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DOIN' 90 THE ENTIRE WAY: Rob Derhak and moe. hit the road... again.

by Jesse Jarnow

The perpetual motion of moe. might appear abnormal at first glance. At this point for the band, though, it's practically routine. A quick recap: Following the release of the band's second major label effort (and fifth album), entitled "Tin Cans and Car Tires", the band hit the road for a long fall tour, slowly beginning the transition from mid-sized and large clubs to small theaters. In addition to the birth of guitarist/vocalist Al Schnier's son Benjamin in August, the moe. family was further expanded with the arrival of bassist/vocalist Rob Derhak's son "Fast" Eddie mid-tour.

Following a triumphant New Year's Eve show during which the band managed to pack Philadelphia's cavernous Electric Factory, the band took a few weeks "off". Use the term loosely. Al ended up on the road for a short tour with his new side endeavor, Al and the TransAmericans (see Al Goes TransAmerican from the December issue). Fresh on the heels of that, the band holed up at one of their numerous secret bunkers along the eastern seaboard to prepare for their spring outing.

When the band hit the stage for a stealth gig at the Stone Coast Brewery in Portland, Maine, moe.rons were in for a surprise: a five-piece version of moe.. Supplanting Derhak, Schnier, guitarist/vocalist Chuck Garvey, and drummer Vinnie Amico, was former moe. and Yolk drummer Jim Loughlin (aka #2) who had recently played bass on the Al and the TransAmericans tour. Stationed at a master control just next to Vinnie, Jim held forth on a wide array of percussion, as well as flute, melodica (that keyboard thingee that one blows into), and even acoustic guitar.

The quintet snaked its way across the country and back again from the beginning of February to the end of March on what was dubbed the No Hard Feelings tour. The band continued moving into larger venues. In addition to a variety of bust-outs, the band added a greater depth to their sound - a trend started on New Year's Eve - by adding a variety of new instrumentation and arrangements to spice up old songs. After a show at Cleveland's Odeon on March 21st, the band headed home for a few well-deserved weeks off.

On the morning of April 9th, I spoke to Rob Derhak from his home in Maine, just before he took off for the evening's gig in Boston, and the next leg of the tour which will take the band into the midwest, through the southeast, and back home again by the end of May. Plans for the rest of the year have been shaping up recently too. Periodic studio time is planned (see below interview), multiple weeks of rehearsal are scheduled, and, to cap it off, the band will be playing at Woodstock '99 -- a festival in, uh, the "spirit" of the original to be held in upstate New York during the last weekend of July. Perhaps the only independent band on the bill, moe. will join a bevy of big name rock acts such as Aerosmith, Metallica, Bush, the Chemical Brothers, Alanis Morrisette, Sheryl Crow, George Clinton, and others.

JJ: The first question for you today is what made you wanna rock?

RD: (laughs) Lack of girls.

JJ: How did the Woodstock thing come about?

RD: The truth or the fantasy part?

JJ: Either/or.

RD: We were so good they had to get us. (laughs) We've been working with Don Law for a while and we just have a relationship with them. It's our hometown, basically, where we all grew up. It made sense for them to put us there, I guess. It's not like we're headlining or anything.

JJ: Do you feel like anymore of a big rock star than you did, say, before you were asked?

RD: (laughs) No, not exactly.

JJ: How was the first leg of the tour?

RD: It was great, I had a blast. It was fun playing with Jim. We actually really enjoyed ourselves... not that we hate what we're doing. Even though we were on the road for seven weeks, which is kind of long to be away from home, especially when you have kids, we had a really good time. It was great for me except I got sick once, for like three days, three gigs right in a row, and that kinda sucked.

JJ: Do any moments, musical or otherwise, stick out?

RD: Yeah, sure...

JJ: Good answer. Very lucid.

RD: There was a lot of stuff that was interesting. I thought Cleveland was pretty wild. I couldn't believe the crowd we had there. We've never had that kind of crowd in Cleveland before. Musically, there were a couple of times, like... Meat seemed to be the best song we were playing the whole tour. We'd really tear it up. We've doing this thing in that and Brent Black, where instead of where in Brent Black I used to just take a solo, we've been doing it so it's a percussion/drums thing, and then a solo. It's been more of a collaborative thing. That seems to stick out for me, on a couple of occasions. One night in Chapel Hill, Meat was really good. That really stuck in my head

JJ: How much was the whole group dynamic changed by having Jim back in the band?

RD: We fight a lot more... (laughs)... It's been really cool. Jim's a really good guy. Him and Vinnie get along great so it wasn't like any kind of weird drummer jealousy thing going on. I think it's made us listen even more than we do normally to what everyone else is doing because Jim has to make sure and Vinnie has to make sure that they're not stepping on each other's toes for drum fills. I'm kind of in that circle. Me and Vinnie kinda have this going, after two and a half years, where we know when not to do a fill and let the other guy go. Now we had to put another person into that mix. You really have to keep your ears open.

JJ: Have you had to change what you've been doing specifically at all to handle this?

RD: Yeah, I tone it back a little. I've been toning it back more and more as I play trying to take more of a role as a bass player and a singer and not so much crazy-step-on-everybody's-toes-slap-funk boy. I try to keep the groove going a little bit better.

JJ: How much difference do you generally notice in the band from tour to tour?

RD: How much difference...?

JJ: Between the way you're interacting, between the way you guys are improvising... that sorta stuff.

RD: From tour to tour, there's this dichotomy between the guitar players that I notice. One time Chuck seems to be the dominant player and the next tour Al's the dominant player. It's sort of like a "Lord Of The Flies" thing going on. (laughs)

JJ: Kill the pig, slit his throat, spill his blood... Isn't Al a vegan? (laughs)

RD: Who has the conch for that week...

JJ: Do you guys talk about how the band is evolving at all?

RD: Yeah. We talk about it. I know that we want to try changing a little bit and getting more instrumentation involved in what's going on. Like, Al wants to play more mando... Not just that. Al's talking about maybe bringing his keyboard along next time and trying to work that into a couple of tunes if he can play it well enough. We want to develop our sound. We just want more, I guess. We want to do what you can do recording... we want to be able to do that live. Chuck's talking about trying to work his sax into a couple of things. I've been writing these tunes that are all like these 70s rocker tunes. For some reason they just have this KISS-type feel. I think you just kinda evolve. You don't really talk about. There are things that you wanna try doing, but there's this evolution that you can't really control. It's just how you're feeling at the time.

JJ: You guys didn't start out as a jam band, did you...?

RD: Not really. We didn't really know what the hell we were doing. All of our friends' bands were all power-pop bands or punk bands. We sort of had this Fishbone/Chili Peppers influence. That was mostly because of me, I guess. Chuck liked that too. It was just what we were listening to. I didn't even really listen to the Grateful Dead all that much or even the Allmans. I saw Phish. At first, I thought I wasn't into it, but then I start to get into them. That kind of made us turn more into a jam band when we got into that scene...

JJ: Did it happen accidentally or did you guys decide "okay, we're gonna put an open section in here now and see what happens"?

RD: It kind of happened after Al had been with us for a little bit. He had always played in bands that had more open sections and solos in general. Before, we would just say "okay, we put 16 or 8 bars of solo here" and practice it till we got it right, or we thought it was right. Al would suggest just seeing where it went and we'd sit there working on it. We didn't really know how to jam but just kept doing it anyway. It was real sloppy and, basically, after five years you just kind of figure out what each others' styles are and develop your own sound.

JJ: What was a typical old-school moe. gig like? Pre-Al...?

RD: Oh, pre-Al? We'd set up in someone's basement in college. We'd play, get drunk, and people would scream at us. It was usually just a friend's party: you set up and play. There would be, like, 30 people there and all of them, pretty much, were your friends and they'd get all fucked up and be like [in falsetto drunk voice] "yeah, yeah play" whatever... a cover... like Fire or something. It pretty much stayed that way even when we started doing bar shows. It was basically all your friends. There would be people there would be people there who would just random stop by, the house would clear out, and your friends would stay and just get hammered... and you'd be there till four o'clock in the morning. And you end up hanging out at the bar after hours, drinking and playing pool.

JJ: So how's that any different from what you do now? (laughs)

RD: It's a lot different. We're too tired to do any of that shit now...

JJ: How do you go about writing setlists these days? Do you have a structure that you tend to follow?

RD: We try to keep the first three tunes in-your-face type tunes. The only structure there is... Well, I guess Al and I write setlists differently. When Al writes a setlist he likes to put all really structured poppy-sounding tunes in the first set and maybe one jamming tune and then he likes to put the jamming tunes in the second set. I like to mix it up a little bit. We both like to put big energy, attention-grabbing songs in the first three songs. Usually, it'll be something where all three of us get to sing. I'll sing one, and then Chuck, and then Al... Chuck doesn't write that many songs, so it's kinda hard.

JJ: Why did you end up taking the question marks out of the setlists? [The band, for a while, included question marks as variables in their setlists. For example, a list might read: Four > ??? > ??? > Four.]

RD: It was just an experiment. It's not like it's gone forever. We like to do things differently. We put the question mark in there because it was something that was new and different and then it got to be old and boring. (laughs). We started to get these formulas. We started to figure out what other people were doing and it got to be a little too formulated. We just took it out. We like to have people come and have us be different each time they see us.

JJ: Personally, I thought it provoked some really cool playing, but that could've just been a product of where you guys were at the time, anyway.

RD: It was cool. I'm not against it. It's not something we won't do again. I think we did it once or twice on this tour. Part of it, too, was sometimes the jams were so long that they were boring us and it was like "okay, this isn't going anywhere". We'll probably do it again. It's nice to think of something different each time. Some sets we say "let's just do the radio version of something" and other times we're like "let's put a jam here where there's never been before".

JJ: How do you know when a jam is over? I've seen times where somebody wants to keep going and somebody wants to stop...

RD: Oh, yeah... (laughs)... and then it's like "oh, I thought I was leading the jam. "Yeah, but you're the bass player, man..." (laughs). We have signals, but you have to be listening and paying attention, at least. Many times, one guy is lost and everybody is back into the song. That's happened to me. I can think of specific times that's happened to me on the last tour. Generally, it always happens to me in Stranger Than Fiction. Chuck has a guitar riff that he does that I never seem to catch that everyone else seems to catch...

JJ: I also noticed that you guys haven't been doing a hell of a lot of segues lately...

RD: We haven't been?

JJ: Yeah. Was that a conscious thing or did you not even notice until I just mentioned something...?

RD: I noticed. I don't think of it. I don't know. It's not conscious in the sense that "you know what, we're gonna do a whole tour without segues" type thing. When I'm writing setlists, I come up with the tunes and then I think "should I put a segue here... nah, it's not gonna work." We haven't done it in a while, which probably means that we're gonna start doing it again. It's sort of the same jamming into the question mark sort of thing. A lot of it started with having Jim start out the tour with us. We had like two weeks to prepare and have him learn all of our material and not just on percussion; on guitar, flute, and melodica. It was like "let's just get the tunes down first, and we can get into the other stuff later..."

JJ: Was that the reason you didn't end up debuting any originals this past tour? That's kinda weird for you...

RD: We have two new originals that we worked on during that session but it just didn't seem like they were done. Our soundchecks have been taking so long that we haven't had time to work on them. We actually did have two new tunes... we still do. I've had two weeks off and I've written, like, four tunes.

JJ: Nice. Anything we'll be hearing anytime soon?

RD: No, I doubt it. We don't have time to rehearse them. But what we're doing is that after this tour's over, we're doing about three weeks of rehearsal. I know Al's got a bunch of new tunes and I'm sure Chuck does. We'll be working on all that new material for the summer. You might see a lot of new tunes. We're gonna start trying to record.

JJ: What's the songwriting process generally like for you guys? How often does a song come in complete? How often do you guys completely rewrite stuff?

RD: Generally, whenever I write something, I come up with the verse, the chorus, and maybe a bridge, and then bring it into the band. I try to keep my mind open. Someone might have a part that fits the song great. We just work it out together. It's pretty much the same thing for Al. We'll try to come up with the real guts of the song and try to get the band involved in finishing it. That's basically how the songwriting process has evolved. It used to be we would just sit down and jam out stuff, in the real old days, and try to come up with words and stuff there. As you kind of evolve as a songwriter you have more of a vision. Now, when I'm working on tunes, I try to bring them to the band and have them put their stamp on it so it doesn't sound just like me on acoustic guitar...

JJ: How has your own songwriting changed over the years? How was writing That Country Tune different from writing, say, The Faker?

RD: Actually, with That Country Tune, it's very similar to the way I write songs now. One of the early songs that I still feel comfortable singing the song... I don't feel too embarrassed about it. Some stuff, like Long Island Girls... it was a different time. I was just learning how to play at that point. I mean, I'm still learning. I wrote a lot of tunes like Long Island Girls and Dr. Graffenburg when I'd only been playing bass for, like, two years. I would first sit down and try to come up with a bassline that's, now, some simple thing but, at that point, I had to figure out where my fingers went. And I had to practice singing... And you come up with some goofy lyrics and stuff. I still like them, because of what they are. My songwriting now, I really try to work on the metaphorical implications of the end of the phrase and the literal translation... I always try to think through everything. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not. It's just my style, I guess.

JJ: You guys are also notoriously picky about what songs you end up keeping in the rotation and what songs you end up ditching. What makes you kill a song and, sort of conversely, what makes you bring a song back?

RD: Different things make us kill a song. Sometimes, we realize a song just isn't any good. Sometimes we just don't... Like, we have a tune that Al wrote called So Long which we really like, but also doesn't seem to be much of a crowd pleaser but we haven't gotten a chance to really work on it, playing it live. It sort of has a middle eastern feel. It's a long tune that's slow. We enjoy playing it. It seems like it's gone... but it's not, because we keep working on trying to get the parts exactly the way we want. There are other tunes. Like, Canned Pastries, which we played and then... I don't even remember the reason we stopped playing it. When we were like "hey, let's bring some songs back" and we listened to a tape of old tunes, we're like "man, that tune sucks... we're not bringing that back". We realized why it was dropped in the first place. It's just stupid, you know? There's not enough time to play everything... sometimes you write a song and it's sort of whimsical and you don't really think of the implications of it. You know that tune Magic Hat? Me and Al wrote that together one time in the back of the RV and it made us laugh. We tried playing it and realized the song was just "ehhh..."

JJ: What's the editing process like? You played Waiting For The Punchline in its original form and it sort of went away for a while, and then you brought it back with a lot of revision...

RD: Al did that. I don't know... I think that happened because sometimes when you go to record for an album and we play the tune and we listen to it really carefully, we discover that it doesn't really translate to an album very well. And then [in this case], Al really wants to record it, so he goes back and takes out the part that just doesn't seem to make sense. It's not just him... it could be a comment that I make, like "why do we have to do that in the song" and then we argue about it. It works both ways. It's just us being really picky about the parts that are in the song. Sometimes we write songs that have too many parts. Like "why do we need all that, it doesn't really go anywhere..."

JJ: What's a typical moe. rehearsal like?

RD: There's not really a typical one. (Eddie Derhak begins to make noise in the background.) Hey, Eddie, what're you sayin'? He's making all these crazy noises.

JJ: He's answering the question: A whole lotta cryin'.

RD: (laughs) Yeah. It's sort of like a hurry-up-and-wait situation. You get there and you get all motivated to do something, and you start playing, and it's like you haven't seen each other for four weeks or five weeks. It takes a while... (Eddie gurgles again). It's never typical. Sometimes you really connect and you get going. Like, these last rehearsals were all different because we had to go through every single tune. And the rehearsals before that were working on tunes. And everyone's patience was pretty low, and tolerance was pretty low, so there was lots of arguing about stuff. But we actually got things done.

JJ: Here's the big question of the month: what's up with y'all and Sony?

RD: I mean, I don't really care... Basically, we got dropped. We got dropped early, due to our request. We're label-free. Pretty nice, actually. [Sony] gave us a lot of a money, that's about it.

JJ: Did they effect what you were doing outside of the studio at all?

RD: You mean touring-wise?

JJ: Anything. Business-wise...

RD: I think they effected me artistically outside the studio. I wasn't really able to... It's hard to get motivated about what you're doing when you have a sort of bodanker tying you down. And it's kind of nice to be free. That's not to say that I wouldn't want to sign another record deal with somebody else. I would only do it if it was right. It was a good learning experience. We'd never been involved with anything like that before. Just to survive as a band, 99% of the time you need a major label to work... Ani DiFranco would tell you differently. It's a lot easier to afford stuff when all you have is just you and your acoustic guitar...

JJ: What do you guys plan on doing now that you're liberated?

RD: We're recording. After the gig on Saturday [April 10] in Manhattan [at the Hammerstein Ballroom] we're gonna go into the studio and we're gonna lay down about four or five tunes. We're gonna keep touring and go into the studio every couple months, turn out a few more tunes. If we don't sign another deal we'll have that for our own album and put that out next fall, or next spring.

JJ: Distributed through yourselves?

RD: We have our own record company with major distribution, Fatboy Records. That's what "HeadSeed"'s on now. If we don't sign another deal, whatever tunes we feel comfortable with that we've recorded, we'll put that together as an album and put that out probably.

JJ: What kind of stuff are you looking to record soon? New stuff, old stuff...?

RD: We've got about 15 tunes, 18 tunes so far. Something like that, that I wrote down, that we haven't recorded yet. Some of them are old, like That Country Tune and Seat Of My Pants, which we've never recorded. We might get into that. But also have new stuff like Bring It Back Home, The Faker, Blue Eyed Son, Tambourine. We have those tunes. Plus, we're thinking about doing a couple of covers this time.

JJ: Anything in mind?

RD: Just stuff that we play. We might come up with stuff that we don't play, too. Maybe we'll try to record Don't Fear The Reaper. I don't know what we're gonna do, to be honest with you. Actually, we had an idea when we're on Sony to put an EP of covers.

JJ: Sorta like Primus?

RD: (laughs) Yeah, exactly like that.

JJ: How do you choose a cover? Like, Cajun Moon seemed like a natural choice after I heard you guys play it, but when I first saw it on a setlist I was like "eh? what?"

RD: Basically, I've been begging the band for about two years to play it. That's basically how anything gets done. One of us gets motivated enough to learn the song and we make the other guys learn it. I love J.J. Cale. I thought that would be a good tune to cover. I'm not happy with the way we play it yet. I kind of want to make it an original tune. Like I want it to sound moe... not just like a J.J. Cale cover.

JJ: And the final question for the morning: What's up with the Electric Popsicle? [Rob's side band with moe. drummer Vinnie Amico, moe. soundman Steve Young, and Scary Chicken guitarist Tim Bryant.]

RD: (laughs) Nothin'...

JJ: Absolutely nothing?

RD: I'm not saying that I'm not gonna do my own side project, but that was just a hastily thrown together... basically, Wetlands called and said "do you wanna open for Mike Watt?" and I said "what? are you kidding me? Of course!" I had to get some people together to play in the band. I had to make up something good to do. It was fun. I had a blast doing it. I had this guitarist Tim Bryant, a good friend of mine from Buffalo... it was just fun.

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Jesse Jarnow has been busy attempting to synthesize an organic substitute for Tang at his sometime home in Oberlin, Ohio.