Last June, the legendary Dave Matthews Band released their seventh studio album titled Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King. During the recording of the album, the band and their fans suffered a tragic loss. LeRoi Moore, whose sax playing added a distinct and sophisticated kind of cool to the band's sound, died the summer of 2008 while recovering from an ATV accident. This is how the album got its name. Drummer Carter Beauford and LeRoi Moore created the term 'GrooGrux' to describe a sort of mystical and cool musical happening. LeRoi was and still is the 'GrooGrux king.'

To be honest, I had a high school romance with the music of DMB that flirted with geek-like fanaticism. But with my growing up and into the gospels, we suffered a slow but severe falling out. Despite my love for their musical flair, I have found some of Dave's lyrics to become less honest with time - and certainly less relevant to my changing heart. Then came the headlines announcing LeRoi's death. I was shocked to find myself in mourning. I realize now that it was an issue of celebration.

Much of Dave's songs and the essence he communicates to his audience centers on the idea of celebrating life. In some of his finer moments, it is a celebration filled with gratitude that seems to echo with the confessions of a creator; elsewhere, it is good ole fashioned Epicureanism -- "Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die!" Nonetheless, I realized that I had celebrated important years of my life to the sway and shift of LeRoi's sax playing. I was compelled to give the new album a listen.

DMB was trying to really accomplish something special with this album, and the stakes only got higher with LeRoi's passing. Dave knew LeRoi was particularly pleased with the lyrics and it pushed him not to "cut corners."

In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Dave explained: "Lyrically, I fought really hard with myself and tried to make it sound joyful even if it wasn't and disguise my darker thoughts with the lightness of air."

Indeed, this is a very honest description of the album's lyrics. But, it seems especially true about the track entitled "Why I Am." Frankly, this song has taken me by surprise.

In my opinion, it stands above the rest, and dare I say, I like it. "Why I Am" is a special tune. Dave truly is arguing with himself in this song. The verses recite list after list of chaotic clashes; wrong and right, us and them, heaven and hell. He asks questions and makes observations about some of the many things in this world that are achingly clear to the eye, and yet, unexplainable by both heart and mind. These observations are what drive him madly into the chorus as he discloses his answer to it all -- relationship and music, as he says again and again, "That's why I am, still here dancin' with the groogrux king." Brotherly love and mystical grooves. Come let us celebrate!

I could criticize or praise this answer for the simplicity or the depth that stem from its ambiguity. Instead, I found myself unable to escape the clutches of the first four lines.

"I grew from monkey into man, then killed 15 million with the wave of my hand, I grew drunk on water turned to wine, and became both slave and master at the same d*** time."

These lines are a striking observation of the condition of mankind - sort of holocaustic self-condemnation followed by a textbook definition of mankind's brokenness. I was stopped in my tracks and then nagged incessantly by the part about growing from monkey into man. I won't pretend to be an authority on this highly personal piece, but I can't help but see that the monkey bit is not just an offhand comment on evolution. For me, it is a far more telling poetic expression. In a song about loss and mourning, and catastrophe of mankind, this is the first line. The 'moment before,' if you will, for all my fellow actors. It drives the rest of the scene.

Why?

I don't think it is unimportant. The comment brings a philosophy with it. It says that we are a just a higher kind of animal, and this makes sense of the chaos. It forgives our inability to do justice in the world, sets us free of having to seek freedom from the things that enslave us and gives us permission to indulge every whim and physical impulse.

It becomes possible to answer the complexities of the reality around us with mystical grooves, relationships and booze. I can't help but find this observation to be a relief. It demonstrates that a desire to accept evolution as a counterpoint to creationism can logically be traced to an attempt at escaping reality. This is the very charge many bring against Christians, claiming that we may have created God simply because it makes sense of the world around us. 

Or, that my faith is a childish fantasy born out of an unwillingness to accept death? It can just as easily be argued that relegating mankind to simply a different kind of animal grows from the same childish desires and sloppy thinking.

We have arrived, at least, at an intellectual stalemate and can begin to ask more important questions, and find more serious answers. I think Dave was right in admitting that he 'disguised his darker thoughts in the lightness of air.'

Dave at least proves to be consistently self-aware. In this song about death, friendship, life and love, he speaks of being animal and also immortal. Perhaps Dave feels the full weight of these contradictions as he sings "that's why I am, climbing out of this monkey tree." On second thought, maybe I'm being a little too gracious…it does rhyme well with the preceding line.

In any event, have a listen for yourself. And, please, invite others into the conversation. This is one worth having.

K. Swann is a singer-songwriter in New York City with cutting edge thoughts on life, art and spirituality. He is currently studying Biblical Studies and Theology at Nyack College.