Features

moe. : Still Buzzing the Tower (Relix Revisited)

As work grinded on for The Conch, the band kept its cool publicly, even in the face of some unwarranted criticism.

Schnier, who by all accounts maintains the most sanguine of outlooks when it comes to moe., acknowledges, “It took us a while to get The Conch out and there was a period there where we were accused of coasting. ‘Just how long has it been since Wormwood came out?’ Little did people know we were working very hard on finishing The Conch and we finished it twice before we released it. We were working the whole time, we just weren’t making it available for them to hear. So even though we weren’t necessarily performing new material in front of an audience, that doesn’t mean that we were necessarily coasting.”

Again with the C-word, which is likely less of a reflection about work ethic than an affable personal disposition and a loose stage demeanor that often belies the group’s effort.

As Garvey explains, “I don’t think we’re an overly careerist band where we feel we have to do whatever it takes to claw our way to our top. We can be dissatisfied with the way things are going and we look at it as business, yet we don’t live in the corporate world where you have to compete and kill and slay everything in your path.”

Umphrey’s McGee guitarist Brendan Bayliss affirms, “I really can’t stress enough how instrumental moe. has been in my career. I’ve met a lot of musicians and there’s nobody like those guys when it comes to being down-to-earth people not caught up in the rock star bullshit.

“They’re content with what they’ve created and how they’ve done it, and they should be. I don’t want to name other bands by example, but moe. took a different approach where other bands would say, ‘Screw you!’ and not really pay attention to anyone they’re pushing out of the way.”

This spirit informs the music and infuses its presentation in such a way that it has become an agent of the band’s longevity, along with the group’s songwriting chops, felicitous musical voice and collective improvisational chemistry.

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Starting in January, with a performance at New York City’s Roseland Ballroom, the band took the stage donning formal menswear.

“It had to do with our 20th anniversary and celebrating 20 years together,” says Derhak. “The first part of the idea came from playing with Del McCoury and the fact that he’s been [playing great and dressing nicely] for 40, 50 years and we thought, ‘Well if they can do it then we can do it. We should try to look respectable, too.’ Plus, we’ve always had this fantasy: what if the band could play and just ‘nine-to-five’ it like everybody else, Monday through Friday. And it’s sort of a little take off on that.”

Percussionist Jim Loughlin admits to “mixed feeling about the suits. They’re nice looking suits but I went to Catholic school for ten years so I thought I was done with that.” Loughlin, first joined the group in 1991 as the band’s drummer only to depart prior the Sony signing—“It was a rash decision; it felt like it could become a lifelong commitment and I just couldn’t deal with it”—and then returned in 1999 to complement the group’s new drummer Vinnie Amico, who came onboard in 1996. He adds, “[The suits] can be difficult to play in and they’re really, really hot. Plus, I’ve always been a ‘walk on the stage in what I’m wearing kind of guy.’ We all pretty much have been that way.”

This is part of the point, too. The effort to gussy up the band is so striking because one of the group’s hallmarks has long been the lack of separation between the band and audience. When the band members bust each other’s chops between songs onstage, that’s the way they behave offstage. Loughlin offers, “I think it makes us more relaxed not to think of ourselves as anything different than the other people in the room—we’re just the ones who have instruments.”