The Lillywhite Sessions - Recording Sessions

Recording Sessions

The album was supposed to be produced in the manner of the band's prior three (Under the Table and Dreaming, Crash, and Before These Crowded Streets), all of which had been produced by Steve Lillywhite. Having recorded Dave Matthews Band in studios in New York City, Woodstock, New York and Sausalito, California, Lillywhite had an established relationship with its members. For this album, the band purchased a house near their hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia and converted a portion of it into a recording studio. The band tried some new things, including Matthews playing a twelve string guitar. In early 2000, Lillywhite posted a report on the band's website with details about the session-in-progress, saying that the band had recorded a number of new songs, including "Sweet Up and Down," and had reworked a song which the Dave Matthews Band performed with Santana in 1999, "John the Revelator," retitling it "JTR."

During the recording of the sessions, RCA Records executive Bruce Flohr asked drummer Carter Beauford about his feelings about the songs at that point, to which he replied that he "didn't feel it" and was almost certain that the other band members "didn't feel it" either, implying that the recordings were not going in the direction in which the band had intended. The songs, which had been recorded at the point were very dark, which Dave Matthews claimed was partly inspired by his alcohol consumption during the sessions, inspiring him to write "sad bastard songs" that were full of pity.

" inspired pity, self pity, or pity for the sad bastard that wrote them. I felt like I was in the process of failing, in the process of letting everyone down. In the process of not supplying the band with songs, not giving the producer the music, not giving the record company tunes—so inside that environment, I was continuing to do just that, come up with these sad bastard songs." —Dave Matthews

The album was scheduled for release in the second half of 2000. The band eventually decided to scrap the sessions, and perform their summer tour without a completed album to support. The band played a number of new songs that summer from those sessions, including "Grey Street," "Raven," "Sweet Up and Down," "Grace Is Gone," "Bartender," "Digging a Ditch" and the reworked "JTR."