Dave Matthews talks about life on the road with the DMB
The Dave Matthews Band is on road so much their tour bus has become their second home — so they’ve tried to make it just as comfortable as their real abodes.
Besides their instruments and gear, they also bring a caterer so they don’t have to take a chance on strange cuisine. They also have decorations to make things aesthetically pleasing — and their spouses and kids often tag along for the trek.
AP: What’s your diva request for backstage?
Matthews: I don’t think we’ve got too many really unusual requests. I think there always has to be a little Scotch, a nice wine, and a couple cases of good beer.
AP: How do you wind down after a show?
Matthews: After a show, maybe I’ll have a Scotch. Often my family is on the road, so now what I do is I get off stage and if my girls (3-year-old twins) are still awake, I get on the bus and read them a bedtime story. Sometimes I get into bed and I try to get my soaking wet shirt off so that I don’t get the sheets all wet when I lie between my daughters, but that seems to be the thing that most quickly brings me down to earth.
AP: Do you have a must-have book or favorite reading?
Matthews: I always try and have something. I always like to have an atlas just so that I can find things out. It’s always good to have an almanac; those sort of things. But then I also like to have a little fiction, and maybe a little bit of history, and some crappy magazines. But I’ve gotta have stuff to read.
AP: What’s the gadget you can’t live without that’s not your iPod?
Matthews: I’m not a real gadgety person. In fact, some people think that I’m kind of primitive. Probably a bottle opener is probably the gadget I can’t live without. Actually, I can open a bottle of beer pretty easily without it, but wine is always too much of a pain in the (rear) to open that up. So a corkscrew is probably the gadget that I can’t live without.
AP: What kind of DVDs do you watch on the bus?
Matthews: Well, anything crap. Probably most of the time I watch children’s movies because my kids are on the bus, so it requires them. Other than that, I watch World Link TV most of the time. I like that channel. They have some great documentaries.
AP: What’s your favorite hotel alias that you’ve retired?
Matthews: I’ve had Strangely Brown … what other ones did I have? Stinky Pinky. nobody else likes those, but I like those. Strangely Brown is probably my favorite. I’ve got a good one right now but I’m not gonna tell it to ya.
AP: What’s the chance we’ll find you hanging out in the city where you’re performing?
Matthews: It would have to be the quietest, dive-iest place in town. That’s where I would go. It would be following my wife that I would go out for a drink. But otherwise I would go be boring.
AP: I don’t know if this applies to you since you’re a family man and all, but what would a groupie need to do to get backstage?
Matthews: Ask anybody but me. Because I don’t even know. That’s what I say when they say, “How can I get backstage?” I say, “I don’t know!”
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On the Net:
http://www.davematthewsband.com