"If I feel any debt to any group, it wouldn't be RCA, it wouldn't be MTV, it wouldn't be the media. It would be a debt to the fans, the people who have taken the time to listen to us."
The sea birds soar above Dave Matthews as if in symbolic toast to an artist whose own star continues its climb.
--Dave Matthews
On a ferry off Vancouver, British Columbia, Matthews seems invigorated, and not necessarily because he has received the news that his new album, CRASH, has just debuted at number two in the nation.
"It's really beautiful," he says as he looks out across the water and talks of the last two days wrapped in the arms of Mother Nature, Canadian-style. "I saw my first bald eagles. Actually it was my first golden eagle. I saw my second bald. It's the closest I've ever been."
As the conversation segues to music and once again answering the call of the road, the Virginia-by-way-of-South Africa resident's enthusiasm remains unabated. "It's awesome. I'm psyched. I had been off the road for three months and couldn't deal with it. I had to go out in February [for some informal, unscheduled, performances]."
The ferry's public address system interrupts with an announcement, but Matthews' message is not lost. This is a musician who draws his artistic life force from playing and playing and playing still more in the comfortable circle of a band that he speaks of as if he were talking about his family.
"That's our whole source, that we play. That's our whole source of inspiration -- playing together," says Matthews, who will bring his band to Gund Arena Saturday, September 28, with guests Soul Coughing. "I can't imagine if I were playing with anyone else that I would want to play as much live as I do with this band. It's something I'm inspired to do with the people in this band, just because I feel so honored to play with all these guys. I don't know if I would ever find a situation like this ever again."
He wants, he adds, to embrace it while he can.
And, why not? The Dave Matthews Band make musical magic together with a blend of funk-rock-jazz and more that can be happily unclassifiable. In fact, Matthews, the group's singer, songwriter and guitarist, says he considers it a huge compliment if people don't know what to call you.
There's Boyd Tinsley on Cajun violin, LeRoi Moore on saxophone, bassist Stefan Lessard and drummer Carter Beauford.
The band's huge success with its last album, 1994's triple-platinum UNDER THE TABLE AND DREAMING, has not changed things, he insists. "I do feel, but always have felt obligated to put on the strongest show I can," he says. "I think the shows change. All we can do is continue to play. A lot of us try to ignore a lot of the pressures that come from the industry side of things, if there are any. And we try to concentrate more on playing the best we can and as many places we can go to get in front of our audience.
"If I feel any debt to any group, it wouldn't be RCA, it wouldn't be MTV, it wouldn't be the media. It would be a debt to the fans, the people who have taken the time to listen to us."
Still, the Dave Matthews Band are one of the major musical stories of the past two years. Rolling Stone, not always generous with praise, called UNDER THE TABLE AND DREAMING "one of the most ambitious releases of '94." Its first single, "What Would You Say," brought two Grammy nominations.
And the success story seems to be resuming right where it left off. Billboard says the opening week of CRASH gave RCA its highest placement with a new album since 1982's DIRTY DANCING.
"I had heard from people about a sophomore album being notorious [a challenge]. Once we got in the studio we did concentrate on making a different album from the last one," Matthews says. "We didn't want to imitate methods we used or try to sound the same way. We wanted to sound the way this album came out. Having that intention was liberating in the sense we were in the shadow of the last album. I really think this album is better -- maybe not better -- but more accurately describing us."
Strictly speaking, CRASH is the group's third album, but second major-label release. The hard-touring band sold 250,000 copies of its self-released debut album, REMEMBER TWO THINGS.
Steve Lillywhite -- he of the heavyweight production credits that include the Rolling Stones, U2 and Talking Heads -- produced both UNDER THE TABLE AND DREAMING and CRASH.
"For the first album, he brought a confidence we couldn't have had if he wasn't there. We hadn't done a studio album before," Matthews explains. "He brings a wisdom. He's got a very clear mind, even when he doesn't have something in mind about what he wants to do. He has a very clear mind. This is another step for him. He's always reminding us of the importance of having fun. He was always, it seems, in some sort of celebratory mood, although he might get a little panicky toward the end." [laughs]
Matthews says he did not have many goals for the album, other than to feel that they did the best job that they could in making it. "If anything, we didn't want to let the success of the last album affect this album. We wanted to get away from imitating and repeating ourselves. We tried to do something that would stand on its own and have fun making it."
The fun element is no small factor to Matthews. "It really is all about that for me. If that's gone, I might as well have a bartending job. That's just as good. I had fun doing that," he says.
Certainly, Matthews has had no shortage of experiences and influences, musical and otherwise, having resided in his native South Africa, England and the United States. His physicist father was mobile in his scientific research.
The band members remained in one place to record the basic tracks for CRASH, playing together in a circle where they could all see each other. Matthews suggests that approach gives the album a spirit akin to how the group plays live.
"That (recording technique) is more in relation to what we did when we first were starting, and how we would get things done," he says. "We were all together and we could critique at the same time. The first album, we did separately like a lot of recordings are done. We were all in the room together this time. It wasn't sort of polarized as the last time. There was a spontaneous input like we had when we were starting out. That's one of the reasons we came across in such a live way, I guess."
Matthews says he was conscious of trying to make the lyrics be more accessible, "so people can make their own, so they can play in their lives.
"Lyrics are very important to me. I think I have a long way to go with them, but I'll just keep trying," he says."I certainly don't think I've done the best I can do. I don't feel bad about any of them. If I feel really good about them, they stay. At least they change or grow."
Thematically, his songs can cover a spectrum of emotions, he says. "It's much more what everything ends up as. It's either about friendship, about love, about frustrations, about fears, whatever the inspiration is at the time."
Matthews, 29, feels he has grown as an artist since the last album, with improvements in his guitar playing and singing. "I have to get better. I've been playing with these guys another year and a half since the last album," he reasons. "My voice has gotten older. I hope I never arrive anywhere [artistically]. There's still a long way to go. I hope I never think I'm at the finish line."