Mountain Outlaw: Many of your most beloved songs are filled with wonder and a deep reverence for life. Do you find that those themes shift as you’ve evolved as an artist, or have they been a constant through your music and your writing?

Dave Matthews: I think I write out of experience and sometimes more autobiographically than I plan to. But everything is, you know, what else is there? What else can we pull from other than our own experience? I write about relationships, and I always somehow turn them into love songs just because it seems easier because I’m lazy. But that’s not entirely true. And I’m not entirely lazy. But I just look for things that paint a beautiful picture. I do care deeply about the environment because, you know, without it, we’re nothing. I also love people, and I love being around people. I just think there are so many sad and terrible situations in the world, usually caused by greed or power, want of power. And I think that’s also the same thing that faces our environment. I love a walk in the woods or sitting on a wild beach, suntanning and listening to the sound of the birds. Or, watching a bald eagle sitting in a tree.

But if I ever worry about the world, it’s that we forget that it’s the only thing we have.

And the wilderness of it is the only thing that’s real. I mean, we can build ivory towers and rocket ships and fly around like we’re somehow separate from it. But we’re so attached to it that the behavior of greed and violence and unkindness is the behavior of, you know, it’s like what cancer does. Cancer eagerly and selfishly devours its host. And then it’s dead too. I think of us like that, but I also think of us with wonder.

I think about all the people that make the effort to look after our wild spaces and also be part of them. I think of the possibilities of how we could be toward our only home. And I dream that one day, maybe I’ll be here for it, but maybe it’ll be my children that can enjoy it, when we’ve found our sanity again. That we’ll live on a planet that takes care of each other, whether they’re your neighbors right next door or your neighbors on the other side of the planet.

Our neighbors, whether it’s the trees or whatever, when I think of things like this, that we share 20 to 60 percent of our DNA with plants, that blows my mind. I don’t know how we can feel separate when we’re made from the same stuff, not slightly the same, but precisely the same. Just because we took this tangent of thinking about ourselves as something special, we’re not really, unless we’re all in it together.

MO: You’ve long used music to support causes, whether that was Farm Aid or Standing Rock and through your own Bama Works Fund. What do you think it is about live music that makes it such a powerful tool for rallying people around a cause?

DM: I think one of the first things that comes to mind for me is that it’s so easy. I can now come there, and we’re going to celebrate, but also raise some awareness and some money for these events.

From my perspective, I can go and get in front of 20,000 people, and we can have an awareness together about why we’re doing something. I’m very lucky that I can be there with people that are testing the water in the streams or that are looking at wildfires or weather or, you know, counting eggs, so to speak. And those people are doing all the real work. Then, if I can somehow amplify that by going somewhere and performing, and music is a specifically convenient art form because people come together for live music. When you have different artists come together from different corners and musical forms, then you can really bring people together to have conversations.

Farm Aid is a great example. I mean, it’s irritating that it’s still happening because of the plight of small farmers and family farmers still being an issue. And I think it’s only going to get worse in many ways until some awareness changes. I think music is sort of like a perfect storm of availability. You don’t have to do anything. You can just go up there and do your dance steps and have lots of fireworks. And people have a good time and that’s valid. That’s one thing. You can also go up and raise awareness about a cause. There’s a possibility of some really direct communication of ideas and of common space.

I mean, that’s how Jimmy Carter became the president. That was one of the things that made him president was that he went on stage. Nobody knew who the hell he was. And he went on stage. It’s interesting that he would go to like the Doobie Brothers concerts and Willie Nelson concert. And he said, “Could I talk before your shows?”

MO: What is your own relationship to wild places? And how have those spaces shaped you?

DM: When I was a kid, maybe I was 14 or 15 with my mom, we were in a very big park in South Africa called Kruger Park. It’s quite well known. We were driving down this little dirt road. The sun was just coming up, and then we saw all these elephants in front of us. And so, you know, it was very exciting.

It was very thick bush. Like so thick it was hard to see two feet into it. Then, all of a sudden, the bush right next to the car started moving, and there was this elephant right there. My mom was a very tame driver, but she put it into reverse, and we flew backward. We were alone. Nobody, very few people were driving around at that point. But I remember the excitement of that. The reason I bring it up is because they are the most magnificent animals. Because of their stature and their size, they are sort of an example of a thing that’s threatened by greed and encroachment.

All this greed is the enemy of our future, in my opinion. And we shouldn’t tolerate it. I’m very lucky and I live a very lucky life. But when I think of the percentage of elephants left from that moment 45 years ago to now, we probably have a fraction of as many elephants in the world as we did then.

I still find when I walk in the woods in Virginia, or walk in the woods here in the Northwest, or when I visit places as magnificent as Montana, I like to take the opportunity to go into the wilderness. The part that’s thrilling is that those things have such resilience. But the part that’s terrifying to me is that we take them for granted.

There are so many people who would rather shoot an elephant than wonder at an elephant, that would kill it rather than be amazed by it and the society that these great animals create and to learn from them. The same goes for trees, the same goes for rivers, and the intelligence of nature is so profound. I mean, sure, we can build a rocket, but we can’t make a tree, and a rocket is fairly impressive, but all it’s doing is burning old trees. The very power that allows us to do that, or drive a car across the country, or take an airplane, or fly a rocket to space: the very thing that allows us to do that is the power of nature. And if we can’t wonder at the wild places and protect them, we don’t deserve it.

I love the wilderness. I love people because I think we’re the same thing.

MO: Your music—and especially your live shows—have built a powerful sense of belonging for so many people. Was building that kind of community something you set out to do intentionally?

DM: No, I think almost from the beginning, I was a huge fan. I was sort of friendly with, for instance, the late sax player LeRoi. We were in the same room quite a lot. I knew Stefan a bit. You know, my mom taught him art when he was 12. I knew him also as a musician and a kid who played jazz. I knew Carter. I met Carter quite a few times, but I really was a huge fan of his music. When we got together, I may have had a vision of what I thought the band would be the very first time we got together. But the four of us—when we got into a room together and started making noise with really no idea of what was going to happen—It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be because all of us had our own voices, and I didn’t come in with a clear plan.

The music or the sound that we make together came out of our own voices and our own reactions. There’s a natural thing to it. So maybe that led to a certain amount of spontaneity. We have songs that have a harmonic structure to them, but, after that, there’s a sort of openness. There is a relationship to our audiences that seems very natural.

We went on stage, and were like “This is what we got, and I hope you like it.” Then there was the insane good fortune of people being moved by it.

Maybe that’s our shtick is that we just roll out there and play. We don’t start with a fog machine and 1812 overture or anything like that. We just wander out there.

Sometimes we wave, sometimes we just start playing. And so far, it has worked out.

MO: While you’ve played a few private shows in Montana, it’s been decades since your last large public concert here. What are you looking forward to most during your time in Big Sky?

DM: Well, I love it. I love Montana. I was there not long ago. And sometimes, it’s a sort of a shocking place. I’m really good friends with Lukas [Nelson] and Molly [Tuttle]. So, I’m really glad that ended up that they’re both there.

I love their music. I’m slightly intimidated, but that’s okay. That’s just my nature. I look forward to that.

I love getting the challenge of playing by myself, because it’s real different. But I think I can make a fairly big sound if the speakers are big enough by myself. I look forward to that.

There’s a little bit of a freedom in playing by myself just because if I screw it up, I’m the only one that has to pay for it. And that’s okay. I’m looking forward to it very much.

And the sunshine and the starry nights and the beautiful mountains. I’ll try and make sure I get enough air in me.

Taylor Owens is the content marketing director at Outlaw Partners.