plays an unsettling outro not featured on the studio version. Toward the end of the song, after it decrescendos, the band suddenly and intensely comes back in with the main riff of the song and finishes that way as opposed to fading out gracefully as on the album itself.

Live releases

*"Listener Supported"
*"Warehouse 5 Vol. 2
*"The Gorge (Special Edition)"
*"Live Trax Vol. 2"
*"Weekend on the Rocks"