For moe., big developments happened at both the beginning and end of 2012. In January of last year, the group released What Happened To The La Las, their first studio album in four years and first with an outside producer since 1998 (John Travis, whose credits include Kid Rock, Social Distortion, No Doubt and others). Almost 12 months later, the band closed 2012 with a unique, extremely audience-friendly Relix-sponsored contest that allowed three lucky fans to actually sit in with moe. during their New Year’s Eve run (the three winners just shared their perspectives on Relix.com).
As they took toward 2013 and beyond, the members of moe. are already starting to think about their next studio project, as well as other ways to involve their fans in special events and other creative endeavors. While aboard Jam Cruise, moe. guitarist Al Schnier and bassist Rob Derhak gave Jambands.com a hint of what to expect from the Buffalo, NY-bred quintet this year.
I wanted to start by talking about a contest that Relix and Jambands.com were involved in. Leading up to your New Year’s Eve run, you let fans submit performance clips. Then, the members of moe. sorted through those videos and three fans got to actually play onstage with the band during your run. How did that idea come about and what was it like sorting through over 100 fan clips?
Rob: Well, I guess Al should probably field that because it was his idea. Initially, it was just something that he came up with.
Al: Right, so I’d been talking with the folks on our team that do all of our field-marketing sort of things—social media stuff or whatever. We were brainstorming and trying to come up with ideas for something to do for that run of shows, and I threw out that idea, and they did such an amazing job. I did nothing other than come up with an idea, and they kind of did everything else. They did such an amazing job with it. I have to give our team all the credit, really, for making it happen. The fans responded really enthusiastically about doing this. I guess if you think about it, if you were a fan of some band and you had the opportunity to play with them, why not try? [For Example] if The Dead ever ran a contest like this…
Rob: You guys would enter. [Laughs.]
Al: Right! I guess you probably would have had to mail in a cassette tape back then, like a Betamax video.
Rob: I can’t imagine how many entries they would get.
Al: Oh yeah! It would have been ridiculous!
Rob: We had like over 100 that we had to sift through, which was really hard.
Al: That’s the thing. I think our contest ran for maybe two weeks or so, and people had to post their videos. We ended up with over 100 in the end. It was a lot to sift through that and pick out the talent there. The fans were so talented! It was awesome!
Rob: There were some really good players.
Al: Great, great players. It was ridiculous how good they were.
Rob: I was surprised to see the level of some of those players. I was like, ‘holy crap!’
Al: I was surprised there wasn’t a little more lunacy, [that] we didn’t get more mocking videos. You know, more dudes wearing American flag capes and a shopping cart going down a hill kind of thing. And people were really good. People who are far better musicians than I am that were submitting videos. That was pretty humbling to see—these people that are our fans out there listening to us are actually better than us and now that they had this opportunity, they could play with us. It was cool to connect with that sector of our audience, and we get to do that occasionally when we’re doing workshops or different things. You got the chance to talk to your fans and you get to geek out over the brand of a guitar pedal or something, but this was on a whole other level because now you’re bringing the sit-in to the fan. And it was really cool, like I said, to engage the fans in that type of way. When it came down to it on the day of, we actually got to hang out with these guys and—
Rob: They were all really prepared too, so there was hardly any rehearsal [that] we did. We just went through the song like two or three times before the show, and every single one of them had it down and ready to go.
In terms of the songs that you guys chose, were those songs that they played in their videos, or were they songs that you guys wanted to do?
Al: They chose the songs—we let them choose.
MG: And they all chose different songs?
Al and Rob: Yeah.
How did playing with a fan versus a normal guest musician change the band’s onstage dynamic? Are there any specific examples for the three nights you could point to?
Rob: Yeah, absolutely. I can think of specific [examples]. When we did “Rebubula,” that’s a pretty written song, and there’s already two guitar harmonies going on, so what we ended up doing was [contest winner Matt Mahoney] played Al’s part and in another part he did Chuck [Garvey]’s [part], so those guys just came up with a third harmony—
Al: So we ended up writing new parts during soundcheck that day. We kind of had to sort through it because he thought he had just tracked all of my stuff from start to finish. He was like ‘I learned all of your stuff,’ and when we’d get to another section, it turns out he was playing Chuck’s part when we got there.
Rob: It’s hard to tell.
Al: So we just sort of mapped it out, and let him, we were like ‘you do all of the stuff you know,’ and when we get to all of these things, Chuck and I kind of moved around him, so there’s always like a three part harmony going on. A few times we played stuff in unison, but it was great. He did an amazing job.
Rob: And then when [piano player and contest winner] Joe Bellanti played with us, he had actually written an entire new arrangement of “New York City” for his audition tape, and we liked it so much, we ended up sort of changing the song to fit his arrangement. That came out really good.
Al: That was great. That was so cool.
Rob: My wife was like, “it sounds like the song is empty now without that there.” [Laughs.]
Going backward through your recent holiday shows, for Halloween you revisited two of earlier albums Headseed and Fatboy and performed them in their entirety. Who chose that Halloween concept and how much legwork did you have to do to relearn two albums from the ‘90s?
Al: We did the first two albums and the acoustic La La’s album.
Rob: And why did we do that again? [Laughs.]
Al: Well, here’s the thing. Every time we’ve done a Halloween show, there’s been some kind of theme and going into the Halloween show this year, nobody really felt compelled to have a theme. We didn’t want to have a theme.
Rob: Right.
Al: I went as far as to say, “Let’s just do a show on Halloween and that’s a theme.” It’s already Halloween. Why do we then have to come up with some other thing where everybody dresses like a character from Gilligan’s Island ? [Laughs.] Everybody’s already in costume, or already playing a rock show. Isn’t that enough?
When Zappa did his Halloween shows, they were just these legendary shows. He just played on Halloween in New York. That was it. That was enough. Then the freaks came out, and they did their thing. Take acid, dress in a costume and see Frank Zappa. That’s enough.
Rob: It’s just not enough now, man. Kids need more.
Al: Right. Well, this is kind of what we came to find out—
Rob: You know what else it was too, it was the fact that we’re playing at the Ryman [Auditorium]. The obvious thing was to do like the country music thing, but we already did that. We’re like, ‘we can’t really repeat that,’ so we struggled to come up with an idea for it.
Al: So we initially announced the show and there was no theme, but then there was this whole overwhelming response from our fans wanting to know—needing to know what we were doing. They needed direction from us, and people were compelled to know, so finally we decided to just [to say], “that the theme was going to be moe.” We were just focused on our own music and not have to learn a bunch of TV music or any other music, but just play our music. [We wanted to] give our fans three sets. We’ve done Willy Wonka, The Wizard of Oz, we’ve played Dark Side of the Moon, we’ve done The Simpsons.
As well as special Halloween shows where you wrote new songs around a fan-picked theme.
Al: Right. We’ve written different things that the fans have been involved with. This time was just like we’re just going to play our music, we’re going to do three sets and that would be the theme. The theme would be moe.
Rob: That’s what we should do next year. Instead of [auditioning], have fans actually write songs for Halloween and we’ll pick the music that we’re going to play.
Al: So take the fan contest one step further. Have them write original music.
Rob: Yeah, that will be the Halloween show. And if it sucks, it’s not our fault. [Laughs.]
Photo by Dino Perrucci
When it came time to do the show, did you decide a couple of weeks before to do these albums or what is more of a spontaneous kind of thing? Like ‘Hey, why don’t we just go through our own catalogue?’
Al: It wasn’t too long before that [when] we decided.
Rob: [It was] about a month or so, maybe. I don’t remember exactly.
Al: Yeah, we set aside enough rehearsal time for us to go through and make sure that we—
Rob: We did “Brain Tuba,” which took a bit of rehearsal. That song was kind of weird. None of us remembered anything about it.
Al: And apparently, besides the version that we learned, there’s another version of it that has lyrics.
Rob: Oh really?
Al: Yeah, I don’t remember about lyrics in the song, but—
Rob: We must have played it like once.
Al: So here’s the thing though, the version that we played and as I was going through it, it seemed like the version as far as I could remember it. But then Jim [Loughlin] told me after the fact that there was some disgruntled fans because we didn’t play the right version of “Brain Tuba.” We played some earlier incarnation of it or a later incarnation, I don’t know which incarnation we played, but we played one revision of the song that didn’t also include lyrics. I don’t remember Chuck ever writing lyrics to that song, but—I don’t think Chuck ever remembers writing those. [Laughs.]
Rob: Well that’s it. We’re not doing it anymore. [Laughs.]
It has been about a year since you released your most recent studio album, What Happened to the La Las ? Looking ahead, have you guys started writing songs for the new album, or are you still in that phase before you play the songs live?
Rob: Yeah, we’re gearing up for the next album right now. We’re talking to the producer. I’ve already lost two songs. I left them on my iPhone—got a new one. But, yeah, I think we’re in the beginning stages of getting that going.
The last album is the first time you guys had worked with an outside producer for a number of years—and you really let him choose the songs that were on there and sort through kind of your own decent or not so decent collaborations. In retrospect, did you feel like that recording process let La Las breathe as more of a classic album? Do you think you’d follow a similar approach on your next album?
Rob: I think it was a good start. I think one thing that we’re changing about the next process is we’re going to have a lot more time on our hands and a lot more involvement from the producer. We can actually have time to let things develop between the band and the producer and I think we’re going to try to get him involved early on before we even go into the studio, so we can really know what we’re getting into. That was the one thing that was tough. We talked to our producer on the phone, but we met him at the studio and for three weeks we had no time to go work on songs with him or do anything.
Al: And, he also didn’t have any history with the band or the songs, so he was coming in kind of fresh, and there were a lot of good things that came from that, but on the other hand—
Rob: If we had two more weeks with him, I think some of the rougher edges would have been trimmed out a little bit—[some] different decisions would have been made. I’m not trying to say that we’re not happy with the album because we are happy with the album. Just the way we’re going to go about the next one, we’re going to do more of the same with more time to let things develop.
Al: And like Rob was saying, this time, since we’re going to be choosing a producer further out from our initial studio date, and there might be several studio dates along the way, we haven’t decided on that just yet. A lot of it will depend on how busy we get this summer. We sort of know our schedule through Summer Camp at this point, but once we firm things up the producer, then we’ll actually be able to start actually having listened to demos and getting involved in the process early on, so we don’t have to start retrofitting songs that we’ve been playing for two years or ten years even. [We want to] collaborate early on.
Photo by Dino Perrucci
Before you started work on your last album you went down to Nashville to work with on some songs for publishing purposes. How did that experience come about and are you still working with writers down there?
Rob: Well no, I think we had higher hopes for the Nashville session stuff. The reality of what happened is we had a great thing going with a publishing company [Cherry Lane]. and they were setting us up with a lot of cool stuff and a larger publishing company bought them, so that’s not happening anymore. So it was a nice thing. I bet you we might have that option coming up soon, though.
Al: Yeah, I could see maybe doing a little more of that.
Rob: Also, we’ve been kind of busy, too. I haven’t had the time to go down there [and] explore that.
Al: The other thing too is that from those experiences that the whole Nashville songwriting thing is such a machine and process that you go through if you’re already a songwriter in Nashville with connections.
Rob: There’s a pretty tight knit club down there.
Al: Yeah, so being the two northern dudes who play rock music who are just showing up and are like “yeah, we want to do this.”
Rob: We went down there [Nashville] thinking we were writing songs with other songwriters. We did a couple together and we did separate ones too. My impression was that we’re getting together, see what happens, write a song and get it pitched to some country artists. And I think what the other guys were under the impression that we needed help writing songs for ourselves. So I was like, “why are we here, doing this, again?” I’m not really sure, it may or may not have been the case, but it seemed like those guys were hoping that we were going to use their songs.
In terms of your upcoming tour plans, do you have any exciting shows on the horizon you can discuss at this point?
Rob: A trip to Europe. I’m not sure if it’s going to be a festival out there, or if we’re going to expand off of that, depending on what we do back home here. We’ve got an album coming out, Snoe.down is happening.
Do you think the album will come out this year or in 2014?
Al: 2014, that’s the idea, so that we would maybe get some recording done either early or late summer or definitely in the fall. Then the release date would not be until this time [of] next year or later, maybe pushing it into the spring of next year or so.
Really, you just need time to figure out the producer?
Al: That’s the thing. We might as well start doing that now.
Al, in November you both opened for and collaborated onstage with your friends Strangefolk at the Cap in Port Chester, NY. They joined you onstage during your opening solo set and you sat in with them on a few songs as well. You even covered two moe. tunes. Can you talk about your experiences watching them as a fan and friends as well as how your collaboration took shape?
Al: To answer your first question, watching them as a fan and friend was awesome. It was great. Just to see those guys together again and to hang out with them backstage was really great. And having been with all of those guys together in one place since we all played in [The Gathering of the] Vibes together. It’s been a long time since we’ve all been together in one place, and it was really good. It was a really good atmosphere.
They all had their families there. To watch them play from the side of the stage — I even commented on this when I was there — before I went there, I had to learn a couple of their songs, so I listened to Weightless in Water and Lore when I was at home and we were preparing a Thanksgiving meal, so I was putting them on and we were listening to it and I haven’t listened to Strangefolk since I had seen them and I forgot what a great band they are. Every song was great. Those records still stand out. They’re really great records. To see them performing, at this point, everyone’s ten years older, ten years wiser, the maturity and the chops have all improved by ten years. It’s not like they’re Led Zeppelin or playing speed metal where their dexterity or anything about their age would impede what they’re doing right now. If anything, it’s improved their game and it’s the best I’ve ever seen Strangefolk play. It was amazing how good they were. The drumming was amazing that weekend I thought. He [Luke Smith] was really on top of his game and Trafton’s guitar playing was like the best I’ve ever heard him. Reid [Genauer]’s voice is as good as it’s [ever sounded], and [Erik] Glockler is like the unsung hero of that group. It was cool to see that from behind the scenes too because he remembers everything about those songs. He’s the one who has like maintained this vocabulary of all of the arrangements and everything so he became like the musical director of the whole thing. It was so good to see those guys playing. I can’t say enough good things about it. The vibe in the room was great.
How did they end up covering moe. songs?
Al: I can’t remember if I picked those songs or if they did. Reid [Genauer] and I were talking about songs maybe a week before the gig, and I can’t remember who picked the songs. I think he might have picked one and I picked the other one and I can’t remember which was which, but I showed, and they knew them. They did their homework. It was easy.
