INTERVIEW: Dave Matthews

- Dan Enright

Dave Matthews and his band appear to have sprung full blown on the US music scene, but the reality is they're another 5 year "overnight" success. If your only contact with the band is the radio/video single, "What Would You Say?" that's currently making the rounds, you aren't getting the whole picture. This multi-talented group successfully mixes jazz, pop, folk, and rock & roll to create a style that is distinctly their own - and much more sophisticated than most of the music that graces the air waves.

I caught up with Dave on one of the few days off from his 200 dates-a-year touring schedule. Here's his view of being a musician/songwriter and his first major label release, Under The Table and Dreaming.

Consumable: What's been the biggest difference between playing for yourself and being a professional musician?

Dave Matthews: With the grace of success comes certain obligations. You have to perform, so there's confines on it that can become frustrating. But that's why we have time off. You lose the power to write, which is my real passion. There's not too much inspiration for me to write on the road. The motel rooms and highways haven't got a terrific appeal - but it's still fun. The two hours we spend on stage every day is the thing that keeps it all worthwhile. If it wasn't for that, I certainly wouldn't be traveling around the country.

C: It's good you've kept that joy of performing.

DM: If we were to play the music exactly the same way and do the same thing every night - the same set - then it could get dull. But we try to keep it fresh because we feel, if we're not having a good time with the music then people aren't going to have a good time. Not really. They might come and say, "Well, that was cool... They were good..." but to really appeal to people, whether it's all of the audience or five people that are really wanting to get thrilled, we can really reach those people only if we're really havin' a good time.

C: That connection of the performer with the audience - the pocket - is the real magic of music.

DM: Absolutely. It happens in different ways. Sometimes it's because of us and sometimes it's regardless of us. Some nights it's like, "Ok, we've gotta' go out, we gotta' play now..." It's unusual, but if your spirit's down or you're low, the next two hours seem like a real big thing. But there's a thousand or five thousand people that have come to see us and now we have to reach to the deepest quarter in your body, the furthest spot in your soul and find the strength to put on the show they'll feel was more than worth their coming out. That happens some nights, then I think there's that pocket that is more the road, from working and working. We reach that pocket sometimes. But I know the pocket you're talking about, which is almost like being in heaven, when you're not even there. That has happened occasionally, too.

C: How does the songwriting and arranging work?

DM: On the albums, the way they've been recorded or the songs we've chosen - up to this point I've brought the songs to the band - here's the song, here's the melody, and here's the music - now let's arrange it. What voices do we want, where do we want to put them? Considering every single person a voice, how do we want to treat it? So that becomes a discussion we all have.

Now what's happening is there's songs I'm working on, but there's also songs coming out of soundchecks - 'cause we're on the road all the time. We're playing six, seven days a week, so the only time we get to be creative is during soundchecks, if it's long enough. So, what I think is, the next album will reflect more whole-band arrangements and compositions and I'll probably just stay as the sole lyricist. At the beginning it was all songs I've written, then it's sort of been both, and now it's going to lean toward the band doing a lot of it as well.

C: Is that due to the band being together so long?

DM: Yeah, everyone's roles are very important. These are the same five people that were together the first day we played in the basement. There's no change. It's not me and a band. The name was deceiving more because of the lack of a name than it is a name.

C: Well, you're the front man.

DM: It's not really how the band works. People who have seen us live see it's definitely a five piece band and it comes across that way. There's no dancing around me, we're all dancing around the same thing. I think a lot of people that come to see us realize, "Whoa! It's not focused on him."

The way I see it is, if one of us goes, we have to carefully think about whether or not all of us should go. Every member of the band - whatever it appears to people outside, inside all five of us are equal and have as much right to shout and say, "No! That's wrong..." or "That's right..." or "Change that..." or "That's screwed up... " or "I have something to say now, so I'm going to say it..." Which I think is good. There's a lot more volatility, but that's healthy.

C: How do the lyrics develop?

DM: My approach to lyrics is, I don't want to be trite - although on occasion triteness is good - but I don't want to be too preachy. That's a little rule I made for myself. I do feel very strongly about things that unify us, fears that unify and separate us, and love people have... everyone likes sugar.

I was very lucky in my upbringing to be exposed to really special people and my family had a lot of generous-spirited ideas. I think that it's important of me to try and get that in my lyrics: a sympathy and generosity toward anyone listening, with occasional weird stories or frightening things that people in general might be able to understand. Whether or not they're going to be able to understand exactly what I'm talking about - often it's impossible 'cause I'm not talkin' about exactly anything [chuckle] - but to get a feeling.

I'm just trying to not write another "Baby I Love You/Baby Don't Leave Me/Baby You Drove Me Down/Baby I'm Mad At You" or another "I'm Gonna Rock You/I'm Gonna Rock You Down..." just rock & roll. I know there's a lot of lyricists out there that don't. They're people I look at and I think that's admirable. I don't know where my lyrics come from. They're still my most feared part of music because I'm just not confident about them.

C: You have to trust they'll come when ya need em.

DM: Yeah. I'm afraid of words because they can be misunderstood. In some of the lyrics I'll have changes and other times, exactly what's there is what I sang. Take the song "Pay For What You Get". That one fell out like brick work. "Typical Situation" took more time. That one seemed more difficult. "Dancin' Nancies" wasn't too long, but that also had a lot more lyrics to it than what's on the song. Usually, those edits happened before we got to the studio.

C: I thought "What Would You Say" seemed out of place with the rest of the album. Did you include it so RCA would have a single to release?

Dave : We didn't do that one with anything in mind. It was a song that [producer] Steve Lillywhite liked, so we did that. I think one of the things that makes it stand out is it's got different instruments on it. The way we approached that song when we were recording it, was very humorously. It's definitely the pop song on the album, which made me reluctant to release it as a single. So we didn't release a single, but they did release that to radio first, so it came across as a single.

C: And as a video, right?

DM: Yeah. We made that after the album was recorded. It had been chosen as the single for radio, so we just went ahead and made it.

C: It doesn't really capture the spirit of the album though...

DM: That's why I didn't want to release it. We thought people could hear that and think, "Oh! Well, that's a wacky song." and then assume the rest of the album would be less wacky. It's kind of a trite and joking and mocking of itself, because it's nonsensical. Which is what's happening in the video. What we were kind of shooting at was the emphasis being on the emptiness, with lots of music. I'd love to do that experiment - if you took a really wacked out song and played it over and over again on the radio, it would sail. I always wanted to do that with a song like "Satellite".

Check out the Dave Matthews band - they're touring all over the world, and Under The Table and Dreaming is receiving airplay everywhere.