July 11, 2008 7:59 PM

Dave Matthews Interview -- The Long Version

How's LeRoi doing?
"He's a little beat up but he'll be OK. He didn't break anything that won't fix itself."
How weird is it going out without LeRoi and Butch?
"Butch of his own decision decided he didn't want to be here, wanted to pursue something else in his life. We honor that. That's a very different thing entirely from Roi. We've been playing this year, feeling great, working on the record. ... being on the road we've been getting along with each other as a band better than we ever have. This was a real blow ... he and Carter (Beauford) and I are the first three people who sat around and said 'We're going to be this band.' Not having him there, especially when there's the possibility of him being out for a while, makes it very difficult."
How did Jeff Coffin take his place?
"We were extremely lucky and fortuitous to have him. ... Jeff is a real different player. We're happy to have him. We think of him as a great addition right now. But it's by no means ....rhetorically speaking it's not a replacement. ... We've had Jeff Coffin onstage with us many times but it's always been with LeRoi. Him being there feels very natural. It's the absence of Roi that's a challenge. We're going to come around. Last night was a tough one - it was our first one without Roi. I think we'll be more settled into it tonight."
What's going on with the new album?
"We have a lot of music we've worked on in the past few years ... that for different reasons...we haven't come up with a very clear idea of how to move forward musically as a band. Inside the last year out of necessity we found more focus and rejuvenated our friendships."
How is the recording process going?
"You go into a room, you pick up whatever instrument it is ... and you start. Then everybody joins in with intention and as their mood, just a very honest way of doing it. We did that for a couple of weeks and came up with a hundred ideas. Each one was limited. You could do it for 10 minutes then you just stop. You can't just ramble on forever. They're very concise. ... We were looking for real honest feels and real joyful discoveries. We really had a great time doing that."
And Rob Cavello picked 15 tracks and gave them to you?
"We looked at those 15 and said 'OK, this is a nice confined, nice structured homework task. A nice clear job.' So we just started with one and worked on changes, a chorus, bridges, whatever. All together, all sitting in a circle ... talking through it all. We came up with arrangements for each of the 15, then each day we'd work on the next one and then record it. I've been going in when I have chances and listen on the road, try to get from the song what the focus is and trying to find lyrical content. It may seem a little backwards in some ways, maybe a hard way to do something, but it's been really interesting. The thing I like about it is it's really energetic, real honest musical element to it, a live element to it, all of us sitting together playing the songs together. Tim Reynolds is in the studio so there's really clear musical ideas. The lyrics have been really fun for me with these really clear palates."
So where does it end?
"We're not confining ourselves to those 15. If we come up with another 15 or we come up with different songs that'll fit inside that ... that's a nice way to start, a really inspirational way to start. It sounds very much like us in the sense of the way we are live in a room together. That's something we're really enjoying at the moment."
Is that a big change?
"In the early years when we had a lot of music we'd go in the studio with Steve Lillywhite, and those sessions were great. Steve was really good at documenting and finding the very best performance in us. He really was a remarkable producer. His style is unique. ... In a sense the early ones were inevitably the band. A lot of the stuff had been done live, the only way we knew. This is the first time we've come back as a band and have a single focus, which is rare even for a fresh young band. For us all, we can still bite each other's heads off and play a lot rougher with each other than might be comfortable in most relationships. But we're making some really good music."
You play a lot of festivals. Why the resurgence now?
"It's funny. There's different interpretations. It's a funny time in the music industry. The economy isn't looking as bad as it did for a while but people aren't necessarily rushing out to see live music the way they had maybe 10 years ago. We're seeing a little bit of slow in some of the markets. I'm sure it's combination of us having old asses and the market moving slower. It was still surprising for us. Sales this year have been really good, but overall there's a slack in a lot of the live music, a lot of tours. Maybe the festival thing is a way that promoters are getting some excitement back in live music. We'll see how that goes ... Things go away and then there's sort of a pining for them. They have a freshness to them when they come back. As a kid in South Africa at our versions of festivals over there I always found them a lot of fun. You get exposed to a lot of different music. As a fan of music when there's a lot of variety going on at a festival discovering new music and being in that free environment can be a lot of fun. And occasionally revolting."
I know your history in Colorado is rich, but I'd forgotten that you opened for Big Head Todd and got a big boost.
"For whatever reason (Denver/Boulder) was a good launching. It was our one west sort of satellite, other than the East Coast. We were doing great business for an unsigned band on the East Coast, touring up and down without any CDs out or anything. At that date it mattered. ... We had a lot of doors opened for us by people like Big Head Todd. The Samples were a huge help for us out there. They were doing real well and they really embraced us. They introduced their whole audience to us. That was one of the biggest things, that and Big Head Todd. The Samples really aggressively embraced us... into their social scene as well. That was an extremely generous thing for them to do."
With children, movies, music and benefits how do you keep a focus?
"I'm fairly unfocused. It may frustrate my wife a bit. But I'm also very focused on taking care of my family. I try to have my wife and kids ... on the road with me. I left my whole family in Virginia yesterday but before that I'd had them all out, then just my daughters out for a while. I just go along. I think I speak for everyone in the band. We were doing this for a long time. It's what we want to be doing. It's not like we knew a life where we had a job that we came home from... we found our partners and raised our family all while living on the road. That's how we've come to this. Whether it's easy or hard or whatever combination, that's my life."
You've endorsed Barack Obama. Do you see a time when politics returns to a more civil tone?
"We're inundated in this country because we're susceptible to media. You can turn your head much more successfully away from it. Just try to leave your TV off. It's not easy. But you can't turn it down, the media din in this country. ... I think our country needs to get a little bit away from the culture of fear from every side. It's very defensive, paranoid phase we're going through, whether it's about our food or whether it's people who are different from us, or how we're viewed or how we view ourselves... it's this sort of obsession with labeling and categorizing. With some healthy leadership, maybe a little focus less on money and military and more on health and education we might be able to turn the country around. Keep your eyes on the horizon in front of you as opposed to trying to keep watch over what's behind you. We've become this culture of maintenance - maintaining our freedom, maintaining our safety. It's one thing to be safe. It's one thing to be scared. We should not be so preoccupied, thinking obsessively of how safe everyone is from everything. That breeds an illness. In a way the culture can manifest its nightmare to come true if it obsesses about it all the time. I'm not saying horrible things won't happen if you don't think about them. I'm saying thinking about them all the time won't stop them from happening. If we get a little bit away from this idea of defending ourselves from all the evil that can happen and we start thinking more about educating ourselves and keeping ourselves healthy and enjoying the beautiful and wonderful country and world we live in, a lot more can come from it. Far greater things can be achieved. ... Nothing lasts forever. You often see the decline of great empire or great civilizations has a little paranoia in it. I'm not saying it is the end, I'm just saying we should be cautious because that is a symptom. You can only survive so much paranoia."
You do benefits and various causes all the time, from Farm Aid every year to spur-of-the-moment things like the Katrina benefit at Red Rocks. How do you decide how to spend your time?
"I know my manger would probably say it's a more complicated process, but the way that I think of it is whatever sort of becomes more present and more pressing at the moment. For me Farm Aid was a combination of things. It was my admiration for the work of Willie and Neil, especially Willie to begin with, then Neil Young and John. It was just an admiration of what they're doing and my love of the farm and seeing the dire situation. They're sort of a voiceless demographic. That's what drew me to that. I'm happy to still be a part of it. I sometimes think we need to figure out a way to rejuvenate it a bit but I still think it has an important application. Other than that I think there are things like Katrina - in that situation everybody has to do what they can, especially in the face of such incompetence on our leadership's part. We have to step up. On local and state and federal level there was just finger-pointing and an absolutely failed attempt to do anything."

Posted by Mark Brown at 7:59 PM | Comments (1)