Published May 16, 2002 in issue 0015 of the Hook
BY BILL RAMSEY
DMBEAT@READTHEHOOK.COM
Instead of calling it Busted Stuff, maybe Dave Matthews should have called his band's upcoming album Fixing Things. As reported in other publications, DMB's sixth studio effort falls just short of reincarnation, if not restitution, for those who found Everyday an asterisk to-- if not a total departure from-- the DMB catalog.
Let's not say Matthews has learned his lesson. After all, Everyday catapulted the band into mainstream rock radio exposure and earned the band its first Grammy nomination in years. But, as his 2001 Rolling Stone cover story admits, he was feeling rather vulnerable when he shelved the album and jetted off to L.A. to speedily replace the so-called "Lillywhite Sessions." That material has now been retooled, and when the band caught a tour break earlier this year, they re-recorded it.
The result is Busted Stuff. (He wrote the title track about the passing of his father-in-law.) The first single is the newly penned "Where Are You Going?"
That's due on radio this week, and it's also on the soundtrack of the new Adam Sandler movie, Mr. Deeds, set for a June 28 release. As for the album's release date, well that is somewhat busted. According to fansite nancies.org, the release date has been pushed back twice and now looks like July 16.
The Lillywhite album-- known alternately as The Summer So Far and The Lillywhite Sessions-- has refused to die. The group performed so many of those songs in its long tour last year (and thousands of bootleg copies made their way onto the internet) that fans often sing along.
From the rock press
DMB fans, who are known for gathering disc after disc of live recordings, will surely enjoy comparing old and new versions of the songs they first heard during the 2000 tour and on the bootlegged "Lillywhite" record. Will the new version really be "truer to the spirit" of the band?
"This time we felt that we were doing the songs justice," Dave was quoted in Rolling Stone. "As they were, the sweetness of melancholy was missing, and they had a burdensome quality that was suffocating. When they first got out on the web, it was like walking into a gallery, and there's a crowd of people standing around looking at an unfinished painting and judging you for it. I can't blame the fans for wanting to hear the thing, but it can't fix the feeling that you've been robbed."
The show
On the band's 13th stop on this summer's tour, Cleveland, this writer just happened to find himself at the Gund Arena, almost within sweat-dripping distance of the band.
Although the 20,000-plus seats of the basketball stadium might not strike many as intimate, the venue is quite a bit smaller than the football stadium sites of the last few DMB summer tours. Manager Coran Capshaw announced toward the end of last year's tour that "more intimate" stadiums were the wave of the DMB future.
A slight softening in ticket sales? "They thought the stadium venues were too impersonal," says band spokesman Jim Merlis. Whatever the reason, smaller venues certainly help make the Dave Matthews "experience" an event-- or vice versa-- and yet are another reason why the album and the tours will continue to make Charlottesville's "native rock son" a true phenomenon.
DMBriefs
The video for "Where Are You Going?" was filmed in April in New York City, and could be in rotation not long after this column appears.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, there are now 800,000 members of the "Warehouse," the official DMB fan club (they call it an "association"), generating more than $2 million in revenue. "We don't comment on that," says band spokesman Jim Merlis.
Let's hope the "Warehouse" site-- the one members pay for-- will be redesigned soon. In the meantime, fans will notice a more clearly redesigned DMB site (www.dmband.com). There's the same content, but the site is notably more upbeat-- perhaps in tune with Dave's "new attitude."
