Dave Matthews Band (also known by the acronym DMB) is a United States-based rock band, originally formed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1991 by singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Matthews. Other band members include saxophonist LeRoi Moore, bassist Stefan Lessard, violinist Boyd Tinsley and drummer Carter Beauford. Since 1998 the band has performed most of their shows with keyboardist Butch Taylor who, while not officially named a member of the band, is a fixture on stage. According to the RIAA, Dave Matthews Band has sold over 31 million units in the US alone, putting them in the Top 100 Highest Selling Music Acts of all time.
Songwriter David John Matthews, working in Charlottesville as a bartender at Miller's bar in November 1990, made friends with a lawyer named Ross Hoffman. Hoffman convinced Matthews, usually reserved and scared of playing in front of people, to lay down a demo of the few songs he had written. Hoffman hoped Matthews could shop the songs in order to find other musicians to perform on some studio work with him. Hoffman encouraged Dave to approach Carter Beauford, a local musician on the Charlottesville music scene. Beauford had been in several bands, and was currently playing on a jazz show on Black Entertainment Television (BET). After hearing the demo, Carter agreed to spend some time playing the drums, both inside and outside the studio. Dave also approached LeRoi Moore, another local jazz musician who often performed with the John D'earth Quintet to join them. Moore would be famous later for always wearing sunglasses during shows because of his stage fright. Moore skeptically listened to the demo, but Moore liked what he heard and decided that he too would give the young South African a chance. These three began working on Matthews's songs in 1991.
Dave 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.' Dave would later say, 'The first time we played together...we were awful. Not just kind of bad, I mean heinously bad. We tried a couple of different songs and they were all terrible...Sometimes it amazes me that we ever had a second rehearsal.'
The band's first in-studio demo was recorded in February or March 1991, and consisted of The Song That Jane Likes, Recently, and Tripping Billies, prior to Boyd joining as a full-time bandmember. Boyd only performed on Tripping Billies. Their first public show was at the city’s 1991 Earth Day Festival. Local weekly appearances soon followed, and within a short time word of the band’s contagious new sound spread like wildfire.
They still did not have a name for the band. One name that was thrown around was Dumela (the Tswana word for hello), but no real enthusiasm was ever felt and they dropped it. One story is that Moore reportedly telephoned a place they were booked and said to just write Dave Matthews. The person receiving the call just wrote 'band' after the name, and the name stayed Dave Matthews Band from that point on.
By the summer of 1991, they were playing at the Eastern Standard. They were also playing a regular Tuesday night at the popular Charlottesville club Trax. Tapings of shows at Trax are some of the most widely shared among DMB fans. After Newman, Coran Capshaw, owner of the Flood Zone where the band often played, took the helm of The Dave Matthews Band.
[edit] Breakthrough success (1994-1996)
On September 20, 1994, DMB released their first LP, Under the Table and Dreaming. Under the Table and Dreaming and its follow-up album, Crash brought the band national attention, culminating in a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for So Much to Say as well as four other nominations between the years 1996 and 1997. The band also achieved hits with Crash into Me, Too Much, and Tripping Billies.
By 1997, DMB reached unparalleled levels of popularity across the country and, to some degree, the world. On October 28, 1997, the band released their first full length live album, Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95. The album, which was recorded at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, featured popular songs from the band's first three albums and included longtime collaborator Tim Reynolds on electric guitar.
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