About Dave Matthews Band
Dave Matthews Band is an American rock band formed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1991. The band's lineup originally consisted of Dave Matthews , Stefan Lessard , Carter Beauford , Boyd Tinsley , and LeRoi Moore . As of 2024, Matthews, Lessard, and Beauford are the only remaining founding members.
Dave Matthews Band's 1994 debut studio album, Under the Table and Dreaming, was certified six times platinum. As of 2018, the band had sold more than 25 million concert tickets and a combined total of 38 million CDs and DVDs. Their 2018 album, Come Tomorrow, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, making DMB the first band to have seven consecutive studio albums debut at the peak. The band won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for "So Much to Say". Dave Matthews Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024.
A jam band, Dave Matthews Band is renowned for its live shows. The band is known for playing songs differently in each performance; this practice has become a staple of their live shows.
In November 1990, Dave Matthews, who was working as a bartender at Miller's Bar in Charlottesville, Virginia, became a friend of a lawyer named Ross Hoffman. Hoffman convinced Matthews to record a demo of the few songs Matthews had written and encouraged him to approach Carter Beauford, a local drummer on the Charlottesville music scene. Beauford had been in several bands and was then playing on a jazz show on BET.
After hearing Matthews's demo, Beauford agreed to spend some time playing the drums, both inside and outside the studio. Matthews also approached LeRoi Moore, another local jazz musician who often performed with the John D'earth Quintet, to join them. The trio began working on Matthews's songs in 1991. Matthews recollects that, "...the reason I went to Carter was not because I needed a drummer, but because I thought he was the baddest thing I'd ever seen and LeRoi, it wasn't because I desperately wanted a saxophone, it was because this guy just blew my mind. At this jazz place I used to bartend at Miller's, I would just sit back and watch him. I would be serving the musicians fat whiskeys and they'd be getting more and more hosed, but no matter how much, he used to still blow my mind. And it was the sense that everyone played from their heart. And when we got together and they asked, 'What do you want the music to sound like?' I said, 'I know this is a song I wrote and I like what you guys play, so I want you to play the way you react to my song.' There was a lot of breaking of our inhibitions."
Matthews later said in an interview with Michael Krugman, "In a way, initially it was just the three of us and I approached them with this tape and they said 'Sure,' cause they had time on their hands. They were both working on other things, but they had some afternoon time."
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