Musical Stew Daily

Chuck Garvey of moe. talks with Dean Budnick about moe.’s plans post-moe.down:

Chuck Garvey is looking at an open calendar. This is rare for the guitarist, who has spent nearly two decades, steadily touring and recording with moe.. However, following this year’s moe.down which will take place over Labor Day weekend in Turin, New York, moe. will take an indeterminate time off the road, pledging to return in 2009. In the following conversation, Garvey looks ahead to his time off, describes the factors that led to it and also anticipates the group’s final’s performances for the immediate future, at this year’s moe.down 9.
DB- Before we dig in on moe.down and your upcoming plans, one topic that has interested me lately has been the skyrocketing gas prices and the live music industry. From your perspective, what impact do you think it’s had on bands and fans?

It has a tremendous effect on everyone. I don’t know anyone that’s not affected. Even if you don’t have a car you’re affected, the overall economy is proof of that. But it’s especially difficult for a touring band to sustain itself. There are a lot of bands who tour just in a van and trailer and they get hit really hard. If they’re not making enough from gig to gig they don’t get to the next town. It’s not easy.

It’s definitely affecting us. We’ve had discussions with [manager Jon] Topper and Skip [Richman] our tour manager just about how much it costs to drive in a bus. I think per vehicle, it’s like $1.20 per mile. It’s ridiculous. It’s definitely better than flying around in jets (laughs) but it’s not necessarily the greenest thing in the world and it costs a lot, the overhead goes up for living on the road. It affects us and it affects people who are traveling from city to city. Everyone has to rein in and figure out what their real priorities are, I guess. It’s been pretty interesting all around to see how it’s affected people in the music industry and elsewhere.

DB- Can you notice from the stage that maybe some of familiar faces aren’t at as many shows?

Just by looking at the crowd I can tell if gas prices have gone up ten cents or not.

DB- Really?

No. (Laughs) You do notice it though. Some faces you take for granted, some cities you take for granted. I know it’s hard and specifically I have noticed, this just happened when we did a couple of shows in the northeast when we played on Cape Cod and then we played in Portland, Maine. People had to choose one or two shows over all four and you do notice that and it is kind of strange. I don’t think anybody’s overly stressed out about it but it is a fact of life and it’s unfortunate.

DB- In March the band announced that after moe.down you’ll be taking time off “with the intent of returning again in 2009.” It seems like this was very well thought out. Can you talk a bit about what led you to this decision?

I remember the day in 1994 when we incorporated. We had long since left our day jobs and were just looking forward to the future. And the next couple of years, over 300 days out of the year we were traveling somewhere or playing a show. And ever since then it’s been a process where we make that ratio of off days and working days more livable. And all of a sudden is 14+ years later that we’ve been doing this without a substantial break.

It’s difficult because we have a lot of people who work for us and we have a fan base that’s very loyal. So it’s easy just to say, “Keep going, keep going, keep going.” And you realize for the first time in 14 years we really haven’t taken a substantial break, taken a really big deep breath and then started up again. You’re right, we did think about it for a while because it affects our connection to each other as a band, it affects our entire organization because we have a lot of people on our payroll and it affects every fan that wants to go see shows. So we had to carefully weigh everything and say, “Okay, we can do this.” I guess we owe it to ourselves to be able to concentrate on our families and our lives outside of traveling and it’s great that we have the luxury of being able to do that. We’ve had to work hard to get to that point and now we‘re trying to take advantage of it a little bit. I think it’ll have a positive effect psychologically on everyone. I’m sure it’s going to feel really good to come back and start playing again.

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