Renowned for their live performances, the Dave Matthews Band is consistently one of the USA’s highest grossing live acts. With a sold-out Summer stadium tour booked back home for the end of May, a few days in England for a handful of solo dates must be the equivalent of some light stretching exercises. We sent our intrepid hack, Chris Pye, over to Manchester to meet up with him. So Dave, it’s been about five years since you were last in England, was it something we said last time? Well I’ve been over here a few times but not as a musician between now and the last time we were here. I think the problem was that we had a few problems trying to work out the best way to introduce ourselves to the European market with (former label) BMG, it was a strange experience - we were a fairly big band in the states and they were like “well we’ll just have trumpets blaring and you’ll come over here.” It’s certainly not the way we developed our thing over in the States which was real slow and almost regardless of the industry. And so although it may be the normal way to do things (for a label), for us it was a little ass backwards. I think that’s one of the reasons why we felt that we were set up to fail. This time we’re working with V2 it just seems already (more natural) that we’re talking about how to get over here more frequently and how to create a different career from the States but let it be real, let it be natural and just grow slowly. That’s why I came over here without the band and just do a few shows by myself and do things relatively quietly and not come out with guns blazing. But given how huge the band is in the States it must be weird for you to come over to a place where hardly anyone has ever heard your music. It’s satisfying to come over to a place where we’re less known because then it tests my mettle a little bit to see if the music is still valid, that initial winning somebody over is a particular part of any relationship, so you have see if you still have a good foot to put forward. True enough. And it’s also probably nice not to get hassled in the street. | "The first album I bought was Magical Mystery Tour and then I became obsessed…" | | Dave Matthews |
Yeah, I like being in a different place but I don’t get bothered in America, maybe in my home town because I feel like somebody’s watching me – and somebody often is – but I don’t generally carry a big posse. I’ve discovered that people don’t really look at each other when you’re walking down the street anywhere, so if you don’t have ten security people or if you don’t have cameras then people generally don’t see you. I don’t know if it would work for Beyoncé. But coming to a place (like this) reminds me of what we have in common. It’s also nice to have a drink in a pub that’s older than our country. But admittedly your fans can be pretty obsessive, I know that there’s quite a few Americans making the journey over here just to see these shows. I think that some people see things in me that not even my wife does, which is fine, but I don’t come to Manchester to play to Yanks. But if they make the trip, I can’t fault them, but I come here to play for people from Manchester. Your band plays massive stadium shows, you appeared in Live 8 – is the pressure different to do solo gigs in smaller venues? It’s a lotta fun to play smaller places but the real thing is whether or not you can win the crowd. And that’s everything for me, and so it’s not weird – we (the band) came from a background playing the hundred-person bars and we went through to dancehalls and theatres and now we’re doing amphitheatres and stadiums but it’s not that far away, what we were doing 10 or 5 years ago. It’s not that we can’t remember what it was like. If someone was going to check out the Dave Matthews Band, what one record would you recommend they listen to? I think the live CDs have a (certain) character to them because that’s what we grew up doing, that’s what the band came out of. But then sometimes there are some people whose ears are accustomed to records which are shorter than an hour - which is what we do when we play live – I think we made some decent studio albums, of the newest record (Stand Up) my favourite track is probably Louisiana Bayou. But I think that each studio album has got its own character and so I’d say that if you wanna hear us ‘naked,’ put on a live record and in that way you get the energy, there’s kind of a manic quality to the our live performances. You’re a huge fan of the Beatles, was British music particularly influential when you were growing up? Oh yeah, XTC was some of the best British music I just love them, but they’re enormously underrated but they didn’t ever really break over in the States other than being a cult kind of band. I saw some old footage of the playing live and I though it was cool as hell, but they’re definitely one of my favourites. Are you coming over Liverpool to do the whole Beatles pilgrimage? Not this time, but I will one day. When I was six I stole my parents copy of Sergeant Pepper’s and then the first album I bought was Magical Mystery Tour and then I became obsessed… | 
