Band on a Run

A lot of things can distract a musician when his albums sell in the millions and the sold-out concerts just keep getting bigger. The Dave Matthews Band was stunned, for instance, when its manager dropped by a recent rehearsal to say that the group had sold out Giants Stadium in an hour.

But as the stakes get bigger, the group employs a simple strategy to stay focused.

“The idea is to just play music and have the best possible time that we can,” says Matthews, 31, sipping a beer in a tony bar in the shadow of Carnegie Hall. “There’s a tendency for artists to take themselves desperately seriously, and to be dark and complaining. But I can’t find that in myself. I’m much too pleased.”

With good reason.

The band’s third RCA album, “Before These Crowded Streets,” just entered the U.S. sales charts at No. 1 with first-week sales of more than 400,000 copies. The campaign to sink the “Titanic” soundtrack, which had held the top spot for 16 weeks, had been well orchestrated.

The Dave Matthews Band (or DMB, as the group is known to fans and Web surfers) had performed on “The Late Show With David Letterman” the day of the record’s release. MTV had already served up a weekend promotional blitz, airing a Dave Matthews Band concert and a documentary on the making of the album.

And the band’s tour, which arrives at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Wednesday, is shaping up to be one of the most successful of the year, with the first leg including the DMB’s first headlining concerts in outdoor stadiums.

“They’re one of the few bands that you can see on MTV and hear on NPR in the same day,” says manager Coran Capshaw. RCA’s Bruce Flohr, who signed the band with artists-and-repertoire colleague Peter Robinson, sees an added bonus in such a wide demographic. “It’s an audience that can grow with the band, because nobody outgrows their music,” he says.

Flohr also has a theory that frontman Matthews, who is known for his loopy stage patter and stiff-legged dance, puts an accessible face on a challenging group.

“He’s the guy who lets you into the party at the front door,” says Flohr, “and then you find out that every member of the family is as cool as the guy who let you in.”

“We’re basically a bunch of country boys from a small town in Virginia,” adds violinist Boyd Tinsley, who works out in the gym for 2 1/2 hours to get pumped for an evening concert. “We don’t have the corner on cool or hip or chic, but I think when it comes to getting on stage and giving our hearts out while playing, we own a little bit of that.”

The Dave Matthews Band’s seven-year ascent has been as methodical as it was unlikely.

Consider that the group, whose members range in age from 23 to 41, was formed by a singer-guitarist who’d never performed in public and had written exactly four songs. One musician was in high school. Then there’s the unorthodox instrumentation--besides Matthews on acoustic guitar, there’s Carter Beauford on drums, Stefan Lessard on bass, Leroi Moore on horns and Tinsley on violin.

And the music mixed elements of rock, folk, funk and anything else that might occur to five musicians who liked to jam and who were in search of a sound.

What they found was an expansive, folk-rock style that stood out in the era of grunge like a hippie in a mosh pit. By the time the band signed with RCA, it had established itself as a formidable live act, released an independent record and formed its own merchandising company.

All of which set the table for the huge sales of 1994’s “Under the Table Dreaming” (5 million) and 1996’s “Crash” (4 million). “Before These Crowded Streets” is the band’s most ambitious work yet, with well-placed guest stars (Bela Fleck, the Kronos Quartet, Alanis Morissette) and harder-edged songs that add elements of jazz-rock fusion to an already rich musical stew.

Now, it appears, the sky’s the limit.

Matthews lights up when talking about the group, showering praise and generally acting as if he’s lucky to be in the band that bears his name. Group revenue, excluding publishing income, is evenly split. And everybody is quick to share their musical passions.

“I understand why people sometimes think of us as a Grateful Dead kind of jamming band,” he says. “But we’re really much more influenced by the more obscure music that inspires each of us. It’s about me loving Abdullah Ibrahim, Carter going crazy over Buddy Rich, Leroi going nuts about Charlie Parker, Stefan getting into Smashing Pumpkins, or Boyd loving Vivaldi.”

Matthews considers himself lucky when somebody says he resembles actor John Cusack, but that’s partly because people have also said he looks like Forrest Gump--not Tom Hanks, but Forrest Gump. But then, being recognized was never in his game plan. He was always a big music fan, and a huge fan of the Beatles, but he kept his guitar-playing to himself until he was in his early 20s and tending bar at Miller’s, the Charlottesville, Va., bar where he met most of his group.

“It was something I wanted to do,” he says of performing, “but it was the internal critic in me that was saying, ‘Pour the drinks and shut up.’ ”

Matthews finally got up the nerve to form a band in 1991. The players came from a fusion band (Beauford), traditional jazz bands (Moore and Lessard), and a folk-rock band (Tinsley). Nobody expected much.

But from the start, the Dave Matthews Band was never short of work. One of its earliest gigs was a weekly engagement at Trax, a Charlottesville club owned by Capshaw, a veteran of some 400 Grateful Dead concerts who got a similar buzz from DMB’s live act.

He was soon managing the band and booking them into fraternities, sororities, beach towns and wherever else there was an outlet, if not always a stage. Tapes of the group’s live show began circulating as it crisscrossed the Southeast, and before long the band’s reach extended up into the Northeast as well as to Colorado. Along the way, they crossed paths with such bands as Phish and Blues Traveler, who were following similar paths to success.

The DMB has always allowed fans to tape its shows, and even when they were relative unknowns these tapes proved to be remarkable marketing tools, with the band greeted in new markets by fans who already knew the songs. The seemingly insatiable thirst for live DMB tapes prompted last year’s release of a two-CD concert set, “Live at Red Rocks.”

Matthews and his bandmates know that the world is thick with gifted musicians who struggle to scratch out a living. Matthews was reminded of his good fortune during a recent visit to South Africa, where he was born and spent his first two years.

Horn player Moore had asked Matthews to pick him up some penny whistles. In Johannesburg, Matthews’ penny-whistle connection was a sixtysomething man known as Big-Voiced Jack, who was playing at a jazz club.

“He said, ‘I didn’t have a chance to get to the store, so I’m going to give you these,’ ” says Matthews. “And he gave me these penny whistles that were 30 and 40 years old. Now this is a musician who’s been abused, like getting paid $20 to record an album that became a hit as ‘The Music of South Africa.’ But this guy just kept on playing.

“And his bandmates were saying, ‘Don’t give away those penny whistles, man,’ because he’d had this collection for years. But he said, ‘No--give these to the sax man and tell him he must play these in the stadiums, because I’m never going to get the chance. But my penny whistles will play in the stadiums.’ ”

This June, Big-Voiced Jack will play the stadiums with the Dave Matthews Band. Hiring the penny-whistle player is a sentimental gesture, to be sure, but one that implicitly accepts the notion that a big-time rock star is no more or less than a talented musician who worked hard and got lucky.

“We don’t try to be clever with our music,” says Matthews. “We just want to celebrate the fact that we found each other, and that we can make really nice sounds together. It’s really important to us that the music sounds honest. I think people can hear that, and it’s that spirit that I think is kind of contagious.”

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The Dave Matthews Band plays Wednesday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine, 8 p.m. Sold out. (714) 855-4515.