David John Matthews (born January 9, 1967) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band (DMB). Matthews was born in Johannesburg, and moved frequently among South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States while growing up. Matthews started playing acoustic guitar at the age of nine.

From 1991 to 2003, Matthews predominantly focused on songwriting and performing with the Dave Matthews Band, which he started in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1991. He also has done various solo performances and produced other records. During the period from 2000 to 2010, his band sold more tickets and earned more money than any other act in North America. The band’s 2012 album Away from the World made them the only group to have six consecutive studio albums debut at number one on the Billboard charts. This record was extended to seven consecutive number one albums with the 2018 release, Come Tomorrow.

In addition to music, Matthews has had multiple acting roles. He has also won two Grammy Awards: one with the Dave Matthews Band in 1997 for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group (“So Much to Say”) and one in 2004 for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance (“Gravedigger”) from his solo album. David John Matthews was born in Johannesburg, the third of four children of parents John and Val Matthews. At age two, Matthews moved with his family to Yorktown Heights, New York, where his father, a physicist, started working for IBM.

In 1974, the Matthews family moved to Cambridge, England for a year, then returned to New York, where his father died from lung cancer in 1977 when Matthews was ten years old. At some point, while residing in New York, Matthews attended his first concert, when his mother took him to a performance by Pete Seeger. The family returned to Johannesburg in 1977.

Matthews naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1980. Upon Matthews’s graduation from secondary school in 1985, he was faced with conscription into the South African military just as civil disobedience to the practice was becoming widespread. As a Quaker (and consequently pacifist), Matthews left South Africa to avoid service. Matthews moved to New York in 1986 where he worked for IBM for a short time, then joined his mother that same year in Charlottesville, Virginia, a town Matthews’s family had lived in before he was born. In Charlottesville, he became part of the local music community. Although Matthews had started playing the guitar at age nine, it was only in Charlottesville that he started performing publicly.

Matthews met local star (and future collaborator) Tim Reynolds. In time, Reynolds had Matthews join him on stage, and Matthews was persuaded to record some of his own songs. This led to his first professional musical gig at a modern dance performance by the Miki Liszt Dance Company, based at McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville, singing “Meaningful Love”, composed by John D’earth and Dawn Thompson. In 1991, he hatched the idea to form his own band. Before recording his first demo, Matthews bartended at Miller’s in Charlottesville.

After writing his first few songs, including “I’ll Back You Up”, “The Song That Jane Likes” and “Recently”, Matthews formed Dave Matthews Band in early 1991 with LeRoi Moore, Carter Beauford, Stefan Lessard, Peter Griesar (who left the band in 1993), and Boyd Tinsley while working at Miller’s as a bartender. The band’s first show was on March 14, 1991, as part of a benefit for the Middle East Children’s Alliance at Trax Nightclub in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Matthews’s older sister Anne, who lived in South Africa, was murdered by her husband in early 1994. Her husband then died by suicide on or around January 27 of that year. The event had a profound effect on Matthews’s outlook on life and was referenced in a few of his songs. On January 29, 1994, he performed with Tim Reynolds at the Wetlands in New York, where he dedicated that performance “to her [Anne’s] memory”. 

Dave Matthews Band’s Under the Table and Dreaming, released later that year, was dedicated to her. Anne Matthews was survived by her two children, and they traveled to the United States following her death. Dave and his younger sister Jane (after whom the Dave Matthews Band song “The Song That Jane Likes” is named) took responsibility for the children’s upbringing.

Toots and the Maytals with Dave Matthews when performing together in 1998
L to R: Reynolds and Matthews in 2007 performing in Amherst, Massachusetts, in one of many acoustic shows the two play as a duo. Matthews focused primarily on songwriting and performances with the Dave Matthews Band from 1990 to 2003. DMB is an artistic blend of acoustic guitar, bass, sax, drums and fiddle music. In 1994, DMB signed with RCA Records.