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Dave Matthews Bio.2

Dave Matthews Bio.2

CRITICIZED by some as a hollow bunch of Grateful Dead wannabes, the Dave Matthews Band has demonstrated — over the course of three albums and several years of extensive touring — that it stands apart from the neo-hippie, jam-happy pack. Combining elements of rock, jazz, funk, folk, and world beat, the Dave Matthews Band is more soulful and organic than Phish, more ambitious and subtle in its harmonies and rhythms than Blues Traveler, more varied and dynamic than Spin Doctors. And don't let the nondescript name fool you — they are one of a kind.

[Dave Matthews]

Part hippie, part Rastaman, part street-poet internationale, Dave Matthews was born in a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. His mother, a painter and former architect, not only taught him of the evils of racism, but played an active role in protesting against the apartheid government. Matthews' father, a physicist, died of lung cancer when his son was only ten, a tragic event that ultimately influenced his music and lyrics. Before his father's death, Matthews' family had lived outside of New York City and later in Cambridge, England. Eventually, they moved back to South Africa, where Matthews became immersed in the music of the area, especially its emphasis on complex percussion textures. In 1986, he moved again with his family, this time to Charlottesville, Virginia. There, he began working as a bartender at Miller's, a bar that served as a popular watering hole for local musicians. It was at Miller's that he met saxophonist Leroi Moore, who helped him assemble the group in 1990 after Matthews had finally summoned the courage to expose his burgeoning songwriting skills to a paying audience. Drummer Carter Beauford had grown up on the same street in Charlottesville as Moore, and later played with him in several bands. Bassist Stefan Lessard was a sixteen-year-old prodigy whose teacher was one of the musicians who frequented Miller's. Violinist Boyd Tinsley, recruited a short time later, had jammed around town at the local college's fraternity houses. Initially the band performed at a small restaurant in town, but quickly amassed a large fan base, and was soon drawing nearly a thousand people a night to its shows at Flood Zone, in Richmond, Virginia. The Zone's owner, Coran Capshaw, liked what he heard, and, seeing an opportunity, became the band's manager. He booked them in fraternity houses and beach-resort clubs all over the Southeast, where they occasionally ran into another up-and-coming band playing the same circuit, Hootie and the Blowfish. The group had always intended to come up with a "proper" name, but Dave Matthews Band had stuck before they had time to change it. By 1993, D.M.B. released an independent live album, Remember Two Things, and soon thereafter signed a record deal with RCA/BMG.[Dave Matthews] Everything should have been going well for Matthews at this point, but tragedy struck again, as his older sister Anne was killed by her husband (who then killed himself) in South Africa. Matthews dedicated the band's 1994 major-label debut, Under the Table and Dreaming, to her. The album was produced by veteran Steve Lillywhite (U2, the Rolling Stones), and immediately following its October release, RCA put the band on the road. Though radio response was slow in coming, the funky, crowd-pleasing "What Would You Say" eventually broke through early in 1995, supplying the juice necessary to turn the album into a quadruple-platinum seller. But it was the album's other tracks that demonstrated the depth of what the Dave Matthews Band had to offer: "Ants Marching," with its syncopated violin-and-sax riff; and the lovely "Satellite," with Moore's Branford Marsalis-like soprano sax part matching Matthews' wide-ranging melodic line. In May of 1996, Crash (also produced by Lillywhite) was released. Darker, grittier, and simply more accomplished than its predecessor, Crash sold a bit less, but it upped the ante for Matthews and the band. "#41" and the yearning "Say Goodbye" were linked by an impressive, slow-building drum solo, while "So Much to Say" and "Drive in Drive Out" burned with a new intensity. But in the end, this band's star shines brightest in concert, where Tinsley's manic fiddling (and his Cheshire cat-like grin) and Moore's hesitant sax lines swarm around Matthews' roundabout melodies, all supported by Lessard's supple bass work and Beauford's dominant drumming. In that sense, they are a throwback to the jazz-rock giants of the seventies, though the members' diverse backgrounds provide that familiar formula with a serious twist. Matthews spent the end of 1996 and early 1997 playing an acoustic tour with his friend Tim Reynolds, and in February, the D.M.B. earned a Best Rock Performance By a Duo or Group Grammy for "So Much to Say."

---Thanks to:Dave Matthews Band Official website


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