Listen to the Dave Matthews interview

Ask Dave Matthews questions and you get thoughtful, lengthy, rhythmically quirky answers. His responses – which he supplements with accents, chirps, changes in pitch – shuck and jerk and often veer into parenthetical asides.

So talking to Matthews is like listening to his songs. Either way, he gets your attention. Just like he’s done with the music world.

In 1990, the Dave Matthews Band played its first gig, to 200 people in its hometown of Charlottesville, Va.

“They’d never heard us before, but by the end they were all dancing,” Matthews remembers. “None of us expected to have people get up and start dancing and celebrating.”

Six years later, millions are dancing. Matthews‘ new disc, Crash, debuted as the No. 2 album in the country. Its first national release, 1994’s Under the Table and Dreaming, has sold more than 3 million copies and spent 85 weeks so far on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart.

Matthews‘ most remarkable feat may be that he’s so successful with music that can be difficult to grasp. The band’s unpredictable stop-and-go rhythm patterns and Matthews‘ nasal voice, which he uses to bend notes and sounds, don’t necessarily come across as commercial.

“Before we were signed,” Matthews says, “the reaction we got was: `There’s just no place for this music. It’s too clever. It’s too this or that.’ It’s not clever. It’s just a little quirky. It’s a little eccentric. It’s not trying to outdo anyone. It’s just trying to hit people in the heart.”

It’s working. When Matthews and his band arrive Wednesday at Deer Creek Music Center, a crowd of better than 12,000 will be on hand. What’s behind this remarkable rise from nobody to headliner and star? Everything from Matthews‘ unusual antics as the band’s front man to an initially small but zealous fan base.

Before the group signed a recording contract, its fans would (and still do) tape every show. The tapes spread around the country. Matthews says the band would arrive in cities it had never played and find audiences singing along.

Also, Matthews came along at a time when long, Grateful Dead- style improvisational jamming had become popular with musicians and audiences. The Matthews Band sounds nothing like the Dead, but its leader understands the comparison.

“The reason the comparison doesn’t upset me is that the first time I ever saw the Dead and the first time all of us – except for Boyd (Tinsley, the violinist), who had seen them once – saw them was when we opened for them in Las Vegas last summer.

“And I never really listened to them. Not because I didn’t like them, but because I never exposed myself to them. Well, I guess pulling my pants down in front of them doesn’t involve listening. No, I just never listened to them.”

And no one in the Dead ever stood out the way Matthews does. His unusual singing style complements the music’s nervous energy and rush-hour-traffic feel.

Then there’s Matthews‘ footwork. At times, he looks like he’s shadowboxing as he sings. “I don’t know about the footwork,” says Matthews, the son of a physicist, who was born in South Africa and spent his childhood there, in England and in Virginia. “That’s more like an affliction. I see videos of myself and I get embarrassed because it looks like I’m doing the Charleston. . . . “It doesn’t always happen. See, if it was consistent, then it’d be cool. But instead, they stay still and just bop up and down like anybody’s feet. Then all of a sudden there’s this complete spaz that takes place. My knees start bending in strange directions and I’m like, `What’s happening to me?’ It doesn’t feel like that from where I’m looking.”

As for his singing style: “I love melodies and I like the feelings of the resonance of a voice in my head. It’s a really cool thing to imitate sounds.

“When someone goes `WHAT?!?’ ” – in a squealing sound – “to try to use that sound. Or if somebody’s angry – you know how people grind their teeth? – to try to sound like somebody who’s angry. But not only sound like somebody’s who’s angry, but also sound like somebody who’s hysterical when they’re angry. You know when people get mad and they start shivering? And laughter, and the musical sound of laughter, to try to turn that into melody.”

He pauses briefly. “I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.  Basically, I don’t know where the hell my singing style comes from.”

The “proudest monkey”

But the voice, the dancing, the eclectic good-time music, the jamming, the taping of shows – it all combined to make Matthews famous.

“It’s almost like a dream, in a weird way,” he says. “Not a dream come true, but a continual dream.” As he wrote in the new song Proudest Monkey: I wonder Do I want the simple, simple life that I once lived in well Oh things were quiet then In a way, they were better days But now I am the proudest monkey you’ve ever seen.

Matthews had intended to write about evolution; it turned out to be a metaphor for his life the last three years.

“I do miss what I don’t have,” he says. “But everybody does. And I have a damn good job. As far as jobs go, this is a good one and I should try to keep it for as long as I can.”