DAVE MATTHEWS BAND

Formed: 1991, Charlottesville, Virginia

Members: Carter Beauford, drums (born Charlottesville, Virginia, 2 November 1958); Stefan Lessard, bass (born Anaheim, California, 4 June 1974); Dave Matthews, vocals, guitar (born Johannesburg, South Africa, 9 January 1967); LeRoi Moore, saxophone, flute (born Durham, North Carolina, 7 September 1961); Boyd Tinsley, violin (born Charlottesville, Virginia, 16 May 1964).

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Crash (1996)

Hit songs since 1990: "What Would You Say," "Crash into Me," "The Space Between"

With jazzy chords, theatrical vocals, and impeccable guitar solos, the Dave Matthews Band was one of the most musically masterful groups to make the Top 40 playlists during the 1990s and 2000s.

Lead singer Dave Matthews picked up plenty of musical influences during his childhood. His father was a physicist who performed research in remote locales; the family moved constantly. During his time in South Africa, Matthews absorbed African rhythms but also listened to rock. In the 1980s, he settled in Virginia and began playing small gigs. He formed his band with other local musicians he admired. However, he later expressed regret about naming the band after himself, emphasizing that his band mates influence him more than he influences them.

With three black and two white members, the band is one of the few that is racially integrated. The group attracted label RCA's attention by selling 100,000 copies of independent release Remember Two Things (1993). The band's major-label debut, Under the Table and Dreaming (1994), followed and it broke through the grunge and neopunk prevalent at modern rock radio with the single "What Would You Say." With a time-signature change and outstanding tenor saxophone solo, it is musically far more challenging than typical radio fare. However, the song's rumbling groove and Matthews's extroverted baritone overcame doubts by nervous program directors, and the group had its first hit.

With the potentially make-or-break sophomore album coming up, the band decided to show more of its personality, figuring that long-term success would only be worthwhile if it reflected the band's true nature. For Crash (1996), the band pretested much of the new material on the road and recorded many of the tracks "live in the studio" as a band, instead of one instrument at a time. The first single "Too Much" is a grooving, funk track that skewers gluttony. While its relatively simple hook makes it a logical choice for radio and MTV, that quality makes it seem too blatantly commercial for many diehard fans. For a band with Matthews's reputation, it was not the best choice for a single. Even boosters wondered if the band's 1994–1995 success had been a fluke.

The follow-up single, "So Much to Say," whose midtempo groove, baritone saxophone, and wide-ranging vocals are more representative of the Dave Matthews Band that fans know and love, was another modest hit. It took a third single, "Crash into Me," to both please the old fans and create new ones. The song is a ballad, but the rainy guitar riffs, seductive lyrics, and gentle percussion make it far different from cloying adult contemporary fare. A perfect soundtrack to romantic activities, the song spent fifty-two weeks on the Hot 100 chart. After some tense moments, the gamble on a more authentic sound paid off, and the album went on to sell more than 7 million copies.

For many bands, live albums seem like little more than vanity affairs full of gratuitous applause and frantic

postproduction. However, the Dave Matthews Band is in its element on stage. Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95 (1997) is one of the band's most important albums, showing the group's improvisational prowess.

The stellar success of Crash seemed to give the band license to indulge its jam-band tendencies on Before These Crowded Streets (1998), many of whose songs clock in at more than seven minutes. Interestingly, the group denies it is a jam band, saying extended solos are common in jazz. The album boasts some interesting guest artists—alternative rock star Alanis Morissette sings on "Spoon" and the Peter Gabriel-esque "Don't Drink the Water" features Bela Fleck on banjo. Matthews opens the album with the world beat groove and scat singing of "Pantala Naga Pampa." The variety continues with the next track, "Rapunzel," one of the group's most R&B-influenced tunes. Steve Lillywhite, one of the top and best-known producers in rock, produced the album, as he did with the previous two studio sets. Although the album was geared more toward die-hard fans and produced no big hits, it sold more than 3 million copies.

By the late 1990s, the Dave Matthews Band had become a phenomenon among college students, young professionals, and so-called bourgeois bohemians. The loyal fans at its concerts prompted comparisons to the Grateful Dead's followers, known as Deadheads; both bands took a relaxed attitude toward home taping of their concerts. Matthews kept the bootleggers from making all the live-recording profits by releasing live albums at a frequent pace, every two years or so.

The band headed back to the studio with Lillywhite in 2000, but management and the label were unhappy with the sessions, which were proceeding under the working title The Summer So Far. Before These Crowded Streets had been a more self-indulgent effort, and it sold less than half of what Crash did. Now the label was getting reports that the band's new material was even less pop-oriented and more introspective. Worried, the band and label agreed to scrap the sessions and start from scratch with proven hit-maker Glen Ballard (Alanis Morissette, No Doubt). Matthews began writing more upbeat material.

The result, Everyday (2001), represents a commercial comeback, though naturally some hardcore fans were skeptical of the more mainstream material. Ballard updates the group's sound, bringing electric guitars to the forefront and using echo and reverb to recast Matthews's voice. Matthews sings with a grainier, less twangy tone, and comes across somewhat like Peter Gabriel. He gamely goes along with plugging in his guitar, saying he preferred acoustic guitar in the past because it was what he knew best. "I Did It," a funky confession of sins along the lines of "Too Much," showcases the more compact, slick sound. The group kicks into an uncharacteristically aggressive rock groove on "When the World Ends," which also throws a curve by using layered strings, not just Boyd Tinsley's violin. Ballard brings the drums high in the mix on "So Right," all the better with which to get radio's attention, though Tinsley's colorful violin keeps the song grounded in the band's familiar tradition. Like Crash, this album earned its biggest hit with a ballad. "The Space Between" fuses the group's jazzy, sax-fueled, loose-jointed groove with a bright, modern electric guitar riff. Not quite as steamy as Crash, it delighted listeners nonetheless. With economic uncertainty and the September 11 terrorist attacks, 2001 was a depressed year for music sales, but Everyday managed to equal its predecessor's sales of 3 million.

Delighting fans, the group resurrected much of the unreleased 2000 material in 2002, promoting longtime engineer Steve Harris as producer of Busted Stuff (2002). Matthews goes back to the acoustic guitar and the tempo slows down a bit. "Grey Street" exemplifies the slightly more melancholy approach, as Matthews croons sympathetic lyrics: "There's an emptiness inside her / and she'd do almost anything to fill it in." However, the group still lets loose—the minor-key "Captain" features some of Stefan Lessard's best bass playing. The album includes a bonus DVD with live footage. Matthews is more lyrically introspective and mellow, perhaps a consequence of his becoming a father. Despite his fame, he continues to live in Charlottesville, Virginia, though he and his wife also have a home in suburban Seattle, Washington.

Long solos, complex chords, and diverse instrumentation are far from the stereotypical makings of a band that regularly conquers the Top 40. Outliving grunge, bubblegum, and skate-rock fads, the eclectic, unpredictable Dave Matthews Band gives idealists faith in an industry where sometimes talent is not as important as looks and demographic trends.

Spot Light: Busted Stuff

The Dave Matthews Band stood at a crossroads in 2002. It was about to release Busted Stuff, even though much of the album's material had been circulating around the Internet for more than a year. Nine of the album's eleven songs were originally recorded in 2000 with longtime producer Steve Lillywhite. However, when the project was scrapped in 2001 for seeming too melancholy and the band put out the sunnier Everyday instead, fans had a field day sending each other copies of what they dubbed The Lillywhite Sessions. Redoing the material with producer Steve Harris in 2002, the band changed some lyrics and added two new songs, "Where Are You Going" and "You Never Know." Many wondered if the release was redundant, since almost every loyal fan already had most of the material. But the band's reworking paid off. The word quickly got around that the arrangements and many of the lyrics were different, and fans also banded together to send a message that they were not trying to pick the band's pocket by avidly trading music. The album easily debuted at number one, selling more than 621,000 copies its first week.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Under the Table and Dreaming (RCA, 1994); Crash (RCA, 1996); Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95 (Bama Rags/RCA, 1997); Before These Crowded Streets (RCA, 1998); Everyday (RCA, 2001); Busted Stuff (RCA, 2002).

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