(A John Mayer/Grateful Dead comparison may be more in order.) This creative marriage compromises none of Walker’s vision: From the beginning, there can be no mistaking that this is art. Walker is more than a cult sensation, while Matthews and his group instill a cult-like devotion that doesn’t seem to waver even if their best albums were released at the height of the Clinton era. The Converse-wearing music snob in us all probably wants to argue that Walker is to Matthews what John Fahey is to Kenny Loggins: One, possessed with a life-altering genius, the other possessed with an ear for hook and tune who just happened to become omnipresent by standing in the right place at the right time. Here is where one might legitimately ask if this some kind of joke. Now, longtime DMB fan Riley Walker has given his take on those pieces, sauntering into a Chicago area studio in the wee hours of 2018 to revisit songs he’d heard long ago on a CD-R.

Some of the sessions he oversaw were revamped for the 2002 effort Busted Stuff, but the dozen songs that were initially tracked became a kind of Holy Grail, a rebirth of a band that had maybe lived a little too long on its overall pleasantness. What emerged was, in the parlance of the local Delta Chi chapter, a bit of a bummer, and Lillywhite was relieved of his services.

Matthews and his band trekked into the studio in the wake of both records, eager to explore some darker turns and weirder avenues. The last of those, 1998’s Before These Crowded Streets arrived just as the tide was turning from backward hats and cargo shorts toward a kind of second coming for mainstream prog. By the late ‘90s, Steve Lillywhite, whose CV already included stops with Peter Gabriel, U2 and Big Country, had produced three albums for Dave Matthews and his crew. The story of Ryley Walker’s latest album passes through the perhaps unlikely career of the Dave Matthews Band.

Ryley walker dave matthews