The men of Moe are back on the road here in early 2025, and they’ve got a great new album in tow with Circle of Giants, released on 31 January. On the one hand, it’s hard to fathom that these Gen-X rockers are now honoring their 35th anniversary as a band. For longtime fans, it seems like Moe were bursting onto the national scene in the late 1990s, not so long ago.
Yet such longevity is the reward for this group of dedicated musicians who have continued to hone their craft while touring relentlessly through the decades to win a devoted fan base that’s always wanting more Moe. The band have been mixing up a heady blend of classic rock influences with modern sensibilities and adventurous psychedelic improvisation throughout their career, which is also the general formula on the new record. Yet a seasoned songwriting approach and vintage sound make Circle of Giants feel like it could be a lost classic from the 1970s.
The opening track, “Yellow Tigers”, seems like it could fit right in on the soundtrack of the classic 1981 animated sci-fi adventure film Heavy Metal, heralding a group that are still ready to let it rock. But there’s also the mature vibe of an act that have logged countless miles on the road while experiencing their share of ups and downs. The first single is even titled “Ups and Downs”, featuring a melodic downtempo intro that feels like sonic comfort food as bassist Rob Derhak sings, “Don’t change a thing, give ’em everything you got” before the guitars explode.
With a West Coast tour that would see Moe returning to San Francisco’s fabled Fillmore Auditorium on 8 February, PopMatters took the opportunity to check in ahead of time with guitarist Chuck Garvey to chat about the new album, the band’s impressive longevity and the timeless vibe of the Fillmore. Can it really be 28 years since Moe debuted at the Fillmore in 1997 when a blazing first set of burgeoning classics was followed by psychedelic-rock trailblazer Bob Weir sitting in during the second set to bestow local hero approval.
Other career highlights have included epic moments like a 2:00am show that didn’t end until after sunrise at the inaugural Bonnaroo Festival in 2002, an equally prestigious appearance at the first Vegoose Festival in 2005, themed Halloween shows like the Big Lebowski late-night blowout in 2014 at the Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas following Phish’s earlier show at the MGM Grand, and a special four-day “Phil.moe.” run with legendary bassist Phil Lesh at his Terrapin Crossroads club in San Rafael in 2018.
“It was fun to see Rob singing while Phil was playing bass. The whole thing was not stressful, but there was a lot of adrenaline. I’d never seen that place before, so it was really fun to be in that venue,” Garvey said of the shows at the intimate club, which were so eagerly anticipated that their fans, sometimes known as “moe.rons”, crashed the venue’s website when the tickets went on sale due to the high demand.
Yet it hasn’t all been peaches and cream for Moe, especially over the past decade, during which the group has weathered a number of personal calamities. These challenges have included a hiatus when Derhak suffered from throat cancer in 2017, followed by Garvey going down with a debilitating stroke in 2021. Yet both recovered, and Moe have repeatedly weathered the storm to rise, carry on, and keep rocking.
Garvey says his stroke was “kind of a freak accident”, after he’d received a clean bill of health from his doctor just a month earlier. If there was a silver lining, it’s how the group wound up asking friend and keyboardist Nate Wilson to join the band for some gigs in Garvey’s absence. The superb match resulted in Wilson staying on as a permanent member of Moe.
“Nate was one of those guys who would really flesh out the sound of the band, and he could sing, so in that way, he was a really good pick… And since I’ve come back, we just wanted to keep him in the band because he can still add so much,” Garvey explained.
Wilson’s talents were evident at last year’s Fillmore visit, when he took the lead vocal on a sparkling version of Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California”. His presence is all over the new album with psychedelic organ solos, gorgeous piano runs, and quality songwriting like “Yellow Tigers” and the Pink Floyd-ish “Giants”. All of which makes Wilson seem like a longtime member of the group rather than a recent addition. His songs on the album are augmented by several from Derhak and several from guitarist Al Schnier. The whole band co-produced, with drummer Vinnie Amico and percussionist Jim Loughlin joining to craft the vintage sound.
“All of us come up with ideas, and usually what happens is the point man for one song will be the person who came in with the first idea of the song. Sometimes, we’ll all chip in and arrange the song and come up with ideas. But the point man might have veto power at the end,” Garvey said.
A peak moment of the album is the 12-minute “Band in the Sky”, which stands out not just as a top track on Circle of Giants but as a gem of Moe.’s entire catalog. The tune opens with a mid-tempo melodic vibe reminiscent of Tom Petty, with Schnier singing, “learning how to fall or fly, lift each other up til we’re high”. The laid-back yet uplifting groove moves into an extended exploration with a beautiful piano from Wilson on a jam that recalls classic influences like Derek & the Dominoes or the Allman Brothers Band.
“Lyrically, Al was talking about part of it having that kind of freedom and loose vibe and letting it go for a while. When we recorded the first couple passes, we would just let it go, and we could clip the end whenever we wanted to, but it turned out to be that it sounded good as is, so we just kept it long,” Garvey said, adding that the intention was to keep that vibe going. Moe masterfully achieved this goal as the track soars with a heavenly quality.
Derhak’s “Beautiful Mess” is another standout track with a shimmering sonic landscape that is a special dedication for a fan. Garvey says the bassist was holding streaming parties during the Covid pandemic and that people would ask him to write a song, resulting in a number of demos for new tunes.
“After we recorded the bulk of the songs in Vermont, we stopped for a while. But then, in the fall, we went back to Rob’s house because he has a really big barn, and we can set up there and rehearse. We recorded three songs there and one of them was ‘Beautiful Mess’… He was like, ‘I have a song, and we can see how it goes, and it worked out. He just kind of had that in his hip pocket.”
As to why Garvey doesn’t have a song on the new record, he said he’s still working on his old songs to play live and that he would “like to work on new songs for maybe the next round of writing”.
Moe have been near perennial visitors to the Fillmore in San Francisco, which never seems to get old since the classic venue has such a timeless vibe. ”It is kind of like going home again. It’s weird because I’ve never lived in or spent a lot of time in California,” Garvey related. “But since the first days of the band, it was a goal for us to go completely to the end of the country and see those venues and play there, like the Great American Music Hall. It was so fun to get there and then to play. At that point, we were completely awestruck about playing something like that.”
Garvey added that he loves the pictures at the Fillmore, with the iconic photos of rock stars from the 1960s to the 21st century performing in San Francisco that adorn the walls. “One of my favorite ones is that big picture of Pete Townshend throwing his guitar up in the air… it’s one of those classic photos, and I always wanted to see it live at that venue, and it’s a whole thing…”
Returning to the Fillmore on the group’s 35th anniversary tour might have been hard to imagine in 1997, but it feels like rock ‘n’ roll destiny now. “We keep talking about being together for 35 years, and it’s like, ‘Holy shit, what happened?’ We remember the first gigs and the really special ones. And it’s a weird thing to go back and remember and look backward and forward at the same time,” Garvey said. “We’re never going to be the same people, but it’s still really amazing to be able to keep playing, and we still have that kind of fire about doing it.”
That fire is readily apparent at Moe’s Saturday night show at the Fillmore on 8 February. Longtime fan favorite “Okay Alright” from 2003’s Wormwood is an early highlight in the first set, striking a resonant chord as always to win a big cheer when Derhak sings of “smoking joints in the parking lot” of his high school back in the day. Wilson stars on “In Stride” from the new LP, leading with piano before the band comes in for a sound that resonates with a late 1970s AOR (“Album Oriented Rock”) vibe.
Derhak makes it a Circle of Giants doubleshot with the infectious “Beautiful Mess”, which keeps the good vibes flowing. “Kyle’s Song” stands out as the jam of the first set with its extended bass-driven intro and smoking guitar solos from Garvey and Schnier sandwiched around an ambient outro propelled by Derhak’s grooving bass line.
Garvey steps into full rock star mode when he takes the lead vocal on the second set opener, “New Hope for the New Year” from 2020’s Not Normal EP. It feels like a timely tune for a spiritual boost, considering how 2025 is going with oligarch Elon Musk’s fascist assault on America. Drummer Vinnie Amico and percussionist Jim Loughlin elevate a psychedelic bridge jam with extra rhythmic flair and dynamic xylophone before Garvey sings, “We’ve got a song we can sing on our way to the future”, which becomes a welcome mantra.
The set moves into the stratosphere with Schnier’s “Silver Sun”, an epic jam vehicle from 2014’s No Guts, No Glory that arrived as an instant classic thanks to its dynamic psychedelia and a lyrical theme that touches on “silver spaceships hovering above the ground”. Is Al Schnier a UFO experiencer himself? It wouldn’t be surprising considering how rock stars Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, David Bowie, Sammy Hagar, Tom DeLonge, and Brandon Boyd have related close encounters. The Fillmore is getting lit now with the song’s blend of 1960s Pink Floyd vibes, 1970s progressive rock, and 1980s metal for a sound that’s uniquely 21st-century Moe.
The “Silver Sun” jam is a peak psych-rock moment, but this is the Fillmore, so Moe. hits the hyperdrive with a segue into the “Wurm” outro section from Yes’ “Starship Trooper”. The classic cosmic jam from 1971’s The Yes Album is one of those influential pieces of music that resonates through the time-space continuum.
Guitarist Steve Howe utilized mesmerizing three-chord patterns to generate one of the most intensely spaced-out guitar ascensions in rock history. Moe take the starship for a stellar ride here. Wilson crushes the big synth solo, and Garvey rips fire on a smoking guitar solo that feels like it could power a spaceship across the cosmos, ala jazz legend Sun Ra’s music in his 1974 film Space Is the Place.
Another classic prog rock bustout follows as Wilson takes the Peter Gabriel lead vocal on a Moe debut of the Genesis classic “ Carpet Crawlers”, from 1974’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. There’s an intriguing line about how “mild-mannered supermen are held in kryptonite” and a mesmerizing chorus section that seems to take the Fillmore to another dimension as the band keep singing, “We gotta get in to get out…”
Moe brings it all full circle when Derhak drops a bomb with “Plane Crash”, his classic ode to the fear of flying and dangers of getting “too fuckin high” from 1998’s Tin Cans and Car Tires. The song was a peak moment in the second set of that debut Fillmore show in 1997, triggering a time-tripping flashback for those who were present back then. The song’s soaring jam also generates a climactic conclusion to what has become a milestone show here in 2025.
Moe keep it going in a big way with an encore jam on “Mexico” from their 1994 debut album Headseed. The Schnier tale about celebrating one’s 21st birthday by hitchhiking south of the border to get wasted on tequila in Tijuana is a classic Moe jam vehicle. So it is here as the group take it for a sensationally groovy ride. A cover of Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” caps the night, perhaps alluding to delivering yet another memorable rager at the Fillmore. So it is that rock ‘n’ roll once again proves to be a fountain of youth elixir for both the band on stage and the fans in the audience.
