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South African vocalist/guitarist Dave Matthews formed Dave Matthews Band in Virginia in the early '90s. Featuring the creative talents of Matthews, Stefan Lessard, LeRoi Moore, Boyd Tinsley, and Carter Beauford, the group presented a more pop-oriented version of the Grateful Dead crossed with traces of jazz, funk, and the worldbeat explorations of Paul Simon and Sting. The band built up a strong word-of-mouth following in the early '90s by touring the country constantly, with special attention paid to college campuses. They credit much of their early success to avid fans taping their shows and trading the live copies. In addition to amassing a sizable following, their independent album Remember Two Things sold well for an independent release; soon, they were attracting the attention of major labels. After putting out the live EP Recently, they signed with RCA in 1993. Dave Matthews Band released their major-label debut, Under the Table and Dreaming, in the fall of 1994. By spring of 1995, the record had launched the hit single "What Would You Say" and sold over a million copies, thus setting the stage for an extremely successful career.
A year and a half after the release of Under the Table and Dreaming, the record had sold over four million copies in the U.S. alone. In April of 1996, the Dave Matthews Band released Crash, which entered the charts at number two and quickly went platinum. Throughout 1996, the group toured behind Crash, which reached multi-platinum status and spun off five successful singles. Also in 1996, Matthews launched an attack on bootleggers in conjunction with the Federal Government, targeting stores that were selling semi-legal discs of live performances. The efforts of Matthews, his band, and his management resulted in an unprecedented crackdown on bootleggers in early 1997 -- with nearly all of the major foreign bootlegging companies placed under arrest by the United States -- thereby putting a moratorium on the entire underground industry.
To further combat the bootleggers, Dave Matthews released an official double-disc live album, Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95, in October of 1997. It was an unexpected success, debuting at number three on the charts and selling a million copies within the first five months of its release. The live record paved the way for a string of multiple nearly annual future DMB concert recording releases. It also drummed up support for the April 1998 release of Before These Crowded Streets, the group's most ambitious album to date. Another two-disc live effort, Listener Supported, followed a year later. Summer tours also packed the band's schedule during the late '90s, with sold-out shows across the U.S.
In the Summer of 2000, Dave Matthews Band recorded several tracks with their producer since Under the Table and Dreaming, Steve Lillywhite. These recordings got leaked to the internet and the band was forced to release the unofficial bootleg The Lillywhite Sessions. This music was considered to have an overall dark tone to it, which executives found inconsistent with the angle of marketability they were looking for in Dave Matthews Band. The band returned to the studio with Glen Ballard to record a fourth studio album -- Everyday, issued in February 2001. Although popular, it was overshadowed by the Lillywhite Sessions material and left more loyal fans disappointed. The band eventually chose songs from the Lillywhite Sessions, re-recorded several others, and released the results in July 2002 as Busted Stuff. Its debut single, "Where Are You Going," was also featured on the soundtrack to the Adam Sandler flick Mr. Deeds, and was the only song to have not been featured in some way on the original Summer 2000 recordings.
In 2003, Matthews went through a personal dark spot and released his first solo album, the moody and brooding Some Devil. A "Dave Matthews and Friends" tour followed -- his "friends" being Trey Anastasio, Brady Blade, Tony Hall, Ray Paczkowski, and Tim Reynolds -- and the album's chief single, "Gravedigger," earned Matthews a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. The same year, Boyd Tinsley released a less successful solo album of his own, True Reflections. Dave Matthews Band returned to the road in 2004 and released more new, exciting live material with songs like Hello Again, Sugar Will, and Joyride. They also joined Bruce Springsteen's Vote for Change tour toward the end of the year, just as their mail-order-only DMB Live Trax series debuted. In early 2005, they launched a website that featured progress reports on their next album in the form of video footage, diaries, and soundbites. When the flawed Stand Up finally appeared in May, it was the band's first album of all-new material since 2001's Everyday. Like its three predecessors, Stand Up topped the charts, making DMB the only band other than U2 to score four consecutive number one albums.
Weekend on the Rocks, another live set, followed Stand Up at the end of the year. In 2006, the two-disc compilation The Best of What's Around, Vol. 1 presented one disc of previously released studio material and one of unreleased live recordings from various time periods ranging from July 2000 to June 2006. The year 2007 found Matthews and Tim Reynolds touring Europe and America.
Work had also begun on a new DMB studio album in 2007, but the band temporarily shelved the project during pre-production to focus on touring. They returned to the studio in April of 2008 and started recording sessions in Seattle, but did not finish the album before kicking off the tour in May. LeRoi Moore unfortunately passed away before the album could be completed. The saxophonist had suffered a serious ATV accident in June and ultimately succumbed to his injuries on August 19, 2008.
A heartbroken band finally returned to recording one last time in February 2009. Using pieces of LeRoi's recordings from the Seattle sessions, the band collaborated with producer Rob Cavallo and special guests such as Rashawn Ross, Tim Reynolds, and Jeff Coffin of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones fame to record the final cuts for the new album. The album, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King is scheduled to be released on June 2, 2009. A Spring-Summer-early Autumn tour begins on April 14 at Madison Square Garden in New York City in support of the album.
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
allmusic.com