Photo by Garret K. Woodward
In 1990, Buffalo, NY, spawned a fresh new jamband named moe. In the 25 years since, the band has developed into a groovy quintet with thousands of devoted fans, yet they seem to remain grounded, if not a little exhausted, after all this time. As they celebrate their silver anniversary with a series of three-night runs in the cities and venues that have made them who they are today, Al Schnier, takes some time to reflect and look forward.
As grateful as he is for what has come before, he is just as excited to continue the ride and keep creating the music that has been the life-force of both moe. and their fans. Here he discusses why the band decided to change up their touring schedule for this current tour, talks about what the guys have planned for their upcoming Star Wars-themed Halloween, touches on his recent departure from Floodwood and gives out a couple quarter-century band awards.
What were the goals going into the 25th anniversary, and what has come of them so far?
One of the things we were thinking going into this year was that we wanted to change up what we were doing in terms of our touring. You know, we’ve spent 25 years of being on the road all of the time. It’s interesting when I look at it: there are venues across the country—and you can pick any city Like Atlanta, for example—we’ve been playing the Tabernacle in Atlanta for I think the last 15 years. Or, you know, The Fillmore in San Francisco for 15 years, and it’s sort of strange. There are a lot of bands that will kind of move through those venues, on their way up, on their way down, or whatever, but there are very few bands that just get to a spot and stay there consistently, and that’s just sort of what we do. We just played the 9:30 Club again in DC. We’ve been playing that place forever, it feels like. And, you know, not to qualify it—there is something really awesome about that. But at the same time, we’re looking at it like, “What the heck are we doing?” We’ve been doing this for 25 years—what do we want to do different for this 25th anniversary tour?
So we thought, well, what if, with some of those places and some of those great cities where we play, instead of just passing through as part of another one of those tours that we just do, let’s make them more destination events. So we wanted to turn them into these three-day weekends where we could go and do a Friday and Saturday night there and bring everybody from the region to that area. So instead of playing everywhere else in a 150-mile radius around there, we’d just go and play those places, and then throw in a smaller venue on Thursday night for people who want to make a three-day weekend out of it. And it’s proven to be a really cool model for us. So we’re working a little bit less, which means we get to spend a little more time at home, a little more time working on other projects, just a little more time doing other stuff. It also means, when it comes to moe., that we’re excited about doing moe. It’s been a lot of fun doing these events, too, because people are gravitating toward the events. It makes them feel a little bit more special than just another night on the tour.
Have you noticed a difference in the feel of the shows because of this new formula, with both you guys and the fans extra-psyched for each one?
You know, I think so. To me, they feel more like events than just another day at the office. And that’s sort of the intent. We wanted to do something a little bit different. The only thing is—it’s funny, I think Chuck [Garvey] touched on this at one point in another interview, or at least in conversation with us—when we’re not on the road, you sort of lose that aspect of becoming a well-oiled machine when we get into a groove. If you start to play together for two to three weeks at a time, then you can sort of lock in, and you get to another level of playing. But at the same time, there are drawbacks from that, too, because you also get beat down by being on the road, people are getting sick. You know, we’re old [laughs]. There’s a lot of wear and tear that comes from traveling on the road like that. There’s a physical demand to it, and it’s sort of nice to come in and just do three shows and go home and then do it again a few weeks later.
So there’s a give and take aspect.
Yeah. And, I don’t know, I like doing it both ways. I can see the pros and cons of doing it both ways, and right now I’m really enjoying this.
Rob Derhak who was doing an interview earlier this year, and he mentioned you guys got some silver instruments. Did you get a silver guitar?
That’s true, yeah. I have two silver guitars and Vinnie [Amico] got a silver drum set, and Chuck has a silver guitar. I was even using silver amps at one point. We had silver jackets and stuff that we were wearing. We were really trying to embrace the silver anniversary.
Moving on to the Halloween show theme, Star Wars, how did that come about? I assume you guys are fans.
Yes, we’re big into Star Wars. It’s one of those things that we grew up with. And the Halloween theme is something we’ve been doing forever. Just trying to grab an idea, either from a movie or some other thing, something that we can grab where there’s going to be something great visually and some great music attached to it. We did a Willy Wonka Halloween show in the ’90s, I think, at the Hammerstein Ballroom, then we did a Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon Halloween show, we did a Simpsons Halloween show. I can’t remember who threw out the Star Wars theme. It might’ve been Rob for this one. And it was unanimous, like, “Yes!” We were all in on it. And again, there’s great music for it, great costumes, just a no-brainer.
So what are some specific plans to integrate it into your show?
It’s the same thing we’ve done with a lot of the other shows. First of all, we’ll all be in costume, in character. There’s original music from the movie that we can incorporate into what we’re doing, but then there’s our music that we can tweak to fit in, as well as covers that may be related to the event somehow. We’ll incorporate all that, as well as stage and set design, lights and everything. So there’s a full multimedia affair that will be incorporated. In fact we were just discussing it this morning. We’re working on the setlist now, because we’ll get together next week, but we’ll all spend this week at home kind of tweaking the ideas, then show up next week for a full week of rehearsals before we do it.
What’s your favorite Star Wars movie?
My favorite one probably still has to be the first one. I don’t know—it’s a close tie between that and The Empire Strikes Back, but I’d still pick the first one. I mean, the first one was just so amazing. It’s still such a great movie. It still gives me chills when I watch it.
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.
