With their spring 2009 tour about to get underway tonight at Madison Square Garden things are kicking into high gear for the Dave Matthews Band, my all-time favorite music group. The band has a new album, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, due out June 2nd and today they unveiled the album artwork and track listing as well as offered a free mp3 download of the first single, Funny The Way It Is. According to data in last week's Billboard feature on the band even if the new album posts only modest sales it will put them in 5th place in Nielsen SoundScan's ranking of album sales by artist since 1991.
I'll be going to tomorrow night's show at the IZOD Center in NJ with my wife and am looking forward to our 11th row center floor seats (the benefits of 11 years of fan club dues). Thanks to antsmarching.org you can follow the setlists from home on Twitter via @dmblive. I'm looking forward to hearing some of the songs from the new album which the band will no doubt intersperse into the set list. There will be some sadness, though, as this is the first DMB show (I've seen them 40+ times) I will have seen since the death of saxophonist LeRoi Moore who passed away last August as a result of an ATV accident. I always thought that LeRoi added one of the most unique and interesting dimensions to the band's music and it will be strange to see him missing from the stage.
Billboard put together the video below as a preview of the new album. It features some touching interviews with the band members. I highly recommend checking it out.
