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moe., Wednesday, Jan. 27, 8 p.m., Sherman Theater
(524 Main St., Stroudsburg). Tickets: $28 general admission via shermantheater.com or box office at 570.420.2808 Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, noon-6 p.m.
Info: moe.org, shermantheater.com, 570.420.2808
by Michael LelloWeekender Editor
With a two-guitar lineup, punchy tunes and three different singers, there has always been a classic-rock feel to moe.’s music. Now, with 20 years under its belt, it might be time to consider moe. itself a classic-rock band.
Growing from humble beginnings as a University of Buffalo bar band to a brief major-label deal with Sony to its current elder-statesman status on the jam-band scene, moe. is celebrating its 20th anniversary, which will include a return trip to the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg Wednesday, Jan. 27.
That the band has its own record label, its own staff at home and on the road and tour buses instead of a cramped van has not made the job easier, necessarily. Just different, said guitarist/vocalist Al Schnier.
“I’d like to say that it’s easier, but I think the situation just changes, or the things you deal with, you know what I mean?” he said. “Life was much easier when we made no money and had nothing to lose. But the work for us was a lot harder then for us, personally, when we had to move all the gear and had to drive through the night through a snowstorm and then get drunk again.”
moe. is set to kick off the 20th anniversary with a two-night run at New York City’s Roseland Ballroom this weekend, with the first night slated as a benefit for World Hunger Year, aka WHY.
moe. and WHY announced this week that they would direct some of the proceeds of the Jan. 22 show to relief efforts in Haiti. While moe. often includes surprise guests during its shows, it has announced at least some of the sit-ins for that event: Allman Brothers Band drummer Butch Trucks, Marco Benevento, Jeff Austin of Yonder Mountain String Band and banjo pioneer Danny Barnes, known as a member of Bad Livers.
WHY was founded by Harry Chapin and has often partnered with musicians, including Yoko Ono. Schnier said moe. — which has a history of charitable efforts, including its 2005 tsunami relief show at the Roseland which featured Trey Anastasio, as well working for autism awareness and voter-registration group Headcount — plans some additional outreach in conjunction with WHY during its 2010 shows.
SNOE., THROE. AND MOE.
The winter tour will wind through all parts of the country, including Boston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta, before it culminates in the snoe.down, a three-day music and winter sports festival in the Vermont ski towns of Killington and Rutland. In April, moe. will host its inaugural tropical throe.down on a beach in the Dominican Republic, and in May it will perform at the 10th Summer Camp Music Festival, which the band co-founded and will this year include the Avett Brothers and Gov’t Mule, among others.
And you can expect another installment of the annual moe.down festival this Labor Day weekend in Turin, N.Y. moe.down has attracted up to 12,000 fans and, in addition to headlining sets by moe., has featured a widely diverse list of performers, including The Flaming Lips, Perry Farrell, The Violent Femmes, Cake, Matthew Sweet, Method Man and Redman.
With lengthy tours and festivals it not only performs at but also plans and organizes, there wasn’t much time left away from moe. for Schnier, fellow guitarist/vocalist Chuck Garvey, bassist/vocalist Rob Derhak, drummer Vinnie Amico and multi-instrumentalist Jim Loughlin. So the quintet took a hiatus following the 2008 moe.down before returning in January of last year.
“People might not realize that if we go on tour for even just three weeks and come home, the first two or three weeks that you spend at home is just catching up from things that you missed, whether it’s dealing with your mail or fixing stuff,” said Schnier. “We’re all homeowners and have families. … And we don’t have butlers or personal assistants. We’re not rich, and we don’t live in giant mansions. We’re pretty normal at the end of the day, so we have lives to maintain.”
When some bands announce a hiatus, it’s often a red flag on the way to an inevitable breakup. But Schnier said part of the goal for the hiatus always was to return to the road and the studio.
“There was no dissention in the ranks, no alcohol or drug problem,” he said. “We still liked moe., and we still liked each other.”
ANTHOLOGY OF MOE.
To mark its two decades as a band, moe. has also begun compiling an anthology for a release date later this year.
“We’re putting out a collection of our. …,” Schnier said, then paused, laughing, “ … our favorite songs, I guess. I hate to say our greatest hits, because we never really had a hit.”
The band feels it doesn’t have a definitive CD that represents all facets of its career and makes a good starting point for a new fan, so it decided on the anthology. The original intent was to pull from the archives, but moe. decided to re-record some of its material — it had no choice when it came to some of the songs Sony owns the rights to — or record longtime stage favorites that never got the studio treatment.
“One of the songs is ‘Seat Of My Pants,’ which has become a staple of our live shows,” Schnier shared. “I think we recorded a demo version for (2001 studio album) ‘Dither,’ but we never did anything with it. So we recorded a real version of the song, the whole full-length version of it.”
Fans can also count on a “completely different” version of “St. Augustine,” a song originally included on moe.’s 1996 Sony debut “No Doy,” Schnier said.
After releasing its early work on the band’s own Fatboy Records, moe. signed with Sony and released “No Doy” and 1998’s “Tin Cans and Car Tires.” When Sony dropped the band from its roster, moe. brought back Fatboy, releasing “Dither,” “Wormwood,” “The Conch,” 2008’s “Sticks and Stones” and a host of live albums.
Along the way, moe. gathered critical acclaim for its albums and lengthy, improvisational shows. Rolling Stone, particularly its veteran writer David Fricke, took a liking to moe.’s music, offering glowing reviews of the albums and naming Schnier and Garvey to his “Top 20 New Guitar Gods” list in 2007.
ALL ROADS LEAD TO … NEPA?
While moe.’s members grew up in Utica, N.Y., and formed during their college years, the band has more Northeastern Pa. ties than you’d expect.
Its archivist, Dr. Stan Lobitz, is a Kingston-based doctor; its “Warts and All, Vol. 1” live album was recorded at the Scranton Cultural Center; and a slew of other NEPA venues — from the defunct Sea-Sea’s and Harveys Lake Amphitheater to Toyota Pavilion at Montage, the F.M. Kirby Center and the Sherman — have played host to moe. shows.
Schnier also fondly recalls a 1984 concert he saw in our area.
“I remember as an impressionable teen going to see the Jerry Garcia Band in Moosic. He played at this little corrugated aluminum building in that amusement park there,” he said of the since-closed Rocky Glen Amusement Park, adding that he often stops to eat at the Dragonfly Caf� in Hazleton when his family heads South for vacations. “It’s still one of my favorite shows.”
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