There might be more to the Dave Matthews Band than you think. Greg Edwards goes beyond the valley of the shadow of H.O.R.D.E.

"I love Trent Reznor!" Dave Matthews squeals with glee. "I really do. The guy drives me nuts." All those surprised by this, please raise your hands. One, two.....thirty-seven....no, you're not the only one. After all, nobody would look at Dave Matthews - the smiling clean-cut singer/acoustic rhythm guitarist of the Dave Matthews Band, who play jazzy, jammy H.O.R.D.E. rock on the lighter end of the spectrum - and picture him jumping around yelling "I WANNA FUCK YOU LIKE AN AN-I-MAL" in that Beaker-from-The-Muppets-like voice of his. You'd think he fits all those H.O.R.D.E. stereotypes you were brought up to believe: that he worships the Grateful Dead, that he smokes tons of pot, that he's got a really big penis.....
But Dave and the other guys in the Dave Matthews Band (or DMB as they're lovingly called by fans and Internet denizens) aren't good at perpetuating stereotypes. Especially when they don't know how.
For starters, don't expect the DMB to whip out a cover of "Head Like a Hole" or some other n.i.n. angst-fest anytime soon. While Blues Traveler and Phish have tossed in a "Low Rider" here and a "Good Times, Bad Times" there, Matthews couldn't play someone else's song if his life depended on it (well, maybe then).
"It would be a lot easier if I had a catalog of music that I knew," he admits, "but I really never learned anybody's music, so it's hard for me to whip out some tune by AC/DC and play it. I guess I could if I spent any time on it, but it still wouldn't sound like 'Hell's Bells.'
"It would sound like hell, though," he laughs, beating all of us to the punch. Of course that would mean that Hell has this loose, acoustic blues-folky vibe that's full of pep, which would probably piss off all those Norwegian Satanists who think the nether vacation-land is one big Monsters of Rock festival. Besides, the guys in the DMB - violinist Boyd Tinsley, saxophonist Leroi Moore, bassist/tacpianist Stefan Lessard, and drummer/percussionist Carter Beauford - are too nice to go to Hell. Heck maybe....
It might stand to reason, though, if the DMB don't whip out a cover or two, that they must've written enough of their own songs to make sure no two shows are alike. But while Phish always plays dozens of tunes they haven't recorded, and may never record, the DMB don't have that kind of stockpile. "We only have about 50 songs that we play," Dave says. "so that would be shooting ourselves in the foot. But we play them differently every night. Phish do a radical change from night to night, but that's their thing, and I think it's developed in that way for them.
"If we have a smoking jam," he continues, "we don't say, 'Okay, let's learn that jam.' That's come and gone. And a lot of things come and go like that. That's why we hear people screaming, 'Play this!' or 'Play that!' 'cause they have it on some tape somewhere, and I say, 'I don't know what the hell you're talking about.'"
Which would explain why the DMB don't have their own "Dark Star," a Dead song played so infrequently that each appearance was an event. Matthews isn't even sure what "Dark Star" is. "I'm sure I've heard of the song," he says, a bit put off, "but I don't know it. I had never seen a Dead show until we played with them, either. Boyd had been to one Dead show, but none of us ever really listened to them. But when we played with them in Vegas, we all really got into it. And we were all really honored, honored more by the whole thing that happened, the whole scene, 'cause nobody could've imagined it. But there wasn't any sort of conscious effort not to see the Dead. I grew up in Africa, and Carter was into fusion, everyone was on their own thing so it just hadn't come there."
The debunking of myths and stereotypes doesn't just apply to those of the H.O.R.D.E. scene when dealing with the DMB, or Dave himself. Though Matthews has lived half his life in the States, the other part was spent in South Africa, making him a white South African. And, as anyone who's seen Lethal Weapon II knows, aren't all white South Africans racists?
Well before you start screaming "FREE SOUTH AFRICA YA DUMB SON OF A BITCH!!" like you're Danny Glover, don't. (And not because you're closer to Danny Bonaduce.) As you can see from the photos, Matthews would have a hard time as a racist, given that three-fifths of his band are black, making a minority out of him and fellow honky Lessard. "It's such an absurd idea that by virtue of living in a place that I'm guilty of the sins," he says.
It's a subject that incenses Matthews, when he thinks about it, which isn't often. "The legacy is the same legacy as in America, but people in America have forgiven themselves a lot faster than they've forgiven anyone else. And at the moment, my feelings are that South Africa is a raging example to the rest of the world - and most poignantly to America - on a way to deal with the issues of race. In a small period of time, they've done the most thorough and the most relentless purging; it's phenomenal. It's something that America has done the opposite of over the years: we're patching and hiding and showing under the carpet.
"If our kids were taught that America was built on genocide and slavery," he continues, "we'd probably have a more accurate perception of where America came from and why we have these wounds and why we have these guilts and why we have these pains in our society, and why we have this fear of each other. If you show the wounds, they have time to heal, but if you hide them, they just fester."
But as he says, "it doesn't concern me, I don't spend any time on it, and it's more likely a mosquito." Especially now that he's unknowingly wrestled the title of H.O.R.D.E. sex symbol from Allgood's Corky Jones. So unknowingly, in fact, Matthews wasn't even aware of his responsibilities, which he thought might've included, "remaining ignorant of the fact. Heh heh heh.
"Everyone's a little bit aware of how they appear," he adds. "We're all vain in a way, and I'm sure I'm no exception. But I've never thought of the responsibilities, I never thought of that. But now that I've been informed.................."
Of course, looks fade. But then, so does fame. And, again bucking what you hold to be true and good and warm and fuzzy and stuff, neither of these things seem to bother Dave.
"This will pass," Matthews says of his band's popularity, as if he's already resigned to the fact. "It may be 25 years, it may be two years, who knows? I might go over the edge in a week. My time is temporary, so I'm going to make the most of it."