The Dave Matthews Band
Where: Nissan Pavilion, 7800 Cellar Door Drive, Bristow, Va.
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
Info: $75; ticketmaster.com
It’s almost a cruel irony that during this season, dubbed by some as the “summer of death” due to all the high-profile passings, The Dave Matthews Band is on tour.
It was just over a year ago — Aug. 18, 2008 — that founding member LeRoi Moore died. And as Matthews, who has joined the other band members in a hiatus from news media interviews, told Relix magazine, the death hit the group hard. After a time of turmoil in the band, differences were resolved and everyone was pumped as they recorded the band’s seventh studio album. Then Moore died.
“There’s no point in mourning all the sadness and suffering in the world,” Matthews told Chris Willman of Relix, “Whereas if you acknowledge all the things that are happening in the world and you fight them as if it’s your first priority, then you are allowed to laugh maniacally at it all and dance like a madman. And so this is my therapy, to sing about the end of the world and dance.”
As loyal as the jam band community is to the Dave Matthews Band — called DMB by fans and jam band aficionados — the band’s highest concentration of fans is arguably in Virginia with nods to the whole DC Metro area. Charlottesville is the birthplace of the DMB where singer/songwriter/guitarist Dave Matthews and four of his buddies brought together their divergent musical interests in jazz, classical music, soul, and Afrobeat, and created DMB. That means you’re in for a packed arena if you head over to this weekend’s area show.
The multi-Grammy Award winning band is all heralded for their laid back approach to music and fans — keeping the pace of the original American jam band The Grateful Dead — and often give their music away. In return, the fan base has been loyal to the DMB keeping the band’s music consistently on the Billboard charts.
This new album — “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King” is no different, having debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 424,000 copies sold its first week of release. That ties DMB with Metallica as the only two groups in chart history to have five consecutive studio album debut at No. 1.
But let’s not chalk all of this off to sentimentality. DMB has put out an amazing album which won four stars from Rolling Stone magazine and kudos from other critics including those at “The New York Times” and even “Billboard” which called Big Whiskey DMB’s “best album yet.”
This is a cruel summer, but DMB seems determined to help fans work through it.
