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Moe.

moe. is an American jam band, formed at the University at Buffalo in 1990. The current lineup includes: Rob Derhak (bass, vocals), Al Schnier (guitar, vocals, keyboard), Chuck Garvey (guitar, vocals), Vinnie Amico (drums), and Jim Loughlin (percussion).

Moth

The song Moth, off of the album No Doy, has a part in it where the band stops and Al Schneir says "You know it might be difficult to walk a straight line when you're half in the bag and three-sheets-to-the-wind, so to speak ... But to fly?" before going back to the song. When played live, Schnier will sometimes say this at the part, but more often the bass player, Rob Derhak, will say something amusing. Typical comments are the Itsy-Bitsy Spider song or "We don't need no stinking badges!" The following are a collection of the more humourous comments with links to download the song (the band openly allows taping and trading of their live shows)
  • Sometimes it might be difficult to be in the lobby of your hotel in your underwear without your glasses on. It also might be difficult to tell the women behind the counter that you think you're in the band moe., and you don't know where your room is. - Al on October, 5, 1996.

Sourced

  • [moe.] is an amalgamation of a wide variety of the history of rock, all regurgitated and recycled through the eyes, ears, hands, whatever of the guys in our band and all of that with a sense of adventure, a sense of humor, also a constant desire to push the envelope. All in this arena of taking chances, improvising live, and making things up on the spot.

  • It comes down to being comfortable enough onstage, and confident enough with our instruments, for our personality to come through.

  • You can’t really preemptively decide the course of any jam. You need to let the music determine where you’re going.
  • Al Schnier, Genres Unlimited by Marc Shapiro of Diamondbackonline.com

  • Pretty soon, we were playing four nights a week, and the band had become our lives, and we needed to make the choice to do it full time. Then came that uncomfortable call to my folks to tell them I was quitting my job.

  • Our own individual musical tastes evolved a great deal, and the 'moe. sound' has become more refined without sacrificing its defining improvisations. There's something to be said for good live music where people take chances and go for it.

  • I would be floored and amazed if we ever win a Grammy award or end up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But if we can make some year-end Top Ten lists and continue to play music that makes people happy, that's more than I ever hoped for as a musician.

  • It helps having five really different musicians. We push and pull the band in different directions, and that’s what keeps it interesting. It can be very tricky working in the confines of a five-person democratic group when you’re trying to be creative together. Everybody has equal input, yet you don’t want the song to sound like five different voices.

  • Every year is a little bit better than the last. It would be great to do something groundbreaking that redirects the evolution of popular music before this is all over.

  • As we learn more about autism, and as our kids grow older, we are finding that we as parents and our children need that same high quality and progressive resource beyond the Promise Program's objective. The Kelberman Center is fulfilling that need.


  • Not finishing college. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. And that goes for the band too.
    • moe. manager John Topper when asked biggest mistake a first time manager can make, Taking on Topper

  • All gains. We got to play in front of a crowd that enjoys live music. We got to be affiliated with legends of the jamband scene. We got pretty good catering. We got exposure to a lot of fans who have heard about moe. but had never seen them. And on top of that, I want to say that the Allman Brothers Band and family treated moe. great. They treated us better than an opening act.
    • moe. manager John Topper when asked about moe. opening for the Allman Brothers in summer 2005, Taking on Topper

  • I think it sucks that Phish quit. I think because of their size and success they brought new people continuously into the scene who then checked out other bands. Overall, I think it’s harder to pick up fans now that Phish is gone.

  • It comes back to their personal lives. Everybody has a different agenda with their families, whether it’s getting married or having a kid or a kid’s birthday or being home for Halloween trick or treating. That’s the hardest thing to balance out. Somebody wants to take family vacation in January, somebody wants to go in April and somebody wants May. It’s balancing five guys personal lives with their work lives and making it fair for all of us. I think I’m lucky, though, because the individual guys in moe. realize that there’s four other people who depend on them. As well as the seven, eight, nine other people they employ.

  • They might egg us on to push the outer walls of a song further and further. They'll say, 'Yeah, do it, we want you to do something new.' Well, we want to see something new, too.... More magic happens when you do things like that than when one person makes the decisions.
    • Chuck Garvey on the fans, Caught in a Jam by Clayton Collins of The Christian Science Monitor.

  • We've been getting more popular, sure, but we haven't grown as fast as some other bands. I think that's because artistically we make a specific effort not to become caricatures or regurgitate what we do.

  • We thought we were done [with the new 2006 album], but we're not. We're going back into the studio to adjust a few things, and we'll probably end up replacing a couple songs that we were originally going to put on there ... Sometimes it's hard to get enough time [between the album and touring]. What we really need is a second band.

  • Frank Zappa was the rock guy who plastered classical, highbrow, blues, lowbrow, reggae and gawd knows what else into a style uniquely his own. Beside the juxtaposition of many diverse, seemingly unrelated styles, he possessed a strongly developed compositional 'signature' consisting of heretofore unimagined rhythms and melodies typically performed at knuckle busting, blowtorch-to-the-head speed. His guitar tone and style are immediately recognizable- honking, stinking, loud and delicate with flourishing, ornate, melodic, knuckle-dragging inspiration in every note.
    • Chuck Garvey, Relix Magazine, Issue: April/May 2006, The Many Minds of Frank Zappa edited by Richard Gehr.
 
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