Dave Matthews was up and at ’em early on Wednesday for his return to SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show before playing an invite-only show for the satellite radio service at Irving Plaza. Matthews swing through New York City came in support of Dave Matthews Band‘s new album, Walk Around The Moon, which features a title track Dave conceived of while tripping on mushrooms.
The DMB frontman made his The Howard Stern Show debut in 2018. Stern announced the launch of the limited-run Dave Matthews Band Radio channel during Matthews’ visit to his studios five years ago. The channel returned as a permanent addition to SiriusXM’s offerings in June of 2020. Yesterday, Matthews was back at the Stern Show studios, where he talked with the host remotely.
Howard Stern played the studio version of “Walk Around The Moon” and asked Matthews if the song was about eating mushrooms and where he’s at with drugs. “I don’t do a lot of any drugs at the moment,” Dave responded. “Are mushrooms drugs? I suppose they are, they are [a] controlled substance. I think they’re pretty good for you. They’re good for me. If you have too many of them you shouldn’t operate a vehicle.”
Dave added he’s reached the point in his life when he can dabble with psychedelics without worrying about it. “There was some mushrooms and there was a pandemic, so it was like ‘if not now, when?” Matthews said. “Who knows who’s coming out of the forest, we should probably do these mushrooms,” the singer-songwriter/guitarist recalled. “Who doesn’t love a song written on mushrooms? That’s a sales pitch,” Howard Stern quipped.
See the portion of Dave’s appearance on the Stern Show where he acknowledges he took mushrooms before penning “Walk Around The Moon” below:
Walk Around The Moon, DMB’s first studio album in five years, arrived on May 19. Matthews and his bandmates recorded a bulk of the 12-track LP during the peak of the pandemic in Charlottesville. Members adhered to strict guidelines as they generally recorded their parts separately.
Dave Matthews first discussed his affinity for ingesting mushrooms while the pandemic was raging during an interview with Dean Budnick for Relix’s recent cover story on the new album. Read what Matthews told Relix about “Walk Around The Moon” below:
I happened to be in Virginia when things were locked up extremely tightly. [Walk Around The Moon producer] Rob [Evans] was there as well. So, at some point, we started working to see what we might come up with.
At first, I felt no need for anyone to hear the stuff we were doing. That changed when I started playing the lick that would end up as the beginning of “Walk Around the Moon.”
Since we were in this forced vacation or forced sabbatical, we had been eating the occasional mushroom. So there was this lighthearted idea of turning the mushroom into a character.
I wrote the song about meeting a woman who would change my life, change the way I looked at things. She would sort of blow apart my world. It’s interesting that while I was saying that I was actually in a world where this thing—that wasn’t a mushroom—had come in and blown everything apart.
Dave Matthews Band resumes their 2023 Summer Tour at Forest Hills Stadium tomorrow, Friday, June 9. The show will be the group’s first at the historic New York City venue. Live audio will air on SiriusXM’s Dave Matthews Band Radio as part of the Friday Night Concert Series.
