The Boys of Summer

Often, Batson would have a microphone on and the musicians wouldn't even know it. "I could just be sitting right here and Mark would have the tape going," Tinsley says, reclining in a lounge chair on the studio's second-story deck. "American Baby" began with a simple plucked violin riff by Tinsley. "I definitely wasn't thinking that could be the major hook of a song when I was sitting there playing it," says the forty-five-year-old Charlottesville native.

The experience was in stark contrast to the making of Everyday, in which Matthews and Ballard constructed the songs almost entirely on their own before the rest of the group showed up in the studio. "This has opened our eyes that 'Hey, Dave can write songs, but the rest of us can also bring in ideas that will be just as strong, if not stronger,' " says Lessard, 31, who cranked out a grunge-inspired guitar part that became the basis of the ode to oral sex, "Hunger for the Great Light."

Tinsley compares the method to how the group works during sound check, where off-the-cuff jams develop into new song ideas. "If you keep going back, you miss what was cool about an idea initially," he says. "With this band, generally the first reaction is it."

"That's the magic of this band: shooting from the hip," says Matthews. "The lights have to follow our cues, because we're not going to follow their cues. We're not going to stick to a song the way it's supposed to be. Everything is up to us. That's music to me. That's American music. We're an American band."

[Excerpt From Issue 976 — June 16, 2005]