If you were alive and cognizant in the '90s and early 2000s, the three words "Dave Matthews Band" probably conjure visions of frat houses, tailgate parties and sunburned revelry. In a 2018 Talkhouse essay promoting a re-recording of DMB's lost album, The Lillywhite Sessions, singer/songwriter Ryley Walker summed up the Matthews milieu.
"My roots run deep into a flat cornfield of Illinois surrounded by Buffalo Wild Wings and Payless Shoes that are housed inside of a Target inside of a Sam's Club," Walker wrote about his upbringing in Rockford, Illinois. "[DMB] were the stuff of legend. Their annual summer tour was the mecca for suburban townies to go get juiced up at."
However loving, Walker's Matthews essay sums up many outsider's associations with the band. But it's worth considering that most of the tags pinned on Dave Matthews are specious to facile. Take the categorization of "jam band"; it's right there on their Wikipedia, which may lead outsiders to lump them in with Phish or Dead & Company.
But while DMB command a jam-adjacent audience — and mixes up their setlists every night like a jam band — they're actually something of an unclassifiable, genreless, hydra-headed beast. And their authentic nature is all over their new album, Walk Around the Moon, out May 19.
"Dave Matthews [is] from South Africa, and he went back in his early teens and grew up there for a number of years," DMB's saxophonist and woodwinds player, Jeff Coffin, explained to GRAMMY.com in 2022. "His music is very influenced by… those dances, by that structure of music, and there's a hybrid of things that are going on there.
"So, to me, using the term 'jam band' for a group like that doesn't do it justice at all," he continued. "I don't have any idea what you'd call it." That's exactly how Dave neophytes should approach Planet Matthews: with a completely open mind, divorced from calcified associations.
Now consisting of Matthews, Coffin, lead guitarist Tim Reynolds, trumpeter Rashawn Ross, keyboardist Buddy Strong, bassist Stefan Lessard, and drummer Carter Beauford — all virtuosos in their own rights — the GRAMMY winners have racked up numerous hits across the decades. Therefore, any list of essential songs is bound to somewhat mirror the most famous ones.
But once you've absorbed these 11, don't stop — Dave Matthews Band weren't just the poster children for try-everything-once '90s radio; they were and are an American musical institution. Here are 11 gateway tracks for a group that perforated the hearts of millions by being only themselves.
"What Would You Say" (Under the Table and Dreaming, 1994)
With a limbic acoustic guitar intro, a blast of harmonica and a crashing drum intro, DMB arrived fully formed with "What Would You Say." It's not only the first song on their debut album; with it, they made their national TV debut on "The Late Show With David Letterman."
If Beauford's inimitable grooves and Matthews' idiosyncratic turns of phrase, like "The bear ate his head, thought it was a candy," hook you, keep going; Dave's almost certainly for you.
"Satellite" (Under the Table and Dreaming, 1994)
The celestial, heart-bursting "Satellite" is another key early Matthews track; much like "What Would You Say," it evades concrete meaning and goes for a rush of emotion. "Satellite" further establishes DMB's slippery rhythms and beautifully unctuous timbres; it just feels good in the bones.
"Ants Marching" (Under the Table and Dreaming, 1994)
The hip-swinging "Ants Marching" is a live DMB favorite for a very good reason.
Once former DMB violinist Boyd Tinsley's violin blends with the late LeRoi Moore's soprano saxophone for that opening fanfare, your ear is turned; you want to hear every harmonic and rhythmic twist and turn "Ants Marching" will take.
"Crash Into Me" (Crash, 1996)
One of the great heavy-breathing, voyeuristic character songs in the pop/rock canon (hello, "Every Breath You Take"), "Crash Into Me" was inescapable in its day; the 2017 film Lady Bird revitalized this paradoxical lovemaking jam for a new generation.
"I have a strange relationship with a lot of music that I've written," Matthews told Vulture in 2018 about the song's inclusion. "It was so lovely to see the song used as a central tool in someone else's story."
"#41" (Crash, 1996)
Fan favorite "#41" also comes from their hit second album Crash. (As per the title, it was the 41st song the band wrote.)
It came at a time of professional strife for Matthews; after they booted manager and mentor Ross Hoffman due to creative differences, Hoffman sued, claiming he was owed a share of their profits.
The gorgeous "#41" was a response to this calamity — while the lyrics are opaque, they're suffused with the sensation of grappling in the dark.
"I will go in this way/ Oh, and I'll find my own way out," Matthews sings. "I won't tell you what to be/ Oh no, but I'm coming to much more."
"Don't Drink the Water" (Before These Crowded Streets, 1998)
This urgent, guttural classic from DMB's third album, Before These Crowded Streets, addresses apartheid as well as the plight of Indigenous Americans.
Guest banjoist Béla Fleck gives "Don't Drink the Water" a droning, ominous energy — a dark sense of ancestral communion.
"Don't Drink the Water" only builds and builds in intensity, with Matthews sounding more and more ferocious, until the final line, which sums it all up: "There's blood in the water."
"Gray Street" (Busted Stuff, 2002)
The aforementioned Lillywhite Sessions, helmed by Steve Lillywhite, is the dark-horse favorite of the true heads: it exemplifies Dark Dave.
Most of the Lillywhite Sessions tunes made it on their fourth album, Busted Stuff; the radiant "Gray Street" anchors both the album that was and the one that wasn't.
Following a woman staving off feelings of despondency, "Gray Street" exposes Dave Matthews Band's vulnerable, rubbed-raw pop heart.
By the time the chorus hits ("It feels like cold blue ice in her heart/ When all the colors mix together/ To gray!), that Matthews magic is on full display.
"American Baby" (Stand Up, 2005)
Sometimes known as the controversial DMB disc due to its baked-in anti-piracy program, DMB's underrated mid-period album Stand Up certainly has its proponents — Ryley Walker among them.
The gleaming, streamlined "American Baby" is actually about national identity, but easily doubles as a straightforward pop-rocker about romance; double-fist it with sensuous album highlight "Dreamgirl," and they go down just the same.
"Why I Am" (Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King, 2009)
Arguably no schism or loss in the DMB camp — the aforementioned falling out with Ross Hoffman, the departure of Boyd Tinsley amid a sexual misconduct lawsuit — looms larger than the death of their founding saxophonist, LeRoi Moore, in 2008.
"He was a difficult friend, but boy, was he one of the greatest friends I had," Matthews later expressed. "And certainly one of the greatest musicians I heard."
Despite being written and recorded prior to Moore's death — and featuring Moore on it — "Why I Am" took on added resonance on Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King, the band's monument to Moore after his passing.
"This song is definitely about death. The whole thing of 'When my ghost takes me from you, you will remember the fool that I am, so don't cry, baby don't cry,'" Matthews later told Relix. "The urgency of living, I think, is very present in this song."
"Samurai Cop (Oh Joy Begin)" (Come Tomorrow, 2018)
After Tinsley's dismissal, DMB were a different band — yet again.
"I'm used to turning to my right and seeing him going bananas — some days doing it better than other days," Matthews said in the candid Vulture interview. "I don't know how it's going to be without him there… I'm going to miss having that whirling-dervish Adonis-Muppet over there on my right."
Despite this conspicuously missing piece of the puzzle, Dave Matthews Band soldiered on with a sense of hard-won camaraderie — and the majestic Come Tomorrow single "Samurai Cop (Oh Joy Begin)" sounds like the crew raising aloft a weathered flag.
"Madman's Eyes" (Walk Around the Moon, 2023)
When Matthews said "I have a strange relationship with a lot of music that I've written," he wasn't lying; speaking to Vulture, he called 2012's acclaimed Away From the World "fine."
"I think it was a great album and then I let people convince me it wasn't finished. I did a disservice to the music," he said. "I kept working on it and it lost a lot. It's too bad I didn't say, 'No, you're wrong. The music may be flawed and splintered but it's genuine. It's done.'"
Whatever Matthews' qualms with his own work, "Madman's Eyes," from their new album Walk Around the Moon, is a crusher of a single, fueled by the dark mysticism of Coffin's soprano hook.
Dave Matthews Band have a complicated history, and they will remain multivalent, misunderstood, and fiercely beloved. They'll keep evolving in tandem with their fanbase. But "compartmentalizable" is an attribute that remains impossible to imagine.