Obviously you guys have been playing together for a lot of years. Besides the new touring schedule, how do you keep it fresh for your fans, but even more so for yourselves, to keep you all wanting to play with each other?

You know, it’s interesting. Some of it will just come from tweaking setlists and just trying to mix things up a little bit. We’re very conscientious about the work that we put into a show every single night. We show up and we rehearse for two hours every day before we get up on stage. And it’s so difficult these days with how accessible everything is. As we’re playing a show—and this goes for any band—it’s readily available to fans and critics on the Internet as it’s going down live, whether they’re at the show or not, whether they’re actually listening or not. So you’re subjected to whether or not it looks good on paper, what kind of choices you’re making. You could play the best version of what’s supposedly the most mundane song ever, or a very typical song, and it doesn’t make a difference. You could do something exceptional with that very regular choice of a song and it doesn’t make a difference as far as a critical audience may be concerned. In the same regard, you could play a really rare bustout of a song and do a really shitty job of playing it, but people will be really excited about it, because you haven’t played that song in 30 years, or nobody ever plays that. We could cover a Phish song and do a really shitty job of it, but the fact that we did it will get more attention than anything else. People will be really psyched about it, and it will be the worst choice we could possibly make. That stuff will drive us crazy.

We would rather play really, really good music, and sometimes people get really hung up on the stats more than the quality. And I understand—when you’re in something for the long run, when you’ve seen a band 100 times, you don’t want to hear the same song, you want them to change it up. You don’t want to hear the same song, same spot, same opener, same closer, same encore, et cetera. It gets old after a while. Do something different, come on. I mean, we’ve all been there. You know, if the Dead close with “Day Job” or “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” one more time. I’ve walked out of venues—I was one of those guys. I didn’t need to hear it again. But, at the same time, they could’ve played an exceptional version of one of those songs. Or maybe there are better choices. So what we’ve been trying to do is at least incorporate some different songs, bring in some different covers. Right now we’re just focusing on the Halloween show, but the thing we keep talking about is new material. There’s a lot of talk amongst us about trying to incorporate new material at this point. So that’s what’s gonna come next. But right now, with the 25th anniversary tour, this year is more about celebrating everything that we have done up to this point, then we’ll start looking forward.

I wanted to get your opinion on some 25th anniversary awards for moe. Who would win the Most Improved Player Award in the band, so far?

I would say that definitely goes to Jim [Loughlin], because when Jim was first in our band—Jim is the drummer—this was during the Headseed era, during that time those songs came to be. Then when Jim left and started playing with Yolk, we went through a series of drummers till we landed Vinnie, and Vinnie has been our drummer ever since. When Jim came back into the band to be not only a percussionist but a multi-instrumentalist with the band, I had had this idea that we started working on at this point about everybody playing a variety of instruments in the band and about improvising sort of in a different way: rather than stretching out our songs in this lateral way, we would start to improvise within the context of our songs and maybe just have a different palette of tones to work with. That was when I started playing keyboard, mandolin and different things in the group, and Chuck actually brought a saxophone in for a short time. I was playing acoustic and Rob had an acoustic bass, and we were all just trying to mix it up a little bit so we had more of a variety of sounds to work with, so it wasn’t just stretching things out linearly so much as we were but working in a different sonic spectrum. That’s when Jim came back into the fold, and since that time, he has excelled so much, particularly as a mallet player, and the vibraphone and marimba and that stuff. It’s just been awesome. He’s gone from being what I think he would agree as a pretty basic player when he first started doing that stuff to really being pretty exceptional at what he does. It’s been awesome.

What about the Most Valuable Player?

I would say that the MVP would probably go to Vinnie. In a lot of ways he’s probably an unsung hero or the most underrated member of the band. I mean, Vinnie totally drives the ship. It’s amazing how much he holds down the fort. There was a time a couple years ago when he ended up with mono, and he tried to play through and he couldn’t, so then Jim came over on drums, which we thought would be fine. Jim was the first one to say, “Hey man, we can’t do this without Vinnie.” We played a couple of shows without him, and Jim kind of went back to being our drummer, and he was just like, “Holy shit, we need Vinnie.” We kind of all realized that. Somebody I read recently said there’s never been a great band without there also being a great drummer and I think that’s true in this case—not that I’m saying that moe. is necessarily a great band, but it’s certainly the case that Vinnie is a great drummer, and we wouldn’t be where we are without him.

Is there any looking toward the future for year 26?

We have so much that we’re looking forward to. Next year, we’re kicking it off with another trip to Jamaica, and this time we’re going with Little Feat and Medeski Martin and Wood, which should be awesome. Then we have more of these three-day city shows on deck, and then some summer festival stuff that we’ve been talking about. There’s a lot planned. But, like I said, I’m most looking forward to new material. That’s the thing that I’m really excited about. All of this time has allowed me to focus my energy and spend a little more time working on moe., and so I’m looking forward to really digging in and ramping things up for next year.

It was recently announced that you would be leaving the band Floodwood. What brought this decision about?

Over the last three years, we have built Floodwood up to a point where it just deserves more time. We made two records and played almost 40 shows a year. It’s a tough pace to keep up while also playing in moe. and doing gigs with Everyone Orchestra, Jazz Fest, Phil & Friends, etc., in addition to being a Ski Patroller. I had hoped that my schedule would balance out a bit more to allow more time for Floodwood as it grew, but I just found myself having to say “no” to gigs more often than “yes” and that’s not helping anyone. I really think the band is special and that Nick and Jason can do something great with it if they dedicate their time and energy to it. I felt like I was holding them back and it was time for them to take it up a notch.

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