Like clockwork, it's early June and the Dave Matthews Band is on the road, this time without a new album in tow.
Like the Grateful Dead before them, the DMB summer tour has become an annual routine, but that doesn't mean the DMB faithful should expect the predictable, according to Boyd Tinsley, the band's jazzy violinist.
"We're always trying to push ourselves to take the music to the next place. We never just sit on our laurels and play everything the same way and just cruise along. We're always trying to make the music better and more rocking. We started off as a touring band, and we were touring before we had an album. And that's the lifeline of this band."
The last tour was timed with the release of "Stand Up," a comeback record of sorts in the wake of "Everyday" - the DMB release where Matthews hooked up with pop svengali Glen Ballard - and a period in which Matthews and Tinsley both issued solo records.
It seemed like there was a fracture in the tightly knit Charlottesville, Va., band, but, says Tinsley, "It may have seemed like that to people on the outside, but it was never like that among the band itself. It was a period of time when everyone had to explore their own places of music and then bring that back to the band."
The 2006 tour arrives with the band (Matthews, Tinsley, bassist Stefan Lessard, drummer Carter Beauford and saxophonist LeRoi Moore) in the process of writing its next record and eager to test drive some of the new stuff.
"We know that it's when we get those songs on the road and play them live for audiences over and over, that's when they really tighten up and that's when they really evolve," Tinsley says. "So we're going to take some of these songs and play them on tour this summer, and then come back in the fall and put them down on tape."
Tinsley, who recently composed music for ESPN's Wimbledon coverage, has a good feeling about the material so far.
"The songs are really rocking. There's a couple songs that really just get me, man. It's a different album than 'Stand Up.' When you consider the time it came out, we started writing that the day after the last presidential election. A lot of things that were going on at the time came through in that music. This is a different time and a different feeling, and I'm digging it. I think everyone else is, too."
The band, which now has a catalog of more than 100 songs, will have about 40 at its fingertips, rotating them from night to night for the sake of freshness and, of course, the road-tripping fans.
"The set list is usually done about an hour before the gig, and that's usually done between Dave and Stefan," Tinsley says. "We sometimes get complications with Carter, because they're the rhythm section - they're the ones who are playing the whole time. Me and LeRoi, sometimes we get to just hang. They sort of like shape the set list, but it's not uncommon that we'll call an audible somewhere in the set list. If we feel need to bring the show up or something, we might put in an up song, or if we need to bring it down, put in a ballad. We also feel free to just call out suggestions sometimes during the set. Every night the set is different, man. We're not just sitting there playing the same old thing night after night. If we do play a song two nights in a row, we try to take it somewhere new."
Most interviews with the DMB inevitably come around to whether or not it's a "jam band," so why depart from that here? This time it happens accidentally, when Tinsley seizes upon the term during a question about something else, but the response is still interesting.
"I don't think it's a dirty word," he says. "I used to go to Dead shows, I love the Allman Brothers. I love jamming. Some of our songs are very open in the spirit of jazz, I think, more so than even being a jam band. But there are a number of songs we have that don't go in that direction as well. I would not call us a jam band. We go out with a more open attitude."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)
