Dave Matthews Band - Don't Drink The Water

What this video is

Released in 1998 as the lead single from Before These Crowded Streets, 'Don't Drink the Water' arrived at a moment when the Dave Matthews Band had evolved from a Charlottesville, Virginia jam-band phenomenon into a major-label act capable of debuting albums at #1. The song's lyrical stance — voiced from the perspective of a colonizer dispossessing Indigenous peoples — was politically charged for mainstream rock…

Why it matters

This video represents a significant artifact of late-90s jam-band crossover into MTV's alternative rock programming. It demonstrates how the Dave Matthews Band leveraged high-budget, politically-engaged visual production to differentiate themselves from contemporaries. The use of on-location…

The director

Dean Karr is a Seattle-born director and photographer who received a BFA from Washington State University and later attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Based in Los Angeles, he rose to prominence in the mid-1990s directing videos for…