Dave Matthews Band

By spring 1991, the Dave Matthews Band played its first concert at a rooftop party in Charlottesville with its soon-to-be permanent lineup: Matthews, Beauford, Moore, virtuosic violinist Boyd Tinsley, and bassist Stefan Lessard. In the tradition of the Grateful Dead and Phish, the Dave Matthews Band built up a fan base by allowing fans to record and circulate tapes of performances. Fan favorites like ‘Ants Marching’ and ‘Tripping Billies’ were revamped nightly as the band opened up ample musical space for improvisation. The band’s first album, 1993’s Remember Two Things, was an indie success on the college charts and eventually went gold. RCA signed Matthews and released Under the Table and Dreaming (Number 11, 1994), which yielded the hits ‘What Would You Say,’ ‘Ants Marching,’ and ‘Satellite.’ Within a year, Under the Table and Dreaming was four times platinum.

After playing on the jam-band-friendly H.O.R.D.E. summer tour, DMB recorded 1996’s Crash, which debuted at Number Two on the pop albums chart and earned the band a Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Perormance by a Duo or Group in 1997 for ‘So Much to Say.’ 1998’s studio album, Before These Crowded Streets, a series of solemn narratives about a tormented man’s yearnings for his lover, debuted at Number One.

The dawning of the new millennium saw Matthews pick up an electric guitar for the first time in the studio on the uncharacteristically gritty Everyday, which was produced and cowritten by producer Glen Ballard. Everyday was actually the fifth studio disc DMB cut: they’d shelved an album recorded in 2000 with producer Steve Lillywhite, much of which made its way onto 2002’s Busted Stuff. A year after that, Matthews issued Some Devil, his bow without the Band; it too won a Grammy, for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, in 2004 for the single ‘Gravedigger.’ In 2005, DMB released Stand Up, their seventh studio disc.

In early 2008, the band began working on a new studio album with producer Rob Cavallo. In June, 2008, LeRoi was seriously injured in an ATV accident and died of his injuries two months later. The sessions for the new album took on a new meaning, as a tribute to Moore. Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King Groogrux King was a nickname for Moore grew into a diverse, textured album, at times melancholy or menacing, but just as often festive. Released in June, 2009, the album debuted at Number One, selling 424,000 copies its first week out.