January 22nd, 2004
By AUSTIN SCAGGS
"That's right, Kitty. You're beautiful, but I'm not going to touch you. I don't know where you've been, and I hope you're not related to the devil." These days it's hard for Dave Matthews to trust anything, not even a small black cat desperate for attention. He doesn't need any more bad luck. "Trouble, get behind me now," he sings on his solo debut, Some Devil. "Trouble, let me be." He acknowledges that his best album with Dave Matthews Band is five years behind him and says no God gives a shit about him and that suicide crosses his mind more often than you may think. "I've been in situations where I haven't been able to see how I'll get by," he says. But Matthews also says he has a "pretty solid sense of joy." He is happily married, his two-year-old twin girls, Grace and Stella, worship him, and, as he puts it, he makes "an exorbitant living," estimated to be north of $20 million annually. In order to stay out of a lunatic asylum, Matthews has resolved to distract himself with projects, big and small. There's the solo album, which expands on Matthews' constant themes of loss, death and love; a craft project that involves designing and hand-painting a deck of cards; a president he vows to remove from the White House; the winery he operates on his Virginia estate; and ATO Records, the label he oversees (David Gray, Ben Kweller, My Morning Jacket and five others are signed to ATO). "I want to, as desperately and joyfully as possible, fill my life with unusual experiences -- make my life full of challenges and accept them," he says. "Change is like a vacation." What's taking over his fantasies at the moment is the thought of writing the next DMB album at the band's brand-new studio complex in Charlottesville, Virginia. "It's, like, my crazed ambition."
In Thibodaux, Louisiana, a bayou town fifty miles southwest of New Orleans, Matthews, who will turn thirty-seven on January 9th, has diverted his short attention span to acting. Sporting a full beard, he's on the set of Because of Winn-Dixie, directed by Wayne Wang. Matthews plays an ex-con drifter who arrives in Naomi, Florida, and settles in as the owner of a pet shop, where he imparts his wisdom to a young girl. He'll also contribute new songs to the soundtrack. "I always said that if I ever do a part in a movie, I would refuse to play music," he says. "But I realized that this is the perfect part for me." His character, Otis, has trouble stringing thoughts together without a guitar in his hand.
The day after the movie wraps, Matthews races back to his home in Seattle -- where the family is living while his wife, Ashley, studies holistic medicine -- to begin rehearsals for a tour supporting Some Devil. The beard is gone. In the kitchen of Studio Litho, where he spent seven months recording the album, Matthews welcomes guitarists Trey Anastasio and Tim Reynolds. They spend the afternoon listening to potential covers, playing along to Little Feat's "Spanish Moon" and the Band's "Up on Cripple Creek."
"This song is eerily appropriate," says Anastasio, as Paul Simon's "American Tune" blares through the monitors.
Matthews begins singing along: "And I dreamed I was dying." Two creases form between his closed eyes, and a large glass of Scotch and a cigarette are nestled in his right hand. "And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly/And, looking back down at me, smiled reassuringly."
Dave Matthews will soon launch his film career with a supporting role in an earnest puppy-dog tale set in a small town. But the musical superstar's big-screen debut isn't in the production-troubled remake of Where the Red Fern Goes. That film is going straight to DVD. 
