SEATTLE — Five years ago, Dave Matthews Band was knocking on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s door. Their fans were pounding on it.
In 2019, the Virginia band led by a longtime Seattleite was nominated for the Rock Hall’s 2020 class alongside Soundgarden, Whitney Houston, MC5 and a dozen others. Despite running away with the online fan poll, which counts for one official vote among the 1,000-plus industry pros who decide the thing, Dave Matthews Band failed to make the cut. It was the first time since the fan poll was introduced with the 2013 class that the top vote-getter didn’t get inducted.
DMB’s legion of fans were predictably ticked, though even then, it seemed like only a matter of time before Matthews & Co. would be dad-dancing in the Cleveland music shrine. It’s been 20 years since their tender, loved-or-loathed earworms flowed into the mainstream the way they did in the ’90s and early 2000s, yet DMB remains one of the biggest bands in the world, largely existing in an expansive universe of their own creation.
In the grand scheme of things, they didn’t have to wait too long. The jammy folk-pop rockers will be inducted into the Rock Hall during a ceremony streaming live on Disney+ today. (It remains to be seen whether former violinist Boyd Tinsley — who left the band in 2018 as sexual harassment allegations levied by Seattle-based musician James Frost-Winn surfaced — will join his former bandmates at the ceremony.)
The Charlottesville, Va., band is part of a 2024 class that includes Cher, Ozzy Osbourne, Mary J. Blige, ’70s rockers Peter Frampton and Foreigner, and hip-hop greats Kool & the Gang and A Tribe Called Quest as voted-in performers.
Part of the fun and agony, the selection process is always a heavily criticized ordeal, and the Rock Hall has created additional pathways in recent years to enshrine artists without a vote. Detroit garage rock heroes MC5 are one of four acts receiving a “musical excellence” award this year, while pioneering blues singer Big Mama Thornton and British blues/rock artists Alexis Korner and John Mayall will earn entry through “musical influence” awards.
With its second nomination, DMB — its original lineup rounded out by bassist Stefan Lessard, drummer Carter Beauford, Tinsley and saxophonist LeRoi Moore, who died in 2008 — were voted in as performers. And, unsurprisingly, they topped the fan poll once again.
The hotly debated Rock Hall isn’t simply a popularity contest. But a significant chunk of Matthews’ — who’s lived in Seattle at least part time since the early 2000s — and his polarizing band’s hall-of-fame worthiness can be attributed to the cultlike following DMB has cultivated over the last 30 years.
Dave Matthews Band burst onto the scene in 1994 with their six-times-platinum debut album “Under the Table and Dreaming,” wielding a rootsy strain of jam-pop with undeniable melodies. Songs like “What Would You Say” and “Crash Into Me” (the latter from DMB’s sophomore smash “Crash”) achieved cultural ubiquity, becoming essential songs of the ’90s — arguably the last great guitar-pop era.
Although their music hasn’t drifted through pop culture’s center in years, DMB is bigger than ever. Thirty years since the musician’s musicians broke through, Matthews’ delicate, hold-me-by-the-fireplace vocals are instantly recognizable by any bloke in a Starbucks. Yet the band hasn’t really had a song that Dave agnostics could find themselves accidentally singing along to since 2001’s “The Space Between.”
And that’s perfectly fine for a band that hasn’t really been for the casuals in some time. It also hasn’t stopped DMB’s universe from expanding, sucking new fans into their orbit with eclectic and accessible music that both baseline listeners and self-styled connoisseurs can enjoy. Even as year-end list-makers and other institutions like the Grammys haven’t paid DMB much mind in ages, the band held an impressive streak of seven No. 1 albums over 25 years, thanks to the millions of ants marching to DMB’s new tunes that exist largely outside the mainstream gaze.
The streak, which started with 1998’s “Before These Crowded Streets,” finally snapped when last year’s “Walk Around the Moon” peaked at No. 5. The only two rock bands with more Top 10 albums, according to Billboard, are the Beatles and the Rolling Stones — pretty good company to keep.
For all the gaudy chart stats, DMB’s true calling card and legacy-maker is their dynamic live show, the place where the curious are converted into car-decal believers. It’s the reason fans descend upon the Gorge Amphitheatre for three days every “Labor Dave weekend.”
Trading in a New Orleans-esque gumbo of American music DMB has the genetic makeup of the best bar band on Bourbon Street, albeit with a virtuosity and gulpable accessibility that satiates arena crowds. That jam band ethos, which keeps fans fed on live albums and bootlegs, has made DMB one of the biggest touring acts in the world.
A 2022 Pollstar report looked at 40-plus years of ticket sales, dating back to the concert industry trade magazine’s inception in the early 1980s. Only U2 had sold more tickets (26 million) than DMB, who topped the Stones, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, and Elton John. The career 23 million tickets that Dave sold up until that point were more than Madonna and Garth Brooks combined.
