The Jam Band Origins of the Dave Matthews Band

The Charlottesville, Virginia-born group, the Dave Matthews Band, is known for its lengthy live sets, elongated jam versions of its studio hit songs, and its strange, quirky but lovable titular lead singer. But how did the quintet become one of the biggest bands in the world and one of the highest-grossing live groups of all time?

Let’s dive into the jam band’s origins.

Dave Matthews

Born on January 9, 1967, in Johannesburg, South Africa, David John Matthews moved with his family at just two years old to Yorktown Heights, New York, which is about an hour outside of Manhattan. The family moved to England for a year in 1974. But when young Matthews was 10, his father died of lung cancer.

In New York, before his mother brought him back to South Africa, following the death of his father, Matthews saw a Pete Seeger concert and fell in love with music. In 1985, Matthews, who was a pacifist, left South Africa when he was faced with having to serve in the country’s military.

In 1986, Matthews moved to New York again and worked briefly for IBM. Then he moved with his mother to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he began working as a bartender at Miller’s Bar and on the stage as an actor. In the college town, he met guitar player Tim Reynolds and the two hit it off.

DMB Members

Also in Charlottesville in 1991, Matthews met the other members who would form the band—saxophonist LeRoi Moore, drummer Carter Beauford (who was then playing on a jazz show on BET), teenage bassist Stefan Lessard, keyboard player Peter Griesar (who left the group in 1993), and violinist Boyd Tinsley.

“…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,” Matthews told The Philadelphia News, in 2012, of those musicians he approached for the band. “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.”

At first, the band was just Matthews, Beauford, and Moore. But armed with just a few instrumentals and a three-piece, the group needed more. So, they added Lessard and eventually brought in Tinsley. At the time, Matthews said, he just wanted a fiddle on one song (“Tripping Billies”), but the player and his distinct rollicking sound stuck.

“The first time we played together…we were awful,” Matthews said of those early days. “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 First Demo, Show

While Matthews had recorded little demos to recruit the members, the band’s first demo was recorded in February or March of 1991. Tinsley was not yet a full member. The demo included “Song That Jane Likes,” “Recently,” “Best of What’s Around” and “I’ll Back You Up.” The latter of which was Matthews’ first-ever song.

The group’s first show, a benefit for the Middle East Children’s Alliance, which was discovered recently, took place on March 14, 1991. The band played the songs “Typical Situation,” “Best of What’s Around,” “I’ll Back You Up,” “Song That Jane Likes,” “Warehouse,” “Cry Freedom” and “Recently.” All of these songs remain fan favorites today.

The Name

From there, word of the band spread. At first, the group called itself Dumwelah, which is a Tswana word for “Hello.” But soon they went against that thought. How the band got its eponymous moniker remains a bit unclear. But the story is thought to be that Matthews was calling up a booker for a gig in the future and the booker asked what to write on the poster. Matthews said to write “Dave Matthews” but the person on the call wrote that and added “band” at the end. The name, strangely, stuck.

Added Matthews in a later interview with Nevin Martell in 2004, “Boyd [Tinsley], if memory serves, wrote ‘Dave Matthews Band’ [on this flyer for the show]. There was no time when we said, ‘Let’s call this band the Dave Matthews Band.’ It just became that, and it sort of was too late to change when we started thinking that this could focus unfairly on me. People sort of made that association, but it’s really not like that.”

Albums, Breakthrough

In 1994, the band released its debut studio album, Under the Table and Dreaming, which included huge hits like “Satellite” and “Ants Marching.” With that, the band was in the mainstream. Two years later in 1996, DMB released Crash, which featured the smash songs “Crash Into Me” and “So Much to Say,” earning the band its first Grammy Award.

To date, the band has sold upwards of 25 million concert tickets and 40 million CDs and DVDs.

Photo by Danny Clinch/Shore Fire Media