Whether they like it or not, moe. is considered a jam band and that means tie-dye, hash pipes and \long live Jerry Garcia."" But when you release a triple-disc live album comprising of one show, there isn't much else to call you. moe. brings their hippie-friendly sound to the Orpheum Theatre Tuesday night. The Daily Cardinal recently chatted with lead singer/guitarist Al Schnier about the tour, songwriting and their thoughts and the great state of Nebraska.
So tell me about your current tour.
The tour is about a month long. It started with the Moedown, which is our sort of annual camping festival that we do in upstate New York. We had Medeski Martin and Wood play this year, and Robert Randolph and Particle and who else'Jazz Mandolin Project. We had a really good lineup this year. And then after that we went out on the road for two weeks with Robert Plant, which was also really cool. So it's just been a great way to start off our fall tour. And now the second half of the tour we go out and do our own shows which we are all looking forward to despite the fact that touring with Robert Plant was really cool.
So are you promoting anything?
Yeah, a new Warts and All release came out. Warts and All is our series of sort of official bootlegs. They are basically just live master soundboards that we release once a year.
I saw you in Madison last year. Is there anything specifically that draws you here other than the fact that it's just a great town?
No, not really. Other than that, no. It just happens to be a really good college town. It always kind of fits somewhere. It's a place worth stopping. I personally really like the town'you know it's in a beautiful part of the country. I don't know if you call it the downtown area, but the strip anyway is pretty cool. There's a lot of good little stores. There's some pretty good record stores.
You guys are a pretty versatile band. Where do you draw most of your influences from?
The music comes from all the stuff that I listen to. For all of us, it's really diverse. I'm a big fan of bluegrass music but at the same time I'm a really big fan of Radiohead. For the other guys in the band, some of the other favorites include Ween, Frank Zappa, Cake, Gomez'you know its really pretty varying amongst us all.
I'm always interested to hear what bands think of other bands. Is there any up-and-coming talent we should look out for?
Regarding up-and-coming, I'd place all bets on Particle and Umphrey's Mcgee. Those are my two favorite up-and-coming bands. Both bands have a really great work ethic. You know, they're just out there working really, really hard. They're trying to do something with their music and really just trying to get some momentum going and I wish them all the best of a luck.
I've always wondered about the song ""Spine of a Dog."" Can you tell me about that song?
It just came up again recently. I can't remember why we were talking about it. It basically was sort of abstract cryptic references to sitting around and doing nothing in college.
Because the lyrics are pretty wacky.
It stems from, you know, spending a lot of time in a rundown house, taking acid and throwing bowling balls through the window. Living on $1.60 a week, and making that stretch and somehow getting drunk on that money. Your typical college life, you know.
Now, I'm from Nebraska. Could you tell me about that song also?
That song was written by our bass player Rob. It was just another one of those sort of journal entries from the road. He actually wrote the lyrics to the song on our atlas on the Nebraska page. I think he may have chosen that page actually because it was like a page that we didn't need. Because it was somewhere we weren't traveling.
But I've seen you in Nebraska.
Well, yeah, we've been to Nebraska since, but at the time it wasn't real high on the priority list. It wasn't like, ""We need to get out there and build a following. Let's go to Nebraska.""
But you don't have anything against Nebraska?
No, not at all.
OK, good.
