Fans can thank the power of radio for inspiring the jam band moe.
Founding members guitarist Chuck Garvey, bassist Rob Derhak and guitarist Al Schnier, all come from the
Utica, NY area.
The economically struggling factory town may not have a lot going for it, but what it had when the
musicians were growing up was "a great FM radio station," Schnier said in a recent telephone
interview.
All three listened to WOUR, he said. The station did more than play the hits of the day. It played entire
albums and was serious about exploring and delineating "the lineages" of rockers and their
music, he said. "It was just great to have informed deejays telling you as impressionable kids
what’s going on."
The station also sponsored shows, some free featuring local bands, others in the city’s two largest
concert venues featuring acts such as Peter Gabriel, Stevie Ray Vaughn, ZZ Top and Ozzy Osbourne.
"You couldn’t sleep two days before the concert," Schnier said.
All those influences, all that excitement of being young and discovering music, all flow into the music
of moe. In addition to Garvey, Derhak and Schnier the band includes drummer Vinnie Amico, who also lived
for a time in Utica, and guitarist Jim Loughlin.
The jam band will perform Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. at the Cla-Zel in Bowling Green.
Though Garvey, Derhak and Schnier all had met growing up, they didn’t really get to know each other until
they attended the University of Buffalo where moe. took shape after Garvey and Derhak played a Halloween
party in 1989 as Five Guys Named Moe after the Louis Jordan hit.
The band from the start was "an amalgamation," Schnier said, of the Hot Chili Peppers, Primus,
Frank Zappa and others.
By 1994, the band was playing all the college towns in the region and making regular trips to Manhattan.
Moe. was doing well, but "the band was encroaching on our lives." Some members were flunking
in college, Schnier got fired. "Our girlfriends were at their wits end," he said.
So the band had a meeting: "We would either dedicate ourselves to the band or have it as a hobby and
focus on our lives. It was really, really obvious that we really liked playing in the band."
So they dropped out of school and pulled up roots and moved in together in Albany, NY.
Schnier, who is now back living outside Utica,
said the decision paid off. The band has extended its reach across the country and overseas.
It remains a tight-knit outfit that works out songs through consensus. "It has to work for all of us
for it to work," he said. "It’s the only system of checks and balances we have… This has to
be a shared enthusiasm."
That energy is communicated to the bands legion of fans. Even when moe. travels to Japan, they see
familiar faces, Schnier said.
They’ve always cultivated a close relationship. For one thing, they encouraged fans to tape shows and
trade them. Now they will sell flash drives of the recording off the sound board right after a show
ends. "That sort of propagation of the music was good for us, good for the fans, good for the
scene," Schnier said. "It imparts good will." That has paid off in moe. attracting
"so many dedicated fans, long-time fans, hard core fans who come back again and again" and
that’s "much more important to us as a band" than any loss in CD sales.
Those fans are demanding though. "We’ve carved out a niche win which our fans expect us to play a
different show every night," he said. "We can go five, six nights without repeating a song,
and we’d better or the Internet police will get after us."
Not that moe. is inclined to be complacent. "It’s always been a goal of ours to try to make
everything better," Schnier said.
The band will isolate one element of its performance and focus on developing it. For awhile they focused
on improvisation and how to communicate during "what is infamously known as a question mark
jam." Instead of a setlist, the band will decide what song to start with and after that will be a
question mark. That period of development "really helped us to rein in how we improvise and how we
get to the next song."
Now, he said, they are working on arranged themes and riffs that they can use to bridge parts of a show
and give it greater unity.
"The idea for us," Schnier said, "is always to keep growing and always tweaking the
design."
