Jambands.com sat down with moe. guitarist/vocalist Chuck Garvey for further insight and reflections on the evolution of a band celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2010. In Part I, Al Schnier spoke about moe.’s history from his vantage point—which concludes here after our conversation with his bandmate. In Part II, Garvey continues the historical discussion with a fascinating further study of a band willing to take the time to determine what it presents, both on stage, and in the studio, and how it keeps that creativity fresh. Indeed, moe. forges onwards in their third decade together with that very attitude on the heels of a celebratory 20th anniversary tour, and the upcoming release of Smash Hits, Volume One. The album is a ten-track retooling of some of moe.’s classic studio tracks, and all, with the exception of a cut or two, have been completely re-recorded to bring fresh perspective to an always invigorating upstate New York’s historic improv journey.
CHUCK GARVEYRR: What are your recollections of 20 years ago when moe. was formed?
CG: Rob [Derhak, bassist/vocalist] and I met at SUNY [University at] Buffalo. We were just hanging out all the time. A friend of ours—his roommate—had an acoustic guitar, and I had brought an acoustic and my electric guitar to school. We would just hang out, and play simple stuff—three chord songs, and just kind of goofin’ around. I had been playing for a while, and Rob just started. We started playing around with whatever was fun, and anything to kill time, and keep out of class. (laughs) It was a fun thing to do, just hanging out and jamming.
The first summer after Rob and I met, we started playing a little bit, and it was all just garage-style. We went back to Utica [New York]. I remember playing a little bit, and when we got back to school in the fall, we got hooked up with Ray [Schwartz], who was a drummer. We immediately hit it off with him, his sense of humor, and everything. The first party that we played it was “O.K.—we’ve got a gig, so we’ve got to scramble and get some cover tunes together.” We really didn’t think about it in a “we’re starting a band” kind of way. It was more about having fun, and doing something that was creative and totally different. It was great. It didn’t seem like hard work at all. (laughs) I guess that’s it. When you really love something, you just do it, and don’t really think about it.
RR: How did Al Schnier’s entrance into the band change the dynamics?
CG: Ray Schwartz was playing with another guitar player, Dave Kessler. We actually did a couple of gigs where Al played a little guitar, and he played percussion. So, at first, there were three guitars at times. We actually traveled and played Oswego, and a couple of places. It was a little weird having three guitar players. There was just a lot going on, but it was interesting because we all played very differently. Dave had all these metal chops. He was kind of a shredder. (laughs) Al was more like a Deadhead, and played a lot of punk and other stuff, so there was definitely a mix of all this weird stuff going on.
We were doing cover tunes and some of our early original songs, so it was kind of weird making everything fit together, but I guess that was part of it. We had all these different styles that we were individually interested in that we were trying to make fit together. It was the beginning of that—figuring out what the collective personality of the band was going to be, and what would work.
When Al first started playing, Dave Kessler faded out, started not showing up to rehearse, or anything, so it was just Al and I playing guitars in the band, and the dynamics of that were great. We started feeding off each other, and that’s when we started playing longer and longer shows, and traveling around to places like Erie, Pennsylvania. We were figuring everything out for the first six months to a year.
RR: The opening track from moe.’s new best of release, Smash Hits, Volume 1 is “Spine of a Dog,” which you wrote, and the phrase came from Ray Schwartz. Using that song as an example of the period you just referenced, how did it get written?
CG: We were just talking about that. We wrote the liner notes for Smash Hits, and my memory is kind of fuzzy. I usually defer to Rob because he remembers how things went down more accurately than I sometimes do (laughter). Rob and I were actually jamming with another friend of ours in the basement of the house where some other musician friends of ours lived—another drummer. We were goofing around with the first part, and maybe the odd time section came later, but it was something that we looped over and over again because it was this pleasing groove, and Rob built on the bass line more and more. Actually, the guitar is very simple, and it is more about what the drums and bass are doing. By the end of it, we were thinking, “Wow, that’s really cool.” So we did that part, and the whole band started working on it. Rob had some lyrics, the intro lyrics, “I am a pinball machine…,” and Ray had that phrase [“reality is twisted like the spine of a dog”], and I took those bits, and added the other verse parts, and tried to tie them together as best as I could. The only thing that I had, as far as the lyrics went, was not being able to communicate, and being really kind of …(pauses)…I don’t know how you explain it…
RR: Sort of like right there? Not being able to communicate?
CG: (laughter) Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, you’re stunted in some way, or maybe you’re under some kind of influence, or something, but basically, not able to communicate in a social situation where people think you’re nuts. (laughs) That was a thing I was playing around with, but it was really like we did the jam, and there were all these little bits that people kicked in to get it going. I can’t believe that it was that long ago that we wrote that.
RR: A musician has to have the ability to train the mind and body to play an instrument, and then turn the brain off so one can play with an enhanced form of muscle memory. I discussed this topic with Al, as well. Once moe. began playing longer passages, jamming sequences, within their songs in the early-to-mid 1990s, how did the band hone and perfect their ability to improvise in the moment?
CG: We were playing a lot of shows, and we were rehearsing a lot. It was all we did all day long. (laughs) To a certain extent, that was everything that we were doing. When you first start a band, you have to do that, you have to put in a lot of time to get it so that it’s second nature. Over a couple of years of non-stop work, you get to a point where you get that fluency and you get that ease, and you don’t have to think about anything. Even if some guy in a bar is yelling at you, and throwing stuff at you, you’re still going to be able to play the song. (laughs) Which happened, occasionally.
I don’t know. It gets easier, and you get to a point where the four hours or so that you get on stage, are the easiest part of the day, and the rest of it is the struggle. The rest of it is dealing with people, traveling, and everything else that we have to do, so the music becomes the easy part where you can communicate freely. It is—it’s a lot of hard work, and, all of a sudden, it starts to become a lot easier.
RR: moe. evolved through years of touring into a tight-knit, family-run business, and we’ve talked a lot about that in the past. But, how have you stayed fresh as a musician, and how have all of the changes over the years had an impact on you?
CG: We spend less time on the road, which is good so everyone has as much family time as possible. What changes are you referring to?
RR: Like you said, as you mature as a band, you don’t have to play as much. When moe. does go out these days, what are the goals? Are there certain things that have changed over time? How are you functioning as a band?
CG: Especially through the 90s, after having done so much work, so many days out of the year, we benefit more from the freshness that comes from taking time off, and then, going back to it. It’s actually like rediscovering it. When you tour a lot…(laughs) it’s probably like working in a cubicle—you do it so much, you become kind of dead to it. You don’t want to be doing it anymore. As long as you keep it fresh, and you focus on the things that are really important, then you get the best out of what you’re trying to do. And that’s what I think we’ve done. We’ve tried not to burn ourselves out touring, and, really, everyone’s trying to have as much as a balance between home life and work life. When you come back to it, either way—home life, or the work life, the musician life, or the tour life—you’re looking forward to it each time. It’s fresh and inviting every time you do it, and you try not to let it get stale. It’s easy to get into ruts when you’re doing this job. Unfortunately, it’s kind of hard to see when you’re in a rut. All of a sudden, you realize, “I’m doing the same thing over and over again. It’s not changing. It’s not evolving at all.” When you realize that, you try and step back from that a little bit, and it helps out a lot. When we took time off in the fall of 2008, I think it was only five months, but it was the first time that we took a solid five or six months off in 14 years of touring. That may gives a little bit of perspective on getting a sabbatical from your job, just so you can go out and experience something else, and then go back and bring some kind of freshness back. We’ve been trying to balance that for a while now.
RR: I think that ability to bring a fresh mind back to the stage is also critical to the individual musician’s listening skills. Who are you listening to on stage? Has that changed over time, or are you just focusing on what you are playing, and how does that impact what you are playing?
CG: Sometimes, you don’t even realize that you’re listening because everything is kind of…it’s not because the music that you’re playing is exactly what it should be because there is no exact definition to what you’re doing, it’s just that everything is happening, and it feels good. We may not have played a certain passage ever before, or not like we currently are, so you’re in it, but you don’t really think about who you’re listening to because everybody is contributing and supporting, or doing what they need to be for that thing to be successful.
Sometimes, the only thing that I hear is one somebody makes a sudden jarring change, or a move, that doesn’t jive with everyone else. It’s not really a mistake, but the flow is interrupted. (laughs) You pick up on that, and, sometimes, you hear the odd man out. You try and draw them back in, or you try to reinforce the group ethic, or the group movement that is happening.
Other times, you’ll hear Rob and Vinnie [Amico, drums] crushing some groove, and making something really heavy and potent, and you just jump on it. Or, Al is playing a lead, a certain melody, and you follow him behind that, and you try and support that.
There are a lot of different ways that it happens. Sometimes, you’re listening to one person. Sometimes, you’re not listening to anybody, and it’s just kind of happening. And that’s actually really good—when you’re not listening to one specific person, you just hear the whole thing happening, and you try and support it, and make it better. Maybe, sometimes, it means backing off. Maybe, sometimes, it means add, or pushing it, in the next direction that it needs to go in.
But I don’t know, it’s a hard thing. It’s kind of like sitting down with a bunch of friends, and having a conversation. You know when to back out, and you know when it’s funny, and everything’s flowing; you just know that you don’t want to interrupt the good thing. (laughs) You’re not really listening. You’re more reacting. It is really a conversation like that when you have some people that you are familiar with, and you can just talk around—you’re not really thinking of who to listen to, or who to concentrate on, because the whole group is making it happen. I don’t know. It’s a weird thing. I tend to not think about it much until somebody asks me.
RR: Yeah, the stupid intellectual gets into your face.
CG: (laughter) It’s good because, you know, I don’t really think about it, and it really just occurred to me that sometimes, I’m not actively listening to any one person, it’s just that something is happening, and you’re reinforcing it. So, it’s pretty complex—you’re processing everything, but you’re not necessarily listening in a critical way. You’re more listening in a reactive way. You’re filtering everything, and trying to process it as quickly as you can. Really, the less you think about it, the better.
RR: Let’s talk about how that conversation translated into the studio over time. Did moe. find it difficult, or just different, to have a conversation in the studio?
CG: It’s no fun. Once again, if you take the same situation, and you’re hanging out with a group of your friends, it’s a lot easier when you’re drinking beer on somebody’s porch to have a great conversation where everybody’s contributing. You take that and you put it in a public situation, or you go it into an institutional situation, where there are some other people listening in, people clam up, and the spontaneity can’t happen, but it’s also a comfort thing, especially when you’re in a real studio, which is great, and I love it, and I’m very comfortable in that situation, but, at the same time, you feel like you’re on the clock. Every minute is dollars out the window. You start to stress about things that shouldn’t be important when making art. That’s the one thing that we have contended with.
On the other hand, the first time we went into a real, proper studio with a producer, it was a great experience because we had a producer who had been around for a long time, worked with a lot of famous people, and we learned a lot. In just a couple of months, we got a crash course on all things studio. After a couple of albums, our comfort level went way up, and we just realized what worked better for us. And, then, we started to do weirder stuff like trying to do Wormwood.
RR: Yeah, you circumvented that process.
CG: Yeah. Yeah. We just personalized it, and a lot of people have done the same thing over the years, but we kind of put our own little twist on it because we have our own specific needs for what we want out of recordings like that.
Sticks and Stones, for example, finding the church, and setting up in there, and just waking up in the morning, rehearsing, and writing, and recording stuff was really comfortable and a great way to do it. But, at the same time, it’s kind of hard to write the material, and flesh it out really quickly, and have it be something that’s going to last. We had to strike a balance with that, as well.
We’re constantly trying to fine-tune that, and how to develop the material, and how to make the recording situation comfortable, and have it really sound like us. When you’ve spent so much of your career on the stage, that process can sometimes…mixing the two up is a little hard to do, and it’s always about finding the right balance.
RR: Let’s talk about that fine-tuning because you did a bit of that when you re-recorded the old songs for the new album, Smash Hits, Volume 1. Did you listen to it all the way through? What did you think of it?
CG: I did listen to it all the way through, and initially, we had chosen a lot of the songs, and we listened to them, and some of them sounded really dated, like some of the older material which had been recorded in ’94, or some of the songs on Fatboy or Headseed — some of that sounded a little bit dated. But, I like it. Really, a big part of what we wanted to do with Smash Hits was that we’re trying to put our best foot forward to present the music to people who are just being introduced to the band, or the music that we feel has had the strongest impact, live, on people. In that way, I think we chose the songs very well, and having a current version of some of those songs is a very good representation of who we are, and what are personality is. I’m really happy with it.
I really like the old recordings, but some of it makes you cringe a little bit. They are a little bit like baby pictures. (laughter) It’s a little embarrassing for them to be presented.
RR: Smash Hits is really sharp and consistently good. I like that fact that the tunes sound hot and modern, like they were just recorded on the spot in one long session.
CG: That’s great. That’s really good to hear. I love those songs, and we felt we owed it to people to try and have the best versions of them that we could for this purpose. And, then, they can go back, and do a little bit of archaeology, and find the original versions. (laughs) That’s another surprising element that they can find. I’m glad. It’s good to hear someone say that. I don’t think I’ve actually gotten any feedback like that from anybody.
RR: It is the 20th anniversary for moe. What are your feelings about how the band is playing, thus far, this year?
CG: Well, it’s been a lot of fun, and I think we’ve been playing really well. I think wearing the suits on stage makes us play better. (laughter)
RR: Really? How come?
CG: I don’t know. Maybe, we take ourselves a little more seriously. I don’t know what it is. Getting dressed up, and wearing a tie to work—I’m actually starting to get into it. It’s kind of fun.
RR: Maybe I should do that.
CG: Yeah, you know how some people work at home? They’ll actually put on a suit and tie to get the feeling of…I don’t know—there’s some kind of validation in there, or something, but yeah, we’re having fun playing a lot of material that we’ve written over the last 20 years.
It’s interesting. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Maybe, next year, we’ll just move on, and have a bunch of new material, or start dropping some of the old stuff from live sets. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t want to say anything to freak anybody out. I’m kind of making this stuff up. (laughs)
Playing this year has definitely been interesting, and it’s continuing to unfold. We’re still putting together Summer Camp, and moe.down, and the summer [dates], and we’re just milking everything out of it that we possibly can. (laughter) It’s kind of fun and surprising that we’ve been doing it for that long.
20 years ago, we played a Halloween party, and a bunch of cover tunes, and to see it turn into this—you can take things like that for granted, but this year, maybe, we’ve been forced to come to terms with it. (laughs) It’s interesting to see how we’ve progressed, and, also, as a result, on this tour, we’ve talking about all the crazy shit that’s happened to us over 20 years. And the stories keep coming, and a lot of it we forget, and, all of sudden, things start coming back. It’s pretty interesting, and, for me, it’s been pretty cool to realize that you’ve been able to have this extremely cool job, and to be doing it with your friends. It’s not always easy, but it’s been pretty damned rewarding.
AL SCHNIER – Part II
Jambands.com concludes its two-part series focused on 20 years of moe. with guitarist/keyboardist/singer/songwriter Al Schnier. In this part, Schnier discusses the key mental and physical attributes of a veteran live performer, the importance of outside solo projects upon the continuing work of moe., and that indefinable thing that only he can do when a man is confronted with an axe on stage—stand still, or rock the hell out.
RR: Let’s talk about the concept, prevalent in the music scene, especially amongst improvisational musicians, of not thinking too much on stage.
AS: It’s something that I learned about when I studied philosophy, and that I’ve read over time. I know that having that beginner’s mind, or having an open mind, and just being receptive to those things, being a blank slate, will allow me to be more receptive to those musical ideas. But, also, at the same time, I need to be an accomplished musician to be able to express myself any way I want to. It’s this weird dichotomy. It’s almost paradoxical. In this one camp, you have to be really accomplished and know all of the rules, but, at the same time, be willing to completely abandon that and forget everything, and be able to do both.
There are guys like Derek Trucks who just do that. Maybe, it’s innate. Maybe, it’s learned. I don’t know. It’s ridiculous how some people can do that. And, then, there are people like me who might be able to fake it from time to time. (laughs) Sometimes, I feel like I can get there. You have moments like that when everything is working. The band is on, you’re on, and the crowd is on, and you just have those moments. I think the fans know that, too. That’s why we all keep coming back. That’s why we love this scene so much because you know everything is in sync, and just works.
You may not necessarily feel that at a…even at a Who concert, necessarily, you know what I mean? Not to take anything away from that—I love the band—but for a show that’s got a pretty choreographed performance laid out, or Tom Petty, or Clapton, or any classic who clearly have earned their legendary status. Those shows are a different thing. It’s going to be a different kind of performance, or a different thing, that you get from it than you would from those moments of improvisation where everything is in sync.
RR: Moving from the mental to the physical aspects of playing a musical instrument, the last time we spoke for a feature was three years ago as The Conch was being released, and you were also battling tendonitis. How are you doing now?
AS: Oh, well, it’s under control. I guess the tendency to flair up is still there. The cool thing is that I’m aware of it now. The good thing was that I handled the whole thing through very organic and natural means. There were no cortisone shots, no surgery, and nothing invasive. I had a really great massage therapist who walked me through the whole thing, and, so, through a lot of muscle-release techniques and stretching, he was able to get me back on track. Now, I’m really aware of it.
The funny thing is that while I was going through this, I remember seeing a live broadcast of David Gilmour playing at Radio City [Music Hall in New York] when he did his recent On An Island tour. I was watching him play, and he almost has that Derek Trucks-like approach when he plays. It’s a very sort of Zen-like stance on stage. He’s peaceful, he’s relaxed, but he’s playing the most vicious and most beautiful notes (laughs). It’s a commanding performance, but he’s very relaxed. I was watching this, and, all of a sudden, I had this epiphany: I need to embrace this inner Gilmour. (laughter) Just really be aware of my posture, and relax a little bit more as I play.
But, then, a few weeks later, my wife and I went to see Neil Young play. (laughter) He was jumping around on stage.
RR: Hunched over.
AS: Hunched over like a caveman, just playing the life out of his guitar, and I said, “That’s me. That’s how I play the guitar.” And I love that. I love that visceral attack. I love that physical approach (laughs) to the instrument. I like both, but when I’m in those Neil Young moments, and I feel my arm tensing up, and I feel the pain setting in, I have to remember my inner Gilmour, relax a little bit, and take it down a notch. I think the thing is for the first fifteen years or more of playing in moe., I never did. I would keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. I did not care about the tension, or the pain, or whatever. That’s how I finally destroyed the tendons in my arm the first time. Now, I’m aware of it. It won’t happen again.
I’ll do yoga from time to time. I’ve been a pretty avid runner for years, and never really stretched properly. Sort of around the same time as I was dealing with my tendonitis, I couldn’t even sit cross-legged on the floor anymore. (laughs) I was just so tight that I couldn’t do it, and I had already sort of chalked it up to some old injury, or something, and that’s just the way things were. It turns out that through some stretching over the course of several months, now, I am limber enough that I can do that. Some things are just a matter of time. If I didn’t…who knows? Maybe, I would have needed hip replacement surgery, ultimately, or something else. I think so many things can be avoided if we are in tune with our bodies.
RR: I wanted to talk about an album that made my Top 5 for 2008—Al & the Transamericans’ This Day & Age. I was wondering about the importance of side projects to you because they carry weight for me as a listener. How important are those projects, and what do they bring back to moe., or to yourself as a musician?
AS: Well, you’re absolutely right. It’s essential to what I do. There’s no way that we can possibly fulfill all of our creative needs with moe., collectively. With the Transamericans, for example, I get to pursue my love of that kind of music—that rootsy, organic, American music. That stuff is sort of informed by the Band, Dylan, and the Dead—music that I just love so much. Those sounds, too. Even more importantly, I get to make those albums. That album This Day & Age, particularly, we made at my house, and I engineered and produced the whole thing. That, in itself, is a huge passion of mine, and just getting to do that is so fulfilling for me.
Working on all of Diane’s albums [Author’s Note: Diane Schnier is Al’s wife, and an accomplished singer/songwriter in her own right, whose latest release is The Fool (2009)], and getting to be her partner, and the engineer and producer for all of her stuff, it’s such a great outlet for me because her music is totally different from mine, and she does things that I could only hope to do musically. (laughs) I’ve always said it to her, and I’ll say it again: she’s a way better songwriter than I am. She always makes these choices that I would never make, and they are always better (laughs) than the ones that I would make—musically, in terms of her chords, the lyrics, and everything. I love it. I really love working with her.
When she gives me this free rein to do whatever I want, in terms of the production, to her songs like this great outlet for me—“We’re going to put Mellotron and sitar on this song because it will really bring out the better qualities in this thing,” or “We’re going to put a backwards guitar here.” She’s totally open to it, and she’s been so great in that regard.
Then, I can go back to moe., and say, “You know what would sound really good here? A sitar and a Mellotron. I had a lot of good experience using this microphone on a banjo.” Some of it’s because you have more experience with those sonic textures in your head. You spin through those musical ideas. Some of it is because those things have been fulfilled (laughs), I don’t have to torture moe. with making them add a sitar to a song.
So, you know, it goes both ways. I only wish there was more time in the day. There are so many more things that I want to do. I wish I had more time to just write songs all day long, and to pursue other musical outlets. Having come off this thing I want to make an album with Marco Benevento. [Author’s Note: January 22, at the WHY Benefit at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, the keyboardist, along with numerous guests sat in with moe.] It’s just things that I want to do. But will I ever have some time to do it? I don’t know. I don’t know if I have the time to make another Transamericans’ album at this point, but I think I have enough songs to do it. We haven’t played a show since our tour to support the album, so who knows? I still have half the songs done for the follow-up for the al.one album, but I haven’t had the time to make the album.
Right now, Diane and I are working on an album for her that is almost done. We just have to mix it at this point. The album will be finished, and we just finished up moe.’s Smash Hits album. Gotta finish that, gotta finish Diane’s album; then, maybe, I can focus on extracurricular recordings, again.
RR: We’ll come full circle. A chance for another decade or two for moe.?
AS: I don’t see why not. But…I mean…you never know. This wasn’t ever supposed to be a 20-year thing. This was a hobby, so who knows? I guess anything is possible. Things in the moe. camp couldn’t be better at this point. In this day and age, it’s remarkable to have a job for 20 years. When you think about having a band for 20 years, it’s unthinkable. And have families, too. When we’re on tour together, we still all go out to dinner together. On our days off, we’ll go catch a movie. We hang out together. We like each other, we spend time with each other, and everything is totally cool within the band, and kind of always has been. We’ve never had any substance abuse issues, or major catastrophes. There are no strong rivalries among band members. There’s nothing like that. Maybe, that’s why we’re still together after 20 years. But, then, maybe that’s why we’ve never been on the front of the National Enquirer, either.
