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moe. Shares Smash Hits

In a Jambands.com interview with Randy Ray last month, Al Schnier described moe.‘s forthcoming release. At that time, he explained, “We spent some time in the studio over the fall, and recently, in this break over the winter, re-recording some of the moe. classic songs for a new ‘hits’ album that will be coming out in the springtime,” Schnier says. “Originally, we were just going to use the original recordings, but then when we started putting them all together, the stuff from Fatboy and Headseed sounded so different from the stuff from Wormwood and The Conch. In the end, the versions had evolved so much, too. Why not just do updated versions of this stuff? Let’s just bang them out in the studio, and get really good, tight studio versions of these songs. So, we’ve done that with a lot of songs. Now, people will have an updated studio version of a lot of the classics.”

The ensuing disc, Smash Hits Volume One is now set for a June 1 release. Included on the album are new versions of such previously recorded songs as “Mexico,” “Saint Augustine” and “Spine of a Dog” along with a take on “Seat Of My Pants,” which has yet to appear on a studio record. All of the songs are accompanied by notes from the musicians, as Al Schnier, for instance, describes “Yodelittle” as “technically the 1st song I ever brought to the band & the 1st one we ever finished together…The cool thing about Yodelittle is that it may have been our 1st long song, from the start. Others evolved into jams (i.e. Dr. Graffenberg), but this one began as a jam. I’d just gotten a new echo pedal for my guitar and was inspired instantly. The delay is gone but the song remains…”

This weekend moe. is at the The Tabernacle in Atlanta, with shows on Friday and Saturday.