Interview with Peter Griesar.

Peter Griesar calls out from across the parking lot.

“I’ve got two glasses of wine in me! I just went to Wendy’s to get a burger. Ninety-nine cents!”

Indeed, he has a half-consumed cheeseburger in his right hand, which he’s gesticulating with as he suggests that we go into The C&O and sit down. The C&O has been hailed as one of the best restaurants on the Atlantic coast by Bon Appetit, Food & Wine Magazine, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Not coincidentally, The C&O is also where posh Charlottesvillians go to see and be seen. And on this summer Thursday night, it’s packed.

Pushing his way downstairs to the bar of the four-star restaurant, Griesar plops down and polishes off his burger while a woman, just a few feet from him, starts on a twenty-four dollar steak. He is completely oblivious to any potential conflict.

Peter Griesar is off in his own little world much of the time. Sometimes, while talking to him, you get the sense that he’s having a wholly different conversation than you are. It’s as if he simply can’t contain all of his creative energy, and it has to manifest itself somehow. As a sort of impulsive-savant Tourett’s Syndrome, he ends up making surprising connections between seemingly-unrelated topics, and does so constantly. He effectively thinks in hypertext, which causes him to make an enthusiastic point about, say, nuclear disarmament when he has simply been asked if he has the time.

It’s just this unusual style of thinking that makes him a shockingly talented writer. He’s written some of the best songs being recorded today. Some are famous (DMB’s smash-hit “So Much To Say”), but most you’ve never heard of (“Pulling,” “Superfastgo,” “Dreams.”) His songs are often referred to as “catchy,” or “poppy.” Most of them are a lot of fun, and all reveal a genuinely rare talent for composing music, writing lyrics and assembling songs.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of Griesar’s music is the very real possibility that very few people in the world will ever hear it. He’s fiercely independent. Most of his recordings are entirely created by him in his home, hand-packaged and -sealed. He’s seen the record industry, and knows it for what it is. Although a grassroots promotion movement has already started, it very well may take a major label to launch him. But given Griesar’s rather unpleasant experiences with Big Music, it may take a lot of convincing for a label to convince him to sign. Once he’s discovered, though, they may very well be interested in doing a great deal of convincing.

It is quite clear that Griesar has had at least two glasses of wine. He’s completely at home in The C&O, having worked and relaxed in Charlottesville bars for just over a decade. He knows half of the people there, and many of them interrupt to provide an enthusiastic greeting.

“That’s the lovely Kara McLaine at that table. Hey, Kara, I’m saying that on mic! I’m being interviewed. That’s the lovely Kara McLaine, at that table.”

Peter Griesar is best known to the world as “that guy who used to be in Dave Matthews Band.” From 1991-1993, he was the sixth member of DMB, playing keyboards, harmonica and providing backup vocals. In March of 1993, after two years of dedicating his life to the band, he abruptly left. Ever since that last show, millions of fans have been left wondering “what happened?”

Griesar is in the unenviable position of being relatively famous for what he failed to accomplish. It seems a terrible burden to bear, going through life being known for what one might have done, for what one “should” have done. Still, it’s a great mystery of modern music — what caused him to quit the band?

There’s no shortage of rumors. Drugs, sex and violence appear in many of the stories. More recently, the more mundane “he was sick of touring” has become a standard response on Usenet group alt.music.dave-matthews and IRC channel #dmb. As DMB fan Josh Coady (“rexor”) put it recently on #dmb, “he left cause the band got too popular…started touring…he prefered the simple life.” This is closer to the truth than any of the rumors, but still raises more questions than it answers.

In early 1993, Dave Matthews Band was just starting to make it big. They were preparing to record their first album, their shows were selling out, and they were the hottest band on the east coast college scene. Why would Griesar leave then? What kind of a man could get so close to fame and fortune and turn his back on it? Getting so close would kill some men. But not Griesar. He couldn’t be happier about it.

Peter Griesar was born in 1969 and grew up in suburban Westchester County, New York. His family was musically-inclined, and so he was raised with music as an integral part of his life. From the age of six he was performing with his family, Partridge-family style. Though he began by singing, he was soon pressed into taking piano lessons. His older siblings Katie and Billy served as musical examples for Griesar, particularly his sister’s interest in guitar. Despite his family’s common interest, Griesar frequently describes the core of his musical development as a solo task in which he builds on the resources that others have provided to him.

“One Christmas, I remember that my father had spent a lot of time, and he made me a greenhouse. It was really beautiful woodworking, a beautiful, like, greenhouse, like a real little greenhouse you can grow plants in, like, something like nice, you know what I mean? And he got my sister a tape recorder. Oh, I was so jealous. And I remember just dissing this, as a young kid, like, dissing this Christmas present, like, I mean, I had this greenhouse, and I would grow carrot butts in it, you know I mean? Whatever else you — a little kid — would do. But I was so pissed, because my sister got a recorder, just a little cassette recorder, a little yellow [one.] A thing, like, 70’s-style, you know what I mean? And I remember breaking into her room and I would record with it when no one else was home, I would, like, when no one, when I was alone, I would sneak into her room and I would record. My alias was Peter Zabu. And I was like some kind of DJ and like I would like and it was just this wild thing. I would be the DJ and then I would introduce myself and sing a song and then come back in as the DJ and introduce another song, and so on. I don’t know. So that was my first interest.”

Griesar constantly checks to see if people know what he means. For good cause — slower-witted people may very well may not follow him. He appears to spend so much time wrapped up in his own thoughts that it’s no wonder he needs to check in with the rest of the world every so often.

In high school, he was in his first band, The Yodells. (“Named after the famous food, Yodels,” he explains, helpfully.) Griesar played keyboards, and they ended up winning the local talent show, playing Led Zepplin’s “Rock and Roll.” From there, musically, he became somewhat of a recluse. He reluctantly went to college, the cheapest one that he could find — The University of Virginia, where he spent a year and a half. Music was something that he did alone in his dorm room, headphones plugged into keyboard.

“I was always the person that was, like, making that same noise over and over again, recording in his dorm room, who would, like, have to walk all the drunk kids to the hospital in the middle of the night because he didn’t go out, he spent the whole night inside just excited that he had the first night when had the whole place to himself. Know what I mean? It wasn’t cool. It was never cool. And to be honest, being into something, truly being into something, being focused and involved in something that you like, is never cool. And that’s the struggle, is that it’s not cool. That’s why you like doing it. If it’s cool, it’s not a singular experience, it’s a group experience. No singular experience is cool.”

UVa was less-than-exciting for Griesar. He found a student body that was homogeneous and uninteresting; the classes were boring. As Griesar puts it, “I just didn’t get it at the time. But I don’t think many people at UVa did.” After 18 months, he couldn’t take it anymore. He wanted to enter the world and be treated like an adult. His parents reacted strongly to the news, and he was cut off from them for a time. Not quite knowing what to do, he went to work for Club Med.

“I only worked for them for four or five months. It was amazing, in a lot of ways. You know what I mean? When I was surrounded by people who considered me a failure, and were treating me as such, I was accepted by people who were treating me as a success, someone who was hiring me to be a chef, and giving me a salary and an expense account, and were treating me with some kind of a respect, that I knew what I was doing as an adult. And it was something that I wasn’t getting from my family. I wasn’t, in the context of my family, given the opportunity to choose my future after high school. It was a given. College. You have to choose a college. If I’d had the chance to think it out, I probably never would have gone to college in the first place. I might have gone to a seminary or a…I don’t know. Maybe I could have. I don’t know. But I could have done something else.”

When he returned to Charlottesville from his Club Med stint in 1989, Griesar approached the first person that he saw and asked where he could get a job. He was pointed towards Miller’s, a popular bar on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. He was hired on the spot, and set to work waiting tables.

Miller’s is recognized by Dave Matthews Band fans for being the birthplace of DMB. But in 1989, of course, it was just another bar. Griesar worked his way up from dishwasher, eventually waiting tables. There he befriended one of the bartenders, Dave Matthews, as well as many of the musicians that would play there regularly. Musicians like Tim Reynolds, John D’earth, Johnny Gilmore, Greg Howard and Houston Ross.

But he hadn’t much worked with anybody musically until his home became an after-Miller’s party spot. He lived on Second Street NE with fellow musician Art Wheeler, just a few blocks north of the Mall.

“We used to have a lot of wild parties down there. The Miller’s crowd would always roll down there. It’s the place where I met Carter, Leroi, and those guys. Those guys were pretty much perennial partiers in my living room, that was where we all used to hang out.”

Music, as he describes it, had previously been a mere a “mental exercise.” He didn’t learn to see his talents as more than that until 1990, when bassist Houston Ross (now a member of Griesar’s band, Supertanker) drafted him into his band, “The Basics,” for a gig in nearby Harrisonburg. Also in the group were Tim Reynolds and Leroi Moore. This was Griesar’s first band since The Yodells.

The Basics were a constantly-changing, rather nebulous band that existed for the better part of a decade. Ross’ recruitment of Griesar sparked something in him, and he began to think of music as a more important part of his life. Matthews and Griesar had taken to recording, Peter Zabu-style, on Griesar’s four-track. He also began playing with friends, mostly just playing around, and soon took up regular gigs with Matthews.

“About the time Dave quit bartending, he and I started performing at open-mic nights at Eastern Standard on Monday nights. The one song I remember that we actually penned and sang was a masturbation song, called ‘This Time I’m Gonna Eat It.'”

Griesar looks up, sleepy-flirty, at the waitress. “I’d like a cup of coffee please.” As she turns away, he grabs the microphone pinned to his lapel, giggling, and intones into it, “I wanted to say tequila.”

In August of 1990, Miller’s closed up a week for repairs and cleaning, as they’ve done most every year. Griesar continued to work there every day, assigned the task of re-tiling the floor. Dave Matthews, Leroi Moore, Carter Beauford, and Stefan Lessard, needing a place to practice, used the tiny Miller’s stage while Griesar worked. Before long, he’d stopped getting much work done, and was playing with them. A band was born.

The story is well-known from here. The Dave Matthews Band (briefly named “Dumela”) picked up violinist Boyd Tinsley before long, started playing frat parties and gigs around Central Virginia. The band, and those around them, immediately had a very good feeling about their music.

“Carter and Leroi and Boyd and Stefan and Dave each brought me joy. I loved being in the middle of all that talent. There was so much communication and I was so happy to be doing it every day. I really do love those guys and think they are some of the greatest musicians I have ever heard, much less played with.”

One thing that became clear quickly was that their music was work, not fun and games. They played nine shows in one particularly difficult week. The hours were bad, the money worse. All of them had left their day jobs (impossible to keep given their performance schedule, anyhow), but still had bills to pay. It was stressful, often thankless, work.

Charles Newman, their manager, managed to get them gigs here and there, but it was rough going. Early on, Newman had the idea to set up weekly shows at Trax, Charlottesville’s major music venue. Though this proved very successful for the band, it didn’t do so well for Newman. Coran Capshaw, the owner of Trax, liked DMB so much that he took them under his wing, eventually taking over the role of manager.

Trax’s proximity to the University of Virginia was immensely helpful. A couple of hundred UVa kids came out to every show in early 1992. But when classes began in fall of 1992, things really took off. Thanks to word-of-mouth among students, attendance rocketed up to around 800 people at each show.

The band started making plans to release an album. They were playing bigger shows outside of Charlottesville: North Carolina, South Carolina, New York, Colorado. The press was starting to talk, and the reviews were good.

So it came as a surprise to many fans when, on March 23, 1993, Peter Griesar played his last show with Dave Matthews Band. There’s that nagging question again: Why?

Griesar pauses, assembling his thoughts. He looks tired, far away, as if he’s preparing himself for a great effort. With a deep breath, and a bit of sadness, he haltingly explains.

“I was…I was tired. My mom was sick. I was…there was…I felt, like, a breakdown in communication between me and David. Personally and…I have very little patience for that because I’m a personal person. And so I decided…and I wasn’t having any fun, and so I decided to stop. And do something else. I wanted what was happening to stop. So I made it stop. I needed it to stop. I had to stop for my own health, for my own sake of well-being. That’s all. I left because I needed to grow. That I was my deficit. I needed to grow. I considered that to be my need.

“I was young, I had been through a lot of experiences, this was a really great experience. I had a great time doing it up to that point, and I knew that the joy that I found in it, the joy that I derived from what I was doing was dwindling. It was turning into something else, from my perspective. In this day and age, if it had been another time, a year later, a year before, a week before, a week later, things might have been different. But at the time, I was in the moment, and I thought ‘If I don’t stop doing this, I’m not going to grow anymore.’

“I’m a good sideman. I know how to make someone look good. I think that’s what I did to Dave. I made his guitar playing sound better by mirroring it on the keyboards. And I made Boyd sound better by helping him learn melodic lines and training him into them. By the time I left the band, David learned how to play rhythm guitar and Boyd had learned all the melodic lines and Carter had learned all the backup harmonies. So all of the three jobs that I had were useless. They really were. If there was any intellectual reason that I left, it was that. My time was done, I had done my job. And that’s the best job anyone can do.

“[I knew that] the band was much larger than me. That what we were doing was much more important than me, and I knew that, and that my leaving would go almost unnoticed, in a way, in the sense that I would leave on a Tuesday and they would be playing on a Wednesday. And I knew that at the time, I was expecting that. I didn’t expect the world to stop. I wasn’t quitting the band to make a statement. I wasn’t doing it to make a stand. I was doing it to, literally, simply, to duck out. I didn’t want to continue under the circumstances because I needed to grow. I’m not much of a regretful person.”

Griesar didn’t play any music for a few years. Instead, he went back to his job at Miller’s, where he started back at the bottom, washing dishes and preparing salads. It was a humbling experience.

It wasn’t until 1995 that Peter was convinced to come out of retirement. Charles Newman, DMB’s early manager, was managing fledgling C’ville artist Lauren Hoffman. She needed help, and Peter spent about six months working with her in the studio, advising her, and playing keyboard for her.

In 1996, he eased back into music a bit by joining a local band, The Ninth. “The Ninth was never really much of a band. It was just a fun project for Charlottesville.” He describes it as, in essence, “a massive lack of musical communication.” DMB bassist Stefan Lessard was a member, briefly. But the group never amounted to much, and Griesar didn’t really look at it as a serious musical endeavor.

Griesar began producing music again in December of 1997. After buying a CD-R, he created a solo five-song EP as a Christmas gift for friends. From start to finish, the project took him just five hours. He pressed 180 copies, photocopied and hand-colored the cover, and passed them out over the next few weeks. The disc, entitled “Ho Ho Hum,” was received very well, and having a copy became a minor status symbol among Charlottesvillians.

Just two months later he had assembled a band, Supertanker, and had recorded an eight-song solo disc entitled “Disposable Love Songs.” A well-attended release party was held at the Live Arts Theatre, and the low-fidelity album sold briskly in local record stores. Supertanker quickly became a popular act. Though there was somewhat of a rotating cast of members, Griesar and his songs remained the focal point.

Over the next two years, Griesar played many solo acts in Charlottesville and New York, and the band played regularly around town in most every venue that would take them. A prolific writer, as always, he soon had two dozen songs under his belt. Songs like “Go Away,” “Naughty” and “Superhero” showed off his talents as a writer, which concert-goers eagerly received.

In the spring of this year, Griesar and his band parted ways and he released his first disc in two years, a four-song EP entitled “From The Supertanker Dude With The Zero Obsession.” Compared to “Disposable,” the slick production (Griesar prefers the term “medium-fi”) sounds extremely professional, like something that a record label would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating. Griesar made it at home.

In August he assembled a new Supertanker, which is now performing regularly in Virginia and North Carolina. The roster includes old-school Charlottesville musicians Houston Ross and Johnny Gilmore, as well as Matthew Wilner, who has led several bands of his own in town. Griesar is somewhat in awe of his bandmates, feeling somewhat humbled that these men have seen fit to play in his band.

“I’ve got a really dope band. I’ve got a lot of material. A lot of really good songs that I love to sing and I love to play, and they love to play them. And we’re kind of new and kind of fresh, but every one is a talented, focused musician. Now I’m just sort of spending my time to figure out a way to get this band on the road, playing in places where people can see it, because that’s what I have to offer the band right now. Know what I mean? And that is my number one and sort of only goal right now. There’s four great people playing music. One of them has 41 years of [professional] experience. Another one has about 20. I’ve got about 15. And Matt has about 8. This is a really serious musical adventure for us.”

Griesar is fortunate to have scraped together enough money from his work with DMB, in addition to working odd jobs here and there, that he’s able to devote a great deal of time to Supertanker. (Although not necessarily doing work that he enjoys. “No matter how much time I have,” he points out, “I still have to spend it doing the business of Supertanker which leaves less time to devote to the music of Supertanker.”) He bristles when asked about the royalties that he’s received from his credit on Crash’s “So Much To Say.”

“I really don’t want to talk about royalties. Because, to be honest, people in this business don’t understand money. I really don’t want to talk about money. Money and fame has never been my goal in what I do. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be able to afford food, or a roof over my head.”

The funny thing is that Griesar’s not just blowing hot air; he really doesn’t care. Perhaps he’s jaded, perhaps he’s sick of the rock scene, or perhaps he’s just happy making his music. His fans are far more concerned with his success than he’ll ever be. Perhaps this is how music is meant to be, as it was fifty, maybe a hundred years ago. Griesar may be closer to roots rock than anybody else out there. He’s making music for the sake of music, performing because it makes people happy. Unfortunately for him, what would make most of his fans happiest would be seeing him played on radio stations nationwide, selling out shows and touring nationwide, basking in the spotlight that DMB enjoyed while he was washing dishes at Miller’s.

In many ways, Griesar is still the lonely kid in his dorm room, glad to be alone with his music. He may always be that kid. Whether or not he gets rich and famous has nothing to do with success as he knows it. In his own way, he’s achieved a musical nirvana, a level of success that Dave Matthews Band will never achieve, a level that few musicians ever achieve.

Peter Griesar is happy.