The Raging Optimism and Multiple Personalities of Dave Matthews

Last year, in an effort to stake out his own retreat, Matthews moved into a house in the secluded foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The day after he arrives home, Matthews drives out there to check on the place. The house, a hermit's retreat, is at the end of a winding, narrow dirt road and perched on the side of a waterfall. A converted flour mill built in 1750, it comes with 65 acres and a price tag of $500,000. He strolls around, inspecting the grounds and making plans. "I've got the design in my mind," he says, "for simple three-room cottages with lots of light, high ceilings, so that friends of mine, people who need a place, and artists, can come and live and just have a place that they can do their art and don't have to worry about money."

But Matthews is a long way from starting his artists' colony. During the past six months, he's spent perhaps two nights here. Packing boxes sit, still full, in the mill's vast, loftlike interior, and the place has a lonely aura. The few personal touches are a set of dusty museum display boxes containing the African cicadas that Matthews collects as a reminder of his homeland. The singer's CD collection, which has not yet been removed from its packing box, offers a catalog of Matthews' influences: Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, the Beatles, U2, INXS, Traffic — as well as a cache of South African and other international musicians: Vusi Mahlasela, Ali Farka Toure, Baaba Maal, Abdullah Ibrahim, Juluka.

Matthews walks over to a brocaded antique sofa that Jane recently bought for the place. He picks up a guitar that leans against the wall. Alone, far from the stage and the cheers of his fans, Matthews coaxes from his melodies a melancholy that he says was often the impulse behind the songs. Between playing soulful, slowed-down versions of his hits, he talks about the price he has paid for musical success. "Sometimes I get a little afraid that being on the road — and in this separated position — that I will lose sight of some of the things that were inspirational to me when I was bartending and meeting people," he says. Matthews also says he's beginning to feel the pressure to keep coming up with hits. He plays the riff to "What Would You Say" and looks up. "See, I look at that and think, 'Where did I come up with that lick?' I've also been plagued by the song "Recently." I want to write another lick like that. I don't know what I was thinking. I wish I could figure it out. When I get one, I think 'Phew, I got another one I like.' "

Matthews then plays the chords to "#41," a song from Crash that reflects the new album's darker mood. "Remember," he sings in a voice abraded by too many cigarettes, too many days on the road, "when I used to play for all the loneliness that nobody notices now."

Still fingering the guitar, Matthews reveals that this song was written around the time that he was undergoing a messy split over money with his mentor, Ross Hoffman. "I was thinking about where I come from, and why I wrote songs and what was my inspiration," Matthews says. "And how I was now in this situation where those things that I'd done, I so loved, had now suddenly become a source of incredible pain for me. Suddenly there's all this money and people pulling, asking, 'Where's mine?' The wild dogs come out. The innocence of just wanting to make music was kinda overshadowed by the dark things that come along with money and success." Then Matthews, catching himself, smiles — and like one of his songs, he turns the melancholic moment, searching for the upside. "So it's a song about looking back," he says, "but at the same time, a song that's still adamantly looking forward and going, 'But I'm still going to carry on, regardless.'"

[From Issue 749 — December 12, 1996]