Interview With Peter Griesar
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Peter Griesar is best known to the world as "that guy who used to be in Dave Matthews Band." From 1991-1993, he was the sixth member of DMB, playing keyboards, harmonica and providing backup vocals. In March of 1993, after two years of dedicating his life to the band, he abruptly left. Ever since that last show, millions of fans have been left wondering "what happened?"
Griesar is in the unenviable position of being relatively famous for what he failed to accomplish. It seems a terrible burden to bear, going through life being known for what one might have done, for what one "should" have done. Still, it's a great mystery of modern music -- what caused him to quit the band?
There's no shortage of rumors. Drugs, sex and violence appear in many of the stories. More recently, the more mundane "he was sick of touring" has become a standard response on Usenet group alt.music.dave-matthews and IRC channel #dmb. As DMB fan Josh Coady ("rexor") put it recently on #dmb, "he left cause the band got too popular...started touring...he prefered the simple life." This is closer to the truth than any of the rumors, but still raises more questions than it answers.
In early 1993, Dave Matthews Band was just starting to make it big. They were preparing to record their first album, their shows were selling out, and they were the hottest band on the east coast college scene. Why would Griesar leave then? What kind of a man could get so close to fame and fortune and turn his back on it? Getting so close would kill some men. But not Griesar. He couldn't be happier about it.
Peter Griesar was born in 1969 and grew up in suburban Westchester County, New York. His family was musically-inclined, and so he was raised with music as an integral part of his life. From the age of six he was performing with his family, Partridge-family style. Though he began by singing, he was soon pressed into taking piano lessons. His older siblings Katie and Billy served as musical examples for Griesar, particularly his sister's interest in guitar. Despite his family's common interest, Griesar frequently describes the core of his musical development as a solo task in which he builds on the resources that others have provided to him.
"One Christmas, I remember that my father had spent a lot of time, and he made me a greenhouse. It was really beautiful woodworking, a beautiful, like, greenhouse, like a real little greenhouse you can grow plants in, like, something like nice, you know what I mean? And he got my sister a tape recorder. Oh, I was so jealous. And I remember just dissing this, as a young kid, like, dissing this Christmas present, like, I mean, I had this greenhouse, and I would grow carrot butts in it, you know I mean? Whatever else you -- a little kid -- would do. But I was so pissed, because my sister got a recorder, just a little cassette recorder, a little yellow [one.] A thing, like, 70's-style, you know what I mean? And I remember breaking into her room and I would record with it when no one else was home, I would, like, when no one, when I was alone, I would sneak into her room and I would record. My alias was Peter Zabu. And I was like some kind of DJ and like I would like and it was just this wild thing. I would be the DJ and then I would introduce myself and sing a song and then come back in as the DJ and introduce another song, and so on. I don't know. So that was my first interest."
Griesar constantly checks to see if people know what he means. For good cause -- slower-witted people may very well may not follow him. He appears to spend so much time wrapped up in his own thoughts that it's no wonder he needs to check in with the rest of the world every so often.
In high school, he was in his first band, The Yodells. ("Named after the famous food, Yodels," he explains, helpfully.) Griesar played keyboards, and they ended up winning the local talent show, playing Led Zepplin's "Rock and Roll." From there, musically, he became somewhat of a recluse. He reluctantly went to college, the cheapest one that he could find -- The University of Virginia, where he spent a year and a half. Music was something that he did alone in his dorm room, headphones plugged into keyboard.
"I was always the person that was, like, making that same noise over and over again, recording in his dorm room, who would, like, have to walk all the drunk kids to the hospital in the middle of the night because he didn't go out, he spent the whole night inside just excited that he had the first night when had the whole place to himself. Know what I mean? It wasn't cool. It was never cool. And to be honest, being into something, truly being into something, being focused and involved in something that you like, is never cool. And that's the struggle, is that it's not cool. That's why you like doing it. If it's cool, it's not a singular experience, it's a group experience. No singular experience is cool."
UVa was less-than-exciting for Griesar. He found a student body that was homogeneous and uninteresting; the classes were boring. As Griesar puts it, "I just didn't get it at the time. But I don't think many people at UVa did." After 18 months, he couldn't take it anymore. He wanted to enter the world and be treated like an adult. His parents reacted strongly to the news, and he was cut off from them for a time. Not quite knowing what to do, he went to work for Club Med.
"I only worked for them for four or five months. It was amazing, in a lot of ways. You know what I mean? When I was surrounded by people who considered me a failure, and were treating me as such, I was accepted by people who were treating me as a success, someone who was hiring me to be a chef, and giving me a salary and an expense account, and were treating me with some kind of a respect, that I knew what I was doing as an adult. And it was something that I wasn't getting from my family. I wasn't, in the context of my family, given the opportunity to choose my future after high school. It was a given. College. You have to choose a college. If I'd had the chance to think it out, I probably never would have gone to college in the first place. I might have gone to a seminary or a...I don't know. Maybe I could have. I don't know. But I could have done something else."
When he returned to Charlottesville from his Club Med stint in 1989, Griesar approached the first person that he saw and asked where he could get a job. He was pointed towards Miller's, a popular bar on Charlottesville's Downtown Mall. He was hired on the spot, and set to work waiting tables.
Miller's is recognized by Dave Matthews Band fans for being the birthplace of DMB. But in 1989, of course, it was just another bar. Griesar worked his way up from dishwasher, eventually waiting tables. There he befriended one of the bartenders, Dave Matthews, as well as many of the musicians that would play there regularly. Musicians like Tim Reynolds, John D'earth, Johnny Gilmore, Greg Howard and Houston Ross.
But he hadn't much worked with anybody musically until his home became an after-Miller's party spot. He lived on Second Street NE with fellow musician Art Wheeler, just a few blocks north of the Mall.
"We used to have a lot of wild parties down there. The Miller's crowd would always roll down there. It's the place where I met Carter, Leroi, and those guys. Those guys were pretty much perennial partiers in my living room, that was where we all used to hang out."
Music, as he describes it, had previously been a mere a "mental exercise." He didn't learn to see his talents as more than that until 1990, when bassist Houston Ross (now a member of Griesar's band, Supertanker) drafted him into his band, "The Basics," for a gig in nearby Harrisonburg. Also in the group were Tim Reynolds and Leroi Moore. This was Griesar's first band since The Yodells.
The Basics were a constantly-changing, rather nebulous band that existed for the better part of a decade. Ross' recruitment of Griesar sparked something in him, and he began to think of music as a more important part of his life. Matthews and Griesar had taken to recording, Peter Zabu-style, on Griesar's four-track. He also began playing with friends, mostly just playing around, and soon took up regular gigs with Matthews.
"About the time Dave quit bartending, he and I started performing at open-mic nights at Eastern Standard on Monday nights. The one song I remember that we actually penned and sang was a masturbation song, called 'This Time I'm Gonna Eat It.'"
Griesar looks up, sleepy-flirty, at the waitress. "I'd like a cup of coffee please." As she turns away, he grabs the microphone pinned to his lapel, giggling, and intones into it, "I wanted to say tequila."