For many people, the definitive soundtrack of the mid-1990s was a band out of Virginia with unusual instrumentation and an unmistakable sound. It was a sound that was completely different than the other stereotypical 90’s bands. Born and partially raised in South Africa, Dave Matthews was a bartender in the college town of Charlottesville when he founded the Dave Matthews Band in 1991. After recruiting a number of talented local musicians, the band started to spread their creative sound throughout Virginia. Two decades on, the group has sold 40 million records and have spread their music throughout the entire world.
The group was able to bring something completely different to the table, something that nobody else was working on. The band members didn’t come from the same background, they weren’t the same age, and they didn’t grow up with each other. Their relationship was purely derived through the music they created. In my opinion, this is one of the most beautiful relationships you can have.
"I can remember saying 'I can't imagine that I'm going to be doing this when I'm 45' — and I'm 45. And so I don't know if there's a place that we need to go to. But it's also a sort of interesting challenge to try and work with the same group of people because there's a uniqueness to it — of trying to get past all the things that relationships have when we're working together. ... There's four of us that have been in the band for more than 20 years. It's interesting that our love for each other really revolves around the music we make together. We're not in the same age group, we didn't come up in the same places, but we really do have a unique sort of love affair when we're playing music together. And it gets stranger and stranger, but it's good."
