Rashawn Ross has posted on his myspace profile that he will be joining Dave Matthews Band on tour this summer.

Rashawn is a trumpet player hailing from the bands Yerba Buena and Soulive. DMB had Yerba Buena open at four shows in 2002 and Soulive four in 2005.It wasn't until 6.18.2005 when Rashawn joined the guys on stage as a guest on Louisiana Bayou. Since then he has guested at 16 shows, including most of the Red Rocks shows and even the renewal of JTR at Jazzfest.

Rashawn's most recent side project has been filling the horn section of Soulive with Ryan Zoidis. According to the Soulive website "the pair are an integral part of the band, traveling everywhere they go." This won't be the case with multiple Soulive dates conflicting with DMB's tour. (Soulive opens for DMB in Hartford) Talib Kweli's most recent album, Right About Now, gives trumpet credits to Ross.

Rashawn's presence as a guest on an entire tour with the band is a point of some controversy. Butch Taylor has been playing keyboards on tour with DMB for so long now that many consider him to be a de facto part of the band. Rashawn Ross seems to have has less support as evidenced by a thread from a few weeks ago comparing him to Butch Taylor.

Some hesitancy from fans may stem from both Ross's simply being a new contribution to DMB's sound and also the high expectation of any performer joining DMB. To be sure, Rashawn plays a very different role than Butch. Dave and the guys have mentioned on a number of occasions that Butch is there to help fill in the overall sound of the band while Rashawn acts as more of a complement to the horn section. For some this is of no consequence if it means one less solo for LeRoi Moore.

If Rashawn does indeed join DMB on stage at each show this summer, it will be interesting to see how his performance is integrated into DMB's sound and what role he'll play on the new songs we're expecting as well.

Under a hot Delta sun, 10 stages are being built in New Orleans for 400 bands in a music lineup you would normally need a ticket to the Grammys to see:

Fats Domino, Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band, Jimmy Buffett, the Dave Matthews Band, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Lionel Richie, Keith Urban, Herbie Hancock, Allen Toussaint, Elvis Costello, Etta James, Dr. John, Irma Thomas, Pete Fountain, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Eddie Palmieri are among them.

The bands will be performing at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, April 28-30 and May 5-7.

But will tourists be there to see them?

In this city, still critically wounded by Hurricane Katrina, nervous city officials are waiting to see who shows up. Last year, a half-million visitors bought tickets for the festival and brought in $200 million to $300 million to the city.

New Orleans could sure use the money now.

"It's impossible to predict," said Angele Davis, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism. "The festival is not scaled down like Mardi Gras was. It's one of the best lineups we've seen in years, and it's the most important ever. It's symbolic of the rebirth of our state."

If she could get a bullhorn and shout to the rest of the country to visit New Orleans, she would. Her message is different from the usual tourism pitch: "Come to New Orleans and help our city recover," is her plea.

She spent the days after Hurricane Katrina taking desperate cellphone calls and text messages from citizens trapped in their houses and on their roofs by floods, and she helped residents escape the city and the battered Convention Center that had served as emergency shelter for so many.

"The one thing I will never forget is helping an elderly lady and two of her friends waiting to be airlifted. She didn't want to leave; it was all she had, she had never been away from the city. I promised her she would be able to come back, and I think about that quite often. Will she be able to come back? Will it ever be the same? Her name was Mrs. Hayes."

Davis was born and raised in Baton Rouge; she plays the trumpet, accordion and piano and loves the jazz festival, especially the blues bands from Baton Rouge and zydeco from the bayous. She's still trying to help her city.

First things first: Get people to come to the jazz festival.

"When you talk about a $9.9 billion tourism industry that employs 120,000 people, 85,000 in New Orleans, you see how important it is for our recovery," Davis says. "Every day we don't have visitors is catastrophic. We projected we lost about $2 billion in 2005."

The challenges are monumental, including finding housing for hotel, restaurant and festival workers who are living in damaged houses, are crowded into the few rentals in the city or are commuting long distances from inland cities.

But the highest hurdle is the world's perception of New Orleans as a tragic city devastated by a natural disaster televised live to the world.

The tourist sector of the city, the French Quarter -- 78 square blocks, the oldest and highest part of New Orleans -- is largely up and running: 30,000 of the 38,000 pre-Katrina hotel rooms are back, airline flights are at pre-hurricane numbers, and most of the old city's restaurants and museums, and the festival grounds are repaired and open -- all waiting for visitors, who are slow to return.

Matthew Goldman, advertising director for the festival, isn't telling how many tickets have been sold, probably because that isn't a reliable indication of how many people will come.

"There is no reserved seating at the festival. Most people show up at the gate and get a ticket, and the festival never sells out," he said. "But the momentum is unbelievable. There's a tremendous amount of interest."

City and festival officials are battling two misconceptions about New Orleans: "They think we're back to normal or we're still under water, and neither is right," Goldman said. "But the structure is there. There are usually conventions that block out the hotels during the festival, and we don't have the conventions, so the hotel rooms are definitely available. The festival will be great, and it will be an emotional time for everybody."

Davis, too, said the images after Katrina still are vivid, and when people think of New Orleans, they think of Katrina.

"The devastation is there, it's real, but the major things that make New Orleans such a unique tourist destination are our culture, our art, our architecture, our history, our cuisine, our music, and they still exist," she said.

"It's miraculous that our tourism assets are still in place, because tourism is the second-largest industry [after health care] in the state. We have the ability to help recovery if we're able to get the message out that New Orleans is still a wonderful, and true, experience for visitors."

It just isn’t a complete concert season at the Gorge Amphitheatre without a few shows by the Dave Matthews Band. And tickets for DMB’s three appearances at the Grant County venue, scheduled for Sept. 1, 2 and 3.

Coming off of back-to-back tours with country superstars Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban, Pat Green joins another superstar but of the pop/rock world, Dave Matthews, for five shows this August. Green, who is well known for his captivating live shows and fan following, will be opening for The Dave Matthews Band in Tampa, West Palm Beach, Atlanta and Nashville.

'The past few years have been incredible - touring with Kenny Chesney last summer through stadiums and arenas across the country, then most recently opening for Keith Urban,' comments Green. 'Now we get to put our brand of country music front and center for fans of one of the biggest touring bands of all time. Thanks Dave - this absolutely rocks.'

A three time Grammy nominee and Academy of Country Music nominee, Green has released three major label albums including Three Days (debut), Wave On Wave (gold certified) and his latest Lucky Ones, the last two of which debuted in the Top 10 on the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart.

Recently signed with the RCA Label Group's BNA Records, Green will be releasing the first single from his forthcoming album to country radio this summer.

The Dave Matthews Band / Pat Green dates:
8/09/06 Tampa Ford Amphitheatre
8/11/06 West Palm Beach Sound Advice Amphitheatre
8/12/06 West Palm Beach Sound Advice Amphitheatre
8/15/06 Atlanta HiFi Buys Amphitheatre
8/16/06 Nashville/Antioch Starwood Amphitheatre

The Dave Matthews Band will lower the curtain on its summer tour by formally opening the 16,000-seat John Paul Jones Arena at the University of Virginia.

The band, which formed at U.Va. and still calls Charlottesville home, will headline the grand opening with shows on Sept. 22 and 23.

It will be the band's first hometown appearance since its Scott Stadium show in April 2001.

The band is recording an album and will likely play new music throughout the summer tour. Ending the tour in Charlottesville could offer fans a bit more for their money.

The $129.8 million arena will be the home to the U.Va. men's and women's basketball teams.

U2's Vertigo tour started out with demand so huge that it overloaded the ticketing system, forcing the band to apologise to its infuriated fans, and it will end as one of the top-grossing treks of all time.

In between, the trek has produced some of the most critically acclaimed concerts of the Irish band's career, showcasing innovative production amid brilliant songs in stadiums and arenas around the world.

With dates still left to play, Vertigo is easily the top-grossing tour of 2005, reporting grosses totalling more than $260 million and attendance of more than 3 million from 90 sellouts, as reported to Billboard Boxscore through November 15.

Amid all the to-do about Vertigo, the Eagles quietly put together one of the biggest touring years in the band's history, much of it within its home state of California. The Eagles reported almost $117 million in grosses from 77 shows. Major stadium and arena dates in Australia added to the band's coffers.

Rolling Stones tour producer Michael Cohl opts to report his numbers at the conclusion of a tour, so data for the Bigger Bang shows will influence the 2006 charts -- and likely again earn the Stones chart-topping status.

Another veteran road warrior, Neil Diamond, also put up some career-milestone numbers. Touring Australia late last year and North America this fall, Diamond reported grosses totalling more than $71 million and attendance of more than 1.06 million. Another leg of the tour began this month in support of his new Rick Rubin-produced record, "12 Songs."

Country superstar Kenny Chesney is another artist who continues to outdo himself, reporting more than $63 million in grosses from a route that included stadiums, amphitheaters and arenas. His A Place in the Sun tour drew 1.1 million in attendance, topped only by U2.

Two other country acts cracked the top 25 this year. Toby Keith reported nearly $32 million from 62 shows, and up-and-comers Rascal Flatts notched an impressive $26 million from a hard-working 83 dates.

Chesney's melodic godfather, Jimmy Buffett, embarked on an efficient year of touring. Buffett grossed $41 million from 26 shows. The biggest of all was an $8 million box-office take at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

Rod Stewart continues to draw crowds, moving 564,223 tickets this year for a gross of nearly $49 million. His pal Elton John also raked it in, reporting more than $45 million from touring dates and another $30.6 million from his resident booking at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Had John's Colosseum run been counted as part of his "touring," he would have ranked third among all touring acts.

Meanwhile, Dave Matthews Band continues to be one of the most consistent touring acts in the world. With dates still left on the books after Billboard's reporting period ended, DMB grossed more than $45 million and sold 984,697 tickets to 51 shows. That does not count the thousands who heard the band at festivals like Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tenn.

One of the great touring success stories of 2005 came from Green Day. The band found another gear this year, managing double-bookings in many arenas and even adding stadiums to the route. On the strength of the much-praised "American Idiot" album, Green Day cracked the top 10 tours for the first time with a gross of $36.5 million from 76 shows.

While pop, country and rock of various styles are represented in the top 25 tours, Latin is absent, and it took combining hip-hop's two biggest names for rap to make the top 10. Though they represent millions in album sales between them, the Eminem/50 Cent Anger Management tour finished 21st among touring acts in 2005, grossing $21 million from 21 shows that drew 191,803 fans.

Most people assume that as a diehard fan of the Dave Matthews Band (DMB), I tend to be a little bit biased when it comes to judging a new album release. The reality is that such a statement could not be farther from the truth. Like most other fans, I find myself being that much more critical when it's time to hear those twelve new songs for the first time. We have very high expectations from the band, not only because of the amount of money we shell out to see them every year, but because we know how much potential they have to amaze us.

This past May, DMB released Stand Up, which was arguably their first real studio album effort in four years. 2001 brought us Everyday, a poppy, radio-friendly album that even some of the band members have been quick to chastise. As a community, we felt slighted after 1998's brilliant album, Before These Crowded Streets. Although the band had been in the studio prior to the Everyday sessions, they scrapped that material for the songs recorded with producer Glen Ballard in 2001. 2002 brought Busted Stuff, consisting mostly of the rerecorded material from the scrapped (pre Everyday) Lillywhite Sessions, but by then all of the songs had been familiar concert staples, having been played on the road for the two years since their initial inception.

So in late 2004 when the band returned to the studio, many fans had decided that this album was going to make or break their devotion to DMB. We had followed Dave through his 2003 solo recording, Some Devil, an exceptional album that featured Phish's Trey Anastasio and long time DMB collaborator Tim Reynolds, and even forced ourselves to buy violinist Boyd Tinsley's solo album, True Reflections, a major debacle in itself. At this point we wanted to know just where this band was going. Early speculation that a producer such as Dr. Dre could produce the album led many to worry. The thought of a hip-hop producer had fans wondering just how much more they could endure. Had Dave Matthews Band degraded themselves to the world of shallow lyrics and digitally synthesized drum beats

Fast forward to March 2005. The band had developed a website offering clips of themselves working in their Charlottesville, Virginia studio. We were introduced to producer Mark Batson, a native Brooklyn boy who had worked with artists such as India.Arie and Eminem. The uproar that emerged from the nancies.org message boards seemed to cause a major rift in what was already a somewhat shaky community. There were three circulating opinions. You either felt that, A) the band had lost its creative side and was uninspired. Dave could no longer write the same lyrics that he had written ten years earlier. B) All bands eventually branch out and experiment with new styles and such a change should we welcomed C) Who cares about the studio album? It's the way that these songs are transformed at live performances that counts.

I personally favor the third option. The truth is that this album does not blow me away. It has its highlights such as "Hunger for the Great Light," "Hello Again," and an ethereal "Out of my Hands." The album's first single, "American Baby," is a clear plea by a politically charged Matthews, begging that we not forget what makes this country so great. However, as tight and over produced as these songs may come across on Stand Up, hearing them live and having them jammed out, raised them to a whole new level. Throughout the summer and winter tours the songs just kept evolving and getting better. In the seven months between my first show in the Roseland Ballroom and my last show in Philadelphia's Wachovia Center, I was shocked to see what had become of this album. "Smooth Rider" had managed to become even sexier while "Louisiana Bayou" had become even more vivacious (often with the addition of Robert Randolph and his Sacred Steel Guitar). The band had still managed to play classics such as "Warehouse" and "Too Much" while bringing back older songs that hadn't been played in a while, namely '#34', which hadn't shown its face in twelve years. At the same time the band did away with the majority of those Everyday songs that nobody wanted to hear to begin with. But now another tour is over and after six years and eighteen shows, the same question still lingers in my mind - Where is this band going?

I wish I had some idea. Every time I think that they're heading one way, they veer off and move in a different direction. Every time I think that I'll never hear a certain song again because it's been shelved for a few years - they bust it out with a vengeance - often sounding a lot different than it previously had. People constantly ask me whether or not I feel the band has sold out. I think the answer is fairly obvious. Yes, they have. But it's not what you'd think. They've sold out Madison Square Garden, Giants Stadium, the Staples Center.... And with good reason.

Eleven thousand, six hundred people howled as though they were dingoes on the edge of the Australian desert: It was chilling, and the Dave Matthews Band hadn't played a note yet. It had simply walked onstage Wednesday at the sold-out Blue Cross Arena at the Community War Memorial. Matthews, in his casual T-shirt, ambled from one end of the stage to the other, acknowledging the adoration with merely a smile and a wave. It's crazy, crazy, that this is the biggest American rock machine of the day.

Those 11,600 sang along with many of the songs, yet most folks who don't follow the band closely would be hard-pressed to come up with the name of one Matthews hit. This is not a band that lives and dies by the radio. It dances on the whorl of plasma molecules of light projected onto the stage and across the audience, as Matthews shuffles jerkily like a marionette, his soul pouring from that acoustic guitar and trilling, snarling, scat-singing, often cartoon-character voice of his.

It is acoustic-based music, played with a groove and a funk — and even a swagger — that suggests a band that's completely at ease playing live. It takes its time, almost interminably, between songs. The wait for the encores was five, eight minutes. As long as you'll see at a show. Yet the crowd didn't lose steam for "The Christmas Song" and what's become the Matthews concert standard, "Ants Marching," supplemented with a Boyd Tinsley-led fiddle hoedown.

It's a visually stimulating band, particularly when Tinsley suddenly scampered to the front of the stage like a reggae scarecrow. The Dave Matthews Band is, without a doubt, a live experience: Half of the more than dozen albums it's officially released have been live recordings.

The audience howled again, this time in recognition, at the opening notes of "Recently." That wasn't a radio hit, but they all knew the words. "Dream Girl" was an elegant departure from the groove, a pop ballad from the latest album, Stand Up, that should have been a hit.

"Crash" was a hit, presented here quietly, growing in crescendo. "Stand Up" was a rumbling, frat-boy chant with sax, "Stay" a bounding blend of groove and soul. It was bewildering and exhilarating to keep up with these guys, as the band submerged into Middle Eastern psychedelia. Growing menace is also a DMB signature, with Matthews yowling into the rafters.

On the eve of the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder, opener Soulive delivered "Come Together," what they said was a Pantera cover (musta been the Sly Stone version), and the old soul classic "Tighten Up." I haven't heard funk this cool since polyester shirts.

Soulive played like it was the hometown favorite. Which it is, in a way, with the Evans brothers — keyboardist Neal and drummer Alan — having grown up in Buffalo. Alan proudly noted their parents were in the audience. And they're probably rightly proud of their sons as well: a great band, and Alan has the finest Afro in pop music today.

Every few years Dave Matthews comes up with a memorable song -- the math-jam anthem ''Stay (Wasting Time)," a peppy dirge like ''Ants Marching," sweet, sexy ''Crash Into Me." The rest of the time the mild-mannered road warrior and his excellent band create tight grooves and musical moments -- three hours of them on Thursday a

For the young party animals packing the arena, the opening notes of anything were cause to wave cellphones connected to best friends stuck at home. For others, the lengthy stretches of polished, cautious improvisation and generic melodicism proved less dazzling.

Despite the fact that he fronts one of the most successful touring outfits in the world, Matthews is no frontman. DMB is a democracy, and the group's namesake contributes less to its collective charisma than electric fiddler Boyd Tinsley (whose vivacious sawing, tragically buried in the mix, was more visual aid than aural treat) and drummer Carter Beauford, who evidently requires a kit the size of a small town to keep the classy world rhythms flowing.

Peaks were few and far between during a set heavy on tracks from this year's sleek, muted ''Stand Up." ''Everybody wake up!" Matthews cajoled, strumming good-naturedly on the song of the same name. But even the interpretive dancers, as directionless as the band, lost the beat. After each member took tidy little four-bar solos on ''Recently" and pseudo-noodled through a 20-minute extrapolation of ''Seek Up" -- a model of banal virtuosity -- the modest light show during ''Pig" hit like pure, unhinged emotion.

Tight and reliable to a fault, DMB is testament to the remarkable divide between aptitude and inspiration. For a dose of the latter they need look no further than their own opening act, Mike Doughty, the former Soul Coughing frontman who records for Matthews' ATO label. Charming, quirky, and soulful, Doughty commandeered the arena airspace with deep songs and real personality -- neither of which can be replaced by complicated time signatures.