Dave Matthews

Biography

Dave Matthews (born January 9, 1967 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is the vocalist and guitarist from Dave Matthews Band.

At the age of two, Matthews and his family immigrated to Westchester County, New York, where his father, a physicist, went to work for IBM. Then, in the early 1970s, he moved to Cambridge, England, before returning to New York—where his father died in 1977. The family moved back to South Africa in 1980, where Matthews went to a few different schools.

The key move for Dave Matthews was when he relocated in 1986 to Charlottesville, Virginia, where his parents had lived before he was born. Though he also logged time back in South Africa and in Amsterdam, it was in Charlottesville where Matthews—who took piano lessons as a child before picking up the guitar at age nine—became part of the local music community and hatched the idea for his own band.

Dave formed The Dave Matthews Band in early 1991 while he was working as a bartender at Miller's in Charlottesville. The band's first gig was on May 11th 1991, at a private rooftop party in downtown Charlottesville.

Matthews released a solo album in late 2003, Some Devil, which was moderately successful; its single, 'Gravedigger,' won a Grammy Award in 2004.

Dave and his wife Ashley have twin girls, Stella and Grace, and live in Seattle, Washington.