FROM THE VAULT: Dave Matthews Band

With Dave Matthews Band back on the road for an extensive summer tour, we look back on almost 25 years of interviews with the members of the group.

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Viktor & Relix Daily
June 01, 2025

June 1, 2025

FROM THE VAULT

With Dave Matthews Band back on the road for an extensive summer tour, we look back on almost 25 years of interviews with the members of the group. 

It all began rather casually, as these things often do. Dave Matthews was sitting on a couch in his band’s home studio, fumbling with an acoustic guitar in search of a lick. He soon landed on something that prompted longtime Dave Matthews Band recording engineer Rob Evans to take the initiative and move a microphone into position.

Dave Matthews describes their mood from the outset of the sessions as “joyful and unapologetic – like, ‘This is my band; like us or don’t like us, there is no band in the world anything like us.’”

Dave Matthews’ dressing room backstage at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center has the look of a creative hive. There’s an electric piano set up in the corner, amp humming. A sketchbook sits on the table, charcoal pencils nearby. The trusty acoustic guitar waits on a stand. There’s a sound system and on top of the rolling wardrobe case, with neatly hung shirts inside, a laptop chirps as its incoming emails arrive.

2022: The Dave Matthews Band guitarist digs in on improvisation, rolling with the COVID punches and a pair of wild, new albums.

Buddy Strong celebrated his birthday by indulging in the “purest form of musical cocaine”: a sprawling, 22-minute version of Dave Matthews Band’s “Two Step” at a show in Indiana.

When he’s not recording and touring with Dave Matthews Band or performing select dates with Matthews in an acoustic duo format, guitarist Tim Reynolds tends to solo work or with his trio, TR3 featuring Tim Reynolds.