Dave Matthews Band

Interviewer: The songs from Room For Squares are hook filled. They could be any number of different things. You know, they have lots of hooks, classic pop hook type material!

JM: My tendency is to only work on songs in which the hook keeps me up at night. I have a very low threshold for blandness. And that just sort of comes with being my age I think. I think the age that I’m at, a lot of people my age sort of need this super saturation of something to hold on to. Before, that classic rock thing is a little more blues oriented, a little more sort of like—I’m not a rocker, you know, I don’t rock. [imitates rocker sounds]

Like, I acknowledge that that’s the sound of the times but I gravitate more to, like, a super saturated colorburst sort of melody, and as melodic as you can possibly get. I was totally inspired by, like, Dave Matthews Band at the time. They were the only group, for me, that were completely innovating advanced concepts in hookery.

Just like eight hooks in a song. Why the hell not? I’ve got four songs I’m working on, let’s try and make it one.

I would love to be a fan of myself or someone like myself. It's like you caught on to me really early. I'm twenty-three and people who listen to me are around that age as a whole and I'll issue records like they are magazines. It will change. There will be different issues and different colors. Like Dave Matthews getting chastised so much that he has for his last record. Whether or not I believe it's a great record, which I think it's a pretty cool record. It's just a CD man! You should be proud that there is a guy that is thinking about people in such a way that he wants to change things and try this and try that. He will be around forever. It's just one record.

CM: So you were a big Dave Matthews fan?

JM: Yeah, without a doubt. No doubt. I never bought into the periphery of being a fan. I don't think for anything I've ever bought into the periphery of it, I just liked the music. I went to a couple of shows and I loved what was going on, but I didn't admit that for a long time. I was scared shitless that I was going to be given walking papers and that the world was going to say, "No thanks, we already have one."

CM: Yeah, but there's a more soulful feel to what you're doing and that's not to say anything negative about Dave because he does what he does better than anyone else does what he does (laughs), but there's something in the delivery that is occasionally closer to singers like Seal than Dave Matthews.

JM: That's very cool. I have to say that the Dave Matthews comparison has...I've stopped listening to it for what people mean by it. You know? But I understand that it's usually meant as a compliment. Dave Matthews is nothing but a superlative if you think about it. Have a Dave Matthews day! (laughs) Or..."your car, it's brand new, how much did it set you back. It's Dave Matthews."

CM: Have you found that you have the same fan base as the Dave Matthews Band?

JM: I think that the odd and strange, but beautiful and blessed thing that I have going on is that I think that my fan base is kind of made up of a whole overlapping of a lot of different kinds of people.

CM: That's the pop thing.

JM: Yeah, I hope so. I hope I have the pop engine and the jazz wings, you know what I'm saying? You feel that? Yeah. I definitely feel that there are people who would list Dave Matthews and John Mayer on the same line of what they like, but I think that some of my fan base is a little more open. I think that at times the Dave Matthews fan base can be very kind of closed at what else they want to listen to and I feel like even if they are the same people, it's nice to see people with their antenna up and their antennae in the air saying, "Well, let's listen to this." For a lot of people, Dave Matthews is literally all they listen to.

CM: Believe me, we know in Athens. Remember, we've got the Dave Matthews Cover Band here.

JM: Yeah, and that's all they listen to. Again, I think Dave Matthews Band is great, I just think that sometimes...and I may get a talking to if this ever gets printed, but I don't think it's a negative thing. I think that sometimes some of those fan bases are so rabid that they're very close minded.

CM: I know what you're saying and I bet the people you're talking about know what you're saying.

JM: Y'know, even if they are Dave Matthews Band fans, well God bless them for giving me a chance.

CM: On the other hand, you're getting Elvis Costello and Police references...

JM: And that's cool.

CM: So it's not as isolating. I can't imagine that it's not frustrating for you to hear the Dave Matthews comparisons all the time, but it sounds like you're used to it enough now that when it comes from a fan you can take it as the compliment that it's meant to be.

JM: Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying where it stops becoming the definition of their words and becomes my definition of their words.

Oh, "Edge of Desire" started, the year was 2008. I was watching at that time the, like, vice president debates or something, and I was at some bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and it was a practice thing. [Plays guitar riff from Edge of Desire.] Not that different from [Dave Matthews Band's] "Satellite." You're going for the feel.

Dave Matthews Band has invited many musicians to sit in with them. I've been lucky enough to be one of them. And the one song that you'll see more than any other a musician sitting in on is "#41." And the reason musicians love sitting in on "#41" is because the chord progression is so beautiful and so much fun to play on top of. You don't have to be a Dave Matthews super fan to enjoy this song, "#41."

It's no secret that Dave Matthews Band deeply inspired my songwriting. I would say it inspired me so much that I became a songwriter. I had been darting back and forth between pop music and guitar music, and there was something about the erudition in the music of Dave Matthews Band, that I went: oh, this is how you can play pop music with music made by people who would use the word "erudition." And I bought the album Under The Table And Dreaming, and heard this very first song, and I'll never forget the popping of that drum fill.