Excitement is high in the world of moe. as we push further into 2023. Following the return of guitarist Chuck Garvey on New Year’s Eve 2022, 13 months after his November 2021 stroke, the band hit the road last weekend for its run of dates with Garvey back in the touring lineup. Following shows at Huntington, NY’s The Paramount (1/19) and Washington, D.C.’s 9:30 Club (1/20), the band wrapped its three-show January jaunt with a performance at Montclair, NJ’s Wellmont Theater on Saturday, January 21st.
Related: Chuck Garvey Returns: moe. Guitarist Talks NYE Comeback, Stroke Recovery, More [Interview]
Ahead of Chuck’s return to the road, Live For Live Music caught up with the guitarist to talk about his recovery process, re-learning moe.’s repertoire, and more. As he explained, “I started working on playing guitar within three weeks. Amy bought me a little guitar to play during rehab. It was fun to just strum a guitar like a noob. And it was also fun to see some stuff was still there. I could play these little pieces of songs even though I couldn’t remember the songs’ names. But I could play these little ditties but I couldn’t sing them or remember their names. I would send snippets of video to the band and say ‘This is what I’m working on right now,’ and it was, say, ‘Moth’. … I was learning all these licks and riffs in some kind of shape and it was fun to tell the band what I was working on. It took about six months to get to the point where I could play some of these songs. I still didn’t really feel I was 100% ready to play them with the band. Everything with the stroke… like everything in life… is baby steps. You don’t even notice how fast and how far you are progressing, until, say after a couple months, you notice you’ve gone a really long way.”
While we wait for moe.’s next live shows—a pair of two-night February runs in Portland, ME and Albany, NY, respectively—get excited by flipping through a gallery of photos from last week’s performance at the Wellmont Theater via Joey Lugo at the bottom of the page. Click below for a complete list of upcoming moe. tour dates. For ticketing details, head here.
