Photo by Stuart Levine
Making it to the 25-year mark is an accomplishment for any band – but how many bands halfway into their third decade together are still challenging themselves? Let’s face it: most artists who have had any degree of success (at least enough to make a living out of what they’re doing) oftentimes hit a plateau where it gets pretty easy to play the stuff that sells the tickets and pays the bills. No need to get too risky as long as the fans are yelling for those oldies-but-goodies, right? Right.
And then there’s moe.
Since 1989 moe. has been playing their own kind of music, based on a solid foundation of rock (and roll) and laced with elements of everything from prog jazz to Vee-Eff-Dubya-hall-on-a-Saturday-night twang to rattle-the-dashboard-speaker roar – in other words, the very definition of the word jamband. And perhaps the best thing about the quintet is that the meaning of the phrase “their own kind of music” continues to evolve – without ever losing the vibe of what makes a moe. song a moe. song.
The latest offering from bassist/vocalist Rob Derhak, Jim Loughlin on percussion and vibes, drummer Vinnie Amico and the guitar/vocal tag team of Al Schnier and Chuck Garvey is the new Sugar Hill release No Guts No Glory. On a day when he was actually sitting still, Chuck Garvey was kind enough to share some time to discuss the making of the new album, including some thoughts on improvising (in both music and life itself), melding acoustic elements into an electric setting, and a wonderful bedtime story.
The band hosts its fifteenth annual moe.down this weekend.
BR: Chuck, if I have the backstory of No Guts No Glory correct, you guys originally intended to record a really rootsy, acoustic-based album. Somehow you ended up working with a producer – Dave Aron – who’s done stuff with Tupac and Snoop Dog, laying down this fully plugged-in collection of songs that’s as moe. as moe. gets. I guess my question is, how did that happen?
CG: Yeah, well … (laughs) I think a lot of people were surprised by that combination of events. But Dave has also recorded U2; he worked with Prince for awhile; he’s had a lot of experience with a lot of different styles. But really, he started out as a Deadhead from New Jersey, you know?
And a longtime friend of the band, right?
Yeah, we’ve known Dave for at least ten years. He comes to shows; he knows what it’s like to see us play live; he knows our fan base. To a certain extent, it was good to have someone who was so familiar with us to start with, you know what I mean?
Rather than having to get up to speed with who you were before he could begin thinking about the music itself.
Right. So, it was a case of applying what he already knew to what he thought would be best for us – and help us get the most out of what we were doing.
So what did flip the switch for you guys? What happened with the original intent of a bunch of rootsy tunes?
Well, alright … (laughs) This is how it happened. We did our last album, What Happened To The La Las with a producer named John Travis. Once we did the electric album, we thought we’d make a really stripped-down, acoustic version as a cool bonus disc – just for fun and to see the songs in a different light.
A lot of people responded really positively to the acoustic disc. We try to play acoustic live sets when we can – it’s a fun thing to do for us. So, we thought, “Why don’t we write and record some music with the intent of having that acoustic flavor on everything ?”
Our original plan was to record with Larry Campbell at Levon Helm’s Barn – we’d played a Midnight Ramble there; it’s a great place. We had this idea of just recording to tape; just set a bunch of limitations by saying you’re going to record an acoustic album … and hopefully, with those limitations, you create something that’s different and unique to you, you know?
We were all set to go – and then it started coming apart time-wise with everybody’s schedules and the studio time. It got to the point where it just wasn’t doable – we had to scrap the idea.
In the meantime, we’d all been working on demos for songs that we wanted to pursue for that acoustic album. We had these demos … and decided we’d go in a different direction – “Let’s call Dave and see if he’s up for it.”
We took the songs that we had written with the acoustic album in mind and decided to go for it – make an electric album. At the same time, I think every song has touches of acoustic guitar and other instruments that we don’t necessarily play live all the time. We included that flavor with our normal electric sound. We came at it from a different direction because of what the situation dictated.
Sometimes those things get handed to you, reminding you that you’re not in charge … and you have to be ready to go with the flow.
That’s exactly what happens: you have to improvise in music; you have to improvise in life.
You mentioned applying the acoustic touches to the electric sound. I always go back to what Keith Richards said a long time ago – something like, “Dig into any good rock ‘n’ roll record and somewhere in there you’ll probably find an acoustic guitar driving the thing.”
It’s very true. And I think a lot of musicians write with an acoustic guitar or a piano because they want to make sure the song has depth when it’s performed simply, rather than a lot of decorations, you know?
It does the raise the question of performing these songs live: the band’s sound has great depth, but there are only so many sets of hands. These songs have some wonderful sonic textures – those layers of electric and acoustic sound you mentioned. How will you approach them live?
One of us will play acoustic and the other will play electric in order to get that blend. We used to have songs where that was an element – especially with Al. Even before this recording, he would play the acoustic guitar and mandolin onstage every once in awhile. But since recording this, we’ve gotten back to including those elements more.
In the past, moe. might release a studio album and fans would be singing along on the first spin because you’d been playing the songs live for awhile. How about the tunes on No Guts No Glory ?
About half-and-half; on the deluxe version, I think there are 14 songs total – 7 are brand-new and 7 are songs we played on the road. Some more than others, certainly … like … “White Lightning Turpentine” we’d only played 10 or 15 times. But then there are songs like “Billy Goat” that’ve been in the rotation now for a couple of years.
I grew up with vinyl and I’m sure you’ll understand what I’m saying when I refer to thinking about an album as a record – in terms of sequencing and song-to-song flow. No Guts No Glory feels like a record to me. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a good album on shuffle (laughter) but it feels like these songs are meant to be the way they are.
We definitely feel that sequencing is a kind of art. I think the sequencing of every studio album we’ve released has been done thinking of it as an album. We’d think in terms of time constraints and have a “side A” and a “side B,” even though it’s going to be on a CD or digital files – we’d make sure there was a certain flow to it. Or think of it as a setlist, where it has to have a certain momentum at the beginning; a certain momentum in the middle – and then a conclusion, you know? So if you to listen to it all the way through, it makes sense.
It seems now that very few people do that, because there’s so much music out there. At the same time, for all of us, we’re of that mindset where we’d consume this thing as a whole, rather than taking out one track and throwing out the rest.
Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking on our part to think that people will listen to the whole album. (laughs)
Man, I hope that never ends – at least in my lifetime. How about we talk some specifics on a few songs?
Sure!
You mentioned “White Lightning Turpentine” – it tickled me how it announces itself with that rolling, burbling acoustic riff – but it really becomes a moe. tune the moment you first hear Jim’s mallets.
Absolutely.
Do You think it’s fair and/or correct to refer to Jim as one of the band’s secret weapons? His work is amazing … like a sous chef who’s in the background throwing all these weird and cool spices over everyone’s shoulders into the pot.
Yeah! (laughs) It’s a very signature thing to hear Jim on the vibraphone or a xylophone … there are very few people who have that as an element of what they do. He’s definitely a secret weapon in that regard.
His percussion work, as well – combined with Rob on bass and Vinnie’s drums … that’s some kind of serious rhythm machine, right there.
Definitely! (laughs)
There are a number of shapeshifts in that song, even though it’s only something like four-and-a-half minutes long. That’s one of the many things you guys do so well: morphing from this vibe/this rhythm/this melody to something else to something else to something else in four-and-a-half minutes without it sounding busy. Where does that come from within the band?
I think a lot of that comes from both improvising live and writing the songs; composing the songs in a way where you feel that as you progress, it’s going somewhere – it’s a journey. Incorporating shifts in time, feel and even style is something that announces different moods or different meanings throughout the song. It’s also a way to get a little more depth out of what could be a very bare bones song on its own lyrically; you can write a lot more drama, a lot more scope into it with music.
I think people who listen to music – and have the patience and love for it – want it to unfold like that. It’s like reading a book or watching a movie. So, hopefully, those kind of changes or that kind of approach inspires creativity in other people … and maybe they make up their own story. (laughs) Those are the kind of fun elements that we appreciate as musicians or fans of music.
You compared listening to a song to watching a movie: “Same Old Story” – that should be a theme song to a movie. It hasn’t been made yet, but I want to see it.
What kind of movie would it be, do you think?
Oh, man … like one of those old, classic James Bond flicks with some Spaghetti Western elements and some surf on the side. It’s a frigging kaleidoscope of moods.
Cool! (laughs)
The suite “Silver Sun” is an amazing trip. How developed was that when you guys went into the studio?
It was completely developed. We did a Halloween show a few years ago where we asked fans to give us suggestions for a theme; it ended up being “The Electric Lemoe.nade Acid Test” – our version of Acid Test-era psychedelia. We also said each member of the band would write a song for that night and we’d perform them.
Al wrote “Silver Sun” for that show and some of the elements you may hear – like the beginning jam that’s sort of Allman Brothers-esque or the middle part which is very “Wish You Were Here”- or “Echoes”- or whatever-era Pink Floyd. It’s very Floydian. It’s got those elements of psychedelia in it; that was the goal we set for ourselves.
We’ve been performing “Silver Sun” like that since and we finally said, “Let’s get a really good studio version.” We did the same with “Billy Goat” and “Mar De Ma” and a couple of other songs – we just wanted to get really pristinely-recorded-but-slightly-imperfect (laughter) live versions with the whole band playing and try to capture the energy.
Those songs definitely benefit from being played live in front of an audience, but it was very fun to do them in the studio – getting all those elements in there and having it come off as something that was exciting and fun to play. It was pretty much as we’d been playing live, give or take.
”Calyphornya” wouldn’t have been the same song without that acoustic rhythm guitar pushing it.
Yeah, definitely. Al plays acoustic on that when we play it live.
Can you play “Blonde Hair And Blue Eyes” without grinning?
Ahhh … no. Especially when we get to the part where I get to yell, “_Punch out your lights!_” (laughter)
Is “The Pines And The Apple Tree” an example of the approach you might’ve taken for the whole album if you’d ended up in Levon’s Barn?
Yeah … you know, that probably is the closest to what we were proposing to do. And that was the one song out of all 14 where Dave Aron said, “Let’s look at this one in a completely different way.” That was the one time where most of the band didn’t track it at the same time. Dave said, “Start with the acoustic guitar and we’ll build on top of it.”
So I played the acoustic guitar and we layered elements on top of it at specific points in the song. We arranged it as a band, but then we recorded it that way.
It was interesting – definitely a different approach to recording it.
Wow – the give and take of that song feels live.
The elements kind of come in and out of it and lend themselves to that approach. Sometimes the groove of the song benefits from drums, bass and maybe guitar playing together at the same time, all slightly elastic, you know what I mean? Things speed up and slow down just a little bit. On this song, we were just coming at it from a different direction. It keeps things interesting for us.
So here’s probably the very most important question about the album: who’s that speaking at the beginning of “Billy Goat”?
That’s Rob’s father.
What a wonderful little bedtime story. (laughter)
Yeah! Rob recorded his Dad telling a bunch of stories from his childhood and grabbed that little quote to put on the beginning of “Billy Goat.” The song was kind of inspired by his dad.
What’s that great line? “Flatter than …”
“Knocked him out – flatter’n piss on a plate!” (laughter) Rob’s Dad grew up in Canada … and you know what? I think he may have lived up your way – in Maine – for a while.
Ah … this all makes sense now. (laughter)
*****
If Brian Robbins had a billy goat, he’d keep him tied up over at www.brian-robbins.com.
