Review: Moe in the casino

Above: Light is good, and many of them shone on Moe at the VooDoo Lounge on Wednesday. Photos by Timothy Finn/The Star

Moe came to the VooDoo Lounge at Harrah's casino on Wednesday. I'm not a big fan (I'd seen them once); and I had my fill of jam bands last month in Lawrence. But I decided to go, for a few reasons:

One, Moe is from Buffalo, N.Y., which is about 30 miles south of where I grew up. Buffalo is renowned for a lot of things, like abandoned chemical plants, toxic-waste dumps, lake-effect snow, four-straight Super Bowl losses, O.J. Simpson. But it has a good music scene (ask Rex Hobart), one that is more interesting than its greatest success stories: Ani DiFranco and the Goo Goo Dolls.

Above: Bassist Rob Derhak. Late in the show, he'd take on a Steely Dan vocal.

Two, I wanted to see how much of the Wakarusa crowd would show up at a casino club (about 450 did). This was the VooDoo's first gamble on a jam-band, and I was curious about a few things, like: Can you dance around the VooDoo in bare feet? (You can.) And would the pot-smokers dare to indulge? (They didn't. The security here doesn't mess around)

Once I'd figured all that out there was nothing left to do but watch Moe for more than three hours (minus a 35-minute break).

Moe doesn't look like it's from Buffalo (the Goo Goo's do). It looks like it's from Vermont or the Northwest. It's a rock/blues/funk/country band, with a feathery dusting of fusion jazz. It also sounds like it has absorbed the ways and traits of all the standard bearers in their field: the Dead, Little Feat, the Allmans, Phish, Widespread.

Guitarist Chuck Garvey sounds like he's watched a few Denny Dias "how-to" DVDs and videos; every once in a while you can detect a Steely Dan flourish or vibe in his leads. Thus the cover of "Reelin' in the Years" for the first encore.

Above: Chuck Garvey told the crowd he was listening to golf on his headphones. (He was kidding.)

Moe can write songs -- straightforward, less-than-five-minute songs with melodies and choruses. The opener, "St. Augustine" is like that, though it went on for nearly 10 minutes.

So is "Tambourine," which provided one of the liveliest moments of the night. It started off with some acoustic guitar picking and strumming (in the Keller Williams vein) from Al Schnier, some electric bottleneck slide from Garvey and a "Folsom Prison" drum shuffle from Vinnie Amico. Then the song opened into a funky Dead-like country-blues number that started one of the few loud singalongs all night.

"OK Alright" got a bigger response, mostly for its simple but rousing and repetitive chorus. Other big moments: "Not Coming Down" and "Wind It Up."

But Moe is a member of the JamBase nation, so it improvises instrumentally, often to excess and with mixed results. The second set lasted about 90 minutes; about an hour of that was spent on instrumental jams.

Many of those kept the mob on the floor bobbing and spinning; some didn't. Moe knows the fundamentals regarding repetition, momentum, climax. But the guys like to throw in abrupt, genre-crossing asides, interludes and transitions that often interrupt the groove.

The results can sound more like a succession of tricks and feats, instead of something lyrical and narrative -- the difference between gymnastics and choreographed dance.

Moe is typical of other bands its age: As musicians they are polished and versed in the fundamental techniques and skills that can impress a crowd that gets most of its jazz and blues and funk from improvisational groove bands like this one. The more adventurous they get, however, the more they reveal their seams and limitations.

The cover of "Reelin'," was entertaining, but also enlightening. The faint-of-heart don't take on Steely Dan, even a cut from its earliest days. Moe pulled it off, right down to Garvey's note-for-note lead. But you could feel and hear the substantial difference between their version and the real one, especially Derhak's vocals (none of Moe's three singers is better than average).

It didn't matter. Given a groove to hold onto and a familiar song to sing, the crowd indulged in it, big time, including a guy in the balcony, who stood on his seat and danced. (You can't do that in a casino, with our without shoes.)

| Timothy Finn, The Star

Comments

[tmac]

tim hit it on the head but for a couple things: there was pot smoking, plenty of it if you looked around, especially in the balcony. and the set break was more like 40 minutes, which was too damn long.

[Tim Finn]

I went up to in the balcony, on the floor, by all the bars, in the men's room. I didn't smell it anywhere; maybe it was the low-fragrence blend. I did smell herbal cigarettes. My notes said they broke at 9:18 and came back at 9:53. No big deal. You're right: It was too long.