Book Review: So Much To Say: Dave Matthews Band 20 Years On The Road By Nikki Van Noy

I recently received a copy of the book So Much To Say: Dave Matthews Band 20 Years On The Road by Nikki Van Noy to review.


So Much To Say is released in conjunction with the Dave Matthews Band's twenty year anniversary. I remember hearing them for the first time in a bar back in college. (let's just forget how long ago that was LOL) This particular bar, like so many campus bars back then, always seemed to be ready for an impromptu sing along, and "Satellite" fit the bill. Right about that time, DMB took off CRAZY and became a household name.

So Much To Say starts off there in the early days, right before they exploded on the charts, with lots of little tidbits and anecdotes to make even a diehard fan happy. The book doesn't stop there; it continues on talking about DMB's online presence - they allowed fans to tape and trade shows with other fans - to the giant "oops!" of the first big album leak of the digital music era, the Lillywhite Sessions. The book keeps chugging along with the tragic death of saxophonist and founding member LeRoi Moore in 2008 from an ATV accident, and ends with looking back over the last twenty years.

Included in the book are over 35 color photos taken by fans, which gives the book a different perspective than many other similar band-related books. The Dave Matthews Band has always been about the fans - why else would they happily let folks tape shows? - and it spills over into this book. So Much To Say is for the fans with the fans input - complete with "Fan Focus" parts which spotlights the stories behind several diehard DMB fans. Fans will not be disappointed with this book at all!

Trivia: Dave Matthews Band was the first music act to release an official single via Napster - "I Did It" ten years ago in 2001.

So Much To Say: Dave Matthews Band 20 Years On The Road by Nikki Van Noy is a paperback music biography book published by Simon & Schuster. It will be released next Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 and it is 220 pages long. The suggested cover price is $15.99, but Amazon has it available on pre-order for $9.08 as of this posting. It will also be available as an e-book for the Kindle and other e-readers.

I received a copy of this book in order to read it and share my thoughts on it. All opinions are my own and not that of the author(s) or publisher.