Dave Matthews Band
Dave Matthews Band (also known as DMB) is an American rock band formed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1991. The band's founding members are singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Matthews, bassist Stefan Lessard, drummer and backing vocalist Carter Beauford, violinist and backing vocalist Boyd Tinsley, and saxophonist LeRoi Moore. As of 2024, Matthews, Lessard, and Beauford are the only remaining founding members.
Dave Matthews Band
Dave Matthews Band's 1994 major label debut album, Under the Table and Dreaming, was certified platinum six times. As of 2018, the band had sold more than 25 million concert tickets and a combined total of 39 million CDs and DVDs.[4] Their 2018 album, Come Tomorrow, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, making DMB the first band to have seven consecutive studio albums debut at the peak. The band won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for "So Much to Say". In 2024, the Dave Matthews Band were selected for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
A jam band, Dave Matthews Band is renowned for its live shows. The band is known for playing songs differently in each performance; this practice has become a staple of their live shows.
History[edit]
Formation (1991–1993)[edit]
In November 1990, Dave Matthews, who was working as a bartender at Miller's Bar in Charlottesville, Virginia, became a friend of a lawyer named Ross Hoffman. Hoffman convinced Matthews to record a demo of the few songs Matthews had written and encouraged him to approach Carter Beauford, a local drummer on the Charlottesville music scene. Beauford had been in several bands and was then playing on a jazz show on BET.
After hearing Matthews's demo, Beauford agreed to spend some time playing the drums, both inside and outside the studio. Matthews also approached LeRoi Moore, another local jazz musician who often performed with the John D'earth Quintet, to join them. The trio began working on Matthews's songs in 1991. Matthews recollects that, "...the reason I went to Carter was not because I needed a drummer, but because I thought he was the baddest thing I'd ever seen and LeRoi, it wasn't because I desperately wanted a saxophone, it was because this guy just blew my mind. At this jazz place I used to bartend at Miller's, I would just sit back and watch him. I would be serving the musicians fat whiskeys and they'd be getting more and more hosed, but no matter how much, he used to still blow my mind. And it was the sense that everyone played from their heart. And when we got together and they asked, 'What do you want the music to sound like?' I said, 'I know this is a song I wrote and I like what you guys play, so I want you to play the way you react to my song.' There was a lot of breaking of our inhibitions."[5]
Matthews later said in an interview with Michael Krugman,[6] "In a way, initially it was just the three of us and I approached them with this tape and they said 'Sure,' cause they had time on their hands. They were both working on other things, but they had some afternoon time."[6]
The beginning stages of this new band proved to be, in the words of Morgan Delancey, "a time of trial and incubation."[7] Beauford would later recall that, "It started out as a three-piece thing with Dave and Leroi...working on some of Dave's songs. He only had four songs at the time...And it didn't work out with the three of us."[7] Matthews said, "The first time we played together...we were awful. Not just kind of bad, I mean heinously bad. We tried a couple of different songs and they were all terrible...Sometimes it amazes me that we ever had a second rehearsal."[7]
Performances, taping and fans[edit]
A jam band, Dave Matthews Band is known for its tight, engaging live shows.[91] The band has always encouraged fans to record its performances and was one of rock's most bootlegged bands. In fact, a direct patch to the soundboard was made available to recordists until 1995, when some of these tapes found their way into less scrupulous, commercial-minded hands who overcharged fans in the band's eyes. The band cites college students trading these tapes in the early 1990s as a key reason for their current fame.[92]
The band is known for playing songs differently each performance; this practice has become a staple of their live shows since the early 1990s.[93][94]
As of 2018, the band has sold 20 million concert tickets.[95] The New York Times wrote a feature article in 2023 titled "Why Are Dave Matthews Band Fans So Loyal?", observing the band has toured "relentlessly" every summer since 1992 and fans have loyally followed them around the country ever since.[96] It noted the similarities with the Grateful Dead with fans seeing hundreds of shows and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on tickets and travel over the course of decades, all the while building friendships and community around the band's live shows.[96]
Studio albums
Philanthropy[edit]
As of February 2023, the band's own charity, the Bama Works Fund, has raised over $65 million and made over 6,500 grants.[97] It was founded in 1999 to address the needs of disadvantaged youth, disabled persons, the environment, and arts and humanities in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia area, and surrounding area of Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Nelson, and Orange Counties.[98] In addition, BAMA Works Fund has been active in other projects, and often the Dave Matthews Band, both as a whole and individually, have planned charity events and donated their time and resources outside of Charlottesville. Some examples include building a "Village Recovery Fund" after the tsunami that ravaged Sri Lanka, promoting a challenge grant for the Habitat for Humanity Musician's Village in New Orleans,[99] multiple appearances to benefit both Farm Aid and the annual Neil Young-sponsored Bridge School Benefits, fundraisers for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and followed this with donations after the 2010 disaster that leveled many villages in Haiti.[98] The band played benefit concerts to help fund the school system in New York City, and countless other concerns. As a result, the band was awarded the NAACP chairman's Award. In Matthews's acceptance speech, he spoke for the band as a whole, commenting that of all the achievements they had enjoyed, that the award by the NAACP and Julian Bond, in particular, was by far the highest honor they had bestowed upon them.[100][101]
The band donated the $1 million raised during a charity concert to homeless and children's charities in San Francisco, California. The band has played other charity concerts benefiting Bay Area parks, music education, and AIDS research.[102][103]
In June 2016, the band announced that a CD set of Dave Matthews's 1996 solo performance at Sweet Briar College would be released later in the summer, with all profits donated to the college, which almost closed in 2015.[104]
In September 2017, Dave Matthews Band organized and hosted "A Concert for Charlottesville: An Evening of Music and Unity", a free benefit concert to raise funds for the victims killed and injured in a terrorist attack at the Unite the Right rally in August 2017.[73] Other artists who performed included Cage the Elephant, Coldplay, The Roots, Brittany Howard, Pharrell Williams, Chris Stapleton, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake, and Stevie Wonder. The concert raised nearly $2 million for victim relief and racial-justice causes. [105]