Dave Matthews, whose band is slated to headline the second night (8/29) of San Francisco's upcoming Outside Lands [ tickets ] Festival, lost focus several times during a recent phone interview thanks to ducklings, chickens and his children.

"Oh, 'there's ducks in my dam. 'There's ducks outside my house. They just arrived. Lord! All the little baby ducklings. Anyway--I live on a river. The ducklings have just arrived."

The soft-spoken jam-band frontman reminded reporters on the conference call yesterday (8/6) that he's a family man first.

"We just got chickens in Virginia, and so my daughters have to take them out and put them away at night, feed them cornmeal. So now my 'daughter's running holding the corn--the corn feed, and all the chickens are chasing her. 'She's competing with you for my attention."

Dave Matthews Band [ tickets ] is currently in the midst of a summertime tour in support of the group's June release, "Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King." When asked, Matthews reveals his lack of planning when it comes to festival appearances.

"'We're not really good at planning things too far in advance. 'I'm better at falling down the stairs than I am at climbing them. I climb them pretty well, but I tend to just do it one step at a time."

The Grammy-Award winning group will share the stage Saturday with the Black Eyed Peas, an act that DMB is very familiar with, having toured together earlier this year in Portugal.

"We get along pretty well, like a house on fire, and it may seem an unusual pairing. I know that quite often, when people notice that 'we're going to be playing the same venue, journalists often wherever we are say that 'it's kind of an odd pairing. But it's comfortable for us. So I guess 'that's the most important thing. And we seem to get along well enough person-to-person. And the music is fine. Maybe I can drag Will.I-.Am out on stage this time. ... if the 'night's going well. 'It'll have to be going particularly well so that 'he'll feel inspired."

With the Outside Lands stop being one of two festival appearances the band will make this summer, Matthews explained how festival performances appeal to the band in a different way than traditional headlining shows.

"'It's a lot of fun just to be in an environment that seems like a bit of a party. I 'don't know; for me it feels like more of a party for the performance as well. There's an air of excitement 'that's different. When 'I'm on the road with just my band and whoever 'we're sharing the bill with--you know usually one, maybe two other bands--then it's our family. So all the people in the crew are familiar faces. 'There's a different element of excitement when you 'don't know everybody 'that's in the production and everybody driving golf carts around and all the different musicians and all the different crews, and 'there's all different sorts of emotions that are traveling around back there of competition and of celebration. 'There's a real energy, a real electricity 'that's more present in a festival environment, and 'I'm glad they're coming back more and more in the States."

Matthews even admitted to donning a disguise and heading out into the crowd.

"I put on a baseball hat or some sort of hat and sunglasses so I can go around the crowd. If I 'don't show my receding forehead, I don't really stick out at all. So I can just wander. I like doing that a lot. 'That's one of my favorite things to do at the festival is go and stand a little ways off the stage. I 'don't like the crowds. I 'don't like to be too shoulder-to-shoulder. I get a little claustrophobic, but I like to be out walking around in the gangs of people, disappearing that way."

Audiences so far on this tour have embraced the new record, according to Matthews.

"The album has been, and most of our albums for whatever reason, 'aren't so quickly received, so lovingly received initially, and then usually the songs grow a little bit. But this album has been very well received by our fans. So 'that's been nice, that 'they've been very open and 'they've embraced all the new music with depraved abandon."

Dave Matthews Band dealt with several changes last summer when keyboardist Butch Taylor left the band and long-time DMB saxophonist LeRoi Moore died unexpectedly from complications following an ATV accident. Jeff Coffin, saxophonist for Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, has been touring with the band since Moore's death.

"'There's a lot of change. I think in some ways 'we're really open. I think there was a more open approach evolving with the band before LeRoi [Moore] passed away last year, and that sort of spirit has carried on into this new band, and there may have been a little bit of hesitance, but right now I feel really good about how 'we're playing. I mean 'we've been on the road for a little while now, so, as you know, getting some calluses and maybe a little bit fatigued here and there, but I think the music is really good at the moment. I 'can't apologize for this band. 'It's pretty smoking, and you know in some ways, 'it's sort of a traditional band, and we 'don't use a lot of gizmos. But still, I think this band is pretty shocking in a good way at the moment. Shocking me."

Matthews also spoke passionately about his involvement with Farm Aid. His band is one of eight acts scheduled to perform at the Oct. 4 event in Maryland Heights, MO.

"When I joined, it was pretty exciting when I first played, the idea of playing with others who were on the bill and, you know, especially for me, [playing with] Neil [Young] and Willie [Nelson]. I like them because there's a humility about Farm Aid and a service, and then the idea of giving a voice to the voiceless, that appealed to me right at the beginning, And now I think that my initial involvement, if it was motivated by anything, it was the ugliness of food entirely for profit--sacrificing quality and sacrificing good farming techniques and sacrificing good farmers and small farmers for a sort of greater giant corporate farming style, which doesn't benefit anyone but the corporation. So it's sort of an ugly model of how to destroy the earth and destroy our food and destroy our farmers but make a little cash while you're doing it. It just seemed a sort of unforgivable--sort of, in a way, anti-capitalist--way of doing things."

Though he spoke at length on the subject, Matthews summed up his goal for Farm Aid succinctly.

"I think Farm Aid now is there to defend the small farmers, but also to promote connecting farming communities to local sellers and to markets and to grow the new farm movement more and more around the country. So that's what I feel like my part is. I'm seeing a new purpose for a Farm Aid."