The Last Stop

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"The Last Stop"

Song by Dave Matthews Band
from the album Before These Crowded Streets
Released	April 28, 1998
Genre	Rock
Length	6:57
Label	RCA
Writer(s)	Matthews, Lessard
Composer(s)	Dave Matthews Band
Producer(s)	Steve Lillywhite
Before These Crowded Streets track listing
Rapunzel (2)	"The Last Stop" (3)	Don't Drink the Water (4)

"The Last Stop" is the third track off of the Dave Matthews Band album Before These Crowded Streets. It is directly segued into from the previous track, "Rapunzel."

This track was originally titled "The Egyptian Song" and "Black and White" before being named "The Last Stop," and remains as one of the band's biggest live cult songs today. The song compares the three main dominant religions in the world and explains how each religion is justified if one believes that it was dictated from God.

The song features Béla Fleck on the banjo. A reprise to the song is featured as a hidden track at the end of album, after "Spoon." When played live, "The Last Stop" often segues into the outro, which is performed with the whole band as opposed to the guitar-only version on the album.

[edit] In Concert

Though rarely played, "The Last Stop" is arguably the band's most popular concert song amongst its most dedicated fans. Chants of "Last Stop" are known to pop up often at concerts, with Matthews occasionally responding with a quiet and brief tease of the song's guitar part.

On occasion, a haunting prelude will come before the song.

During the fall/winter 1998 tour, "The Last Stop" hit its peak, which is close to a consensus according to fans. The song often featured Tim Reynolds on electric guitar and Fleck on banjo. Closer to Christmastime that year, Fleck was know to interpolate Johann Sebastian Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" during the reprise outro, such as during the performance released on Live Trax Vol. 1.

Changing things up a little bit for the song's performances during the 2006 summer tour, saxophonist LeRoi Moore and guest trumpeter Rashawn Ross added soaring horn lines to the song's chorus. Ross mentioned in an interview that the song was one of his absolute favorites to play.^{[citation needed]}