Photo by Chris Paul
RR: I love that you were able to play these songs immediately in an acoustic fashion. Sometimes, musicians get away from themselves and don’t realize that the songs need to stand on their own, and I think that’s just a great idea for the band, too.
CG: It’s pretty important for us that all of them work (laughs)—just one guitar and one voice; hopefully, all these songs can be effective in that way, and then you know you have the good essentials of the song, and everything else is just gravy.
RR: Other than the upcoming moe. winter tour dates here in the States, you have some shows overseas where this new material will be played, as well. What does the Jam in the Dam mean to you and the band at this point in time? And how excited are you to be able to go over to tour Europe in 2012?
CG: We’ve been to the Melkweg before and we played two nights, and that was really special for us, but the trip was way too short. (laughs) Now, to go back and also have this other music out, which is important, it’ll be great just to be able to hang out and see these other bands in that context, and to be able to hang out in that city is lots of fun. We’ve never done it before, but it made a lot of sense and we are pretty excited about creating a European tour. We had plans to do it a couple of years ago. We had talked about doing it, and it just never worked out, so this visit is going to be pretty special, especially starting off with that kind of festival atmosphere. If you can call it that. It is kind of like that.
And, then, to do these [other European] gigs is going to be pretty interesting for us. It is going to be a lot more like 1994 (laughter)—small places and hard work and tight quarters and loud rock and roll. (laughs) I think it’s going to be kind of fun.
I can’t even…I haven’t even been thinking about it much. We’ve just been working on the day-to-day stuff with the album and everything that goes along with releasing it, and touring it here in the States. We are going to be playing at the Macworld convention, too.
RR: I was going to ask you about that. January 26. Macworld as part of the conference’s Music Experience. How did you get approached for that gig?
CG: They saw the iPad video that we did and they were really excited about it. So it’s all great and positive work surrounding the release of this album, which we are pretty proud
of—all of it from working on acoustic versions of the songs, working on iPad versions of a couple of other songs, doing in-stores, and playing all these shows, and going to Europe is just one giant colossal (laughs) thing to look forward to. It’s a lot of logistics and a lot of planning and a lot of work, but it’s definitely all wrapped up in the excitement of this new thing that we have. I’m looking forward to all of it. It’s kind of a blur; it’s just focusing on the small aspects of it when we need to. It is kind of overwhelming, actually. Small bites.
RR: moe. had a wonderful idea to have fans send in their favorite moe.-gig related photos to the band’s Facebook page for a ‘moe. memories 2011’ section. With your comment about “a blur,” I wanted to ask about the 70 gigs played in 2011. It seems like a somewhat manageable amount for the band to play in one year. When you look back at 2011, do you have certain things that you are able to spotlight for yourself, or is it just one giant big blur?
CG: It kind of is. (laughter) Pictures do a lot to help to trigger memories of all this stuff. Yeah, I do remember a lot about [2011], and it all started at New Year’s last year when we all wore white tuxes, and we had the Dirty Dozen Brass Band play with us in Boston, and that was such a great way to kick off the year. A couple of the guys had their kids come up on stage and played and sang with us. The whole thing, that night, was just a great way to kick off the year for us.
We also went to the Dominican Republic, which was amazing. It was a small group of people, but it was a really cool…I don’t know what to call it…it’s like this cool little field trip. (laughs) We were able to play an acoustic show and three electric shows in this wonderful place, and everybody had a great time. That was the beginning of the year, so we really had a great way of kicking it off.
The touring in 2011 has been a lot of fun. I see pictures of all the places that we’ve been, and remember the stages and some of the songs that we played, and they all start to blend together a little bit, but it’s definitely fun to go through the pictures and see what we’ve been up to in the past year.
I can’t…it’s funny…I think the Dominican Republic was really a big highlight for me. Summer Camp was amazing, and moe.down was really amazing this year—I think that I really feel like those were the highlights of the year for me.
RR: You seem to be caught up in the flow of events while keeping a positive attitude. A couple of years ago, you spent 2010 celebrating the 20th anniversary of moe., so I am wondering about your current take on the band as you move forward.
CG: Well, we’ve been starting to look…obviously, we’ve been doing this for a while, so we’ve been looking at touring and the special event shows. We just look at them differently and creatively every year. This year, we were working towards—and, actually, part of last year—making a studio recording, and gearing up for that as we were
touring, so we were playing some of the songs looking forward to making this album. And, finally, we were able to set aside the time for it. A lot of our energy was focused on that, and fine-tuning the songs on the road a little bit, but looking towards making this new, different recording (hopefully). It’s those kinds of projects and that kind of the planning aspect of what we do where you’re planning six months, or twelve months, or even eighteen months in advance, that everything starts to get a little…not surreal…but, you can lose perspective on some things just because you do have to look ahead a year in advance, or more, when you are talking about making a recording, and releasing it, and setting up a tour, and everything that goes along with that.
You are also talking about keeping a positive attitude.
RR: Yeah, especially when you’ve been doing this for so long. When someone has that much time plotted out in advance, how do you not go on auto-pilot creatively?
CG: See, nothing is completely plotted out, though. Everything changes like the day before. (laughter) It’s having those things like looking forward to playing in the Dominican Republic, or looking forward to playing the Summer Camp festival, or moe.down, or looking forward to the recording, and eventually the release of this album. There are all these things that when you have them to look forward to, as long as you have that, everything else becomes easy, or a little bit easier (laughs) because you are working towards these goals, you are working towards the time when you get to do these exciting and, maybe, different things where you’re putting yourself in a different situation. As long as that’s fun and exciting and you have those things to look forward to, the whole process is definitely a lot better. It’s better for us; I think it’s better for our fans. If it ever comes to the point where the music is suffering and you’re really not looking forward to anything than I can’t see doing it anymore. But, luckily, we always have these things to look forward to, and in that way, it’s less like a job. It’s more like you’re working on your family, you’re working on these friendships that you’ve had with people for 20 years. As long as you have that, you’ve got a lot.
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