By Whitney Youngs

It’s been decades since the Dave Matthews Band (DMB) has toured the nightclub circuit. Love them or hate them, you can’t deny the fact that the famed progressive rock group plays to sold-out crowds at venues as large as the Staples Center, Wrigley Field and Madison Square Garden. But these days, DMB violinist Boyd Tinsley is only performing on small bandstands with trio of 20-something musicians as part of a side project named Crystal Garden.

“It’s very intimate,” says Tinsley about being on tour as a special guest with Crystal Garden. “The audience is right there and there’s a raw energy that you can only get in small clubs. I’m having a blast first of all because I’m playing, and I would have gone crazy if I were not out there playing.”

With DMD on hiatus, Tinsley went out on the road with Crystal Garden for a 60-show tour that ends in Las Vegas in early November. The band, now touring the coastal states of California, Oregon and Washington, will stop in the South Bay to play a show at Saint Rocke tonight.

Last year, Tinsley set out to form a young rock band and combed through music scenes in Canadian cities.

“I wanted to find someone particularly from Toronto just because there is so much talent there, and everybody is so hungry,” Tinsley recalls.

So it’s no surprise that Crystal Garden’s bassist Charlie Csontos and drummer Matt Frewen hail from Toronto, the most populous city in Canada and one of the most ethnically diverse places in the world.

Tinley first found San Francisco trumpeter James Frost-Winn—who is no longer with Crystal Garden—and then the group’s singer and guitarist, Seattle native, Mycle Wastman, who he heard at a club in New York City while DMB was on tour. He found Csontos and Frewen through a musician friend living Toronto.

“These guys give everything they got and they are so good. They are so knowledgeable about every subgenre of rock,” Tinsley adds. “They are listening to current stuff, but also stuff that I grew up with from the ‘60s and ‘70s, so it’s cool they know about music that was made decades before they were born and they incorporate that into their music.”

Crystal Garden recorded its debut album “Let the Rocks Cry Out” at Tinsley’s home studio just outside Charlottesville and later in Seattle with Tinsley—who produced the album—and guitarist Stanley Jordan as guests.

With recording wrapped up, Crystal Garden, as far as bands go is still in the honeymoon phase, and it needed to play a live show, so Tinsley brought the group with him to play to a crowd of 1,000 at a festival in Charlottesville.

“It was fantastic, it was their first show, and they played like they were pros and they got a standing ovation,” Tinsley remembers. “They got a glimpse of the future in their first gig, so that was cool. I am trying to get them to develop more of a show than just a gig, presenting the music as a show, and that’s something they’ve taken to really quickly and really naturally. The only way you can do this is playing gig after gig after gig. ”

Released this year, “Let the Rocks Cry Out” is an album of 12 songs, including two interludes, the deeply grooved song “Dirty Down Low” that reveals the androgynous side of Wastman’s voice and the bluesy “Devil Woman,” which highlights the band’s ability to lock into each other.

“It was a very organic kind of thing, the way that I discovered them,” Tinsley adds. “I vibed with them really well, and from the very beginning they just sort of magically gelled as a band. And to have a good band, you got to have natural chemistry between musicians.”