By Tracy Pepper

It's a warm spring afternoon, and Dave Matthews is loping down a main street in his hometown of Charlottesville, Va., unmolested. Despite the fact that he is the frontman for one of the world's most popular rock bands, no one gropes him, screams his name or asks for his autograph; hell, no one even looks his way. "I can walk just about anyplace and nobody knows who I am," says the 31-year-old singer-songwriter cheerfully. There is one exception. "The only people who know me are the Gothic kids," Matthews says. "They hang out on the downtown mall and scream, 'F--- you! You f---in' suck! Having money doesn't matter!'" He laughs. "They always recognize me."

Of course, the Dave Matthews Band has had a number of critics - especially rock journalists who accuse it of dishing out bland party music and feel-good platitudes for an audience of neo-hippies, frat rats and Grateful Dead fans who just can't let go. But even the most vocal naysayers can't deny the group's phenomenal success. The Dave Matthews Band - which includes bassist Stefan Lessard, drummer Carter Beauford, saxophonist Leroi Moore and violinist Boyd Tinsley - formed in the early '90's at a time when grunge was still the rage and a melodious pop group with jazzy underpinnings was far from the height of hipness. But by ignoring trends and staying true to its muse, the band has become one of the most profitable acts on the concert circuit, attracting so many devoted fans that it recently sold out New York's Giants Stadium (a stop on its upcoming North American summer tour) in 90 minutes flat. Meanwhile, the band's major-label debut album, Under the Table and Dreaming, has gone platinum five times over, while the follow-up, 1996's Crash, has sold nearly 4 million copies.

And the momentum shows no sign of sputtering to a Hootie and the Blowfish- like halt. With the release of Before These Crowded Streets, the band's fourth and most introspective record to date, Matthews is showing a different side to his personality. "I've always been frustrated about all sorts of things - mad as hell - but music was a way I could get past it," he says. "In most instances, music and anger don't meet up for me, but on this album they do. It's sort of a release."

It's hard to imagine Matthews getting upset about anything as he interacts with his bandmates at a nearby rehearsal space. He's the energy locus of the group. Running in and out of the room, he shifts accents mid-conversation (one minute you're talking to an effete hairdresser, the next a pompous Brit) and flashes his taut belly to everyone's amusement. The group is busy readying its new songs for the upcoming tour. The new album is the first by the Dave Matthews Band that was written in the studio and not endlessly road-tested before being recorded.

"This album is darker, certainly," says Steve Lillywhite, the band's longtime producer, who adds that this time around, Matthews wanted to challenge himself more as a songwriter. "He wants to be seen as a serious contender, and personally, I think he is."

Indeed, angry songs like "The Last Stop" ("How is this/Hate so deep/Lead us all so blindly killing killing") shift away from the live-for-today philosophy that characterizes the Dave Matthews Band's previous albums. "But I still really believe in that attitude," insists Mathews, "because the only thing you're guaranteed at birth is that you're going to die. You don't know if you're going to be rich or end up in the poorhouse. You don't know if you're going to get your legs blown off, or if a bomb is going to land on you. But you do know you're going to die. Guaranteed."

Such sober statements are not surprising from a person who experienced a rather unusual, sometimes traumatic, childhood. Matthews grew up a budding artist and musician in Johannesburg, South Africa. When his father, whose work as a physicist took the family to upstate New York and England, died of lung cancer in 1977, 10-year-old Matthews, along with his mother, two sisters and brother, returned to South Africa before eventually settling in Charlottesville in 1986.

Matthews was a 23-year-old bartender at a local club when he asked Beauford and Moore, two of Charlottesville's most respected jazz musicians, to listen to some songs he had written. Although the older men were superior players, that didn't deter an ambitious Matthews. "I thought, what the hell, aim high!" he says. Beauford and Moore were impressed, and Tinsley and Lessard came on board shortly thereafter. "[We played] any prom, any rooftop party," recalls Lessard, "six or seven nights a week, sometimes a couple shows a day."

The hard work paid off in enthusiastic fans, but record-label executives "were throwing our tape in the pile," says Matthews. The band's savvy manager, Coran Capshaw, saw the audience building, however, and kept the group on a grueling road schedule. Concertgoers were encouraged to record shows and trade copies among themselves, and the buzz on the quintet grew quickly. Nine hundred prople ould turn up at a club that could hold only 300, and whoever managed to wrestle their way into the show would sing along with every song. "We were tripped," says Matthews. "I would ask people, 'How do you know the songs?' They were like, 'We have tapes!'" (All of this occurred before the Dave Matthews Band had even put out its independently released debut, 1993's *Remember Two Things,* which has since gone gold.)

By the time the band signed with RCA Records in late 1993, its enormous grassroots following enabled it to call the shots. And it still does. The band controls all the licensing and merchandising for its T-shirts, hats, CD cases - you name it - throught its mail-order company, Bama Rags, a venture that brings in millions each year. "We never once tried to make this thing become what it is," Beauford says. "It just happened."

The band's initial success was overshadowed by tragedy, though, when Matthews' older sister and her husband were killed in a shooting incident in Johannesburg in 1994, weeks before the release of "Under the Table and Dreaming." "I try to find humor in everything," says Matthews, "but the death of anybody that's special leaves a hole you can't fill. People say, 'God had a better plan for them,' and I'm glad some people have that faith. I don't have that faith. If there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he's done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world."

For the first time all day, Matthews grows quiet. "Death immediately makes me think of who matters in my life, and who doesn't," he says. "When my sister died, that was the first time it hit me that the guys in this band loved me so much." He gets teary-eyed. "They just rushed to me. [Playing] Madison Square Garden isn't nearly as big as how much I love the four guys in the band."

It's this familiar bond that seems to have brought Matthews a peace of mind he didn't have when he was younger. "Life was pretty intimidating for me when I was a kid," he admits. "I didn't go to college. What was I going to do?" But now, he says, life at 31 is easier - and happier. "People were not imparting this information to me when I was 18 and burdened. But now I want to go up to every 18-year-old kid with 15 piercings who's cursing me because I smile too much, and say, 'S--- is so *easy*. It's so easy.'"

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