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For DMB, Grammy nominations are a sweet reward
NEW YORK — Although the Dave Matthews Band’s many achievements include a Grammy Award, getting a trophy has never been the focus of the group, which has blazed an independent path from pop’s mainstream.
And it’s still not.
But this year, even frontman Dave Matthews is feeling emotional over their two nominations for “Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King,” including album of the year, perhaps the Recording Academy’s most prestigious award.
“I live in my own tree and I’m pretty out of touch with a lot of what’s going on — the mechanics that’s going on with the Grammys and the industry in general,” said Matthews in a phone interview last month.
“But to get that was a real thrill for me ... because of what the album meant to us and because [of] the loss of LeRoi [Moore] and because of the love that we put into making this.”
The Grammy nominations underscore how the band, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, has rejuvenated itself after traumas that have led to the dissolution of other groups: First, creative differences almost tore them apart, then founding member LeRoi Moore died after a 2008 ATV accident.
“This band now as it is, is in a very new and very dynamic, very encouraged phase,” said Matthews of the group, which had one of North America’s most successful tours last year and is going on a European tour next month. “Overall this last tour was one of the best. The emotional connection and the band and the music that we are making ... is good or as better than we’ve ever sounded.”
It was only a few years that the band — Matthews, saxophonist Moore, drummer Carter Beauford, bassist Stefan Lessard and violinist Boyd Tinsley — had frayed to the point where Matthews wondered if there would ever be new music from them.
Though the band has sold millions of records and is among the most enduring road acts, frustration was high among its core members — Moore, Beauford and Matthews — after 2005’s “Stand Up.”
Matthews, in an interview in a busy hotel lobby shortly after the release of “Big Whiskey” last year, recalled the frayed emotions that resulted from years of dysfunction during the creative process.
“The things that made the chemistry in our relationship were overshadowed by things that don’t really matter musically to us, and shouldn’t really matter, and possessiveness and ego, and all those things, they’re all real things, get into the middle of what should be a purer, a more purer process, and a more honest process becomes confused,” he explained.
It was Beauford and Moore who helped the band get through their deepest valley.
“The three of us were the ones in disarray, and I mean essentially, the foundation that the band couldn’t survive without was gone, and that’s when I said, ’I’m done’ — that’s what blew apart and that’s what came back together,” Matthews said. “Those two guys basically said — especially Carter — said, ‘No, no, it’s not too late, let’s sit down and let’s figure it out.’”
After thrashing out their issues, Matthews said the trio became “closer and had more sympathy than we did in the past, and had more care for each other. I had a more eagerness to get in a room with LeRoi after that than I had in years.”
Grammy-winning producer Rob Cavallo had started work on the band’s next album when Moore was injured in an ATV accident in June 2008. The group was touring at the time, and Jeff Coffin filled in for him (and later replaced him). The plan was to stay on the road until Moore got better so he could participate in the album.
Moore died two months later at age 46. Though devastated, the band played the night he died, and continued after that, more determined than ever.