Moe. fans get a chance to jam at Nelson Ledges

By John Benson

The guitarist praises the Ledges’ ‘unique character.’

Guitarist-singer Chuck Garvey of moe. has never visited Northeast Ohio’s Nelson Ledges Park, which is where the jam band is scheduled to perform as part of Rhythmfest III on July 3, but he’s heard plenty about the popular outdoor venue/campground.

“Last night we were in Myrtle Beach and ran into this lady who said that she lives near Youngstown and said she used to go to Nelson Ledges to hang out,” said Garvey, calling from the popular South Carolina tourist city. “In fact, I’ve heard a couple of people talk about Nelson Ledges in those terms, like they used to go there to hang out and party.”

We’ll get back to Nelson Ledges in a second. In recent band news, the Buffalo, N.Y.-based band is throwing its fans a curveball with its latest album “Sticks and Stones.” For the first time in recent releases, the outfit decided to write and record new material in a studio. Sure, this may sound odd, as in don’t most bands write and record songs in a studio?

The answer is yes, but not moe. For years, the group has written new material and then added it to the band’s set list, sometimes honing unreleased songs for years before they were recorded. The result for “Sticks and Stones” is a classic rock-inspired effort with the jangly “Cathedral” and The Rolling Stones-sounding “All Roads Lead to Home.”

“Actually, we wrote and recorded a good deal of the music in three and a half weeks,” Garvey said. “So that way, everything was really fresh. You didn’t have any time to over-think anything. It was definitely more in the vein of ‘Sticky Fingers’ or ‘Exile on Main Street,’ where it’s more of like that raw bar band feel. And really the whole time we were recording ‘Sticks and Stones,’ a ’70s vibe and our love for that era was a part of it.”

More important, while this is somewhat different from the normal moe. MO, it’s by no means a sea change approach.

“We’ve done that before with some of our studio albums,” Garvey said. “‘Dither’ is an album of a bunch of our songs that are distilled down to their basic core, but not every single album is presented that way. Then there’s ‘Wormwood,’ where the songs are longer and looser and feel more like our live shows.”

Considering moe.’s ’70s love, the notion of playing live at the four-day, hippie-friendly Rhythmfest III in Nelson Ledges Park is apropos for not only the band but its fans. This fact isn’t lost on Garvey, who said he looks forward to the band’s first-ever show at the venue.

“It seems like a natural setting, and we love playing outdoors,” Garvey said. “Places like this are really great where there’s camping and other stuff to do in the area. It’s just the experience is bigger when it’s more than just the show and the music. The road trip is part of our psyche, and I think that goes for our fans as well.”

He added, “Plus, we like venues that have character like this, instead of the same thing over again where you go to a theater or giant amphitheater. This place definitely feels like it has a unique character, and I think our fans thrive in situations like that, where there is something really unique to explore musically and just in being there. You’re going to get a different experience, and that’s why we’re in this. This seems like a perfect fit for that.”