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Recent court filings in Albemarle County, Virginia, show the former Dave Matthews Band violinist has had a guardian appointed to handle his legal affairs.

Those filings, submitted in late July, came less than a month before drugged driving charges against the 61-year-old musician were dropped.

�That might explain why the charges got dropped,� legal analyst David Heilberg told The Daily Progress.

There were multiple pieces of evidence in Tinsley’s Albemarle criminal case: a rear-ender wreck, an illegal amount of amphetamine in the musician’s blood, an admission of cannabis use and an arresting officer alleging “clear signs of intoxication and cognitive impairment.�

Heilberg said the Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office typically refuses to drop drunk and drugged driving cases — particularly with such a trove of direct and circumstantial evidence. Which, since Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley declined a Daily Progress interview request, raises the question of mental status and decisions by prosecutors.

�Mental incompetency is a situation where they just can’t proceed,� Heilberg said.

The legal analyst refrained from concluding that Tinsley had been found unrestorably mentally incompetent, but Heilberg said the court filings suggest “clever lawyering� in an effort to “bury� facts, and he said that Tinsley’s wealth may have allowed him to commission his own psychological report.

Albemarle Circuit Court records show four civil documents filed on Tinsley’s behalf on July 31. While each document has been sealed, the headings offer clues to their contents. One document appears to be a will, two documents are bonds to protect Tinsley’s fortune from thefts or missteps by a fiduciary. The fourth is simply marked “ODAG,� which a clerk defined as “appoint guardian or conservator.�

That’s what happened to Spears, the “princess of pop,� in 2008 after she attacked a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella, underwent psychiatric hospitalization and infamously shaved her own head.

For Tinsley, whose judgment has been questioned in two lawsuits, the court action removes his ability to make certain decisions and is intended for his own protection. The move follows a professional tumble seven years ago when the band to whom he lent both a distinctive sound and an on-stage physicality fired him.

Tinsley’s ouster from the Dave Matthews Band followed allegations of unwanted sexual overtures claimed by a West Coast trumpeter around whom Tinsley had built a side band called Crystal Garden. The trumpeter, James Frost-Winn, claimed that Tinsley made perverse demands, sent lascivious text messages and once touched his buttocks and masturbated by him while he slept.

�We are shocked by these disturbing allegations and we were not previously aware of them,� the Dave Matthews Band said in a statement after Frost-Winn filed a lawsuit in 2018.

The matter ended in a 2019 settlement that called for Tinsley to pay $837,500 in damages. However, Frost-Winn would later accuse Tinsley of breaching the settlement terms after Tinsley claimed on social media that the sexual allegations were false.

�It appears to me as if Mr. Tinsley is living in a world of self-created delusion, wherein he is able to pick and choose how he violates others and how he chooses to live up (or not live up) to his contractual obligations,� one of Frost-Winn’s lawyers wrote to one of Tinsley’s lawyers last year before a judge ordered the matter to arbitration.

Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, Tinsley attended Charlottesville High School and the University of Virginia. He achieved local fame in the late 1980s with the Boyd Tinsley Band as well as Down Boy Down, a duo whose Sunday nights gigs at Charlottesville’s first restaurant-brewery, Blue Ridge Brewing Co., are part of local music history.

In late 1991, Tinsley began playing with the Dave Matthews Band, shortly before the group began performing Tuesday nights at the now-demolished Trax nightclub on 11th Street Southwest before recording albums and achieving generation- and border-crossing fame. Tinsley performed on each of the band’s 10 studio albums with his opening notes to “Ants Marching� becoming a signature of the band, which was inducted last fall into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Tinsley’s sounds were particularly crucial in the band’s early songs, including “Satellite� and “Tripping Billies.� He earned composer credits for contributing to such chart-making songs as “Too Much,� “Funny the Way It Is,� and the Grammy Award-winning “So Much to Say.� With a mini gymnasium installed in his tour bus, Tinsley was a muscular and bare-chested presence on stage. The often sweat-drenched fiddler was once called a “whirling-dervish Adonis-Muppet� by Matthews.

While Tinsley’s professional life soared, his personal situation soured.

In 2013, a Richmond, Virginia-based financial manager named Getty Andrew Rothenberg pleaded guilty in federal court to embezzling up to $7 million from the artist. Compounding the problem, Rothenberg, after his release from federal prison, sued Tinsley in 2015. While Rothenberg’s suit, pursued in Richmond Circuit Court without a lawyer, was promptly dismissed, it introduced a swarm of allegations.

Rothenberg called Tinsley a “sexual predator� who used gifts, jobs and access to other celebrities “to gain leverage over the people in his world which he currently calls Narnia.�

�There is a pattern of me being victimized by mentally unstable and money-grabbing people,� Tinsley wrote on Facebook and what was then called Twitter in 2022. Such statements led Frost-Winn to claim a breach of his settlement’s nondisparagement clause, leading to a February 2024 lawsuit, which remains pending in a federal court in Washington state.

The Daily Progress reached out to Tinsley’s current and former lawyers, but was unable to reach the musician. Voicemails left for the Dave Matthews Band’s management were not returned.