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