Artist Spotlight – moe.
Interview with Chuck Garvey and Al Schnier of moe
by Lisa Sharken
Many of the most creative musicians are also the biggest gearheads around. Perhaps because of their experimental nature, more of these types are turning up in jam bands. Today, jam bands fuse a broad variety of styles and provide the ideal forum for musicians to be expressive and openly creative. This environment allows the freedom to explore beyond traditional boundaries. With respect to both gear and styles, the attitude is that anything goes, as long as it fits within the context of the music. One band which strongly embraces that mantra is moe.
moe.’s guitarists Chuck Garvey and Al Schnier come from different musical backgrounds, but share many similarities in their gear choices, and occasionally in their playing styles. Chuck had grown up listening to Mick Ronson, Pete Townshend, Adrian Belew, Robert Fripp, David Gilmour, Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck, Trey Anastasio, as well as jazz artists like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Cannonball Adderly–having also played saxophone for about 10 years. On the other side, Al is heavily influenced by Jerry Garcia, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, the Beatles, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Alex Lifeson of Rush. Between them, there is certainly a vast array of influences to draw from, but they are also just as inspired by each other and their healthy competition as guitarists. A pair of undeniable gearheads, Chuck and Al were enthusiastic about sharing every detail of their stage setups with GroundWire. Each unraveled the assortment of gear incorporated in his rig, and explained how they carve individual tones and textures to effectively complement each other, as well as to shape the over all sound of moe.
Describe the setups you each use onstage.
Chuck: My main guitar is a Terry McInturff Sportster with humbuckers and a 5-position switch, so I can do tapped single-coil sounds and humbucker sounds. I’d played Strats for pretty much most of my guitar life, and this was the first guitar with humbuckers that I was really excited about besides the Telecaster Thinline, which I also have on the road right now. But the Terry McInturff guitar really does a lot of different things. I don’t like changing guitars and I tend to just use the McInturff all the time.
I’ve gone through a lot of pickups in the McInturff. Right now I have a ’59 in the neck and a new Custom 5 in the bridge. It’s an Alnico pickup and its tone is somewhere between a PAF and the JB. It’s cool. It has a little bit more output and it does the tapped single-coil sound pretty well.
The Tele Thinline is a ’72 with the stock humbuckers in it and a maple neck. The pickups sound a bit like single-coils to me. When I started playing the McInturff, I got into using humbuckers. I just didn’t like Les Pauls too much. It’s a scale thing. The McInturff is longer scale and it feels much different. It’s all mahogany and has a chambered body, so it’s a pretty meaty guitar and it’s got some qualities that I haven’t been able to find in anything else.
I also have a ’94 Fender Custom Shop Strat with a rosewood fingerboard that I bought in ’96. It’s pink champagne sparkle–super ugly! It had Texas Specials, but I put two Seymour Duncan Duckbuckers and a Twangbanger in it. The Twangbanger is in the bridge position. It’s not noiseless like the Duckbuckers, but it’s more like a Telecaster pickup for a Strat. It’s got a little more body to it and higher output. It’s actually a really good-sounding pickup, and it worked out great.
For pedals, I use a Teese RMC-3 wah, Fulltone Deja’Vibe 2, Analog Man Bi-Comprossor, Analog Man Beano Boost, Klon Centaur, and Foxrox Electronics Octron. After that is the delay, which is either a Fulltone Tube Tape Echo or the Moogerfooger 1045D analog delay. I also use a Lehle 1@3 A/B/C amp switcher to switch between my tuner, which is a Peterson, my Matchless Lightning and the 4×12 cabinet, which is my main guitar sound, and a THD Univalve head which drives a Framp-Tone talk box.
Al: I currently have two electrics on the road. One is a 1968 Gibson ES-345 that’s been rewired from stereo to mono. The other guitar is a ’74 Tele Custom with a factory Bigsby and maple neck, which has become my main guitar. The Fender Custom Shop is building me a thinline version of that guitar with a Bigsby and rosewood fingerboard. It will have a Duncan BG Esquire pickup in bridge, which is a Tele-size stacked version of the Pearly Gates. It sounds like a single-coil, but doesn’t have as much of the snap and has a growl to it. So it captures the Tele vibe and has the extra P-90 growl and gain, and the same sort of mid-spectrum where P-90 lives. It’s a tone I really like.
My effects chain starts with a Fulltone Clyde wah, old DOD 440 envelope filter, Fulltone Full-Drive 2, Diaz Texas Ranger, Analog Man Bi-Comprossor, then a boost pedal called The Force made by a Japanese company called JT Products. After the boost, I go through an Ernie Ball volume pedal, Z-Vex Lo-Fi Loop Junky, Boss DM-2 analog delay, then a modified Boss DD-6 digital delay, which I use for the reverse function. It was modified by Analog Man with a high cut so it sounds like an analog pedal. In reverse mode, when you turn the effect off, the delayed signal will continue until it naturally decays. From there, I go to a Fulltone Tube Tape Echo, Analog Man Bi-Chorus, Diaz Tremodillo, then an A/B switch which selects the channels on my amp.
The amp I am currently using is a Matchless HC30 with a 4×10 cabinet loaded with Weber speakers. I use channel A for rhythm and channel B for lead. Lately, I’ve been relying more on just the amp for my lead tone. Or I’ll use the amp with the compressor for sustain or to change the tone a little bit, or maybe the Texas Ranger, if I want to go for some mid boost in a particular solo section. But I’ve been very happy just playing through the amp.
Many of moe.’s albums were recorded live. Does the live show provide the best example of your music?
Chuck: Most of the live albums that we have are part of a series that we started called Warts and All, where the entire show is included–from front to back–with every dumb thing that we say in between songs, mistakes and jokes. We wanted to have a good example of what we sound like live and make it available to people who were not necessarily in the taping community, because we allow taping of our live shows. But how we represent ourselves onstage is 90 percent of our personality. But then again, we all really enjoy being in the studio because it’s a different creative setting. When you’re onstage you’re living more for the moment and creating something on the fly. When we’re in the studio, we’re trying to create something that is going to stand up for years. It’s just two different mindsets. But we’ve been trying to get to manage the two so they can coexist.
When we play live, I live for the moments when the entire band is improvising as an ensemble, and we’re all going somewhere, like a school of fish. We’re not talking about it, but the whole band moves in a complete 90-degree direction and we take it to the Nth degree! When it’s a spontaneous improvisation, I think that’s really amazing, and I think that a lot of our fans want to be there when that kind of stuff happens. That’s when all of us want to do it and why we all want to be a part of it.
Al: We definitely thrive in a live setting and that’s where our fan base comes from. That’s the mainstay of what moe. is. We enjoy taking chances and having those moments when everybody in the room gets chills because something cool just happened that nobody could have anticipated, and probably couldn’t be recreated. Those are the moments that make it all worthwhile for the band and fans alike.
How do you differ as guitarists?
Chuck: I think we do a lot of similar things, but many times, when I’m doing something very specific, Al is doing a counterpoint to it, or the other way around. Tonally, if Al has a very bottom-endy sound, I’ll choose a thin sound. We try to complement each other that way. But as far as the styles go, at this point, I think we do a lot of similar things. We each do very textural things and spastic Jimmy Page-like things. So for the most part, I think we are fairly similar.
By Lisa Sharken, Seymour Duncan’s
New York-based artist relations consultant.