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By Gerri Hirshey - October 2005

Rocker and gentleman farmer-vintner Dave Matthews is on a mission to promote sustainability, starting with the vegetables, grapes, cattle and chickens on his property in Virginia wine country.

"I like food," says Dave Matthews, "but I like good food. I just think the quality of the food we eat is in a desperate state." As members of the Dave Matthews Band straggle into this state-of-the-art recording studio deep in the Virginia hills, 15 minutes outside Charlottesville, the boss sips extraordinarily good Kona coffee while unspooling the tale of his conversion from junk food road warrior to gentleman organic farmer-vintner.

Before anyone arrived at the studio—the musicians are racing to complete Stand Up, an album that will reach No. 1 immediately after its May 2005 release—the wonderful aroma of vegetable soup filled the corridors, courtesy of a beatific young woman who cooks for the band. "We eat like kings," Matthews says. "And we drink some really good wine." A bottle of Merlot from Matthews's Blenheim Vineyards sits on a counter, prompting a studio wit to declare, in plummy Orson Welles tones, "We shall release no album before its time."

June 16th, 2005

^{Dave Matthews Band is back from the brink and back on the road}

^{By JENNY ELISCU}

The Mudhouse, a cafe in Charlottesville, Virginia, that employs the pierced, tattooed and generally bohemian, is not the kind of place where you pay for your mocha with a $100 bill. To do so would be to invite a sneer that says, "Why not just go to Starbucks, you corporate asshole?" To do so if you're Dave Matthews, whose band got its start fourteen years ago playing gigs at a tiny restaurant a few miles away, would be even more gauche. This is a fact of which Matthews is well aware, and when he opened his wallet on a balmy mid-May morning and saw that the only currency it contained was the Benjamin he'd been given as his per diem a few nights earlier, he panicked. "I had to borrow five dollars from my daughters' nanny," he says in a deep, gravelly monotone. And five dollars barely covered his mocha, which he takes with four shots of espresso.

Matthews is not just the biggest rock star in America -- since 1993, Dave Matthews Band have sold more than 30 million albums and 10 million concert tickets -- he is also one of the richest. DMB's new disc, Stand Up, sold 460,000 copies its first week, and the group is expected to rake in more than $40 million during its summer tour, which began June 1st and will roll straight through September. Even so, Matthews is loath to flaunt his riches. To buy coffee with a $100 bill, he says, would be like "making out in a room full of lonely people."

September 22nd, 2004

Taken From a Rolling Stone Article -

Voices for Change

From Bruce Springsteen to Jadakiss, artists speak out about John Kerry, George Bush and what's at stake on Election Day

As the election approaches, some of rock & roll's biggest artists are embarking on a tour with an unprecedented message: Vote for change. While musicians have played benefits for candidates in the past, nothing on this scale has ever been attempted: a nine-day tour of Ohio, Florida and seven other swing states, culminating on October 11th in a historic concert in Washington, D.C. Spearheaded by Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews Band, Dixie Chicks and R.E.M., the tour is expected to raise $10 million to mobilize voters. On the eve of this ambitious undertaking, ROLLING STONE asked twenty-six artists to discuss why they're voting - and why this election is so important.

Dave Matthews

By JOHN COLAPINTO

I. Mr. A Psychs Up

In a dusty parking lot 100 yards behind the stage of DeVore Stadium, where 10,000 fans await his appearance, Dave Matthews begins his pre-performance ritual. The location is Southwestern College in Chula Vista, Calif., another stop of the 1996 H.O.R.D.E. Festival, and the leader of the Dave Matthews Band is cranked. Beloved by fans for his achingly lyrical songs (and dismissed by some critics as a bland, Hootie Nation jammer), Matthews offstage is a guy neither his defenders, nor his detractors, would recognize.

"I feel good!" Matthews yelps in a full-throated James Brown. He leaps and shimmies, tossing his gangly, goofy, loose-jointed frame down the narrow aisle of his tour bus. From here, Matthews glides into an imitation of fellow H.O.R.D.E. act Lenny Kravitz, thrashing at a low-slung air guitar and tossing imaginary dreadlocks. For a moment, he's a gyrating stripper, then he's the ninja master from his favorite martial-arts movie, chopping the air, bellowing: "You have hurt my students. I will kick you hard in the intestines!"

February 28th, 1994

From and issue of Style Weekly

by Andy Garrigue 

 With a record-breaking first disc out, Dave Matthews Band makes a triumphant return.

Fans knew that it was only a matter of time.  That one day they would've able to get their hands on a Dave Matthews Band compact disc instead of the bootleg concert tapes they had been surviving on forever.  They also knew that one day the band would sign a major-label recording contract.  The momentum had been building for months.  With weekly shows at the Flood Zone and Charlottesville's Trax consistently attracting more than 500 people,
how could it not happen?