12 Questions with DMCB
By Brian PaceRecently, I had the opportunity to go see the Dave Matthews Cover Band at the State Theatre in Northern Virginia. I didn't want to go. I had it in my mind that the term "cover band" equaled unending, drunken versions of "Margaritaville" and "Sweet Home Alabama" in front of a backwoods 40-something toothless crowd in a rural Iowa bar, with the lead singer inevitably taking home the woman with the least amount of periodontal decay.
You can imagine my reluctance to partake.
What I got instead was a true-to-form performance: Dave Matthews Cover Band could give several of the actual DMB members a run for their money any day of the week. Especially impressive was their saxophonist Deniz Felder, who ties for the coolest name with violinist Jimmy Demartini. DMCB's songs were crisp, the interpretations fresh, and they didn't try to mimic every mannerism, as I had feared. They were themselves, just covering other folks' music.
Especially intriguing was the fact that they were selling actual DMB merchandise at their CD booth! I was interested to find out more. One thing led to another, and as a way of introducing or reintroducing this fine cover band, we played an e-mail game of ten, er, twelve questions.
nancies.org: How did you approach DMB/Red Light Management with the idea to sell official DMB merchandise at your shows, and donate a portion to Bama Works?
Dave (guitar, vocals): I faxed [DMB manager] Coran Capshaw with the idea to donate a part of our returns to the Bama Works foundation, and afterwards they basically just allowed us to sell DMB merchandise if we wanted.
n.org: What, generally, is the arrangement that you and DMB/RLM have?
Dave: We had been touring around for a while as a band, and had been calling ourselves the Dave Matthews Cover Band. Dave Matthews had joked about how calling themselves the Dave Matthews Band was kind of uncreative, so we figured the next uncreative name would be ours. It just stuck. So after a while, I wrote to Coran Capshaw and said that since we'd had such success that we'd like to give back to The Dave Matthews Band and donate a portion of what we make to Bama Works, the charitable foundation. In return, our use of Dave Matthews' name was affirmed.
Jimmy: We donate a certain percentage of everything we make to Bama Works, and in turn they allow us to use their name.
n.org: As you know, many bands playing similar venues heavily augment their tour income by selling their own CDs. How do you overcome not being able to do so?
Dave: We haven't run into too many problems with not being able to sell our own CDs; although the extra income wouldn't hurt. We all have our own individual projects on the side, some of which we're all involved in. Deniz Felder, our saxophonist, now has a solo CD available at our shows, and other things will be available in the near future. Selling DMB merchandise helps augment our incomes somewhat, as well.