35 Thoughts About moe.

By Ryan O'Connell on 10/17/2025 • ( 0 )

Musical acts love marking their anniversaries. As they should. Milestones are important. Whether it’s celebrating how long they’ve been together or when a certain album came out, it’s all cause for celebration in the form of reissues and re-releases, special concerts, and, if they’re feeling frisky, a special box set complete with a commemorative coin. We love commemorative coins almost as much as we love assuming we know how to spell commemorative.

Of course, celebrating these milestones can have something of an inverse effect as it can make fans feel old, but that’s neither here nor there. Well, it’s a little here because no one likes being reminded of the passage of time, but whatever, celebrate your milestones, musicians. Fans will be fine. Maybe.

2025 is a big year for moe., as the band is celebrating 35 wonderful years together. 35 years is a heck of an accomplishment, and even more so when you consider that for the bulk of those years, the lineup has remained the same. There were some moving parts in the 90s, but since 1999, it’s been Rob Derhak on bass & vocals, Al Schnier and Chuck Garvey on guitar & vocals, Vinnie Amico on drums, and Jim Loughlin on percussion. Keyboardist Nate Wilson joined first as a touring member in 2021 before securing a full-time gig in 2023.

Now, as someone who has found himself gradually getting back into the old jam band scene in recent years and subsequently, back into moe., this 35th anniversary of theirs has gotten me thinking, and no, not just about my own mortality. Although, to be fair, that has been something I have been thinking but moe. is only partially to blame.

Here are 35 thoughts about moe., and hey, here’s some musical accompaniment as well.

1. I went through a big moe. phase back in the day and have no regrets.

2. And by big, I’d say at around the turn of the century, they were right there with Phish for me. They were certainly more accessible. I went to school in Baltimore and was definitely able to catch them in Baltimore or Washington, D.C., a handful of times.

3. A moe. show at the 9:30 club in D.C. back then was a hell of a good time. Although one time our friend’s car broke down, it got a little sketchy. Luckily, a tow truck driver with a coonskin cap was able to save the day. I think his name was Gerald. Got a picture of him around here somewhere.

4. Part of what drew me to moe. was that they could get heavy and really go for it. And when they did, they sounded huge; just a massive and unrelenting wall of sound. When we moved into our house, there was a nice old couple who lived across the street, Rose and Joe. One time, I was talking to Joe about how they were planning on moving into a 55-and-over community, and he was skeptical, because he was “a little rock ‘n roll” despite being a pretty soft-spoken and chill guy. Back all those years ago, I feel like that was me with jam bands in that I was good with all of it, but still had the remnants kicking around from my grunge days, and I still liked it when things got loud.

5. I often wonder how Joe is doing. Rose too. They were super nice. The people who live in their house now are fine, and I think they are involved with horses. I don’t know how rock ‘n roll they might or might not be. I’ll have to ask.

6. But as far as moe. getting heavy, just listen to the live version of “Meat” from their 2000 live album L(Live). That’s some muscle right there.

6. Around the turn of the century, going to a Phish show was akin to going to a Major League Baseball game, whereas going to a moe. show felt like going to a minor league game. You could get closer, the rooms were smaller, and things could get weird quick. The same could be said for groups like Widespread Panic and String Cheese Incident; those second-tier jam bands that couldn’t do a big room but could do a 2 night stand at a smaller joint.

7. Not to say things couldn’t get weird at Phish, of course. They could, they did, they still do.

8. But speaking of weird, moe’s music could always get weird, which, up there with them getting heavy, was another thing I liked about them. They weren’t afraid to take chances and weren’t afraid to take themselves too seriously. Or sorry, they aren’t afraid to take chances and aren’t afraid to take themselves too seriously. Lest we forget that moe. is very much still in the present tense, kids.

9. The band’s first three albums were all solid, and each seemed to get better than the last, but they definitely hit their stride with Tin Cans and Car Tires.

10. Tin Cans and Car Tires is one of the best studio albums by a jam band ever. It’s such a fully-formed, confident album made by a band that had complete control over the facilities and knew what they were trying to do. It’s also one of the rare studio albums by a jam band that can stand on its own two feet. So often with jam band studio albums, the album is a place where vanilla versions of songs that explode live are kept, but that’s not the case with Tin Cans and Car Tires. It’s a solid rock album from start to finish.

11. I couldn’t even imagine how many times I listened to “Plane Crash” when that album came out. It’s such a beast of a song, and like a lot of moe songs, great to play air guitar too.

12. On a related note: moe. are a top-notch air guitar band.

13. Personally, I feel like the key to good air guitar playing is strumming chords. If you get into noodling and air guitaring solos, you know, it gets messy. Stick with chords and it’s a lot more fun.

14. I could imagine a Tim Robinson sketch on I Think You Should Leave where he gets mad at someone for not playing a guitar part correctly while playing air guitar.

15. There would be a lot of yelling.

16. Speaking of which, I’ve watched the first episode of The Chair Company and I’m all in.

I like it when a network like HBO gives a platform to a talented person and just lets them cook.

17. When I listen to “Plane Crash,” I think about those 9:30 club shows and singing the chorus loudly, drenched with sweat, surrounded by friends, having an absolute blast. It was fun back then because you would see a lot of the same people at shows in that wonderful area of the country. It was a nice little nook in this country of ours for young jamband kids, and the faces you would see over and over again at shows became increasingly familiar. These strangers would become friends, people you shared weed with and high-fived, even though you had no idea what their name was. It was a cool time and one of those things I’m glad to have experienced.

18. Dither was a solid follow-up to Tin Cans and Car Tires, and the two albums really create a high-water mark for the band, at least in the studio. The albums that would follow were good and certainly had their moments, but they don’t reach the level of those two.

19. DJ Logic pops up on Dither, doing some turntable stuff on “Captain America,” and that dude definitely played a role in the scene back then, for better or worse. DJ Logic was the kid in the dorm with turntables who got all the hippies around him dancing. I’m not an expert on DJ stuff, but I’m also not sure how good he actually was. I just know that it felt like he was around a lot.

20. I was at one hippie festival back in the day and picked up a Rope-a-Dope Records sampler that had a killer DJ Logic track on it; a song that had a sweet cowbell groove, and I kind of wish I still had that CD because it was really good. It’s right up there with that Hempilation CD I had back in the day as a great random CD I had that has never been heard from again.

21. moe. is hard to categorize and pin into a certain genre (beyond just calling them a jamband), but I guess they’re prog-rock, although their version of prog-rock is probably slightly more accessible than Phish’s.

22. Back in 2003, Rob Derhak had a side project he was playing with called Swamp Dockey, and they frequently played The Alehouse in sunny Portland, Maine. The Alehouse, like a lot of things that existed in Portland back then, is no longer there, but man, what a wonderful spot. Walk down a few stairs, and it was the closest thing Portland had to a funky hippie joint. The stage was barely off the floor, and they needed to put things over the windows at a certain time of night to help with the noise and keep the people staying in the hotel across the street happy. It was a great place to see a show, to play a show, or to just drink a few beers.

23. Anyway…Swamp Donkey was Rob and a couple of dudes from Assembly of Dust, including Nate Wilson, and they played at The Alehouse a handful of times. The shows were great, and if memory serves, they were almost weekly occurrences. At the time, my affiliation with the jam band was starting to wane, having moved back home after college, but the Swamp Donkey shows were a fun way to scratch that itch that was still there, no matter how much hip hop I was then listening to.

24. Bear with me here because again, this was back in 2003, but I’m pretty sure that in one week, Swamp Donkey played at The Alehouse on Tuesday or Wednesday night and was joined by some of the moe. dudes, as they were in town for a show on Thursday. For us at The Alehouse, we ended up getting in an impromptu moe. show at one of the smaller venues they had probably played in years. It was the closest I had been to them since seeing them play at a record store in Towson, Maryland, a few years earlier. Then on Thursday, moe. played a free show out on Monument Square, which sits right smack in the middle of downtown Portland.

It was amazing timing because with the Phish festival It happening up north that weekend, the show ended up being a wonderful pit stop for folks headed that way. For my crew, we got kicking up 95 north as soon as the show was over.

25. The band’s 2003 album Wormwood was where we parted ways, or at least cut back on the amount of time we were spending together. It’s not that it’s a bad album or that the band wasn’t as good. No, they still rocked, and Wormwood is another solid moe. album. The album features some great tunes, especially “Crab Eyes,” “Kyle’s Song,” “Okayalright,” and “Not Coming Down.” It was more about me and less about them. Or you know.

26. I think with some music you like, you make a decision to move on, but keep that music frozen in time in a lock box; a break glass in case of emergency kind of situation. Around 2003-04, I made a decision, probably subconsciously, to move on from moe. and as the years went on, the band remained in a frozen state as I remembered them. I didn’t pay much attention to new releases and didn’t go see them live, but if that moe. itch needed to be scratched, I would turn to Tin Cans or L. It was going back to the music but also going back to those memories, which were intrinsically linked.

27. It’s picking and choosing your musical involvement, which I think we do as we get older. When we’re young, living it up in our formative years, we’re sponges and our bandwidth knows no bounds. As we get older, we have to be more selective. So with something like moe., while I appreciated that they were still doing their thing post 2003, I was content to view them through a 1993-2003 lens.

28. Then, admittedly, I kind of forgot about them all together. It happens. I had a spell there where I wasn’t really into any jam bands, and that includes Phish.

29. But alas, things change, and as I found myself getting back into Phish, getting back to bands like moe. and Widespread Panic followed because nostalgia comes in waves, especially when it’s essentially nostalgia for a moment in time, which is what was the case with jambands. Hell, I even found myself listening to Strangefolk sometimes.

30. There’s something about Rob’s voice and the intertwining nature of Chuck and Al’s guitar playing that has an enduring, comforting quality. Rob’s voice especially sounds like a nice hooded sweatshirt and a fire going.

31. This past summer, I went and saw moe. for the first time since that 2003 show in Portland. It was up the road in Red Bank, and I went by myself, which was a choice. My darling wife had no interest in going, and I just didn’t feel like asking one of the dad friends I have around here. There was a part of me that wanted to experience the show without any distractions. No questions or comments. I just wanted to drink a few beers and watch moe., plain and simple.

32. They were incredible. I laughed walking to my seat because A) I couldn’t believe I was actually seeing moe. again, and B) they sounded amazing, and if I closed my eyes, I would have thought I was at one of those shows back in the day. The energy, the wall of sound, the playfulness, it was all still there. moe. was still moe. just like Widespread is still Widespread. Consistency is an art form, and it’s amazing these bands that have been around for so long have seemingly not lost a step. They’ve stayed steady and stayed the course. It’s impressive.

It seems like whenever a jamband starts to make some noise, there is talk of anointing them the next Phish. (cough, cough Goose fans.) But some of these jam bands should strive to be the next moe. or Widespread Panic, bands that may have never reached the heights of Phish but still managed to carve out a successful and steady multi-decade run.

And speaking of Goose, during set break, I hit the head, and while in there, a couple of dudes were talking about upcoming shows. One fella said he was planning on hitting up the Philly show, but when his wife heard, she had to remind him that it was their anniversary. And not just any anniversary, kid. It was their first.

There were universal groans and laughs throughout the men’s room, and I wonder if my man went through with it and went to the show or politely declined and spent the evening with his bride.

33. The second set opened with a version of “Timmy Tucker” that went in more directions than my dog in the backyard chasing after squirrels. It just kept going and going, veering from funk rock to prog rock to classic rock to reggae to I don’t even know because at a certain point I feel transported to another time and was just completely lost. Again, I was laughing because goddamn was it fun being at the show. Spending a Sunday night in June crossing a bridge between years and eras is a wild way to spend an evening.

34. I left that show happy that I went, but not entirely sure if that would be the last time or if I’d see them again. Ultimately, if the stars align again, then I could see myself going. But I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to see moe. again. It was wonderful time traveling for one night, but I’m not sure it needs to happen again. If that was the last time I saw moe. play, then I’m happy to have it as a last chapter in our story. There was an air of finality to it, and I’m good with that. If I close my eyes, I can be brought back to those old school moe. shows and if I’m tired, I can take a detour to think about that Red Bank show. It’s a win/win.

35. You know how I know that moe. never really left me? Because throughout those years when we had gone our separate ways and I went years without listening to them, the lyrics of “Spine of the Dog” were always there; something I’d sing while riding a bike or driving or shucking through a long day at work. The band’s music was imprinted in my soul in a way that it is always present, even if the band isn’t.

You get older and tastes change, your life changes, the world around you changes, but there are constants in your life that keep you sane, and one of those constants is music. Certain music stays with you and helps you weather storms and navigate those aforementioned changes. Even if you move on to different bands or different genres, some music you can’t shake and will always be with you.

moe. is one of those bands for me, and I’m pretty damn pleased about that.