DaveSpeak Archive

This DaveSpeak archive was originally created by Scott Swinehart with help from Melissa Bianco.
Since 06.98 Chris White has maintained this archive.

If you have any additions, send them HERE.

LAST UPDATED: 10.15.99

Quotes in BLUE indicate a new addition. (since 06.99)

??/??/92-----*Boyd(in a nerdy voice: “Before I met Dave, I was shy, introverted person with no friends, and now I’m a rock star in Charlottesville. Thank you Dave, thank you Dave, thank you Dave. *Dave: “It only makes me happy that I could be of assistance.”

05/26/92, Trax-----Boyd: “Crunchberries, crunchberries, crunchberries.”

07/21/92, Trax-----(some guy in the audience): “Hey Dave, you’re showing a little muscle tonight, I see.” * Dave: “ I just thought, as he’s pointed out here tonight, I’m showing a little bit of muscle tonight...because, I’m so massively strong that I felt it was unkind of me, unkind of me, selfish of me, to only admire my huge biceps in the mirror at home...when I’m doing what I shouldn’t be doing, at home...according to those hairy hand seekers”.

08/04/92-----(before One Sweet World)----“I wrote a pretty straightforward song when me and Carter and Stefan and Leroi were in my basement a few months ago-and was a really mellow song and then Carter took it and turned it into the funk, this weird Virginia funk Thing, and so it means well in sensitivity but...it’ll pump ya butt pretty good!”

09/11/92, DKE House---“Could I have been.. a beachfront property”...I'm gonna' do Dancing Nancies because uh....again cause' uh.....cause Fenton's dick's on this woman's hand...where'd she go.....where'd the woman with the penis on her hand go? There was a woman here with a penis on her hand........do you also have a penison you......but also um.....she also has a penis on her hand. What the hell is with the penis' on everyone's hand?

11/03/92--“SCHWINGADINK...ba ba da ba da BOW BOW! that shit kicks my ASS!” -----“this is a song about little pink drinks that look like condoms...” -----“with all the excitement of these elections...i lost all my fucking hair” -----“the name of this song is...every once in a while we get a new president.”

11/17/92---“I was feeling the possibility of a cold, a head cold, starting this morning. Because you have to be a very stupid, stupid man to shave your head when winter’s coming, and I fit the necessary categories. The characteristics are mine, I’ll shave my head in the arctic if necessary, just to be a nu-nu, as my mom would say. “You’re a nu-nu, David.” But more likely she’d say (Daves voice gets high) “nu-nu!” This song is also kind of new.....new.”

12/09/92, Floodzone, Richmond, VA----"This guard rail this evening, keeping you away from us 'cause understandibly you're rushing toward the stage causing us fear and terror...was actually here from last night when Public Enemy played here...but you can see that it is convienantly here for us because there is so much use for it. Umm...but you can get quite close, so if you care yo we're not going to do anything unreasonable like cutting the heads off of chickens. It's a very clean show, a very clean show...occasional bad language, but overall a clean show...with examples of cleanliness, this next song, it's called One Sweet World....If you do find the urge to move forward, you don't have to dance but it would be nice because its a long way away."

01/30/93, W&L University----“It’s a nice farm animal atmosphere in here...I just talked to the owner Mrs....?? she’s in charge of the fires.”

12/31/93,The Omni, Richmond, VA----(Section of the crowd counts down the New Year early) We have a pre- mature ejaculation over here on the right side of the stage, But I'm sure they still got a bone."

03/05/93----“Your Jimi thing can be anything you want it to be. Boyd has a big Jimi Thing. Mine is not as big as Boyd’s.”

03/17/93---- “Thank You! Just in a moment I’m gonna be joined by all my friends up here and then we’re gonna funk it hard until midnight and then a little afterwards, so we hope you all stay hope that your bar-hopping doesn’t necessarily drag you away. You could hop away then hop back or just pretend you hopped away and not hop away at all.” ----- “So because it’s St. Patrick’s Day implies that we should be in loud and crazy moods I thought I’d play a love song there’s no better reason, no better time for a love song then when everyone wants to scream so I’ll play one now and we can get it over and done with and then we’ll funk.” -------“Thank you, and Stefan Lessard on the bass guitar, born and bred in France, discovered in the streets of Amsterdam.”

03/23/93---BLC----“Hello and welcome to this evening’s thrilling entertainment...thrill a minute...ah chick!...that intimate vocal sound, hey...how’s everybody doin...I hope you can understand what I’m saying...cause I know what i’m saying...as per usual, I’m gonna play a little bit by myself, which I like doing a lot, cause I know what I like and I treat myself well, and I know i’ll respect myself in the morning...”

04/18/93, Brown’s Island (after introduction, and in redneck accent)--- “Well, here I was just takin’ a piss not ten seconds ago. Thank you very much, we’re the Dave Matthews band.”

06/09/93--(conversation between Dave and Carter) Dave----“I think tonights a good night for a daiquiri party....It’s fuckin hot.” “I don’t normally swear at all, unless it’s fuckin hot.” “Then I say it’s fuckin hot over and over again.” Carter—“Is it fuckin hot Dave?” Dave----“Fuckin hot means it’s not fuckin cold, Carter, you fuckin idiot!” Carter---“Dave wants me to fuck him up!” Dave----“Jane’s my sister, she’s fuckin hot, and this is the Song that Jane Likes!” Carter---“You mean the fuckin Song that Jane Likes!”

07/06/93, Trax----“I’m gonna do another song by myself and then my friend Carter is going to come out and (in a wierd accent) ‘funk it up de back beat’. Cha ba ba cha ba ba ba, eeeek! ‘cause...Carter does it like that.” ---- “That’s Leroi Moore on the saxaphone and (wierd accent again) de Carter Beaufod-be-bo-be-bo-boo!!” ----*Carter responds to Dave: “What the hell is that shit, man??!!”

08/10/93, The Floodzone, Richmond,VA----( starts playing i'll back you up and there's some loud sound coming out of the speakers)... "you know when you're making love with your girlfriend and the dog comes up and licks your balls? that's what that feels like." and then he just goes on to play BOWA.

10/26/93, Trax---(before Say Goodbye)”...um, ah ... I didn’t take a shower today. But I haven’t even gotten out of my pajamas yet, but um it’s not because I just woke up, it’s not that either. I just was up in DC, just screwing around but I didn’t have time to wash myself before I went up there, so I’m wearing the shirt that I wore last night. So I’m a little funky, look a little disheveled,” (In the perfect Monty Python voice) “but I’ve got a heart of gold. He smells a lot, but he’s got a heart of gold.”

12/02/93, Virgnia Tech, Blacksburg, VA------“Excuse me...(now in a southern hick voice) ah shouldn’t a had that chickin curry tonite, shit...ahm on FIIIIIRE!”

12/12/93---Jefferson Theatre, Charlottesville, VA (After Dave sips on his tea and almost chokes.) “Whoa, hahaha, boy I didn’t expect that at all. You ever notice tea was, ever notice, tea with lemon and honey and everything and they got a big fat chunk of something. Might have been lemon, might have been honey. But I doubt it.”

1994(several shows)---There is a story about the roadie who was just puzzled because everyone brought cheese for Dave and tried to give it to the roadie to give to Dave. “what is it with you guys and cheese??”

07/17/94----Backstage Tavern, Ballard, WA---After the last song, Dave comes back out for the encore and says “Sorry if it took a little while, I had to smoke a bowl.”

07/30/94----“Remember that there are hundreds of thousands of things you can eat that are not cheese.”

08/12/94, Ziggy’s, Winston-Salem, NC---“I just lay down for a second a couple minutes ago and then I got all grrrogggy. So I’m gonna take a little time to wake up cuz it’s all grrrrogggy... (Random bass and sax from Stefan and Roi)...I got a little sister named Jane and this is The Song That Jane Likes.” ----- “Are any uh ya all goin’ to the HORDE shows, the HORDE tour, or is it done for most of you? Is it over for most of you? Well we’re gonna be on it from the 15th on so maybe if you’re around you could come see us a little bit, but come early, ‘cause we’re gonna be the coffee show, we’re gonna be the after lunch show so be sure you get there bright and early, ‘cause (weird, low accent) We ain’t no Allman Brothers, we ain’t no Blues Traveler, we ain’t no Big Head Todd, we the little ole Dave Matthews Band...Ha.”...Happy Birthday Liza, we're gonna give you a birthday present after the show's over ok baby? Ah shit. Ah shit. Shit.

09/28/94--What Would You Say---“This song’s about a fat goose!”

10/05/94----“We got some crap you can buy—stuff you can buy—things you can wear. I specified last night—I think you can wear most of this stuff when you’re screwing... you can wear most of this stuff when you’re not screwing. You can wear the hats...if you’re kissing or if you’re just drinking coffee...and you can listen to CDs, uh, while you’re screwing or drinking coffee.” ------“OK, everybody’s having a pretty good time here but there are a couple of meatheads down in front pushin’ around. If you’re gonna shove and push around, GET THE FUCK OUT! I’m trying to play some goddamned music here and I gotta watch a couple of meatheads beatin’ the sh*t out of each other, and pretty girls gettin crushed!! GET THE F*CK OUT! GO THE F*CK HOME!!....But I love the rest of y’all, the rest of y’all are f*ckin’ excellent.”

10/15/94----“It took me a while to get used to that big fuckin’ camera that was in my face. It was freakin’ me the fuck out. I’m still a fuckin’ country boy and they got this big fuckin’ camera in my face and I’m like FUCK FUCK!”

10/21/94, Mississippi Nights, St. Louis, MO.---(before Recently)---“This is a song about somebody I was fucking...no, this is a song about somebody thatI really liked a lot....maybe, I don’t know...and I happened to be at the same time that I really enjoyed this person..fucking her at the same time. -----(Before #36)---- “Thank you very much, Leroi Moore, Stefan Lessard on the bass guitar. Uh, uh, I guess last year sometime last year, Chris Hani, i don’t know if you’re famillar with him but he uh, he was the the the leader of the military wing of the ANC and was fighting for a little bit of liberation in South Africa, and he walked outside i guess after breakfast one morning and caught a bullet in the side of his head, and he died soon after that. So anyway, on that day, after hearing that bad news, we came up with this kinda happy groove, and the song’s kinda about [weird low accent] love and huggin’ and kissin’ and dancin’ and gettin’ babies, and makin’ babies, and makin’ LOOOOOVE [normal dave voice] It’s called number thirty-six.” -----(intro to Rhyme and Reason): “This is a song about too much of nothing...it’s about Peter, Paul, and Mary...”

12/31/94----Song that Jane Likes---- “ Yall sing louder than me, and I got all this sh*t.” -------(before True Reflections)--“and so...it’s one year later...and i’m one year older...and one year closer to being dead...but that....that’s ok...it’s all a part of growing up....”

01/26/95---“So...we haven’t played for a little while, so we’re kind of fresh and out of the box and smell like plastic...”

02/23/95---intro to Dancing Nancies----“so ahh, i know that someone come up to you and say man you’re all fucked up, you get pissed off. You say listen man, i am what i am. Sometimes i wonder if maybe when somebody tells me i’m all fucked up, maybe they got a point or something.”

02/24/95----“ ...we always have a great time when we come to New York. It’s kinda like comin’ home in a way. It’s closer to the east coast than a lot of things. -----“He could fry an egg back there and play the baddest drums you ever heard.”

02/26/95, Rochester Auditorium-----Dave said that the name ‘Under the Table and Dreaming’ referred to “when you’re so drunk you fall down and can’t get up”.

04/07/95, Durham NC--- “So sometimes I wander around a place as beautiful as Duke here, all the nice stone buildings and all the cool people hangin’ out... I wonder if, maybe I’d been slightly different, if maybe I could have ended up here, or somewhere like here, and not been a high-school dropout the way I was, but...uhh..but that’s okay; we’re all different, but we’re not all _that_ different...”

05/05/95, Salem, OR------(After Dave did some of his classic mumble between songs) some guy in the front row - “I can’t understand a damn word you’re saying!” Dave being sarcastic in the most normal, generic, American news anchor voice of I’ve ever heard, said “A gentleman in the front row has kindly alerted me to the fact that I’m not speaking clearly. I sincerely apologize to everybody in the building for not speaking clearly enough!!”

??Mother’s day 1995, Mesa, Arizona---(before WWYS)---“ I was walking down the road, and a little green man jumped out of a hole in the ground......he sad(high voice)”dip dip dip dip” I said “what?” he said “dip dip dip dip” “i said why did you say that?” he said “well, what would you say?”

07/08/95, Germany----(before WWYS) “We come from a part of America where we talk to pigs. You got a lot of pigs out here but in America we talk to them. We say SOOOUUUUUUEEEEE EEEAAA HAH AHA HA!”

07/31/95, Austin----“I hope you don’t mind if we fuck around a little bit, that’s what were best at.” -----“So when your starin up at the sky and dreamin, cause when your dreamin that’s the only real free place, is in your head, everywhere else there’s someone else tellin’ you what to do then you stare up at the stars and maybe once and a while some of them move.”

08/25/95-----“So if you’ve ever seen those Time Life books and you see that picture of those monkeys, and they call it the picture of evolution, and they start off with the little monkey and they end up with the people. That’s not too long a walk, across that page I don’t think. This song is about that monkey.”

11/20/95, Vail, CO----- I didn’t tell many people this, but this is Vodka!”

12/28/95--- “I ain’t promoting drinking or nothing. But whiskey comes from plants. And ya know, whatever comes from the ground has got to be good for you.”

12/29/95, Patriot Center---“The Energizer bunny, he just keeps goin’ and goin’ and goin’... one day a giant hammer is gonna fall out of the sky and knock the shit out of him...”

12/31/95, Hampton Coliseum---(before nancies)---“One thing that wouldn’t change... when the new year comes...when you get a couple of beers or a couple of pipes in you, you’re feeling okay...”

02/02/96--- “My friend Doughty from Soul Coughing says that there should be a law that every time someone yells “Freebird!” the band has to play it. Pretty soon no one would ask for THAT f*cking song anymore!”

06/07/96, Great Woods Amphitheatre, Mansfield, MA---(before Proudest Monkey)----“Sometimes, when you watch all that stuff on CNN... or you watch Party of 5, bombs blowing up in Bhagdad, watch people shootin’ each other people hunting for the other people standing on top of the Whitehouse, people standing on Capital Hill, I don’t care if there democrates or republicans they stand up there sound like know something, they stand up there, sound like they know something... they all still wake up in the morning, drink a cup of coffee and take a shit, there no better than I am... an’ they dance around the problem... say this, talk about the economic implications... but their grandfather, great-great grandfather was just like my great-great grandfather- just a bunch of monkeys swingin’ up in the trees, sittin’ there. if someone tells you they know what’s going on... immediately... question them... yeah... especially the government, i don’t care where the government is, it could be in Moscow, it could be in Washington DC. don’t... just think we got it made. just remember that we’re all monkeys and that’s the first think that keeps us together...”

06/09/96, Jones Beach----Proudest Monkey----“so a friend of mine and I- a friend of mine who’s here, but we’ve known each other for a long time, since we were little kids... we were in Africa together one time... and we were lookin’ up in this tree... and there’s this monkey up in the tree... and the monkey had a little hard-on... you know, a little monkey hard-on...it looked just like a man in a little... in a little hairy coat with a little hard-on... and he’s pretty lax, he’s just chillin’ out in the tree... little hard-on goin’ up and down... i kinda felf weird sittin’ there lookin’ at him and seein’ this, uh, hard-on... ‘cause i’d feel kinda weird if i sat and, uh, looked at anybody else’s hard-on... then i thought to myself, man, he’s a money though, it’s different from bein’ a person. then i thought, ain’t all that different, ‘cept monkey don’t fuck up the world, do they? that’s the only difference... monkey’s just get hard ons and eat bananas...”

06/11/96---“This is one of my best friends...it took me a little while to know him, but once you do know him, he never leaves, this is my friend Jack Daniels.”

06/14/96 (someone throws a joint onto the stage)---“I’ll smoke it later, thanks.” -------(when Dave comes back on stage for the encore)----“I’ve got to get back to the bus, my friend Jack Daniels is in there. He’s a hard man to get rid of.”
06/18/96-- Polaris Ampitheater, Columbus, OH ---“Y’all two in the second row there...Y’all are just fuckin’ goofy.”

HORDE, 1996, San Diego, CA----“ It is nice when you can sit back with some friends, drink some beer and have a good time”

06/19/96, Deer Creek, IN---(into to nancies) “So, there was this one time i was walking from this place called Port Elizabeth in South Africa.. to a place called hurden(?) and it was a long fucking way. Well, I was actually hitchiking, which you can do sometimes there, and be successfull. And I was unfortunately not successfull, and I walked my skinny chicken legs off, and I thought to myself.. I thought, what the fuck am I going to do with my life? Walking around in the middle of Africa, with nothing to do. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? I said, well, hey I could be an accountant, I could be a explorer, I could be myself. could I be, somebody else.. Don’t you ever wonder, could you have been.. don’t you ever wonder...” -----(before What Would You Say)---“This next song.. we haven’t played this, till a couple days ago, we haven’t played this song in a couple years,’cos, uhh, we kind of heard it a lot, but uh, now that it’s not played that much on the radio, we kinda figured we could start playing it again. so..”

06/23/96, Marcus Amphitheater, Milwaukee, WI----“Sometimes you know, I don’t know if you get this way, but I just wanna say something. I don’t know if you’re driving down the road, you got the radio playin, you see the headlines, and you see the McDonalds, and you see the Burger King, Another Citgo, and then you got 7-11, and then you got the radio telling you to turn it up and rip the knob off, and the television keeps changing channels...I say fuck it, I say fuck it, I say it’s TOO MUCH!!” ------(Before Lie In Our Graves) “Hey, this is a song that sings about the hopes that when we all got to the end of our lives that we’ll feel, we’ll feel pretty good about what we did; so don’t comprimise yourself—if you want to go to a fuckin’ island and sit there in the sand for the rest of your life, _go_ to the fuckin’ island! And if you want to go to the moon, _go_ to the god damn moon! And if you want to sit at home, _sit_ the fuck at home!”

07/05/96, Utrecht---(After someone said boo to Dave—as in booing the band)----“The only boo your going to be giving me tonite is bootie!” ------(To the crowd)”Has anyone tried that Mustard soup?” (crowed says yeah!) “Was is good?” “Yeah, but it tasted like hot dogs!”

07/19/96----“It’s fuckin’ hot but it’s not to hot to fuck.”

09/03/96, Tampa,FL-----(referring to the inflatable roof of the Sun Dome) "I don't think we've ever played in a bubble before. What if we all lived in a big plastic bubble? We could grow the food over there, sleep over there, uhhh, grow the, uhh, combustibles over there, and leave the music right where it is!" ...(after Billies) "Oh shit man, I hit myself in the head with my geeetar!"