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Suffern, NY is only a little more than an hour's ride up from Manhattan on the Port Jervis line, but it might as well be a different planet, with the pickup trucks and barely paved streets, the handful of blue-collar townies shuffling between two-story buildings, and the thin blanket of New England dementia covering the area like some off-kilter Stephen King archetype.It was here that moe. chose to hole up for a month last Spring, laying down tracks for their latest release, Tin Cans and Car Tires, and it was to here that I traveled for an in-studio webcast on behalf of JAMtv and the Rolling Stone Network.
A godawful place for a studio, I thought until I began to get the rhythm of the town and its people. Half urban brash, half country cool, the cab driver, the hotel clerk and rest all regaled me with rich -- albeit long-winded -- tales of the city and chided me for my impatience. They forced me to slow down and consider my actions, to step outside of my insolated city demeanor.
moe.'s music is not unlike this town - a meandering, eclectic kludge of styles sitting just far enough outside the mainstream that it forces you to rethink your perspective. Equal parts funk gashes and guitar assaults, Mingus madness and country twang, the quartet is forever testing the boundaries of rock music.
Like all jam bands, moe. are at their best in the live setting, skillfully burning through one dynamic tune after another with an infectious energy that belies any sort of structure. And, like all jam bands, they've run into problems trying to reproduce that feeling in the studio, ineffectively trying to boil those expansive sonic explorations down into four-minute, radio-friendly tunes.
While 1994's independently-released Headseed ran the gamut of genres with a youthful vigor and naivete, the band's Sony 550 debut Noy Doy (1996) was tempered considerably by studio shellac either due to major label jitters or maturity - the kind that sucks the life out of the song. The question on my mind, as I entered Bear Tracks studio was, would moe. be able to learn from their mistakes? To paraphrase Brian Eno, could they use the studio as another instrument instead of fighting against it to retain what they thought to be "their sound?"
The webcast is a tale in it of itself. Full of personality and mishap, and fueled by adrenaline, goofy ebullience and Canadian Whiskey, it stretched long into the evening. Despite all the cameras and the cracks, it was evident that moe. was approaching this new album with the right combination of unfettered creativity and technical wherewithall -- an encouraging sign. Watching guitarist/vocalist Al Schneir duke it out with one song's vocal tracks ("Big World") for nearly three hours, listening to (relatively new) drummer Vinnie Amico's excited monologues about being in the studio with moe. for the first time, and witnessing the beatific look on the all-American face of guitarist Chuck Garvey as he gave me a tour of all the instruments, I developed a personal connection to the record and couldn't wait to hear the finished product.
Nearly six months later I wasn't disappointed. Guided gently by mild-mannered producer John Alagia, whose work with the Dave Matthews Band proved that a jam band can effectively transpose their sound onto record, moe. has produced their most solid studio work to date. Tin Cans and Car Tires is sixty minutes of energy and elegance, swinging freely from the unabashedly moe.-like grooves of "Nebraska" and "Spaz Medicine" to the beautifully crafted guitar melodies in "High and Low" and "Letter Home." There's a certain verve to the record - one which might show up on mainstream radio's radar. So prepare yourselves, moe.rons; Tin Cans may set many more car tires on the road to moe.
During a recent conversation, the shy-but-talented Chuck Garvey and I deconstructed the new record, pondering both the creative process and the technical decisions that went into each song. Aside from seeming petrified at the prospect of hearing his voice on the radio, Chuck was confident in Tin Cans and the way the band truly utilized the studio to enhance their sound.
The two songs that you wrote on this album are "It" and "High and Low." In the realm of Chuck Garvey songs, how do they measure up?
I like them very much. Al really likes "High and Low." I guess it's an attention-getter because he was like, "I can't stop humming parts of that song!" It was driving him nuts after a while.
Yeah, that song really came into it's own in the studio.
Yeah, I was surprised. That song just kept running through everyone's head. They really liked the melody. It's weird I love playing really complicated things, but I guess I prefer writing really simple songs that don't have many moving parts.
Do you like the way your songs evolved in the studio?
"High and Low" changed a little bit. At first I played it over and over again on the acoustic guitar. Then, I worked out all these other parts in my head. If you hear a melody, you can put a million different things with it in your head. When our band gets ahold of it, it's a completely different thing. That happens with every song in our band. Songs turn out for the better when you bounce them off a couple other people because you get something out of it that you didn't realize was there. And that kind of happened with "High and Low."
And what about "It?"
"It" was like pulling teeth the entire time.
Was it hard trying to reel in that song? 'Cause it gets way out there in the live rendition
It used to yeah, and I want to make another version that will be different from the recorded version. But yeah, the bridge changed. It works logically, but it's not something that I want to keep for the rest of my life. In the context of recording for this album, it works.
How are your songs on this record different from Al's and Rob's?
Well, generally speaking, Al is into more country music. I'm definitely into playing steel stuff on the guitar, so with some of Al's songs I'm really trying to do that. "Queen of the Rodeo" and "Letter Home" are twangers. In the past year, he's kind of had a thing for that. Rob likes the more groovy, "shake it" kind of thing, which is good. He also gets into a lot of elements of Steely Dan and Little Feat and things like that. As far as I'm concerned, I couldn't really tell you specifically about my songs. [The other guys in the band] have said I write kind of hooky things.
You mentioned "Queen of the Rodeo." Why did you guys decide to close the album with that?
It's one of those songs we play at the end of the night. "Bar's closing, get the hell out" kind of song, you know?
So it's the encore of the album?
Yeah, it is kind of like that. It's also the happy ending, though we didn't really consciously think about that.
Now, this is the first time you've had a horn section on an album. You brought in the guys from Yolk. How do you feel that turned out?
I'm psyched! It fattens everything immensely and those guys are really good at what they do.
After No Doy, you mentioned that you wanted to bring new sounds into the studio for the next record. Was that a conscious thought that continued through to when you started making this album? Were you like, "We're going to do things that aren't necessarily moe," or did it just kind of evolve into that when you were in the studio?
It's not so much as when you're writing the song, but after playing it a lot of times, you hear parts other than what everyone in the band is playing. You hear a piano, or you can hear strings. You hear different sounds that definitely add to the vibe of the song.
Like the strings on Plane Crash?
Like the strings on "Plane Crash." It's an epic tune to start with and if you add that element it pushes it over the edge.
There was also some talk about adding a keyboard player. Is that something you'd be interested in doing? I know Al said it would clutter things up too much.
It would definitely add to the band, but it would also detract from some of the elements that we already have going. There's too much that everybody's trying to accomplish already. We've had great keyboardists play with us in the past. There are two that I'd consider -- friends we've met and played with along the way -- but no. I think we already have musical density.
Al also said that the band considered adding one when you quit for a bit. When was that?
It was before Headseed, back in '92, I think. I quit for a number of personal reasons then realized I couldn't live with out it, so I begged the guys and they let me back in. They told me that my punishment would be that I'd have to play an entire show in a speedo.
And have you done that yet?
No (laughs). I think they forgot. They've probably let me off the hook by now, though I'm sure they'd love to see me embarassed like that.
Hey, what happened with "Waiting for the Punchline?" Did that ever get considered for the album?
It was, but it needed too much of an overhaul. We didn't have the time to work on it, and it didn't really seem like a good option to do it half-assed and not be happy with it. But we've since re-done the tune.
Are you happier with this newer version?
Our new version came out very well. It makes more sense. It's not quite as spastic as it was. There's definitely a jump to it where it changes gears, but not as much as before. And we've lost the reprise section where we really blow it out, which is really fun to do but it's not necessarily something that we really needed.
There seems to be a loose road theme on this record. Oh you noticed that, did you?
Yeah, duh Was that a conscious decision to create that thread?
You write what you know.
So it wasn't like, "We're going to put all of these songs together and we want to keep the road theme going?"
Albums tend to be much stronger if they're cohesive, and it is cohesive in that way (lyrically), but it wasn't so much a concerted effort from us to do that. When we were choosing the songs, it was a voting process. The ones that ended up on the album were the ones that we felt best about.
Do you think the album is cohesive musically?
Yes. In a lot of different ways. No Doy got a little genericized from the production gloss that got added later. We used a lot of the same equipment for every song. We got different sounds, but the basic elements were included on every song. Tin Cans, on the other hand, is a little bit more diverse. We got into changing amps in guitars and effects, just trying to get to the essence of the song in many different ways.
Yeah, I remember when I was in the studio with you for the JAMtv webcast, you had lots of different guitars there, lots of different amps, types of percussion, etc.
Yeah, you gotta have all the toys there. So if you're inspired to do something you just do it. If you have to think about it too much or track it down, it's gone. If you have everything there, you're like, "Oh my god, I could use that monkey wrench on the conga and it would sound great!"
Inevitably, when you spend so much time with a project, you can 't help but see all of the bad things about it. If you were nitpicking this album, what would you say?
We were all really close to parts of this album, and there was a lot of crazy stuff that happened in the mixing process where we labored over it. It's a lot of really intense listening. Now, I can hear where Vinnie missed the high hat once in the middle of an entire song. I can point out the one nanosecond where Rob's and my voices strayed from their harmonies. I can hear that stuff. It's because I'm too damn close to it. But really, in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter.
It almost gets impossible to judge the quality at that point, I bet.
Yeah, that, and, well somebody made a really funny comment. They were commenting on a producer that worked with Pat Metheny, that he made it so perfect that he took all of the life out of it. Perfecting it to death.
Did you guys worry about that?
Nope. We didn't have enough time.
So you had to leave it in the producer, John Alagia's capable hands?
Well, we all pretty much got involved and got pretty obsessive about it. The tracking was good, but we only had a certain amount of time to mix. And that's when it got crazy because everyone had different ideas about how it should be mixed.
Is that when the engineer, John Siket takes over?
Not really. In a lot of ways, Siket was the anti-John Alagia. Alagia is a very obsessive person when it comes to dealing with everything. He likes the fine details, where John Siket actually is a pretty good mixer. He would make these rough mixes that would just slam. They sounded great, unadorned. They just worked on a lot more visceral level. Alagia's mixes were great because he cleaned up some of the elements that really detracted from the song. Not in an evasive way, but just in subtle ways that doing a really good mixing job just enhances everything. The balance between the two was pretty good, but sometimes they were complete polar opposites and it got pretty crazy. It's like, we have two completely different mixes, and there were so many choices that we would all be divided. Siket and Rob and Vinnie and Al and Alagia would all have an opinion and I would just be like, "Ahhh! I'm overwhelmed."
Did it get ugly?
No, but it definitely came down to the eleventh hour for some of the mixes. I think "It" was one of them. Recording the basic tracks for that song, mixing it, arranging it everything with that song took a long time.
Was that especially gut-wrenching to you because that was your song?
I felt guilty, like I'm making these people's lives hell! It turned out to be a lot of work for such a simple song.
One thing that surprised me was that there are a lot of potential radio hits on the album.
You think so? I guess I'm too close to it. And I couldn't see Al's voice being on the radio. It'd be weird. I definitely couldn't hear mine [audible shudder]. We haven't gotten much radio play in the past.
What was the single off the first album? I forgot.
"She Sends Me," which was a terrible choice anyway. I wanted "Bring You Down."
If you could choose a single off this album, what would it be?
I think that "Letter Home" is a very very strong song, but it's definitely not our first single. If anything is going to grab people's attention, I would want it to be "Nebraska" because it is unique. I really like "Spaz Medicine." "Plane Crash" without the naughty word would crush.
Yeah, "Plane Crash" is a great song. Is that your guitar in the part right after the "too fucking high" lyric? That's Al and I. We were playing like, three or four guitars and layering, actually.
What's going to happen with that concert video you shot at the Vic Theatre in Chicago this past July? We didn't even know about it until like a week or ten days beforehand. Sony did it for several different reasons. They're making an electronic press kit (EPK), and they wanted to get some live footage of us. The stuff they have from last time is just us playing at Wetlands. They're not going to make an MTV video out of it. It's not going to be a live concert video. Our singing is atrocious, because the place - it's a beautiful place, but its really hard to hear yourself.
Did the shoot freak you out a bit?
The cameras? I hate cameras. I had a really bad cold and my nose was running. This guy's camera was right under my face. I was so bummed. I threatened him a couple of times just by stepping at him really fast (laughs).
They made you play a song twice, right?
Yeah, I guess audio or video missed it. We thought it was kind of funny. They wanted to do it, and we're not gonna pull rock star attitude, like "we're not gonna do it." We just told everybody, "Okay, now pretend like we're doing this for the first time." We totally understood the comedy of the situation.
Looking ahead to the next album, do you have anything in mind?
We have talked about in a more general sense this time maybe trying to go with a theme -- either a musical theme or a lyrical theme and concentrate on that while we're writing songs. Right after this one was done, I wanted to record again just because I learned so much. But that won't happen for another year, year and a half.
Where do you see moe. going in the next year?
I think a lot will be determined in the next month, when we really get back into playing again. We've had some vacation time. Al just had a baby. The kid is great. Rob and Becca are expecting, like Thanksgiving day, and Vinnie has a daughter. So that's going to change the subject matter of the songs, because, well, because they're getting old. They're dads [Chuck laughs]. In a lot of ways, I think their attitude is going to remain similar, but I think the subject matter will change a little bit.
So you're done with vacation, but you're not touring yet. What are you guys up to?
Well, we're working on some new material. We have about five songs almost finished. We've never played it before. We'll debut them on this tour. Right now, we've been able to get to two of Rob's two of Al's and one of mine. And sometimes it's very easy and sometimes it's a little slow. All of us have at least two more songs to get to.
When's Vinnie going to start writing, pulling his weight?
(Laughs) We've been asking him the same question. We've been asking for proposals for songs, because if he comes up with a lot of different elements for a song, we probably come up with the music very quickly.
Have you ever wanted to do something totally outside of moe.'s sonic realm?
Yeah, definitely. I would love to have a band with a couple of horn players - a bass clarinet and a trumpet player, a piano, a standup bass, violin and drums, but try and do really rocking tunes. Just to have more of a tonal palette to draw from because two guitars, bass and drums is what it is. but moe. definitely tries to squeeze the most out of it that we can, and that's a lot of fun too.
Isaac Josephson is an editor at JAMtv/Rolling Stone Network and the co-founder of Centerstage Chicago. His writings have also appeared in various other publications, most notably Musichound: The Essential Album Guide to Rock and Down Beat. In his spare time, Isaac avoids his past, incurs parking fines and spends his money in bicycle shops.