Renaissance man Dave Matthews is a family man, actor, record label owner, activist, farmer and vintner. He is also an award-winning songwriter and guitarist, and as a bandleader he is one of the more popular musical artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Matthews was working as a bartender in Charlottesville, Virginia, when he put together the Dave Matthews Band in 1991. The local musicians that he enlisted have, save for a short-lived keyboardist, remained together as a highly adept five-piece jam band that welds world beats and jazz undertones into its accessible folk-rock pop. DMB is frequently augmented on guitar by brilliant-but-unheralded Charlottesville multi-instrumentalist Tim Reynolds, who has also toured as a duo with Matthews, and together they've released a pair of live albums.
Thanks to his success with DMB, Matthews has been able to branch out into a variety of other interests. He co-founded ATO Records, and later ATO Pictures; he's acted in four feature films and guest-starred on the Fox TV show "House." He grows organic vegetables, flowers and herbs on his 1,340-acre Virginia farm, which is near his vineyard. And his philanthropic and environmental efforts include Farm Aid (for which he's a co-director), rebuilding homes in tsunami-stricken Sri Lanka and hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, and a concern for global warming (he's arranged to have 100% of the carbon dioxide emissions offset from the band's near-constant touring schedule dating back to 1991).
Provenance: He was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, but he now calls Seattle home.
Latest release: Live At Radio City Music Hall (with Tim Reynolds) (2007)
© 2007 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.
Dave Matthews
