“I’m not Rihanna. I have to beg for a little attention.”
That’s one of the first things Dave Matthews tells me on Tuesday evening, calling in from his temporary Abu Dhabi residence. He flew in from Seattle to Dubai, then drove down the “little 14-lane highway” to the capital city. He’s clearly jet-lagged, but troops through as he does his allotted promo for the day. After all, he has to get the word out about his first UAE gig on Thursday night, where he and his six band mates will put on one of their talked-up live shows at du Arena.
What can people expect?
“I don’t know until about two hours before the show, and then I write the set,” he says. “But what I try and do when I’m writing a set is think about introducing myself, as if I was meeting somebody’s parents for the first time. I’ll be on my best behaviour, and I’ll try and show as many different sides of the band as I can, but at the same time, be interesting.”
He anticipates seeing some familiar faces in the crowd from the UK and America, but hopes for a handful of Dave Matthews Band (DMB) novices, experiencing them in the flesh for the first time.
Over the phone, Matthews, 48, possesses an understated humility that comes through in his long-winded, self-deprecating responses. The namesake of his band, he’s been making and touring music for over 24 years. (“It’s almost exactly half my life, except the longer part of half my life was the first part,” he tells me.) His band has hit the road every year, except for 2011, when they opted to take it easy for their 20th anniversary together.
The point is, Matthews is probably a man that needs no introduction. Nonetheless, he starts our conversation with, “Hi there, I’m David Matthews, I’m calling for Marwa with Gulf News?” Most interviewees these days don’t even bother learning your name.
Part of what keeps him grounded, it seems, is his children. He has twin teenagers, Stella Busina and Grace Anne, and an eight-year-old boy, August Oliver.
“I live, sometimes, vicariously through him, when I’m not living vicariously through my daughters, who are 14,” he says. Quizzed about whether or not he’s a fan of the Star Trek reboot, which is currently filming in the UAE, Matthews adds: “I’m not, really. My son is into Star Wars, because Star Wars has Darth Vader. Star Trek, on the other hand, I think he could get into it, but he hasn’t yet.”
When it comes to his daughters, he likes to exchange music and literature, sharing with them the books he read when he was young and finding out what’s on their radar.
“The Hunger Games,” he says. “I like making my political analogies, which I don’t know if they are the political analogies that the author would make, but I like making my political analogies about The Hunger Games to my daughters, and then they react to my theories about it — the same way you can do with [George Orwell’s] Animal Farm. My girls are 14; they’re already very socially conscious kids. I’m trying, at least, to encourage them to be aware of the world.”
Another thing that keeps him humble must be experience. Two-and-a-half decades of making music, and there’s a new album on the horizon. Bassist Stefan Lessard tells tabloid! it’s “about finding the fun and the groove.”
“Guitars are not as popular now; there’s less rock and more funk. But I can never say, ‘We play this one kind of music.’ It’s got everything from ballads to up-tempto, sweet, smoky grooves,” he says.
While Lessard describes the album as “about 90 per cent finished”, Matthews says there’s still two or three songs he wants to squeeze out before he calls it a day.
“We probably have four albums’ — four mediocre albums’ — worth of music, that we have in piles. I think we have one pretty good album,” he says. “It probably won’t be finished as fast as the other guys want it to get finished, but I’m a really slow lyricist. It gets harder and harder as time goes on, but I’m trying.”
It’s almost as though he’ll never stop trying. Like the Dave Matthews Band is eternal. Like they’re never going to stop squeezing out songs, putting out records, and going on tour. When Matthews looks down the road, is there a finish line in sight?
“God, I hope so,” he laughs. “I think about it, not infrequently. I’ve thought about it for a long time. There’s times when I think I should be doing something else. I should be courageous and I should challenge myself. But it’s also a challenge to keep writing for a group. There’s something magical in this group of people that I assembled [and] that makes me feel grateful.”
But there are other things in the world, he adds. Maybe the world belongs to our children, now, and he should be spending more of his energy thinking of them. (“Although I don’t know how it would be possible to think about them more than I do already.”) Still, he doesn’t imagine himself carrying on as long as some other bands have. They’d have to be together another 13 years to catch up to, say, U2.
“I don’t feel any obligation to longevity, but I also don’t want to seem ungrateful,” Matthews says.
Spending half your life giving back to your fans doesn’t seem ungrateful at all. When you think about it, it’s incredible that an ensemble the size of Matthews’ has even managed to stay together for this long without crashing and burning at the hands of their egos — especially when Liam and Noel Gallagher can’t seem to be in the same room together for more than five minutes without someone losing a metaphorical limb.
Lessard describes the DMB bond as a kinship, of sorts.
“We all came from different backgrounds, from different places, but we all loved music. That was it,” he says. “In the first 10 years we grew into a family, a band of brothers. Now we all have our own families — we all have children — and we’ve gained a new perspective on touring. We know what life is outside a popular band, we know what it is to put your ego aside. You have a different purpose to being onstage.”
For Matthews, it’s about accountability to themselves, to each other and to the fans. If any one of them starts “mailing it in”, they put him in a headlock.
“I hope I play each song as if it’s my last. Not to mean in an over-emotional way, but just to mean that I put everything that I can into that moment. I expect the same from everyone in my band, and I think for the most part, everyone expects that from each other,” he says.
There must be added pressure on him, I suggest, seeing as he’s Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band?
“Not more than what I add to it. It’s a silly name. It’s more [called] that because of a lack of a name — out of laziness. We didn’t sit in a circle and say, ‘Let’s call it this,’” he says. “There was a time early on, maybe, when it was a little too late to change it, and it may have been frustrating to all of us, but I think at this point, it doesn’t really matter.”
Don’t miss it:
Tickets to see Dave Matthews Band at du Arena on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, are Dh295-Dh595 through ticketmaster.ae.
