In January, moe. guitarist/vocalist Chuck Garvey sat down with Jambands.com for a thorough and in in depth look into their new album, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LA Las, as well as a discussion on 2011 highlights and the road ahead in 2012. Recently, we caught up with moe. guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Al Schnier for a brief chat adding further color to the commentary, including his view of producer John Travis, his own guitar work on the album, and the specifics behind the longest and most intriguing track on the new album, “Downward Facing Dog,” a poignant lyrical and musical gem, which segues into various sonic tonal soundscapes, but never loses track of the “big picture.”
RR: Why did you take older material, and mix it with newer songs on the new album, and why did moe. decide to use an outside producer?
AS: Regarding the song selection or material, definitely with Sticks and Stones, and the last new album with new material before that was The Conch, I guess every album that we’ve done, there has been a different agenda in terms of how we were going to cull the material, or approach the recording process. With Sticks and Stones, we tried to actually write an entire album in a limited time and space and record the whole thing. With [ WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LA Las ], we thought, “Let’s go with songs that have been taken out on the road, and have been put through their paces a bit. And let’s not just limit it to the songs that we’ve written since Sticks and Stones, but really anything that’s never had a chance to be taken into the studio environment, and re-approached in that medium.”
And that was sort of how we came up with a list of songs for choosing from, so really, anything that hadn’t been recorded on a studio album was fair game as far as we were concerned. But, then, like right away, we started saying, “Well, obviously, we’re not going to record something like “Meat” in the studio.” We did limit the parameters to some extent. I mean, we were going to be reasonable about it, I guess. (laughs) There were instrumentals that we did consider. “Chromatic Nightmare” is on the album, and some of the other more recent instrumental things that we’ve been working on actually found their way in different passages. Everything was fair game.
In terms of the producer [John Travis], it was sort of…it’s not that we had reached an impasse; we feel like we had gotten to this point where we have come to the conclusion that, in terms of self-producing moe., it had sort of plateaued at least for the time being because we have five captains steering the ship, and there is only so much you can do when you are compromising to that degree. It’s not that there is any discord, or disagreement, or anything like that, it’s just that when everything gets distilled down to a point of everybody having to compromise, nobody really ever gets their way, and no one of us ever walks away from an album saying, “Yeah, that’s really the album I wanted to make,” and none of us is really sure that that’s the album we should have made.
On the other hand, sometimes, when you do let go, that’s when we find our strengths. That is why moe. has lasted so long—the other guys in the band have better ideas than I do. (laughs) So, you know, often, the best thing I can do is shut up, for example. But, the key is knowing when to do that. In this case, we thought, “Let’s bring in a third party; have somebody else steer the ship, and we can go in and still be a creative force driving this thing, but have somebody else really kind of direct the whole thing.” And it worked out great in that regard. It took so much pressure off of us, so we could just focus on making the album, and not also have to be directing the project, as it were.
RR: How much knowledge did Travis have of the moe. vibe, and how much did his outside influence impact the recording of the album?
AS: He had very little knowledge of it, which is kind of cool. He did profess to seeing us at the Wetlands, and it almost sounded like it was by accident (laughs)—fifteen years ago, or ten years ago, but he really wasn’t familiar with anything we had done since that time, and, even during that time, it wasn’t something that he did on a regular basis. He wasn’t a jamband fan. He wasn’t a moe. fan. He wasn’t familiar with our catalogue. He wasn’t familiar with our tunes. He wouldn’t know the difference between “Timmy Tucker” and “Buster” and “Meat” at this point. And it was kinda cool.
I’m sure he knows who Phish and Dave Matthews and Warren and Panic are, and I’m sure he knows all the players in the scene. I’m sure he recognizes the names because he’s a very astute listener, and he’s got his ears open, and he’s listening to lots of different kinds of music, and he’s just aware of what is going on. But, at the same time, it was nice to have him come in, and not really have any preconceived notions about the way we should do things, or the way things needed to be because of some history, or some thing that we had done previously, so he was really coming in with fresh ears, which was cool.
RR: As I mentioned to Chuck in our interview, the album is a complete experience, and John Travis definitely nailed that aspect of what the band does on record.
AS: I’m glad to hear that. Yeah, that was something that we kept in mind, actually, when we were sequencing the album, as well. We went through a bunch of different options, and in the end, that’s kind of the thing that prevailed—“Well, I kind of see it as a Side A, and a Side B.” That was the one that really sort of worked for everybody—having it have those two sides like that where there was a start and finish to it, thematically, but, yet, still, the whole thing worked from start to finish, too.
RR: Is it fair to say that your pieces dominate Side One of the record, coloring the tone and feel of it, but, obviously, the band brings their influence into the mix, as well?
AS: You know, I hadn’t really noticed that, to be honest. That wasn’t a conscious thing. For us, it was more just about song flow and which songs made sense where. We want to have the right opening song, and then the next…you know, every next song has to be the right song. (laughs) We’ve always shared that same mentality. There are so many albums like that. I think about [Jane’s Addiction’s] Nothing’s Shocking, and the Fishbone album, Truth and Soul, and almost every Zeppelin album is like that, and so many Stones albums, and Beatles albums, and you can go on and on. I want to say that every Neil Young album is like that for me, but there are so many albums where that’s the way it is.
It’s funny. My wife and I were listening to either After the Gold Rush or Comes a Time yesterday, and one song ended, and she started singing the next song, like consciously, and that happens when you’ve been listening to an album for twenty years. I hope that we can make albums like that for somebody.
RR: It still sounds like the band wants to go into the studio, do something different, but maintain that classic, timeless appeal. Let’s get into the specifics of a particular song. I would think “Downward Facing Dog” is going to strike a strong chord in fans, whether they are old ones like myself, or new ones yet to hear moe. Can you talk about the construction of that track?
AS: In terms of music, in terms of the guitar parts, and this is the great thing as a songwriter that you just kind of want to happen. You sit down, and I can’t remember what it was on this particular day, but I, literally, wrote almost all the music to this thing in a very, very short window of time. It was over the course of an hour—the whole thing just started unfolding, but it wasn’t really meant to be one thing. There were two different things that I was approaching. I was working on something, and, I think, I want to say that I had a new amp that I was playing at the time, and I had fallen in love with, and I was just sitting in my studio at home, and had this thing cranked. (laughter) And I fell in love with it, so I just started playing these things, but they were like kind of different things, but this whole thing started…and I thought, “I need to record these things.”
I have this tendency to come up with stuff like this, and I’ll sit there and I’ll play it for a half hour, and I figure, “I’ve been playing this thing for a half hour, it’s totally stuck in my head, there is no way I’m ever going to forget it,” and I come back the next day, and I have no idea what I was doing. So, I thought, “I’m definitely going to record this one.” And that’s what I did, and I recorded what ended up being the back section of the song, and maybe worked on something else for a little while, I was playing around with something, and all of a sudden, the whole front section of the song came together for me.
It wasn’t until later that I realized that this whole thing could be one continuous piece of music, and I put the whole thing together, and I realized that it actually fit. There’s actually a mathematical thing where it works in terms of the timing and everything, too, and it just must have been the time and place that I was in at that time where the whole thing fit, even though it sounds like they are different songs. The timing and everything worked, and I thought, “This is just great.”
It took me a while to explain the rhythm and everything to the band, and how the whole thing fit, but that’s where that whole middle section segues the whole thing. One thing is in ¾ time, essentially, which is the best way to explain it.
In terms of the lyrics, at the time, my father was really not doing very well. His health had been compromised for years, but, at this time, he had gotten to a pretty critical state, so I had a lot on my mind at the time. Being…you know…just…hitting 40 myself, you just start thinking about your own lot in life, and how these things…I don’t know…just really started looking at the big picture for all of these things.
I don’t want to put too much emphasis and say in black and white exactly what I was thinking for this, and what all of these things mean to me, but the chorus of the song sums up the whole thing for me—just about surrounding yourself with good friends, and about living life for the sake of living. I was so focused on dying and death at the time (laughs), so it was a lot to go through, but the whole experience was very cathartic for me, and it’s just one of those things. All the lyrics have all of the very cyclical elements in there, I guess. I don’t know what else to say without sounding like I ripped it all off from a Hallmark card. (laughter)
RR: As far as the guitar tones on that track with its dual slides, and the various other tracks on the album, with their consistent, yet varied approaches, did Travis allow the band some space to experiment with those guitar sounds? Did he allow you to do whatever you wanted based on what a particular track needed?
AS: He kind of said that. I think that was one of the areas where we got along really well. He liked the fact that Chuck and I were willing to go in there and get our hands dirty (laughs), and really play things that were loud and dirty. We both really like that. We both enjoy that side of what we do. I brought a giant box of pedals with me, I brought a whole room of amps with me, and a whole bunch of guitars with me, so anytime we were getting ready to start a new song, or start working on a section, you get to spend a little time as an architect crafting that thing, and figuring out what is going to work best. And Chuck and I would often dance around each other a little bit, tonally, just making sure we stayed…kind of like we do live—we want to have tones that complement one another without stepping on each other’s toes.
The only thing that John Travis would do, occasionally, is that every now and then, he’d hear something that he’d really like, and he’d say, “Yeah, that. More of that. ” Or, “Yeah, that’s good, but can you make it more (and he would make some kind of face)…” And I would say, “Yeah, I can do that.” (laughs) And you’d go in and make more of a nasty-faced sort of sound, or whatever it was, you know. It was a lot of fun to do. At the end of the day, it wasn’t too far off from what we do on stage, anyway. (laughter)
RR: How about some of those live performances on stage, specifically in 2011. Do you look back very often, think about something recent like your New Year’s Run, or do you stay focused on the future?
AS: Honestly, I’m more focused on the present. The stuff that we went through in 2011—it’s really amazing how much we actually did in the past year (laughs), and I’ve kind of forgotten most of it already. It’s just because we are so busy, and so engaged in our current work load. And you have to be, and I think I’d almost rather be. It’s nice to go back and look at those pictures from time to time, and say, “Oh, well, I was skinnier then,” or, “Hey, that guitar was kind of cool.”
I just read something recently. There was an interview with Rob [Derhak, moe. bassist and co-lead vocalist], and he was talking about our performance at All Good, and how he really enjoyed that performance, and I had completely forgotten about it. And we had a really great night at All Good [in 2011], and I had completely forgotten about it. Like you said, I was just thinking about New Year’s and right now, I’m actually thinking about re-building my pedal board for the upcoming tour, and I had to get an attenuator for my amp, and I’m just thinking about getting ready for the next thing. I’ve got work to do. I’ve got a lot of things to do. I’ve got to pick up my skis. (laughter)
RR: What will the European run do to the music? I assume you’ll be seeing some new faces in those crowds. How does that change your current thought process?
AS: I don’t know that we will have to change what we do all that much. I think we’ll still probably go out and do our normal show. The only thing that will change, and this is the thing that’ll be kind of cool, is that we’ll be going in and largely playing small clubs, and doing a whole two-week run of playing small clubs, and that is exciting, so there’s a whole different energy that happens there when you go in, and do a whole run of venues like that. If anything, that is exciting, and the fact that you are playing to a new audience; I guess, some of them will, obviously, be familiar with our material because with the Internet everybody has access to just about everything these days, so it’s not like we are going to be playing to a room full of blank stares. Although, you never know. (laughter)
