The Raging Optimism and Multiple Personalities of Dave Matthews

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!"

Alex Stultz, the 23-year-old merchandising manager, barely glances up from his magazine. After nearly four years with the Dave Matthews Band, he's seen this more times than he can count. He's heard Matthews' rapid-fire repertoire of voices, impersonations, accents; he's seen Matthews' dead-on imitations of Germans, crazy professors, Brazilian exiles, stuffy Brits; and he's heard Matthews' endless stream of toilet jokes — a raft of anal-fixated japes that from a less boyishly enthusiastic 29-year-old might be offensive and weird. But coming from Matthews (whose younger sister, Jane, affectionately calls him Mr. Anus), the unceasing allusions to his bowels — and the manic, high-speed, free-associative monologues — all come off as more funny than weird. So much so that it's not hard to imagine Matthews, in another life, succeeding as a Jim Carrey-like comic. Indeed, six years after Matthews began to supplement his full-time bartender job with musical gigs, his mother is still making backup plans for him. "If this rock & roll thing doesn't work out for David," she says, "he could become a comedic actor."

That won't be necessary. With sales around 5 million (and counting) for his three records, Remember Two Things, Under the Table and Dreaming, and the recently released Crash, Dave Matthews' musical career is working out just fine — far better, in fact, than anyone had reason to expect, given the improbabilities of just about everything touching Dave Matthews and his band.