LeRoi Moore plays his last on newest DMB album

Late saxophonist LeRoi Moore will get to say goodbye to fans through some of the final recordings he made with his Dave Matthews Band bretheren on the band’s forthcoming album Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King. Matthews tells Rolling Stone that several tracks on the new disc feature Moore’s playing including a track titled “Lying in the Hands of God,” which Matthews describes as “kind of like a duet between us.” The album title is partly an homage to Moore as Matthews reveals “Groogrux King” was a nickname of Moore’s. The album is due out on June 2.

Daily Progress lays off 6 employees

A week after pulling in 21 awards at the Virginia Press Association annual meeting in Norfolk, Daily Progress publisher Lawrence McConnell announces that six employees will be without jobs, including two reporters and two editors in the paper’s already shrunken newsroom. Full-time employees have been offered severance packages, says McConnell. The Progress is owned by hard-hit Media General, which closed its Washington bureau March 27 and in February ordered mandatory 10-day furloughs for all its 5,600 employees.

3/31/09: The type of jobs of those laid off in the newsroom has been corrected.

Coach watch: $3.2 million for Smith?

Could the University of Virginia really triple the salary for its head men’s basketball coach? That’s what one newspaper says UVA is prepared to do. The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that UVA is preparing to offer Minnesota head coach Tubby Smith a deal worth a base salary of $3.2 million annually, plus the use of a house, and two cars. The money would reportedly come from a combination of university funding and booster donations. Smith has deflected questions about his interest in the UVA job thus far, stating his intent is to be at Minnesota “for a very long time.”
–photo courtesy Minnesota Athletics

A different Coach watch...

Sports fans may be riveted as UVA ponders a replacement coach for the men’s basketball team, but a different kind of Coach may already be Charlottesville-bound.

An Albemarle County building permit suggests that the upscale leather goods purveyor might snag spots formerly occupied by Mrs. Fields Cookies and Halo in Fashion Square Mall. The mall’s owner, Shopping Center Associates, appears to be spending $180,000 remodel for what could become its most upscale tenant— a store where handbags can soar above $1,000 and even sandals can cost a couple of Benjamins.

New York-based Coach spokesperson Andrea Shaw Resnick declines comment, responding in an email only, “We don’t confirm upcoming store openings until they are posted on our website (usually a few months before the opening).”

Snap o' the day: Knife-wielding chicken seeks revenge

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have some of the more memorable protests around– we still haven’t forgotten the naked protester from 2006. On March 30, chicken-suited Kristina Addington takes the knife to Ronald McDonald (Cassandra Callaghan) in front the McDonald’s on Ridge-McIntire as part of PETA’s McCruelty Campaign to draw attention to mass poultry-slaughtering machines that slit the throats of conscious chickens and if the blades miss, the bird is plunged into scalding water while still alive, says PETA. Afterward, the protesters did not dine on Chicken McNuggets for lunch.