Song Review: moe. with Jake Brownstein - “Happy Hour Hero” (Live, Aug. 7, 2025)

With Eggy’s Jake Brownstein on stage, moe. had one more guitar for this “Happy Hour Hero.”

Performed and captured on video Aug. 7 in Illinois, this version of the early-days number has even more of the Allman-esque, six-string harmonies one expects from moe.’s “Hero.” And the handing off of solos, beginning with Chuck Garvey’s talkbox showcase, is a slow build to sonic drunkenness.

Which is appropriate; for despite the song’s reggae roots, “Happy Hour Hero” is a drinkin’, rather than a smokin’, song.

But there is some fire here, weak vocals notwithstanding.

Grade card: moe. with Jake Brownstein - “Happy Hour Hero” (Live - 8/7/25) - B+

Song Review: moe. - “Rocky Mountain Way” (Live, March 23, 2024)

Though it is known for stretching songs waaaaay out, moe. stayed close to home on “Rocky Mountain Way.”

As captured on professional video March 23 in Colorado (natch), moe.’s interpretation follows Joe Walsh’s instructions carefully. The band’s newest member, keyboardist Nate Wilson, handles the mic, proving himself the group’s most-tuneful lead singer in the process; guitarist Chuck Garvey provides the requisite talk box; and the rest of the band works hard to give Wilson a solid floor.

And they do.

It’s the kind of thing that might make hard-core moe.rons pine for a more-adventurous sonic exploration. And it’s also the kind of thing that might make softer-core fans think, finally.

Grade card: moe. - “Rocky Mountain Way” (Live - 3/23/24) - B+

Rewind: moe. - Tin Cans and Car Tires (1998)

You know you’re getting long in the tooth when you followed the Grateful Dead and the bands that came behind them have now been around for more than a quarter-century.

moe. - lower case with a period - is one of those groups. And as it preps the 25th-anniversary, remastered vinyl edition of 1998’s Tin Cans and Car Tires, Sound Bites listened back to the original LP to determine if he still loves it like he once did.

He does.

This is a collection of relatively compact songs by a band that was already stretching waaaaay out on stage, but was looking for radio success with songs like Rob Derhak’s funky rocker “Stranger than Fiction” and Al Schnier’s plaintive “Letter Home.”

It didn’t work. And moe.’s more-adventurous side, represented here with such Frank Zappa-inspired tracks as “Spaz Medicine” and “Head,” with their tricky time signatures and, in the case of the former, freak-jazz horn charts, became the group’s go-to formula for better and for not better.

The chief moe.rons were young cats still finding their sound when they made Tin Cans and Car Tires and filled it with Allman-esque slide guitar and other homages. This youthful searching is evidenced by the gleeful too-fucking-high refrain in the otherwise-morbid “Plane Crash;” their nod to the Grateful Dead’s “The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)” on Chuck Garvey’s angular “Hi & Lo;” and the unabashed nicking of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on “It.”

There’s reggae in the form of “Happy Hour Hero” and twangy county in “Queen of the Rodeo.” And while the songwriting isn’t particularly original, it’s inspired and infused with the sound of hungry musicians looking for their bite at the mushroom.

In the years since Tin Cans, moe. became its own thing with its own sound and style. And while that is the point of every group - Dark Star Orchestra and that ilk excepted - Sound Bites enjoyed moe. most when it proudly wove its influences into its original music and wasn’t above playing an entire Furthur Festival-opening set dedicated to the Dead’s “That’s it for the Other One” suite.

Grade card: moe. - Tin Cans and Car Tires (1998) - B+

On moe.day, moe.street is a Pearl in Albany, N.Y.

- “We are humbled and deeply honored,” Al Schnier says

On this moe.day, moe. is playing the Palace Theatre on Albany’s moe.street.

The New York city declared Feb. 24 moe.day and temporarily renamed North Pearl Street, where the venue is located, for the band, NYS Music reports.

This is the city’s fifth moe.day and the holiday is “alive and well,” Mayor Kathy Sheehan said.

“We are overwhelmed with the love the city of Albany has given our band over the years,” guitarist Al Schnier said.

“From declaring Feb. 24 as ‘moe.day’ to this, the dedication of ‘moe.street’ … we are humbled and deeply honored.”

moe.’s Rob Derhak is ‘Cancer Free’

Rob Derhak took to Facebook today and declared himself free of the nasopharyngeal cancer that’s sidelined him and his band since last summer.

The founding moe. bassist said he’ll require follow-up visits for the next five years but said his doctors have “given me a clean bill of health and declared me cancer free, with only a minimal chance that it will return.”

Derhak’s post came with the same sense of humor that infuses his and moe.’s music.

”Did I kick cancer’s ass?,” he wrote. “No, it beat me up pretty good. But I just didn’t have the sense to go down, and eventually the cancer grew tired and hit the mat. So essentially, I rope-a-doped the dam(n) thing.”

Derhak completed radiation and chemotherapy in October. The next month, moe. started rolling out 2018 concert dates, including gigs at New York’s Capitol Theatre in February, its annual Summer Camp throwdown in Illinois in May and a trip to Red Rocks in July.

”Thank you to everyone that was pulling for me, the support I received was instrumental in helping me get through this,” Derhak said. “I am truly looking forward to seeing everyone when I hit the stage again this February, with moe.”

Song Review: moe. - “Moth” (Live, March 4, 2026)

“Moth” is one song. But it sounded like two distinct numbers.

And moe. is one band that sounded like two when it performed “Moth,” which is one song, March 4 in Pennsylvania.

Released as the livestream sampler from the aforementioned gig, “Moth” begins and ends nearly 20 minutes later in loose, sloppy form, with big holes in the music and poor performances at the mic.

Then there’s the antithetical, mid-song jam, a reverberating mix of rock and funk as tight as the song proper was loose. Bassist Rob Derhak, drummer Vinnie Amico and percussionist Jim Loughlin were the guardians of precision, allowing keyboardist Nate Wilson and guitarists Al Schnier and Chuck Garvey to improvise as they chose with Wilson and Garvey particularly inspired in their showcases.

Weirdly, when the band transitioned flawlessly back to “Moth,” the music fell apart and moe. again sounded like an under-rehearsed group trotting out not-yet-stage-worthy material. But the song is 30 years old, so there was obviously a madness to this method.

What that was remains a secret.

Grade card: “Moth” (Live - 3/4/26) - B

Song Review: moe. - “Buster” (Live, Dec. 20, 2024)

Zappaesque, jazz-encrusted, jamband-fueled rock was moe.’s calling card in the early days, something the sextet returns to when rolling out such numbers as “Buster.”

Performing Dec. 20 under the holiday-inspired nom de musique mONKEYS oN eGGNOG in Vermont, moe. demonstrated that although decades melt away, lineups change and livestreams supersede bootleg cassette tapes, much remains the same.

In the case of this ’stream bait, moe., and “Buster” specifically, retains the adventurism of its youth, mixing tightly composed passages with freeform playing over jungle beats made more polyrhythmic by the percussion (Jim Laughlin) and keys (Nate Wilson) that were not around when the core quartet recorded the song lo those many years ago.

Unfortunately, moe. never learned to sing all that well and this “Buster” is, therefore, amateurish in spots.

Thankfully, the song was written, and remains, mostly as a vehicle for musical excursions and acrobatic execution.

Grade card: moe. - “Buster” (Live - 12/20/24) - B-

moe. with Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country at Rose Music Center at the Heights, Huber Heights, Ohio, July 19, 2024

moe. were deep in to “the Pit” when Daniel Donato stepped on stage with his hosts and prepared to show off more of the improvisational chops that powered his opening set.

Following the jungle groove of “Mar de Ma” and “Lazarus’,” which gave percussionist Jim Loughlin and drummer Vinnie Amico a marathon-worthy workout, the preceding “Four” cooled things down a bit inside the Rose Music Center in suburban Dayton, Ohio, and gave guitarist Chuck Garvey his lone turn at the mic on this July 19 before a small, Friday-night audience.

Then, as “the Pit” gave way to “Moth,” Donato settled in with the sextet and eventually got himself involved in a guitar duel with Al Schnier that turned so intense, the young Cosmic Country leader whirled around to flash a humongous, shit-eating grin in Garvey and bassist Rob Derhak’s direction. This was the end of moe.’s one-set, 130-minute performance, save for keyboardist Nate Wilson leading the band through the encore of Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way,” to end a night with a band so hot, it skipped right over Garvey’s malfunctioning talkbox as if nothing had happened.

Twenty-seven years after playing the opening slot on the Furthur Festival, moe. are now the veterans lending their stage to such newcomers as Donato’s Cosmic Country.

And they delivered with an hourlong opening set that had the audience on its feet from beginning to end, as Donato played lightning-fast runs on his Telecaster without ceding a note or a bit melody for speed. He instead wrangled out twangy leads that were Garciaesque in their tone and approach to improvisation as the rest of the quartet laid down funky support on keys, bass and drums and at the mic.

“Weathervane” found clavinet adding a groove to the spacey interludes; while “Blue Skies” brought things down. But things rose right back up when Nathan Aronowitz stepped out from behind his keys to play lead guitar and sing “Sugar Shack” as Donato moved into a supporting role.

Having been through Derhak’s 2018 cancer diagnosis, Garvey’s 2021 stroke and the recent suicide of Derhak’s son, moe. are playing like a young band looking for a career path rather than a group with more than three decades under its belt and an established fan base of faithful moe.rons. They came out firing rapidly as Wilson lead them through an agressive, grinding rendition of “Yellow Tigers” and never let up as they flawlessly executed the quirky arrangements and shifting time signatures that mark their music. And Wilson, who joined in 2023, is an invaluable addition on lead and harmony vocals, keys and flute, giving the band a fuller musical sound and padding its work on the mics.

This tour is dubbed Best.Summer.Ever. And though the Grateful Dead are no longer on the summer circuit, the moniker suits the extra-hot moe., which is playing with the fire and vitality it did in the early days.

It felt like it did when moe. was playing bars in the early 1990s.

Grade card: moe. with Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country at Rose Music Center - 7/19/24 - A/B+

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