Episode 23: The Lillywhite Sessions (Part 1)

Records & Riffs

In 2000, Dave Matthews Band was the biggest rock act in America. The group set out to record a fourth record, on the heels of its massive hit, 1998's Before These Crowded Streets. That turned out to be a doomed process. The album's sessions eventually leaked anyway—to widespread positive reviews. The band obviously and understandably rejected this act of defiance and piracy. The record-that-wasn't maintains a stellar reputation by fans all these years later, flaws and all. It's become one of the most well-known aborted albums in popular American music history, in part because it happened near the birth of the Napster era. Modest estimates at the time speculated that well north of 1 million people illegally downloaded the record.

Twenty-two years on from when those recordings happened, the story (or at least parts of it) of the infamous sessions is recounted in this episode by DMB's lead studio engineer at the time, Steve Harris. (Lillywhite himself will be featured in part two.) Harris is an important figure in the band’s history; he would go on to produce 2002’s Busted Stuff, which was birthed after the Lillywhite Sessions debacle, in addition to working later on Matthews’ solo record, 2003’s Some Devil.

In celebration of the 20-year anniversary of Busted Stuff, and everything tied to that album and those songs finally making it to a proper record, I’ve put together a multi-part podcast series tied to one of the most impactful moments in the band’s history. First will be a pair of episodes about the Lillywhite Sessions, and then one about how the band regrouped and decided to finish the Busted Stuff project with Harris nearly two years later.

If you’re a veritable DMB fan and you’ve come to listen to this podcast, you’re gonna know the premise. You’re going to know some of the story. But not all of the story. That’s what these next few shows are for, to help fill in some gaps. It’s certainly an illuminating trip back to an era when DMB was comprised of its original five members, the band was getting bigger by the year, and the wait for the next big album became a sport for unto itself for fans.