The band's jazzy, funk-rock sound comes from the 'brotherhood' chemistry of Matthews, Lessard, violinist Boyd Tinsley, saxophonist LeRoi Moore and drummer Carter Beauford. The music changes around the songs,' he says. 'Our shows change, but they sort of change by themselves. Speaking of which, Matthews says his group still achieves its keenest results through go-with-the-flow jamming. 'I certainly go with the flow more than anything else.' 'You definitely don't have to worry about me analyzing anything too much,' he says. Maybe it's best not to analyze it, he's told. It feels great, but it amazes me and leaves me a little bewildered at the same time.' So it's hard for me to have anything but surprise and gratitude about it. I go and do that, then go home and go to sleep until the next day or go on my bus, which is my home, until the next day. I just feel like I'm going to my office and my office is on stage with a guitar. 'It's not something I've made a point of thinking about until it happens to us. 'It's always well above my expectations, so I never know how to react to it,' Matthews says of such high attendance. All of which is a blur to the modest Matthews, who was raised in South Africa and is now based in Charlottesville, Va. The group has done boffo numbers at the box office and is expected to draw 37,000 during two nights at the FleetCenter (the first show is sold out).

The tragedy interrupted a phenomenal summer for the band. So we'll just get back on the road and carry on.' When death happens, it reminds everyone of what really matters, and that is life and love and family. If it's done anything to us, it's brought us together. And what has it done to us? It devastates us because this is our brother, but he's more devastated because this is his child. We've had tragedies before in the band, and it's been the same thing. It's just, `We have to stop.' Stefan has had a tragedy. There's not even a consideration of anything else. There's no way we could have had a replacement. Because there's no way we could have continued playing. We didn't want to sit down and say, `Well, what should we do now?' It was very evident what we should do. 'Everything just stopped - and that's the way it should be. You wake up and everything's changed.'We didn't have a meeting or anything,' says Matthews. '(Fate) snaps its fingers and suddenly everything else vanishes for a while.

'I don't know what happened, but it's a terrible, early departure,' Matthews says of the baby's death. The band immediately canceled 11 shows and is just returning to action. The Dave Matthews Band found that out when the group was sent reeling by the recent death of bassist Stefan Lessard's 3-week-old daughter, Asian, of unknown causes. Rock stardom doesn't shelter you from reality.

Tragedy dave matthews family