American Bands

"I'm a house of cards in a hurricane A reckless fire in a pouring rain"

"I closed the door like so many times, so many times before Felt like a scene on the cutting room floor When I let you walk away tonight without a word I tried to sleep but the clock is stuck on thoughts of you and me A thousand more regrets unraveling If you were here right now, I swear I'd tell you this"

"Never gone, never far In my heart is where you are Always close, everyday Every step along the way Even though for now we've got to say goodbye I know you will be forever in my life Never gone"

"Only one life to live in We're trying our best to make it through There's no mistakes just lessons It's all about what they mean to you"

"There no more blindness 'cause when I cry I'm smilin' You cured me from dyin' and I know with you I'll keep on livin' You're rushing through me (like water from Heaven) I feel you movin' through me (like sand in the sea) And now I feel so alive (I know that there must be something here) So alive ('cause you're all the air in my atmosphere) Finally I feel complete 'cause you are rushed over me"

"This is the song for the unloved This is the music for one last cry This is the prayer that tomorrow will help me leave the past behind It's a song for the unloved"

"Then my heart did time in Siberia Was waiting for the lie to come true 'Cause it's all so dark and mysterious When the one you want doesn't want you too"

"It seems like yesterday when I said, "I do" And after all this time my heart still burns for you. Can you see me, here I am Standing here where I've always been And when words are not enough I climb inside your heart and still find You're my safest place to hide."

"Who are you now? Are you still the same or did you change somehow? What do you do at this very moment when I think of you? And when I'm looking back, how we were young and stupid Do you remember that? I still need you, I still care about you Though everything's been said and done."

"All the doors are closing, I'm tryin' to move ahead And deep inside I wish it's me instead My dreams are empty from the day, the day you slipped away I just want you to know that I've been fighting to let you go."

"I've tried to go on like I never knew you I'm awake but my world is half asleep I pray for this heart to be unbroken But without you all I'm going to be is incomplete."

"Remember when we never needed each other The best of friends like sister and brother. Those days are gone, now I want you so much. Don't know what to say, never meant to feel this way. Falling so hard, so fast, this time."

"What makes you different, makes you beautiful What's there inside you shines through to me"

"Yes, I will take your hand and walk with you Yes, I will, it's these three words that promise to Yes, I will give you everything you need and someday start a family with you."

"Time, look where we are and what we've been through."

"We've been through days of thunder Some people said, "They don't belong." They tried to pull us under But here we stand together and we're millions strong."

"Show me your reason, give me a sign Tell me the way we fall outta line Is it today or is it tonight? We'll find the answer to our life. So tell me why we have to cry and not try With there's so many things we can do To help this troubled world start anew."

"I will love you more than that I won't say the words then take them back. Don't give loneliness a chance Baby, listen to me when I say I will love you more than that."

"Let me tell you the story about the call that changed my destiny."

"Sometimes it might be difficult to be in the lobby of your hotel in your underwear without your glasses on. It also might be difficult to tell the women behind the counter that you think you're in the band moe., and you don't know where your room is. - Al on October, 5, 1996."

"We've been getting more popular, sure, but we haven't grown as fast as some other bands. I think that's because artistically we make a specific effort not to become caricatures or regurgitate what we do."

"They might egg us on to push the outer walls of a song further and further. They'll say, 'Yeah, do it, we want you to do something new.' Well, we want to see something new, too.... More magic happens when you do things like that than when one person makes the decisions."

"It comes back to their personal lives. Everybody has a different agenda with their families, whether it’s getting married or having a kid or a kid’s birthday or being home for Halloween trick or treating. That’s the hardest thing to balance out. Somebody wants to take family vacation in January, somebody wants to go in April and somebody wants May. It’s balancing five guys personal lives with their work lives and making it fair for all of us. I think I’m lucky, though, because the individual guys in moe. realize that there’s four other people who depend on them. As well as the seven, eight, nine other people they employ."

"I think it sucks that Phish quit. I think because of their size and success they brought new people continuously into the scene who then checked out other bands. Overall, I think it’s harder to pick up fans now that Phish is gone."

"All gains. We got to play in front of a crowd that enjoys live music. We got to be affiliated with legends of the jamband scene. We got pretty good catering. We got exposure to a lot of fans who have heard about moe. but had never seen them. And on top of that, I want to say that the Allman Brothers Band and family treated moe. great. They treated us better than an opening act."

"Not finishing college. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. And that goes for the band too."

"Halloween at the Aladdin Theatre, Jim Loughlin dressed as Darth Vader, with an oversized helmet singing AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"."

"As we learn more about autism, and as our kids grow older, we are finding that we as parents and our children need that same high quality and progressive resource beyond the Promise Program's objective. The Kelberman Center is fulfilling that need."

"Every year is a little bit better than the last. It would be great to do something groundbreaking that redirects the evolution of popular music before this is all over."

"It helps having five really different musicians. We push and pull the band in different directions, and that’s what keeps it interesting. It can be very tricky working in the confines of a five-person democratic group when you’re trying to be creative together. Everybody has equal input, yet you don’t want the song to sound like five different voices."

"I would be floored and amazed if we ever win a Grammy award or end up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But if we can make some year-end Top Ten lists and continue to play music that makes people happy, that's more than I ever hoped for as a musician."

"Our own individual musical tastes evolved a great deal, and the 'moe. sound' has become more refined without sacrificing its defining improvisations. There's something to be said for good live music where people take chances and go for it."

"Pretty soon, we were playing four nights a week, and the band had become our lives, and we needed to make the choice to do it full time. Then came that uncomfortable call to my folks to tell them I was quitting my job."

"Al Schnier, Genres Unlimited by Marc Shapiro of Diamondbackonline.com"

"You can’t really preemptively decide the course of any jam. You need to let the music determine where you’re going."

"It comes down to being comfortable enough onstage, and confident enough with our instruments, for our personality to come through."

"[moe.] is an amalgamation of a wide variety of the history of rock, all regurgitated and recycled through the eyes, ears, hands, whatever of the guys in our band and all of that with a sense of adventure, a sense of humor, also a constant desire to push the envelope. All in this arena of taking chances, improvising live, and making things up on the spot."

"Frank Zappa was the rock guy who plastered classical, highbrow, blues, lowbrow, reggae and gawd knows what else into a style uniquely his own. Beside the juxtaposition of many diverse, seemingly unrelated styles, he possessed a strongly developed compositional 'signature' consisting of heretofore unimagined rhythms and melodies typically performed at knuckle busting, blowtorch-to-the-head speed. His guitar tone and style are immediately recognizable- honking, stinking, loud and delicate with flourishing, ornate, melodic, knuckle-dragging inspiration in every note."

"We thought we were done [with the new 2006 album], but we're not. We're going back into the studio to adjust a few things, and we'll probably end up replacing a couple songs that we were originally going to put on there ... Sometimes it's hard to get enough time [between the album and touring]. What we really need is a second band."

"Now, with all these cameras focused on my face, You'd think they could see it through my skin. They're looking for evil, thinking they can trace it, But evil don't look like anything."

"I've got my ear against the screen, I feel your feelings crackling through every single inch of me; I'm going to make you mean it. With every single cell of me, I'm going to make you mean the words you sigh."

"So take this thin, broken-down circus-clown reject and give her the name of a queen. Don't I know her from the mezzanine? Well, she didn't look like no princess to me."

"All of the stage names evaporate, and it's just a blood-flushed and heart-rushing race; either to kick off too soon or stick round too late, to be far too dear or too cut-rate."

"So hoist up the John B. sail. See how the main sail sets. I'm full in my heart and my head and I want to go home, with a book in each hand, in the way I had planned. I feel so broke up, I want to go home."

"By the second verse, dear friends, my head will burst and my life will end, so I'd like to start this one off by saying "live! and love!""

"Bless this tiny alley; we have fallen, from tall buildings we have fallen through the air into a garden sweetly smelling of the softest sleeping flowers (now they sit under the sidewalk, now they're waiting for the shining of some future sun to show us all that brings you beauty and all that gives you pleasure); I could sigh into your hide and say "I hope I'm here forever, but black sheep boy - with your lovers, with your list of favorite pillows, with your list of missing children, with the walls where you drew windows overlooking hidden gardens cut apart by jagged mountains (climbing up into the air and crumbling down into a fountain where the water waits forever, like a quiet, distant treasure) - when you rise up to recover, when you leave this tiny alley, when you meet me in the garden with your horns all hung with cedar, every spirit brushing past me brushing past them in the ether screams 'all this is window dressing, all you are is flimsy curtains - watch, you flame up with a word from us and don't know that you're burning.""

"Kids get lost, lambs out wandering. Bigger, blacker things go following them into a patch of forest somebody once planted for this song. (It's not over. Phones are still ringing. Eyes are still rolling, eyes are still clinging. Something in the air starts singing...Radios switched on and buzzing. Something in the wind starts humming. Something in the field starts hunting...) Kids grow up and kids go numb. And, kids, it's coming. Kids, it's going to come."

"But the best thing for you would be queen, so be queen; you're all that I need. Though I know that it never can be, I'd be pleased to post your decrees, to fall at your knees; to name all your streets and to sit down and weep when you're carried back through them and set down to sleep, and to lie by your side for sublime centuries, 'till we crumble to dust when we're crushed by a single sunbeam."

"So come back and we'll take them all on. So come back to your life on the lam. So come back to your old black sheep man. He says, "I am waiting on hoof and on hand. I am waiting, all hated and damned. I am waiting - I snort and I stamp. I am waiting, you know that I am, calmly waiting to make you my lamb.""

"A black sheep boy dissolves in hot cream, in sweet moans, in each dead bed and empty home, in each seething bacterium. Killing softly and serial, he lifts his head, handsome, horned, magisterial. He's the smell of the moonlight wisteria. He’s the thrill of the abecedarian. (See the muddy hoofprints where he carried you?) And there’s plenty of ways to claim his crimes tonight, and there's plenty of things to do on his dime. And there's plenty of ways to wear his hide tonight. You've got yours and I've got mine. So why did you flee? Don't you know you can’t leave his control, only call all his wild works your own?"