Its Sense of Brotherhood Intact, Moe. Returns to the Road

Jam rockers moe. will kick off their 12-date Best.Summer.Ever Tour, their first tour after singer-guitarist Chuck Garvey suffered a stroke in 2021, with a blast. Literally. The trek begins on July 4 with a special Best.Fourth.Ever show at Stone Pony Summerstage in Asbury Park, NJ before the tour brings moe. to Cain Park in Cleveland Heights at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 18. Daniel Donato opens the show.

“We have done shows a couple of times at the Stone Pony,” says drummer Vinnie Amico via phone from his Saratoga, NY home where he was “tying up loose ends” before hitting the road. “It’s across the street from the beach, and there are fireworks on the beach afterwards. It’s pretty wild. It’s going to be awesome to all be back together, and starting the tour there will be great.”

When Amico first joined the band, it had been active for a few years. As he tells it, the group was still defining its sound, a mix of Americana, rock and alternative rock, when he came into the picture.

“Right when I joined was a great growth period,” says Amico, who looks back fondly on those early days when the jam scene was developing. “The band had just released [1996's] No Doy , and that was getting some real play. I came in and kind of solidified things. The group had gone through some drummer changes prior to that. Things were a little unstable in the drum seat until I got there. After that, we were able to take an upward trajectory for a while.”

Amico had played in a Buffalo-based Grateful Dead tribute band and brought that influence into moe.

“I came from a jam band background even more so than the guys in moe.,” he says. “They were more into alternative music, but they were jamming already and playing long improv shows. That was really just because they didn’t have that many tunes. They opened up for my Dead band on Halloween."

A scene was developing, and it was centered at the now-shuttered New York club called Wetlands.

"That’s when things started happening," says Amico. "There were bands like Blues Traveler and Spin Doctors and Rusted Root. They were getting some radio play and playing different types of music. There was this underscene that started to bubble up.”

One highlight along the way came when the band opened for Robert Plant in the early 2000s. That tour even came through Cleveland for a Playhouse Square stop.

“That was amazing,” says Amico when asked about opening for Plant. “He is one of the ultimate rock legends, and we got to open for him. He was really a good guy. He was truly a good dude. He would come down to our dressing room almost every night with a Red Stripe and sit down and start telling us stories. He wasn’t being a Rock God telling stories. He was just sitting there bullshitting.”

For its latest album, 2020's This Is Not, We Are , moe. went to Burlington, VT to work with  Ben Collette (Phish, Gogol Bordello, Bela Fleck). As usual, the album's wildly eclectic.  The Cracker-like "Crushing" features twangy guitars and cooing vocals and "Jazz Cigarette" pairs xylophones with distorted electric guitars.

"The process was so easy," Amico says of working with Collette. "We could accomplish a lot, and there was no stress. The work flow was great. It sounds good, and there is creative stuff on that record. We weren’t pushing or reaching for any of it. It all came out of us just because it was a relaxed environment.”

For the upcoming tour, the band will introduce classics and rarities into the set list, including Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California,” the original “Paper Dragon” and Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive.” Other notable comebacks include “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” a classic Camper Van Beethoven tune.

“It kinda depends on who’s writing the list that night and what’s available,” Amico says when asked about the set lists. “Some of the songs we aren’t playing since Chuck’s stroke, but we’re still bringing songs in from the old repertoire. We’re only playing 40 to 45 percent of our songs. We only have a couple of Chuck songs because his speech is a little behind. His guitar playing is awesome, and his voice is okay. He just can’t always get all the words out, but we’re slowly but surely bringing some of his songs back.”

After the summer tour concludes, Amico says the band plans to return to the road for more regular touring. And a new studio effort is on the way as well.

“We just got out of the studio, but we probably won’t put the new album out until January,” he says. “It’s on the back side of being done. It has to be mixed and mastered, and we still need the artwork.”

Despite recent trials and tribulations, Amico says the band, which has existed for more than 30 years now, is like “a family" and "a brotherhood.”

“We just can’t do anything else at this point — nor do we want to,” he says. “After all these years, we find out through better or worse because of all the shit that’s happened to us over the years that we actually like being together and doing what we do together.”

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