The Lillywhite Sessions

1. "Busted Stuff" – 4:05
2. "Grey Street" – 5:53
3. "Diggin' a Ditch" – 4:24
4. "Sweet Up and Down" – 4:43
5. "JTR" – 5:36
6. "Big Eyed Fish" – 5:16
7. "Grace Is Gone" – 5:12
8. "Captain (Crazy)" – 5:27
9. "Bartender" –10:07
10. "Monkey Man" – 7:21
11. "Kit Kat Jam" – 4:00
12. "Raven" – 6:24

Also recorded but cut from the album is 'Build You a House'.

The album was supposed to be produced in the manner of the band's prior three (Under the Table and Dreaming, Crash, and Before These Crowded Streets), all of which had been produced by Steve Lillywhite. Having recorded Dave Matthews Band in studios in New York City, Woodstock, New York and Sausalito, California, Lillywhite had an established relationship with its members. For this album, the band purchased a house near their hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia and converted a portion of it into a recording studio. The band tried some new things, including Matthews playing a twelve string guitar. In early 2000, Lillywhite posted a report on the band's website with details about the session-in-progress, saying that the band had recorded a number of new songs, including "Sweet Up and Down," and had reworked a song which the Dave Matthews Band performed with Santana in 1999, "John the Revelator," retitling it "JTR."

During the recording of the sessions, RCA Records executive Bruce Flohr asked drummer Carter Beauford about his feelings about the songs at that point, to which he replied that he "didn't feel it" and was almost certain that the other band members "didn't feel it" either,[1] implying that the recordings were not going in the direction in which the band had intended. The songs that had been recorded at that point were very dark, which Dave Matthews claimed was partly inspired by his alcohol consumption during the sessions, inspiring him to write "sad bastard songs" that were full of pity.

"[The songs] inspired pity, self pity, or pity for the sad bastard that wrote them. I felt like I was in the process of failing, in the process of letting everyone down. In the process of not supplying the band with songs, not giving the producer the music, not giving the record company tunes—so inside that environment, I was continuing to do just that, come up with these sad bastard songs."[1]

— Dave Matthews

The album was scheduled for release in the second half of 2000. The band eventually decided to scrap the sessions, and perform their summer tour without a completed album to support. The band played a number of new songs that summer from those sessions, including "Grey Street," "Raven," "Sweet Up and Down," "Grace Is Gone," "Bartender," "Digging a Ditch" and the reworked "JTR."

In March 2001, Craig Knapp, the lead singer of Dave Matthews Band cover band "Ants Marching," received a CD from a friend containing the lost Lillywhite Sessions. He then contacted producer Steve Lillywhite via e-mail inquiring what to do with the tracks, and posted his message on the message boards at Dave Matthews Band fan site "DMBML."

Hello Mr. Lillywhite,

I thank you in advance for taking the time to read this E-mail. I have unintentionally placed myself in a very precarious situation.

About a week ago, I received an E-mail from a DMB fan who claimed they had some unreleased material from the new Dave Matthews Band CD. He asked if I wanted a copy, and I said yes, thinking it was going to be acoustic takes from "Everyday." In any event, I received a package yesterday, and it was indeed the session that you and DMB recorded in Virginia.

I love it very much, excellent work. I am blessed to receive this gift.

My question for you is one of moral standards. I would really like to share these songs with the DMB trading community. However, I feel that if the Dave Matthews Band and Steve Lillywhite didn't release these songs, then what gives me that right? I don't want to disrespect the band, or yourself. I guess my question is simply this:

Am I disrespecting the Dave Matthews Band and Steve Lillywhite by making these songs available?

I would really appreciate a response when you get a chance.

Thank you so much for your time,

Craig Knapp[5]

Knapp received an apparently faked e-mail response from Lillywhite, giving Knapp approval to release the tracks via the Internet. Since Knapp only had a 56k dial-up modem, he decided to transfer the songs to someone with a lot of bandwidth who could host them. Using Napster, Knapp then sent the tracks to a fellow member of DMBML, Drew Wiley, who released over the Internet the 96 kbit/s MP3s. Within days, the tracks were also released as 128 kbit/s MP3s, and later as lossless SHN files.[5] The tracks made their way all over the internet via private servers and peer-to-peer programs like Napster. After the release of Everyday, which many fans complained was too "pop-ish", the leak of the Sessions gave some fans what they wanted—an album recorded much like older Dave Matthews Band material.

Dave Matthews Band

The Summer So Far -- Demo #2

(The Lillywhite Sessions)

Producer: Steve Lillywhite

Recorded: Winter 2000 - Summer 2000

Track Name Time

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

d1t01 Bartender 06:37.94

d1t02 JTR 07:52.70

d1t03 Busted Stuff 03:56.92

d1t04 Sweet Up & Down 04:32.58

d1t05 Diggin' a Ditch 04:15.09

d1t06 Build You a House 03:58.60

d1t07 Captain 05:38.37

d1t08 untitled jam 05:48.18

d1t09 Grace is Gone 07:33.00

d1 totals 50:13:4

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[6]
Entertainment Weekly	A− [7]

Once the album leaked, attention by fans and media escalated. Many fans were eager for an official release of the sessions. Online feedback from fans, including a website-based campaign called "Release Lillywhite Recordings Campaign," received media attention from Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone, which gave the unmastered album better reviews than the successful Everyday.[5] During the 2001 summer tour, the band didn't just debut live versions of the songs from Everyday, but also began to play "Big Eyed Fish," which was on the sessions but up to that point had never been performed live. The Dave Matthews Band was unexpectedly touring behind two albums, the one which they actually released, and the one which they didn't want in the marketplace. In response to the album's leak, Steve Lillywhite said, "I cannot condone the release of these unfinished recordings, although I feel these are some of the most moving pieces of music that I've ever recorded with Dave Matthews Band."[3]

In 2018 singer-songwriter Ryley Walker released a complete cover of the album, also entitled The Lillywhite Sessions.

In 2002 the Dave Matthews Band released Busted Stuff, a new album which contained re-recordings of many of the songs that were left collecting dust with Sessions. The new album contained 11 tracks—nine tracks re-recorded from The Lillywhite Sessions, and two new tracks ("Where Are You Going" and "You Never Know"). "JTR," "Sweet Up and Down," and "Monkey Man," were the three tracks not re-recorded on the album.

"JTR" returned as part of the band's concert rotation, having appeared on the Live at Folsom Field album and played during the 2006 summer tour. It returned again in 2010 and has since been played intermittently during the band's tours. Its most recent performance came during the band's 2021 summer tour.

"Sweet Up and Down" was performed several times by the band on the 2000 summer tour, but vanished just a month and a half after the tour's start. It reemerged in 2003 during the Dave Matthews & Friends tour. The song also made a brief return to DMB setlists in 2007, and returned again during the 2010 summer tour.[8] The song would make a return a decade later on February 28, 2020, at a one-off DMB show at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.

"Monkey Man" was never released on an album or played live, making it the only song that is exclusively available on The Lillywhite Sessions.

In April 2006, a self-described recording engineer using the alias of "Karmageddon" mastered the tracks from The Lillywhite Sessions and released them on the Internet. Using the original SHN files released online, Karmageddon burned the songs to a CD-R and ran them through high-end audio mastering equipment, such as a parametric equalizer, audio converters, and a tube compressor. The songs were then balanced to distribute the music evenly through stereo channels, and eventually burned back onto a CD-R.[9] Following the release of the mastered album, "Karmageddon," claimed in an interview that the mastering process he used is "basically the TRUE industry standard as to how a CD gets finalized before mass-production."[10] Once the mastered album was released on the internet, it became the first-ever mastered copy of The Lillywhite Sessions, since the original leaked files were simply raw tracks from the mixing board and were never mastered.