Since forming in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the early ’90s, Dave Matthews and his band have excelled at making cargo-shorts party music, blending acoustic folk, jazz fusion, bluegrass, and funk. Songs like “Ants Marching” and “Crash Into Me” were streamlined and direct enough to become alternative rock radio staples and get airtime on MTV, but it was the band’s improvisation-heavy live shows—where songs routinely stretched into double-digit runtimes—that earned a devoted jam following. DMB songs weren’t as intricate as those of Phish, or as overtly southern as Widespread Panic, but they were sprawling and accessible. In a post-Dead world following the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, people were eager for exploratory music with distinct pop leanings, and Dave fit the bill.
More than 25 years later, DMB still draws substantial crowds, and stands as one of the most service-driven bands in rock. Along the way, Matthews’ songs have become cultural shorthand for the rejection of irony and cynicism. On shows like “Futurama,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Community,” and “The Office,” the band is referenced lovingly via sly inside jokes. Greta Gerwig’s 2017 coming of age comedy Lady Bird goes even further, praising “Crash Into Me” in a pivotal scene, if not prompting a critical reevaluation of the band’s music—which was always more complex and compelling than the rock press gave it credit for—then at least suggesting the band earned points for having a lot of heart.
Of course, darker undercurrents also run through the DMB catalog. His father, John Matthews, died when he was only ten, and his sister Anne was murdered by her husband shortly before the release of the band’s major-label debut Under the Table and Dreaming in 1994. In 2008, saxophonist LeRoi Moore died following complications from an ATV accident. These deaths make their way into his songs. For all the sunny melodies, few pop songwriters sing as frequently and with as much clarity about death than Matthews.
The best Dave Matthews Band songs live in this tension, balancing loose-limbed jams with heavy concerns: from environmentalism to colonialism, apartheid to capitalism not making space for human dignity. “I’ll write a funky song about lust and sex and it makes you want to dance,” Matthews told Vulture’s David Marchese in May. “I feel like that’s okay. But I also have to write songs about the dilemmas of being alive.”