July 17, 2018 • 43 mins
This time around on iHeartRadio Presents: Inside the Studio, host Joe Levy goes deep with Dave Matthews, on the heels of the release of his most recent (and record-setting) #1 album “Come Tomorrow” (RCA Records). Levy probes everything from the recent changes in the Dave Matthews Band lineup, Dave’s response to the backhanded compliment he receives in the hit film “Lady Bird” and why it looks like there’s no end in sight for the 50-something rocker. Special thanks to Dave and RCA Records. Follow Inside the Studio on iHeartRadio, or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I Heart Radio Presents Inside the Studio, I'm your host,
Joe Leeve. This time around, I got a chance to
go along with Dave Matthews, which, if you've ever spoken
with Dave, would be a single sentence. What I love
about Dave Matthews is this is a guy who's passionate
about what he does. He takes it very, very seriously,
(00:24):
but that doesn't stop him from having a wicked sense
of humor about everything, including himself. We talked about why
it took six years between albums, why it took a
year off from the road with the Dave Matthews Band,
the secret connection between his band and Black Sabbath, then
what it was like to turn fifty and keep on going.
(00:52):
The Dave Matthews Band played their very first shows in Charlottesville, Virginia,
had a benefit for Middle Eastern children, and also at
an Earth Day fest of all. Matthews was born in
South Africa and grew up in America and England, but
he was back in South Africa for high school and
after graduating in ninety five, five years before the apartheid
(01:12):
regime began to crumble, he moved to Charlottesville rather than
serve in the Military. He was tending bar there at
a place called Miller's, and he had to be coaxed
by friends in performing his own work in public. But
once the Dave Matthews Band came together, things happened fairly quickly.
The band released its first album, Remember Two Things, mostly
(01:35):
live collection, in two years. After those first gigs, they
built a passionately devoted audience, in part by using the
model of the Grateful Dead, meaning they encouraged the crowd
to tape and trade live shows. Two years after that
debut album, they opened three shows for The Dead on
that band's final tour. In the next year, they were
(01:59):
open shows for Bob Dylan in the year after that,
The Rolling Stones. Of course, they were growing their own
audience that whole time, and by they were headlining stadiums.
That's the year their third studio album, Before These Crowded Streets,
debuted at number one, starting a streak that's continued across
(02:19):
seven albums right up to the recently released Come Tomorrow.
First Dave Matthews Band album in six years. Though they
were almost always described as a jam band and still are,
the Dave Matthews Band became one of America's biggest rock
bands in the nineties, a position they've never really given up.
(02:41):
They wrapped a bunch of different audiences into one thing,
sort of the same way they wrapped a bunch of
different music, the jazzy saxophone of Leroy Moore, the blue,
grassy violin of Boyd Tinsley, the solid funk bottom of
drummer Carter Beauford and bassist Stefan Lazard into one thing.
It's easy to understand the significance that Dave Matthews Band
(03:04):
took on for the Grateful Dad's audience after the death
of Jerry garcia In, but what's less obvious is the
role they played for nineties rock kids around the same time,
since n was also the year that Pearl Jams stopped
playing the United States for three years while they waged
a battle with Ticketmaster. In the post grunge moment, music
(03:27):
that sounded both happy and sad, that mixed the intimate
with the epic was a style looking for a hero.
Some bands could latch onto it for a few minutes
the way that remember Them Marcy Playground or The Spin
Doctors did, and some could manage it for a few albums.
The White Stone Temple Pilots did, But aside from Dave Grohl,
(03:51):
I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who's managed to
make it last for a career that spanned decades the
way Matthews has. Dave Matthews had experienced loss early on.
His father died from cancer when he was just ten
years old, and songs like Satellite or Lie in Our
Graves talked about the fragility of life. Look so did
(04:12):
Tripping Billy's in its own way. Other songs like Crash
Into Me were about chasing down pleasure. A big audience
trying to figure out how to make sense of bad
times and make the good times last found something in
the Dave Matthews Band look. It didn't always translate from
performance into the recording studio, and that may be the
one thing that Dave Matthews Band truly shares with the
(04:35):
Grateful Dead, but the live show became a defining experience,
documented on more than forty live albums. The Dave Matthews
Band audience is loyal for them. Eadie is not summer
without sitting on the lawn at a Dave Matthews amphitheater
show in North America. They were the biggest grossing band
(04:56):
of the two thousands, selling more than I've entred and
twenty million dollars of tickets, and that slowed down only slightly.
According to Billboard. In the band played fifty shows, selling
seven tickets and earning forty two million dollars. But last
(05:18):
year a couple of unusual things happened to the Dave
Matthews Band. The first is that they took the summer off,
and I think that might be the first summer in
twenty five years without Dave Matthews Band shows as Matthews.
It's plained to me turning fifty had something to do
with it, my fiftieth roth. They did fall right around
(05:42):
the same time as the Seven Deadly Sins or the
Cardinal Sins took over the highest office in the nature
of your birthdays in January. So you're saying it was
around the time of the Trump inauguration exactly. You turn fifty,
you have this moment of what thinking, Do I keep
doing this? Do I change what I'm doing? Like what's
(06:02):
going on? I think there was a lot of different thoughts.
I think for me, I've never been ungrateful. I don't
think I may have been tired. I've never been ungrateful
for what I've managed with the band and what all
the guys in the band have taught me. But I
do think when I turned fifty, I was like, but
I really have to have a selfish year. So in
(06:27):
Matthews took time for himself with his family and thought
hard about the future of his band. While he was
thinking about the future, a reconsideration of the past was underway,
thanks in part to Greta Gerwig's use of Crash into
Me in her coming of age movie Ladybird. The song
(06:50):
turns up twice, first when Ladybird, played by Sir Sha Ronan,
plays it over and over again with her best friend
while she's trying her way out of high school heartbreak.
And then later she's riding in a car with her
new boyfriend who's one of the cool kids, and Crash
into Me comes on the radio while he's talking trash
(07:11):
about not going to Brahm. I fucking hate this song.
I love it. I actually want to go to prom.
Here's a lot going on here. A young woman is
(07:32):
standing up for herself, not letting other people define her.
But also it's someone in high school saying fuck it.
To being too cool to admit that she loves the
music that she actually loves. It's a poignant moment in
the movie. I'd say what She asked if she could
use the song. I was like, yeah, I didn't, really,
I didn't. You didn't see the script. I didn't. I
could have, but she's a talented actress and it was
(07:54):
a few years ago, and I was like at the beginning,
but she asked because I think for her it was
a point it song for the you know, I'm grateful.
But then when I watched, I was like, what, that's
a super generous place to put it. And it also
shows sort of exactly what I was saying. But it
was a beautiful place that she put it. So I
had to center a note and say thank you so much. Well,
(08:15):
nice of you. What happens in the movie is a
little like what happened to Black Sabbath or Kiss in
the eighties and nineties. Those bands were pretty much hated
by rock critics in their day, but they became celebrated
when kids who had grown up loving their music began
to make records or write rock criticism of their own.
Looking back now, you can see how Sabbath's gloom and
(08:38):
emotional chaos told a certain kind of truth for seventies
kids let down by the implosion of the sixties, and
just maybe the Dave Matthews Band represented something of a
flip side, a sort of hope for its audience. An
interracial band led by a guitarist who had grown up
(08:58):
in South Africa, the Dave Matthews Band came to prominence
around the time Bill Clinton was elected. They were about
the world as you wanted to see it, rather than
the world as it was. And if that sounds like
an exaggeration, you haven't talked politics with Dave Matthews. A
committed progressive, I think the best political position for me
(09:20):
is as far left as you can go before you
start going towards somebody else's right. So I think we
make the mistake here often of saying, you know you
have the right and you have the left. We barely
scrape the left in this country. But if you can
go further left and then stop, which would be the
real center, before you appear to be going towards somebody
(09:41):
else's right, that's a good left because then everybody on
the left then But then the truth is that We
really would be best off if we were all in
our communal left rather than everybody's absurd radical right. The
radical right is the problem. I don't know if about
the radical left. I think they're all just reasonable. Come
(10:02):
Tomorrow has some songs that date back more than a
decade to two thousand and six. Matthews worked with four
producers and pulled out tracks from sessions that have been
left on the shelf. That sounds like it could be
a mess, but it isn't. It's a more focused album
than he's made in a long while, with a bigger,
heavier rock sound. Compare the version of Can't Stop from
(10:24):
Live Tracks Volume six, recorded twelve years ago with the
studio version from Come Tomorrow. That's the sound I heard
(10:47):
when I went to see the band on the road
this summer. A slightly different band, as Matthews told me
in this interview, there were some long simmering tensions with
violinist Boyd Tinsley, tensions that made him think hard about
the future of the band. Tensely announced in February he
was taking a break to focus on his health and family.
(11:11):
In May, around the time the tour started, sexual harassment
charges surface against Boyd, which he has denied, but the
Dave Matthews Band management has released a statement saying he's
no longer a member of the group. On this summer's tour,
Matthew was touring with a strong seven piece band that
includes Rashaun Ross on trumpet, Jeff Coffin on saxophone, and
(11:31):
Buddy Strong on keyboards. Matthew says he's never felt better
about the music he's playing. Mind you, he said stuff
like this before, but look at it this way. Come
Tomorrow is an album about family, about love, and about
(11:53):
the future. It starts with a song about giving birth,
So think of this as a rebirth moment for the
Dave Matthews Band. When he says he's never felt better
about the music he's playing, about the work he's doing,
he's saying it after a lot of time and reflection.
(12:17):
Here's what else he had to say, Speed get the
kind of major in years. Welcome to my guest, Dave Matthews.
Thank you very much, very nice to be here. So
I saw you play in Hartford on Saturday night. I
just want to ask, when you're doing a sixteen minute
(12:39):
version of Crush, do you know at the start it's
gonna be sixteen minutes or do you get five minutes
in and like, let's go along on this one? Boy?
I think it was. I mean, that's one of the
songs that we have grown accustomed to expanding. But there
are times when we get out of hand. But I
don't mean that in a bad way. That one. I
(12:59):
do remember thinking, wow, this one keeps going and it
really and the way I think about it is is
not that we've left a song a long time ago
and now everything that's happening since then we're in a
completely different place. But it's nice to have a launching pad.
Or sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes you come in from
some sort of improvisation and then land in this song,
(13:21):
which is another way to do it, and occasionally, which
I suppose would seem like a more obvious way to
do it, in the middle of a song, will go
off on some tangent and then hopefully find our way
back to it. But there's a variation. I don't know
that we know exactly how long. There have been times.
I think it was with a Bella Fleck and the Flectones,
we did a version of a song H forty one
(13:44):
with them that lasted close to three quarters of an hour.
You're in some major league dark star territory there. But
I think it's fair to say that by the time
that song ended, there's no way anyone would have known
what the hell of the song was. If they came
in the middle of that, they would have been like,
what is happening? But that really wasn't the effect. When
(14:05):
I saw you guys on Saturday, like, I knew where
the songs were, and the band sounds very, very tight
right now. God, it's so much fun right now. It
feels like every moment there's such a connection inside the
seven of us. There's just this sort of don't jump
off the train because it's going fast kind of feeling
(14:26):
right now that there's moments where it locks in so
tight that you really just have to do your part.
You have to have faith in in what you're doing,
because if you lose faith, that's the only thing that
could stop. We're in such a mean groove that I
don't remember feeling this kind of power. You've always been
(14:48):
a band with great flexibility, but there did seem to
be like a new kind of power to things, especially
the new material, which seems more rock band focused. And
that's interesting that you say, because you know, we've been
working on a lot of that stuff for you know,
some of the tunes actually more than twelve years old.
The new songs, some of them have a real muscily
(15:14):
groove driven thing to them. It kind of has an
effect of doing that to the rest of the repertoire.
I think from the beginning we've been open to improvisation,
to let any things go. But everything changes. I've been
struggling a bit with the band, with the sound of
the band or where we've been going, and I think,
(15:36):
you know, that's what led to Boyd stepping away. I
think that bringing in Buddy Strong. It was realizing now
just this ingredient of energy and of focus that is changed.
It's like finding the last part of some Not to
(15:57):
say there wasn't a magic I'm not saying that, but
I'm saying there's this new ingredient that changed the recipe.
Everything tastes a little different, Everything changes, and everyone changes.
It's like we're all looking at each other like in
a whole different way. Dave Matthews Pan took last summer off,
took a summer vacation. This is that you mentioned Boyd
(16:18):
stepping away. This is the first tour without boy Was
there any apprehension, Well, I think you're part like, yeah,
there's been apprehensive for a long time. I you know,
for me, well, there's been I feel, and I think
the guys all, I know, the guys agree that Boyd
(16:38):
certainly was a big part of the early part of
the band and just remained because he's been there from
the beginning. It's powerful personality. But it's been a while
that I think all of us have felt that his focus.
I mean, he was there on stage, but you know,
(17:01):
in rehearsals or in the studio, his focus was really,
it felt like to us, not in the room, and
so he was his own whirling dervish or his own storm.
But that really worked beautifully sometimes. Other times it was
very disoriented or seemed disconnected, and it was a frustration,
and we came There was a lot of confrontation, but
(17:22):
I'm a fiercely loyal person, and it took a long
time for me to say, look, we need more from you,
we need more focus on us. It just felt like
it's been a while that in that time when we
were meant to be focusing on what we're doing. I've
been having a really frustrating time getting to feel like
he was putting in anything more than the bare minimum,
(17:45):
and to get him to cop to that. That frustration,
in combination with his own personal things, led him, you
know two follow my advice and go to look after himself.
The result of that for me is that we suddenly
have this We're not having to pull anyone along. Suddenly
(18:06):
everybody's like at the front line, you know, pushing to
get ahead. You know, we don't know where we're going into.
You know, we got Buddy Strong just outrage. I think
he's dragging us all along, but we're all dragged. Everyone's
pulling forward. It's like Strong, newest addition to the family.
And we met years ago, but we started talking about
(18:30):
working with Rashan actually called me up and say, man,
there's this guy. Body's wrong. I listened to some of
his gospel work online and I had known he worked
with a lot of different people. This band is an
interesting band, and we want not only you to play
the notes, but we also want you to play your notes.
What do you got? And he has got a lot
(18:52):
with him. It's it's like this open it's opened all
these doors to our own music and to each other.
They're playing the carters killing me. He really is. And
he keeps saying, and he keeps saying looking at buddy,
and he's being like, man, you know what, that's what
it is. You know, he was a joyful presence, good lord.
Every time I turn around and see him, it's like
(19:13):
the presence. You can hear that it one was present,
but you can see it in his eyes and you
can see everyone else because we're all looking at each other,
like everybody's looking at each other as if quite a
lot of the time, if it's not over joy or
getting lost its with this sort of like this shoot
is bad. What is happening. It's like getting something that
you deserve, but you sort of can't believe that you're
(19:35):
getting it. I gotta say. When things started, I was like,
she's I don't know, I don't know, I do I
want another trumpet solo. And then like twenty minutes in,
I was like, there better be a fucking trumpets solo coming. Yeah,
he's Rashan is blowing, Like I see him over there.
It looks like, you know, he's gonna come out of
the front of his horn if you know, it's like,
I'm like, what is happening everybody? Jeff? Actually all it
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looked as though Jeff up in Hartford. There was one
point that I thought he was gonna this is the
last show that we played. I thought he's gonna go
to his knees. At one point he was bad. He
was used blow and I was like, look at this fool,
He's about to go down and it would have been appropriate.
He didn't. He didn't, but it was close. I was
so tired by the end of the show that I
(20:16):
almost couldn't physically play the last song in the set,
but I was so happy about it, like my hands
and my body and my voice. I was so out
of breath. I felt as though like I might not
be able to make it, but it was such a
joyful feeling. I don't know, I don't know. Over it's
not joy. It's not like happy happy, smile smile. It's
(20:40):
some mean groove that is going on up there. So
let's talk about the new record. Come Tomorrow. Ninth studio album,
seventh consecutive number one album debut on the Billboard Album Charts.
If you're keeping score at home Mark, this one is
number one whatever statistician came up with that. I feel
like someone's been fixing the books. But I like to
(21:00):
think that looks good. You know, it looks good. Band
putting out seven consecutive albums that enter the charts at
number one is a record that a new record up
for records, Yes, new record for records. You mentioned some
of these songs date back to two thousand and six.
There are four different producers, three studios. There was a
(21:24):
one session that was started for an album and scrapped.
This doesn't sound like it's gonna be a successful record,
and yet it's a really good fucking record. This is
a focused album. I think it's interesting, and I'm glad
that you feel like that, because I feel like almost
more about this album than I've felt it about any
(21:46):
of them. But I think it was you know, I
made We've recorded some of the recordings that date back
a while. I mean, I love those records, but I
had sort of said, well, that's not finished. I don't
have a place for that yet because we didn't finish
that project. Then we did grow Roux and we finished
that record and I love that record. And then I
(22:07):
did some more recording, you know, so we did grow
Roux with Cavallo, and then I did more recording with Alasia,
who I always right with John Alasiah, who was one
of the producer, always right with him. The record that
we had sort of show before that we were doing
with Bats and and then I made another album. I
went back. We did an album with Lily White that
I'm happy with. Some of the the songs. I don't think
in the end, I don't think it was the best
(22:28):
of the album could have been, but I still there's
some good things in there. And then I went in
the studio again with Rob Cavallo and we had the
beginnings of it. Worked for a while on an album
and we had more than the beginnings of a great
record there. But again, for whatever reason, I think disappointed
my own stop my own head getting you know, a
lot of things on my mind about the band. My
(22:50):
I desperately wanted to make a not feel disappointed in
some ways, like a little bit the way I felt
about Away from the World. Although again I don't want
to a baby out all these albums or good children,
none of them are. We're not gonna but but you
have said that Away from the World you feel you
went back to almost overwork. Yeah, I feel like that,
(23:11):
and I feel like it lost some of the teeth.
Then I went back in the studio and I was
working with John Alasia and uh Rob Evans, two of
the other producers. We just started listening to some of
the songs. I was really just saying, you know, that
is as good as anything I've ever done. That's just
how I started thinking of everything. At the same time,
(23:34):
I'm also writing more music, and what they were all
also telling me was like, the stuff that we were
doing right now was as good as anything that we
have in the back. So we've got this super creative
process going. It was like a monument. That's not the
right word. It was almost like something to hang The
whole process on. Was really when I went back and
(23:57):
listened to the track Can't Stop, which has Leroy More
on it, and it was sort of a live performance,
and bats And was in the room, and this is
one of the two tracks that go all the way
back to two thousand and six. Yeah, Elaysia and Rob
Evans went in and took the track which was recorded
with bats And, and they mixed it and then they said,
(24:17):
this is what we came up with, And I sat
and I was like, this is a monster. And the
way they had Rob Evans like he likes to get
to Carter's drums like right out, you know, and so
it's a beast. So then everything the way that I
was thinking about it was everything has to be as
strong as that. You haven't made an album in six years.
(24:38):
But it's almost like this is the greatest hits of
the last twelve years or something. It feels like that
in a weird way. It feels like this is the
best stuff I've done. And I think grew Rux was
the most focused album because in the middle of it
we lost Leroy. So it had this real purpose that
was behind it too, which was to pay homage, your
(25:00):
homage depending on how you want to be to le Roy.
And so even from the cover, everything about it was Roy,
and I think that's what sort of gave me and
Carter and everybody the motivation to get that record right.
And Rob Cavalla who had met and Doug who met Roy,
and we'd all lost him, so that sort of focus
was like we had to finish this, We're gonna have
(25:21):
to make it great for Roy. In this instance, I
do feel like I someone said you need to step back,
you need to look at what you've made and not
discount the heart that you put into some things. And
so I started digging through and there's a lot of
music I couldn't get on the album. I want to
(25:42):
ask you this is this is a very focused record
in a different kind of way for you, in that
I don't think there's been a record that is quite
this inward looking from you before. A lot of songs
about love, a lot of songs they seem to be
about marriage, or they're about lasting relationships. I'm often used
to your songs addressing the outside world a little bit more,
(26:05):
whereas this felt like a very personal, my family kind
of record. I think maybe there's sort of allowing myself
a little bit of that was feeling comfortable to talk
about it. Maybe that says something about where I am
with my family and also where I am with the band.
Maybe it's turning fifty whatever or past that, whatever it is.
(26:27):
I do feel like a lot of this is looking inward.
And even that song Black and Bluebird is a little
bit of a part of conversations that I have with
my son and with like daughters. It sort of is
like the words the things I've learned to think about
in some ways, or wanted them to think about. When
we're having conversations either about the world, about selfishness, or
(26:51):
about what's happening or the wonder, you know, always try
and remember that the universe is much bigger than we are.
And just that kind of idea from my kids is
I want them to feel stunning lee small, and therefore inspired,
as opposed to I can't stand my old phone. I
need a new phone. Oh my god, it's the worst,
(27:13):
you know. I mean, that's fine to have some emotions
like that, but I'm grateful that my kids aren't overly
obsessed by that kind of stuff. I think that song
is a wordy way of saying that we are so
tiny in the universe that if all of us and
everything on the planet vanished tomorrow, nothing, not even the moon,
(27:38):
would notice our absence. That's really interesting because particularly at
this moment in time, and this is a difficult period
in American history, let's put it mildly, Yeah, in the world.
I mean, you watch everywhere these waves of self absorbed
self righteousness and sort of ignorant and arrogance, scary combinations
(28:02):
of personality and also to connect what's happening in America
to world politics waves of nationalism, which which are a
very different kind of thing here in this country. I
think nationalism yet that very often allows the most disturbing
things to happen in cultures. When a culture starts to
think that it has somehow reached further or is the
(28:27):
example of excellence or should be acknowledged as the most excellent.
When that happens, very dangerous, dangerous things happened. I think
nationalism is what allows a Partei. Nationalism is what allows Hitler.
Not it's all fine to be you know, I'm American.
I'm proud to be an American. That's fine, But you
have to be able to say that feeling and that
(28:50):
belief is no more reasonable or more true than if
a Canadian says I'm a Canadian and I'm proud to
be a Canadian and I'm great. It's no more true. Well,
I also grew up being taught that saying I'm proud
to be an American meant that you were setting an
example that you wanted to share with the world, and
not I'm proud to be an American. Stay out, keep
(29:13):
to yourself. That is will be on our side of
the world, you be on your side. But it is
a scary time. And I do think that the sort
of sense of entitlement or the idea of being if
you're born in America for whatever reason, that for no
reason other than that you are worth more than someone
(29:36):
who is born in Panama. That to me is an
obscene concept that the value of a human being could
in any way come from where they're born or who
helped them. And you did mention apartheid earlier when we
were talking, and of course that is the idea of
(29:57):
something you grew up with and a system that said
you you can be born here in South Africa and
still be worth less. And that my concern in this
country is that nationalism, that we have to keep out
all these people because this is ours, because we were
born here or we arrived here, right. That is truly
(30:17):
strange coming from a country that's so young and is
so recently created by immigrants. This country is half the
soldiers that fought on the side of the Union and
a civil war word immigrants. So it was a civil
war sorts, but it was fought by people that were
coming here that we're from somewhere else. We always have
(30:39):
to acknowledge that, because if we don't, then I feel
less America. Was like, Oh, because I wasn't born here,
I'm less American by some people's standards than someone who
was born here, which doesn't fit in my opinion the
America that I think, in my ideal view of it,
it could be to look at the state of the
population of this country and all our differences, and to
(31:01):
acknowledge some things but not acknowledge others talk about America
as if it's this land of justice and freedom, and
then not acknowledge that it's a land of immigrants, and
not acknowledge that much of it was built by the
hands of slaves, and that certainly it couldn't be what
it is now had it not been for the hundreds
and hundreds of years of enslaved people doing a lot
(31:23):
of the work. The album is named Come Tomorrow. The
title track is about this change we want to see, right,
it would be great. There was talk at first when
I had an album together. There's some murmurings. People are
saying we should put Come Tomorrow out as a single,
and I just said, even though it was written before
the most recent park Lands horrifying shooting. I wrote it
(31:44):
and we recorded it before that. But that said, regardless
of the timing of it, would make it seem pretty
on the button, and I felt like that also would
be I felt like it might be perceived a sort
of stepping in to something that really isn't my place.
I'd rather be supportive of the efforts to get some
sort of sane situation with guns and automatic weapons in
(32:09):
this country, rather than I would try and jump in
the middle of somebody else's terrible situation pretend I'm part
of it. That song is, at the same time as
it's in some ways for me, quite cynical, it is
also you know, when I talked to my children about
how they see the world, I mean, their view is
so much more open and tolerant, even though I feel
(32:33):
like I grew up a very tolerant person, and the
seventies was, as far as the authorities were concerned, the
late seventies was a very tolerant time. It was like, suddenly,
we're all like laughing at the stupidity of our Your
girls are teenagers, yeah, and and and if you have
a teenager now, then you are likely involved in a
(32:54):
conversation about gender and fluidity. That is not the one
that you and I grew up with. No, it was
almost unthinkable, exactly. But my kids they're also connected to
each other now as well through technology. Not always great,
but I think a lot of times it is actually
not a bad thing because they're always in touch with
each other a lot of time. Maybe it's not the
(33:14):
deepest of conversations, but sometimes it is deep conversation. I
learn to be more tolerant and watch myself around from
them more than they they learned from me. I'm glad
maybe I made them lean towards a kindness. But you know,
sometimes I'm a found mouth pig and sometimes I'll say
(33:34):
something in the car and you can't say that, Dad.
I say, actually, I can say it, and I will
say it in the safety of my family, knowing that
you better know that if I say some crazy shit,
that you know where my heart is because you sit
around in my house and smell my hearts. You know.
Not only that. So I was talking last week with
(33:55):
someone you've worked with for a long time who was
full of praise for the way you keep it normal.
She was like, you know, here's a guy who drives
his kids to school every morning, doesn't make a big
deal about where he lives. It's not super secret. Dave
Matthews lives in seatt All, and it drives a priest.
I try not to stick out. I'll try to make
(34:17):
my strange stay on the inside as much as possible.
I do think it's better for my kids. I do
feel like if I walk through an airport by myself,
there's a much better chance that no one is gonna
notice me. Then if I walk through the airport with
a posse, if I really don't want anyone to see me,
well then I just won't go outside. And and and
(34:40):
I do think I don't want people knocking on my
door and saying I made you this jam, or whyon't
you come to my wedding. I don't want strangers coming
out of my house. But I feel like if you're
sort of accessible, it makes the curiosity as to what's
they're less it's less interesting. You can treat yourself like
a normal person. People will treat you like a normal person.
We mentioned that you took a a summer vacation last summer.
(35:01):
Did turning fifty have anything to do with not going
out for a summer tour for the first time in
a long while. I still worked. I did go on
tour with Tim Reynolds. It's light, it's easy, you know,
it's just two guitarsome. Turning fifty also my view of
things changed a little bit then too, because how well
I was not totally unexpected, but it was my fiftieth
(35:22):
birthday did fall right around the same time as the
Seven Deadly Sins or the Cardinal Sins took over the
highest office in the nature. Your birthdays in January, so
you're saying it was around the time of the Trump
inauguration exactly, you turned fifty. You have this moment of
what thinking, do I keep doing this? Do I change
(35:42):
what I'm doing? Like what's going on? I think there
was a lot of different thoughts. I think for me,
I've never been ungrateful for what I've managed with the
band and what all the guys in the band have
taught me. But I do think when I turned fifty,
I was like, but I really have to have a
selfish year. You know, it's all relative, not regardless of
(36:04):
everybody else, but just because of me. And so I
told my kids, said, what do you want to do
with what kind of party. My wife had what kind
of party want? I don't want a party. Had to
give me a surprise party. But I do want to
go have a trip, and I haven't figured out yet,
but I want to take you all on a trip,
and I want to go somewhere where, and then I
(36:24):
want to take all our cell phones away and take
all our things, and I want to hide everything, and
I want to do something where. We ended up going
to Kenya to reteddy this incredible elephants sanctuary. I had
some other places and had I think all my family
would agree. You know, I'm not saying that everybody can
hop in and plan and go to the middle of
Kenya where there's nothing, but it was everything that I
(36:46):
could be. And although I felt selfish um in some ways,
if I looked at it, it was just unbelievable time
for me and my family to indulge each other and
to uh enjoy each other, the company and too. It
was really nice. It was also beautiful because it wasn't
a battle, even in the remotest way. Please canna have
(37:07):
my iPad? Oh can I just check my bad It
was like there was none of it. It was crazy,
but it was because we were around all. I think
it's easier to be without your iPad when there are elephants,
that they make it easier to to forego social media
is wild. That alone is a good argument for an outride.
Band of ivory in this country will help you stay
(37:29):
in the room, as will rhinoceros is. Although they are
not as smart as elephants, not an elephant is hauntingly
smart animal. If I was gonna tell anyone to read
a very simple, very quick read about elephants, that's a
beautiful book that anyone would enjoy by Lawrence Anthony called
(37:51):
The Elephant Whisper, and it's just his experience with a
herd of wild elephant. It is mind boggling the respect
you will gain from a very unassuming book. But it
will make you wonder at the universe. See turn fifty.
You took your family to Kenya? But did you have
(38:13):
that moment? I always think of that, Neil Young song,
I am the ocean. Yeah. People my age don't do
the things I do. It's funny because I do. Sometimes
hear my own voice saying There's no way I'm gonna
be doing this when I'm forty. I mean, I can
hear my I know my own voice, and it was going, well,
there's no way I'm gonna do this when I'm forty.
Now I feel like I was wrong, and there aren't
(38:35):
a lot of people who get to keep doing this,
Like it is a crazy thing, and unless you're working
as a musician and you've had to work all long
to be lucky enough to get where we are and
keep being able to do it at that really very lucky.
I don't take it for granted. For the most part,
everyone's in a while, I take it for granted. I
do feel like I don't care as much about what
(38:58):
people think as I did twenty years ago. I I
think I deeply cared. Now I'm kind of like, if
you don't think that what I did was good, I
don't care. I'm not saying you're wrong, although I think
you're wrong. I I'm just saying that I don't care
because it's good. It's funny too. It's a different thing
when like the people who grew up on your music
(39:20):
start telling their stories or they start writing their rock
history because they don't do it. It's the same thing.
I was thinking about this the other day. Black Sabbath,
we think of black Sabbath is fucking Sabbath. But in
the seventies, if you're reading rock criticism, it's like they're
no good and they're not really Satanists. That's not real
(39:41):
and it's not good. It's not good music, and it's
fundamental to us. Yeah, I just I just know that
it's at the core of me. You know. I do
remember being almost frozen with joy fear when I was
in the gym here in the city and Ozzie was
(40:03):
on a treadmill near me. Now he was running, but
he was the whole he was shaking, the whole ban
He runs like Frankenstein, which is not surprising, but he's like,
I mean, his feet are hitting the ground. Use I
was like, how do his bones hold up? He was
running and it was not long, it was maybe a
(40:24):
decade ago. I was impressed that he was running, but
I was also just like you know, and eventually got
the courage to go, you know. But I didn't bug
him too much. And he's, of course, as we all
know now having watched Our Charming, he wasn't, as you know,
the first and only show of its sort that was
actually worth something. But in my strange opinion, you mean
(40:44):
the only reality show, the only family reality show. Great,
why do it again? That one was perfect? Just watch reruns.
It was perfect and he could see he was a loving,
amazing person. But what great music to hate? You know,
you might hate to admit it, but it's great. It's
in my bones. We're now at a stage where the
Stones are on tour and they're in their seventies. You
(41:05):
can probably do that too. I'll let that happen when
it does well. The way I feel right now is
that I cannot believe how knew this, how good I
feel about this record. Like I think that if someone
listens to this album and says I don't get it,
(41:27):
they should either listen again or I don't know, go
eat a cupcakes. It's they're loss to me. It's such
a good record. I feel so good about it. And
you're back out on tour this summer. I cannot remember
feeling this elated about playing music with anybody and feeling
so lifted by the experience as I do with you know,
(41:48):
the same people and some new people then I've ever
felt in my life. And it's just what the hell
did I do? Right? But I just feel like when
I look at Carter, and I know that we were
in his basement practicing, and I know Stefan was a
fifteen year old kid when I first approached him. When
I look at them now and I see those same
people and you don't really see how much you hate
(42:09):
you know, that makes me think, well, we did something right.
Even though we've lost some friends along the way, we
did something. We found something in each other that is remarkable,
and I don't take it for granted. Day We're gonna
leave it there. Thank you so much right on, and
it was really nice talking to ye. This was fantastic.
Thank you did make you. Inside the Studio is an
(42:34):
I Heeart Radio original podcast created by Chris Peterson. This
episode was written and hosted by me Joe Levy. Our
executive producer is Sandy Smallens for audiation, and our mixer
is Matt Noble. Would like to give a big thank
you to Dave Matthews and our CIA Records. Follow Inside
the Studio on iHeart Radio or subscribe wherever you listen
(42:55):
to podcasts.
I Heart Radio Presents Inside the Studio, I'm your host,
Joe Leeve. This time around, I got a chance to
go along with Dave Matthews, which, if you've ever spoken
with Dave, would be a single sentence. What I love
about Dave Matthews is this is a guy who's passionate
about what he does. He takes it very, very seriously,
(00:24):
but that doesn't stop him from having a wicked sense
of humor about everything, including himself. We talked about why
it took six years between albums, why it took a
year off from the road with the Dave Matthews Band,
the secret connection between his band and Black Sabbath, then
what it was like to turn fifty and keep on going.
(00:52):
The Dave Matthews Band played their very first shows in Charlottesville, Virginia,
had a benefit for Middle Eastern children, and also at
an Earth Day fest of all. Matthews was born in
South Africa and grew up in America and England, but
he was back in South Africa for high school and
after graduating in ninety five, five years before the apartheid
(01:12):
regime began to crumble, he moved to Charlottesville rather than
serve in the Military. He was tending bar there at
a place called Miller's, and he had to be coaxed
by friends in performing his own work in public. But
once the Dave Matthews Band came together, things happened fairly quickly.
The band released its first album, Remember Two Things, mostly
(01:35):
live collection, in two years. After those first gigs, they
built a passionately devoted audience, in part by using the
model of the Grateful Dead, meaning they encouraged the crowd
to tape and trade live shows. Two years after that
debut album, they opened three shows for The Dead on
that band's final tour. In the next year, they were
(01:59):
open shows for Bob Dylan in the year after that,
The Rolling Stones. Of course, they were growing their own
audience that whole time, and by they were headlining stadiums.
That's the year their third studio album, Before These Crowded Streets,
debuted at number one, starting a streak that's continued across
(02:19):
seven albums right up to the recently released Come Tomorrow.
First Dave Matthews Band album in six years. Though they
were almost always described as a jam band and still are,
the Dave Matthews Band became one of America's biggest rock
bands in the nineties, a position they've never really given up.
(02:41):
They wrapped a bunch of different audiences into one thing,
sort of the same way they wrapped a bunch of
different music, the jazzy saxophone of Leroy Moore, the blue,
grassy violin of Boyd Tinsley, the solid funk bottom of
drummer Carter Beauford and bassist Stefan Lazard into one thing.
It's easy to understand the significance that Dave Matthews Band
(03:04):
took on for the Grateful Dad's audience after the death
of Jerry garcia In, but what's less obvious is the
role they played for nineties rock kids around the same time,
since n was also the year that Pearl Jams stopped
playing the United States for three years while they waged
a battle with Ticketmaster. In the post grunge moment, music
(03:27):
that sounded both happy and sad, that mixed the intimate
with the epic was a style looking for a hero.
Some bands could latch onto it for a few minutes
the way that remember Them Marcy Playground or The Spin
Doctors did, and some could manage it for a few albums.
The White Stone Temple Pilots did, But aside from Dave Grohl,
(03:51):
I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who's managed to
make it last for a career that spanned decades the
way Matthews has. Dave Matthews had experienced loss early on.
His father died from cancer when he was just ten
years old, and songs like Satellite or Lie in Our
Graves talked about the fragility of life. Look so did
(04:12):
Tripping Billy's in its own way. Other songs like Crash
Into Me were about chasing down pleasure. A big audience
trying to figure out how to make sense of bad
times and make the good times last found something in
the Dave Matthews Band look. It didn't always translate from
performance into the recording studio, and that may be the
one thing that Dave Matthews Band truly shares with the
(04:35):
Grateful Dead, but the live show became a defining experience,
documented on more than forty live albums. The Dave Matthews
Band audience is loyal for them. Eadie is not summer
without sitting on the lawn at a Dave Matthews amphitheater
show in North America. They were the biggest grossing band
(04:56):
of the two thousands, selling more than I've entred and
twenty million dollars of tickets, and that slowed down only slightly.
According to Billboard. In the band played fifty shows, selling
seven tickets and earning forty two million dollars. But last
(05:18):
year a couple of unusual things happened to the Dave
Matthews Band. The first is that they took the summer off,
and I think that might be the first summer in
twenty five years without Dave Matthews Band shows as Matthews.
It's plained to me turning fifty had something to do
with it, my fiftieth roth. They did fall right around
(05:42):
the same time as the Seven Deadly Sins or the
Cardinal Sins took over the highest office in the nature
of your birthdays in January. So you're saying it was
around the time of the Trump inauguration exactly. You turn fifty,
you have this moment of what thinking, Do I keep
doing this? Do I change what I'm doing? Like what's
(06:02):
going on? I think there was a lot of different thoughts.
I think for me, I've never been ungrateful. I don't
think I may have been tired. I've never been ungrateful
for what I've managed with the band and what all
the guys in the band have taught me. But I
do think when I turned fifty, I was like, but
I really have to have a selfish year. So in
(06:27):
Matthews took time for himself with his family and thought
hard about the future of his band. While he was
thinking about the future, a reconsideration of the past was underway,
thanks in part to Greta Gerwig's use of Crash into
Me in her coming of age movie Ladybird. The song
(06:50):
turns up twice, first when Ladybird, played by Sir Sha Ronan,
plays it over and over again with her best friend
while she's trying her way out of high school heartbreak.
And then later she's riding in a car with her
new boyfriend who's one of the cool kids, and Crash
into Me comes on the radio while he's talking trash
(07:11):
about not going to Brahm. I fucking hate this song.
I love it. I actually want to go to prom.
Here's a lot going on here. A young woman is
(07:32):
standing up for herself, not letting other people define her.
But also it's someone in high school saying fuck it.
To being too cool to admit that she loves the
music that she actually loves. It's a poignant moment in
the movie. I'd say what She asked if she could
use the song. I was like, yeah, I didn't, really,
I didn't. You didn't see the script. I didn't. I
could have, but she's a talented actress and it was
(07:54):
a few years ago, and I was like at the beginning,
but she asked because I think for her it was
a point it song for the you know, I'm grateful.
But then when I watched, I was like, what, that's
a super generous place to put it. And it also
shows sort of exactly what I was saying. But it
was a beautiful place that she put it. So I
had to center a note and say thank you so much. Well,
(08:15):
nice of you. What happens in the movie is a
little like what happened to Black Sabbath or Kiss in
the eighties and nineties. Those bands were pretty much hated
by rock critics in their day, but they became celebrated
when kids who had grown up loving their music began
to make records or write rock criticism of their own.
Looking back now, you can see how Sabbath's gloom and
(08:38):
emotional chaos told a certain kind of truth for seventies
kids let down by the implosion of the sixties, and
just maybe the Dave Matthews Band represented something of a
flip side, a sort of hope for its audience. An
interracial band led by a guitarist who had grown up
(08:58):
in South Africa, the Dave Matthews Band came to prominence
around the time Bill Clinton was elected. They were about
the world as you wanted to see it, rather than
the world as it was. And if that sounds like
an exaggeration, you haven't talked politics with Dave Matthews. A
committed progressive, I think the best political position for me
(09:20):
is as far left as you can go before you
start going towards somebody else's right. So I think we
make the mistake here often of saying, you know you
have the right and you have the left. We barely
scrape the left in this country. But if you can
go further left and then stop, which would be the
real center, before you appear to be going towards somebody
(09:41):
else's right, that's a good left because then everybody on
the left then But then the truth is that We
really would be best off if we were all in
our communal left rather than everybody's absurd radical right. The
radical right is the problem. I don't know if about
the radical left. I think they're all just reasonable. Come
(10:02):
Tomorrow has some songs that date back more than a
decade to two thousand and six. Matthews worked with four
producers and pulled out tracks from sessions that have been
left on the shelf. That sounds like it could be
a mess, but it isn't. It's a more focused album
than he's made in a long while, with a bigger,
heavier rock sound. Compare the version of Can't Stop from
(10:24):
Live Tracks Volume six, recorded twelve years ago with the
studio version from Come Tomorrow. That's the sound I heard
(10:47):
when I went to see the band on the road
this summer. A slightly different band, as Matthews told me
in this interview, there were some long simmering tensions with
violinist Boyd Tinsley, tensions that made him think hard about
the future of the band. Tensely announced in February he
was taking a break to focus on his health and family.
(11:11):
In May, around the time the tour started, sexual harassment
charges surface against Boyd, which he has denied, but the
Dave Matthews Band management has released a statement saying he's
no longer a member of the group. On this summer's tour,
Matthew was touring with a strong seven piece band that
includes Rashaun Ross on trumpet, Jeff Coffin on saxophone, and
(11:31):
Buddy Strong on keyboards. Matthew says he's never felt better
about the music he's playing. Mind you, he said stuff
like this before, but look at it this way. Come
Tomorrow is an album about family, about love, and about
(11:53):
the future. It starts with a song about giving birth,
So think of this as a rebirth moment for the
Dave Matthews Band. When he says he's never felt better
about the music he's playing, about the work he's doing,
he's saying it after a lot of time and reflection.
(12:17):
Here's what else he had to say, Speed get the
kind of major in years. Welcome to my guest, Dave Matthews.
Thank you very much, very nice to be here. So
I saw you play in Hartford on Saturday night. I
just want to ask, when you're doing a sixteen minute
(12:39):
version of Crush, do you know at the start it's
gonna be sixteen minutes or do you get five minutes
in and like, let's go along on this one? Boy?
I think it was. I mean, that's one of the
songs that we have grown accustomed to expanding. But there
are times when we get out of hand. But I
don't mean that in a bad way. That one. I
(12:59):
do remember thinking, wow, this one keeps going and it
really and the way I think about it is is
not that we've left a song a long time ago
and now everything that's happening since then we're in a
completely different place. But it's nice to have a launching pad.
Or sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes you come in from
some sort of improvisation and then land in this song,
(13:21):
which is another way to do it, and occasionally, which
I suppose would seem like a more obvious way to
do it, in the middle of a song, will go
off on some tangent and then hopefully find our way
back to it. But there's a variation. I don't know
that we know exactly how long. There have been times.
I think it was with a Bella Fleck and the Flectones,
we did a version of a song H forty one
(13:44):
with them that lasted close to three quarters of an hour.
You're in some major league dark star territory there. But
I think it's fair to say that by the time
that song ended, there's no way anyone would have known
what the hell of the song was. If they came
in the middle of that, they would have been like,
what is happening? But that really wasn't the effect. When
(14:05):
I saw you guys on Saturday, like, I knew where
the songs were, and the band sounds very, very tight
right now. God, it's so much fun right now. It
feels like every moment there's such a connection inside the
seven of us. There's just this sort of don't jump
off the train because it's going fast kind of feeling
(14:26):
right now that there's moments where it locks in so
tight that you really just have to do your part.
You have to have faith in in what you're doing,
because if you lose faith, that's the only thing that
could stop. We're in such a mean groove that I
don't remember feeling this kind of power. You've always been
(14:48):
a band with great flexibility, but there did seem to
be like a new kind of power to things, especially
the new material, which seems more rock band focused. And
that's interesting that you say, because you know, we've been
working on a lot of that stuff for you know,
some of the tunes actually more than twelve years old.
The new songs, some of them have a real muscily
(15:14):
groove driven thing to them. It kind of has an
effect of doing that to the rest of the repertoire.
I think from the beginning we've been open to improvisation,
to let any things go. But everything changes. I've been
struggling a bit with the band, with the sound of
the band or where we've been going, and I think,
(15:36):
you know, that's what led to Boyd stepping away. I
think that bringing in Buddy Strong. It was realizing now
just this ingredient of energy and of focus that is changed.
It's like finding the last part of some Not to
(15:57):
say there wasn't a magic I'm not saying that, but
I'm saying there's this new ingredient that changed the recipe.
Everything tastes a little different, Everything changes, and everyone changes.
It's like we're all looking at each other like in
a whole different way. Dave Matthews Pan took last summer off,
took a summer vacation. This is that you mentioned Boyd
(16:18):
stepping away. This is the first tour without boy Was
there any apprehension, Well, I think you're part like, yeah,
there's been apprehensive for a long time. I you know,
for me, well, there's been I feel, and I think
the guys all, I know, the guys agree that Boyd
(16:38):
certainly was a big part of the early part of
the band and just remained because he's been there from
the beginning. It's powerful personality. But it's been a while
that I think all of us have felt that his focus.
I mean, he was there on stage, but you know,
(17:01):
in rehearsals or in the studio, his focus was really,
it felt like to us, not in the room, and
so he was his own whirling dervish or his own storm.
But that really worked beautifully sometimes. Other times it was
very disoriented or seemed disconnected, and it was a frustration,
and we came There was a lot of confrontation, but
(17:22):
I'm a fiercely loyal person, and it took a long
time for me to say, look, we need more from you,
we need more focus on us. It just felt like
it's been a while that in that time when we
were meant to be focusing on what we're doing. I've
been having a really frustrating time getting to feel like
he was putting in anything more than the bare minimum,
(17:45):
and to get him to cop to that. That frustration,
in combination with his own personal things, led him, you
know two follow my advice and go to look after himself.
The result of that for me is that we suddenly
have this We're not having to pull anyone along. Suddenly
(18:06):
everybody's like at the front line, you know, pushing to
get ahead. You know, we don't know where we're going into.
You know, we got Buddy Strong just outrage. I think
he's dragging us all along, but we're all dragged. Everyone's
pulling forward. It's like Strong, newest addition to the family.
And we met years ago, but we started talking about
(18:30):
working with Rashan actually called me up and say, man,
there's this guy. Body's wrong. I listened to some of
his gospel work online and I had known he worked
with a lot of different people. This band is an
interesting band, and we want not only you to play
the notes, but we also want you to play your notes.
What do you got? And he has got a lot
(18:52):
with him. It's it's like this open it's opened all
these doors to our own music and to each other.
They're playing the carters killing me. He really is. And
he keeps saying, and he keeps saying looking at buddy,
and he's being like, man, you know what, that's what
it is. You know, he was a joyful presence, good lord.
Every time I turn around and see him, it's like
(19:13):
the presence. You can hear that it one was present,
but you can see it in his eyes and you
can see everyone else because we're all looking at each other,
like everybody's looking at each other as if quite a
lot of the time, if it's not over joy or
getting lost its with this sort of like this shoot
is bad. What is happening. It's like getting something that
you deserve, but you sort of can't believe that you're
(19:35):
getting it. I gotta say. When things started, I was like,
she's I don't know, I don't know, I do I
want another trumpet solo. And then like twenty minutes in,
I was like, there better be a fucking trumpets solo coming. Yeah,
he's Rashan is blowing, Like I see him over there.
It looks like, you know, he's gonna come out of
the front of his horn if you know, it's like,
I'm like, what is happening everybody? Jeff? Actually all it
(19:56):
looked as though Jeff up in Hartford. There was one
point that I thought he was gonna this is the
last show that we played. I thought he's gonna go
to his knees. At one point he was bad. He
was used blow and I was like, look at this fool,
He's about to go down and it would have been appropriate.
He didn't. He didn't, but it was close. I was
so tired by the end of the show that I
(20:16):
almost couldn't physically play the last song in the set,
but I was so happy about it, like my hands
and my body and my voice. I was so out
of breath. I felt as though like I might not
be able to make it, but it was such a
joyful feeling. I don't know, I don't know. Over it's
not joy. It's not like happy happy, smile smile. It's
(20:40):
some mean groove that is going on up there. So
let's talk about the new record. Come Tomorrow. Ninth studio album,
seventh consecutive number one album debut on the Billboard Album Charts.
If you're keeping score at home Mark, this one is
number one whatever statistician came up with that. I feel
like someone's been fixing the books. But I like to
(21:00):
think that looks good. You know, it looks good. Band
putting out seven consecutive albums that enter the charts at
number one is a record that a new record up
for records, Yes, new record for records. You mentioned some
of these songs date back to two thousand and six.
There are four different producers, three studios. There was a
(21:24):
one session that was started for an album and scrapped.
This doesn't sound like it's gonna be a successful record,
and yet it's a really good fucking record. This is
a focused album. I think it's interesting, and I'm glad
that you feel like that, because I feel like almost
more about this album than I've felt it about any
(21:46):
of them. But I think it was you know, I
made We've recorded some of the recordings that date back
a while. I mean, I love those records, but I
had sort of said, well, that's not finished. I don't
have a place for that yet because we didn't finish
that project. Then we did grow Roux and we finished
that record and I love that record. And then I
(22:07):
did some more recording, you know, so we did grow
Roux with Cavallo, and then I did more recording with Alasia,
who I always right with John Alasiah, who was one
of the producer, always right with him. The record that
we had sort of show before that we were doing
with Bats and and then I made another album. I
went back. We did an album with Lily White that
I'm happy with. Some of the the songs. I don't think
in the end, I don't think it was the best
(22:28):
of the album could have been, but I still there's
some good things in there. And then I went in
the studio again with Rob Cavallo and we had the
beginnings of it. Worked for a while on an album
and we had more than the beginnings of a great
record there. But again, for whatever reason, I think disappointed
my own stop my own head getting you know, a
lot of things on my mind about the band. My
(22:50):
I desperately wanted to make a not feel disappointed in
some ways, like a little bit the way I felt
about Away from the World. Although again I don't want
to a baby out all these albums or good children,
none of them are. We're not gonna but but you
have said that Away from the World you feel you
went back to almost overwork. Yeah, I feel like that,
(23:11):
and I feel like it lost some of the teeth.
Then I went back in the studio and I was
working with John Alasia and uh Rob Evans, two of
the other producers. We just started listening to some of
the songs. I was really just saying, you know, that
is as good as anything I've ever done. That's just
how I started thinking of everything. At the same time,
(23:34):
I'm also writing more music, and what they were all
also telling me was like, the stuff that we were
doing right now was as good as anything that we
have in the back. So we've got this super creative
process going. It was like a monument. That's not the
right word. It was almost like something to hang The
whole process on. Was really when I went back and
(23:57):
listened to the track Can't Stop, which has Leroy More
on it, and it was sort of a live performance,
and bats And was in the room, and this is
one of the two tracks that go all the way
back to two thousand and six. Yeah, Elaysia and Rob
Evans went in and took the track which was recorded
with bats And, and they mixed it and then they said,
(24:17):
this is what we came up with, And I sat
and I was like, this is a monster. And the
way they had Rob Evans like he likes to get
to Carter's drums like right out, you know, and so
it's a beast. So then everything the way that I
was thinking about it was everything has to be as
strong as that. You haven't made an album in six years.
(24:38):
But it's almost like this is the greatest hits of
the last twelve years or something. It feels like that
in a weird way. It feels like this is the
best stuff I've done. And I think grew Rux was
the most focused album because in the middle of it
we lost Leroy. So it had this real purpose that
was behind it too, which was to pay homage, your
(25:00):
homage depending on how you want to be to le Roy.
And so even from the cover, everything about it was Roy,
and I think that's what sort of gave me and
Carter and everybody the motivation to get that record right.
And Rob Cavalla who had met and Doug who met Roy,
and we'd all lost him, so that sort of focus
was like we had to finish this, We're gonna have
(25:21):
to make it great for Roy. In this instance, I
do feel like I someone said you need to step back,
you need to look at what you've made and not
discount the heart that you put into some things. And
so I started digging through and there's a lot of
music I couldn't get on the album. I want to
(25:42):
ask you this is this is a very focused record
in a different kind of way for you, in that
I don't think there's been a record that is quite
this inward looking from you before. A lot of songs
about love, a lot of songs they seem to be
about marriage, or they're about lasting relationships. I'm often used
to your songs addressing the outside world a little bit more,
(26:05):
whereas this felt like a very personal, my family kind
of record. I think maybe there's sort of allowing myself
a little bit of that was feeling comfortable to talk
about it. Maybe that says something about where I am
with my family and also where I am with the band.
Maybe it's turning fifty whatever or past that, whatever it is.
(26:27):
I do feel like a lot of this is looking inward.
And even that song Black and Bluebird is a little
bit of a part of conversations that I have with
my son and with like daughters. It sort of is
like the words the things I've learned to think about
in some ways, or wanted them to think about. When
we're having conversations either about the world, about selfishness, or
(26:51):
about what's happening or the wonder, you know, always try
and remember that the universe is much bigger than we are.
And just that kind of idea from my kids is
I want them to feel stunning lee small, and therefore inspired,
as opposed to I can't stand my old phone. I
need a new phone. Oh my god, it's the worst,
(27:13):
you know. I mean, that's fine to have some emotions
like that, but I'm grateful that my kids aren't overly
obsessed by that kind of stuff. I think that song
is a wordy way of saying that we are so
tiny in the universe that if all of us and
everything on the planet vanished tomorrow, nothing, not even the moon,
(27:38):
would notice our absence. That's really interesting because particularly at
this moment in time, and this is a difficult period
in American history, let's put it mildly, Yeah, in the world.
I mean, you watch everywhere these waves of self absorbed
self righteousness and sort of ignorant and arrogance, scary combinations
(28:02):
of personality and also to connect what's happening in America
to world politics waves of nationalism, which which are a
very different kind of thing here in this country. I
think nationalism yet that very often allows the most disturbing
things to happen in cultures. When a culture starts to
think that it has somehow reached further or is the
(28:27):
example of excellence or should be acknowledged as the most excellent.
When that happens, very dangerous, dangerous things happened. I think
nationalism is what allows a Partei. Nationalism is what allows Hitler.
Not it's all fine to be you know, I'm American.
I'm proud to be an American. That's fine, But you
have to be able to say that feeling and that
(28:50):
belief is no more reasonable or more true than if
a Canadian says I'm a Canadian and I'm proud to
be a Canadian and I'm great. It's no more true. Well,
I also grew up being taught that saying I'm proud
to be an American meant that you were setting an
example that you wanted to share with the world, and
not I'm proud to be an American. Stay out, keep
(29:13):
to yourself. That is will be on our side of
the world, you be on your side. But it is
a scary time. And I do think that the sort
of sense of entitlement or the idea of being if
you're born in America for whatever reason, that for no
reason other than that you are worth more than someone
(29:36):
who is born in Panama. That to me is an
obscene concept that the value of a human being could
in any way come from where they're born or who
helped them. And you did mention apartheid earlier when we
were talking, and of course that is the idea of
(29:57):
something you grew up with and a system that said
you you can be born here in South Africa and
still be worth less. And that my concern in this
country is that nationalism, that we have to keep out
all these people because this is ours, because we were
born here or we arrived here, right. That is truly
(30:17):
strange coming from a country that's so young and is
so recently created by immigrants. This country is half the
soldiers that fought on the side of the Union and
a civil war word immigrants. So it was a civil
war sorts, but it was fought by people that were
coming here that we're from somewhere else. We always have
(30:39):
to acknowledge that, because if we don't, then I feel
less America. Was like, Oh, because I wasn't born here,
I'm less American by some people's standards than someone who
was born here, which doesn't fit in my opinion the
America that I think, in my ideal view of it,
it could be to look at the state of the
population of this country and all our differences, and to
(31:01):
acknowledge some things but not acknowledge others talk about America
as if it's this land of justice and freedom, and
then not acknowledge that it's a land of immigrants, and
not acknowledge that much of it was built by the
hands of slaves, and that certainly it couldn't be what
it is now had it not been for the hundreds
and hundreds of years of enslaved people doing a lot
(31:23):
of the work. The album is named Come Tomorrow. The
title track is about this change we want to see, right,
it would be great. There was talk at first when
I had an album together. There's some murmurings. People are
saying we should put Come Tomorrow out as a single,
and I just said, even though it was written before
the most recent park Lands horrifying shooting. I wrote it
(31:44):
and we recorded it before that. But that said, regardless
of the timing of it, would make it seem pretty
on the button, and I felt like that also would
be I felt like it might be perceived a sort
of stepping in to something that really isn't my place.
I'd rather be supportive of the efforts to get some
sort of sane situation with guns and automatic weapons in
(32:09):
this country, rather than I would try and jump in
the middle of somebody else's terrible situation pretend I'm part
of it. That song is, at the same time as
it's in some ways for me, quite cynical, it is
also you know, when I talked to my children about
how they see the world, I mean, their view is
so much more open and tolerant, even though I feel
(32:33):
like I grew up a very tolerant person, and the
seventies was, as far as the authorities were concerned, the
late seventies was a very tolerant time. It was like, suddenly,
we're all like laughing at the stupidity of our Your
girls are teenagers, yeah, and and and if you have
a teenager now, then you are likely involved in a
(32:54):
conversation about gender and fluidity. That is not the one
that you and I grew up with. No, it was
almost unthinkable, exactly. But my kids they're also connected to
each other now as well through technology. Not always great,
but I think a lot of times it is actually
not a bad thing because they're always in touch with
each other a lot of time. Maybe it's not the
(33:14):
deepest of conversations, but sometimes it is deep conversation. I
learn to be more tolerant and watch myself around from
them more than they they learned from me. I'm glad
maybe I made them lean towards a kindness. But you know,
sometimes I'm a found mouth pig and sometimes I'll say
(33:34):
something in the car and you can't say that, Dad.
I say, actually, I can say it, and I will
say it in the safety of my family, knowing that
you better know that if I say some crazy shit,
that you know where my heart is because you sit
around in my house and smell my hearts. You know.
Not only that. So I was talking last week with
(33:55):
someone you've worked with for a long time who was
full of praise for the way you keep it normal.
She was like, you know, here's a guy who drives
his kids to school every morning, doesn't make a big
deal about where he lives. It's not super secret. Dave
Matthews lives in seatt All, and it drives a priest.
I try not to stick out. I'll try to make
(34:17):
my strange stay on the inside as much as possible.
I do think it's better for my kids. I do
feel like if I walk through an airport by myself,
there's a much better chance that no one is gonna
notice me. Then if I walk through the airport with
a posse, if I really don't want anyone to see me,
well then I just won't go outside. And and and
(34:40):
I do think I don't want people knocking on my
door and saying I made you this jam, or whyon't
you come to my wedding. I don't want strangers coming
out of my house. But I feel like if you're
sort of accessible, it makes the curiosity as to what's
they're less it's less interesting. You can treat yourself like
a normal person. People will treat you like a normal person.
We mentioned that you took a a summer vacation last summer.
(35:01):
Did turning fifty have anything to do with not going
out for a summer tour for the first time in
a long while. I still worked. I did go on
tour with Tim Reynolds. It's light, it's easy, you know,
it's just two guitarsome. Turning fifty also my view of
things changed a little bit then too, because how well
I was not totally unexpected, but it was my fiftieth
(35:22):
birthday did fall right around the same time as the
Seven Deadly Sins or the Cardinal Sins took over the
highest office in the nature. Your birthdays in January, so
you're saying it was around the time of the Trump
inauguration exactly, you turned fifty. You have this moment of
what thinking, do I keep doing this? Do I change
(35:42):
what I'm doing? Like what's going on? I think there
was a lot of different thoughts. I think for me,
I've never been ungrateful for what I've managed with the
band and what all the guys in the band have
taught me. But I do think when I turned fifty,
I was like, but I really have to have a
selfish year. You know, it's all relative, not regardless of
(36:04):
everybody else, but just because of me. And so I
told my kids, said, what do you want to do
with what kind of party. My wife had what kind
of party want? I don't want a party. Had to
give me a surprise party. But I do want to
go have a trip, and I haven't figured out yet,
but I want to take you all on a trip,
and I want to go somewhere where, and then I
(36:24):
want to take all our cell phones away and take
all our things, and I want to hide everything, and
I want to do something where. We ended up going
to Kenya to reteddy this incredible elephants sanctuary. I had
some other places and had I think all my family
would agree. You know, I'm not saying that everybody can
hop in and plan and go to the middle of
Kenya where there's nothing, but it was everything that I
(36:46):
could be. And although I felt selfish um in some ways,
if I looked at it, it was just unbelievable time
for me and my family to indulge each other and
to uh enjoy each other, the company and too. It
was really nice. It was also beautiful because it wasn't
a battle, even in the remotest way. Please canna have
(37:07):
my iPad? Oh can I just check my bad It
was like there was none of it. It was crazy,
but it was because we were around all. I think
it's easier to be without your iPad when there are elephants,
that they make it easier to to forego social media
is wild. That alone is a good argument for an outride.
Band of ivory in this country will help you stay
(37:29):
in the room, as will rhinoceros is. Although they are
not as smart as elephants, not an elephant is hauntingly
smart animal. If I was gonna tell anyone to read
a very simple, very quick read about elephants, that's a
beautiful book that anyone would enjoy by Lawrence Anthony called
(37:51):
The Elephant Whisper, and it's just his experience with a
herd of wild elephant. It is mind boggling the respect
you will gain from a very unassuming book. But it
will make you wonder at the universe. See turn fifty.
You took your family to Kenya? But did you have
(38:13):
that moment? I always think of that, Neil Young song,
I am the ocean. Yeah. People my age don't do
the things I do. It's funny because I do. Sometimes
hear my own voice saying There's no way I'm gonna
be doing this when I'm forty. I mean, I can
hear my I know my own voice, and it was going, well,
there's no way I'm gonna do this when I'm forty.
Now I feel like I was wrong, and there aren't
(38:35):
a lot of people who get to keep doing this,
Like it is a crazy thing, and unless you're working
as a musician and you've had to work all long
to be lucky enough to get where we are and
keep being able to do it at that really very lucky.
I don't take it for granted. For the most part,
everyone's in a while, I take it for granted. I
do feel like I don't care as much about what
(38:58):
people think as I did twenty years ago. I I
think I deeply cared. Now I'm kind of like, if
you don't think that what I did was good, I
don't care. I'm not saying you're wrong, although I think
you're wrong. I I'm just saying that I don't care
because it's good. It's funny too. It's a different thing
when like the people who grew up on your music
(39:20):
start telling their stories or they start writing their rock
history because they don't do it. It's the same thing.
I was thinking about this the other day. Black Sabbath,
we think of black Sabbath is fucking Sabbath. But in
the seventies, if you're reading rock criticism, it's like they're
no good and they're not really Satanists. That's not real
(39:41):
and it's not good. It's not good music, and it's
fundamental to us. Yeah, I just I just know that
it's at the core of me. You know. I do
remember being almost frozen with joy fear when I was
in the gym here in the city and Ozzie was
(40:03):
on a treadmill near me. Now he was running, but
he was the whole he was shaking, the whole ban
He runs like Frankenstein, which is not surprising, but he's like,
I mean, his feet are hitting the ground. Use I
was like, how do his bones hold up? He was
running and it was not long, it was maybe a
(40:24):
decade ago. I was impressed that he was running, but
I was also just like you know, and eventually got
the courage to go, you know. But I didn't bug
him too much. And he's, of course, as we all
know now having watched Our Charming, he wasn't, as you know,
the first and only show of its sort that was
actually worth something. But in my strange opinion, you mean
(40:44):
the only reality show, the only family reality show. Great,
why do it again? That one was perfect? Just watch reruns.
It was perfect and he could see he was a loving,
amazing person. But what great music to hate? You know,
you might hate to admit it, but it's great. It's
in my bones. We're now at a stage where the
Stones are on tour and they're in their seventies. You
(41:05):
can probably do that too. I'll let that happen when
it does well. The way I feel right now is
that I cannot believe how knew this, how good I
feel about this record. Like I think that if someone
listens to this album and says I don't get it,
(41:27):
they should either listen again or I don't know, go
eat a cupcakes. It's they're loss to me. It's such
a good record. I feel so good about it. And
you're back out on tour this summer. I cannot remember
feeling this elated about playing music with anybody and feeling
so lifted by the experience as I do with you know,
(41:48):
the same people and some new people then I've ever
felt in my life. And it's just what the hell
did I do? Right? But I just feel like when
I look at Carter, and I know that we were
in his basement practicing, and I know Stefan was a
fifteen year old kid when I first approached him. When
I look at them now and I see those same
people and you don't really see how much you hate
(42:09):
you know, that makes me think, well, we did something right.
Even though we've lost some friends along the way, we
did something. We found something in each other that is remarkable,
and I don't take it for granted. Day We're gonna
leave it there. Thank you so much right on, and
it was really nice talking to ye. This was fantastic.
Thank you did make you. Inside the Studio is an
(42:34):
I Heeart Radio original podcast created by Chris Peterson. This
episode was written and hosted by me Joe Levy. Our
executive producer is Sandy Smallens for audiation, and our mixer
is Matt Noble. Would like to give a big thank
you to Dave Matthews and our CIA Records. Follow Inside
the Studio on iHeart Radio or subscribe wherever you listen
(42:55):
to podcasts.
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