Dave Matthews Band tour announces spring 2009 dates, new album

A perennial touring icon, Dave Matthews Band (DMB) will return to the road in 2009 for the first new tour and album since the death of a founding band member. The spring outing will begin April 14 at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY, and currently has dates booked through a May 8-9 run at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, NV.

The 17-date tour will run down the East Coast and across the southern states, stopping for two-night stands on April 17 and 18 at the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, VA, and on April 28 and 29 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Alpharetta, GA. The Roots, Old Crow Medicine Show and The Avett Brothers will provide support on various dates in April, while singer-songwriter Jason Mraz is signed on for the currently announced May dates.

A presale request lottery for the U.S. tour began yesterday (December 15) through the band’s office fan association, the Warehouse. The lottery, which is randomized and not based on the time requests are received, will close on January 4. Presale confirmations will be sent out by January 15, and public onsales will follow on January 17, according to the band’s Web site.

The trek is the band’s first since saxophonist and founding member Leroi Moore died in August of complications stemming from an ATV accident earlier in the summer. Béla Fleck & The Flecktones saxophonist Jeff Coffin, who sat in with the band following Moore’s accident, will reprise his role for the spring 2009 outing. Musicians Tim Reynolds (guitar) and Rashawn Ross (trumpet) will also join the band, fronted by singer-songwriter Dave Matthews.

DMB will be touring behind the group’s first studio album in four years, which is scheduled for release on April 14. The yet-to-be-titled effort is a follow-up to 2005’s “Stand Up,” a certified Platinum record that topped the Billboard 200.

The band released its studio debut “Under the Table and Dreaming” in 1994 and has since sold approximately 31 million albums in the U.S. alone. Of the band’s six studio albums, five are mutli-Platinum and the four most recent all topped the U.S. sales charts.

Dave Matthews Band itinerary:
(Dates are subject to change.)