An Interview with Rob Derhak of moe.
By Chris Paul
originally published: 02/04/2026
Beginning on February 5, 2026, moe. will start their upcoming Born to Fly tour in South Burlington, VT with a 3-night run. This tour will feature a 4-night run at the Ardmore Music Hall in Ardmore, PA from March 4-7th, the longest of many multiple night residencies. Moe. will also perform at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, NJ on April 11th. This tour marks over 3 decades of music and life for these jam band veterans. Prior to the start of the new tour, I was honored to speak with Rob Derhak (bassist).
Hi Rob, this weekend is the Superbowl, are you excited?
Yeah 100%, go PATS!
Awesome, I was wondering where your fan allegiance lies with moe. originating in Buffalo, NY.
I’m not from Buffalo; I went to school there. If the Patriots are having a crappy season and losing, then I’m all for Buffalo…
Do you have preferred way to celebrate the Super Bowl?
I’ve done so many different parties with family and stuff. This year is not the preferred way. I’m playing in Burlington the night before and I’m driving home with my wife first thing in the morning to get back from Burlington to Portland, ME. Hopefully my brothers will be able to come, and we’ll hang out and watch it. I love to just make a bunch of food and drink some beer and watch the game.
What is your favorite snack?
Buffalo wings.
Ah there is the connection… Can you describe the music of moe.?
We are not mainstream in anyway. There are elements that hearken to feels like an Allman Brothers concert or a Grateful Dead concert… then for a minute you are listening to a song by Mountain or Pink Floyd, basically we are a classic rock band when it comes down to it. People call us a jam band. We do improvise, but I’d say our style is classic rock.
What are your musical influences?
Personal? Like bands I never want to be like (laughs)?
Exactly.
Influenced in the opposite direction. I just heard a funny thing that Lemmy Kilmister (Motorhead) said, I guess I was influenced by Frank Sinatra, I told myself I never want to sing like that (laughs). I actually like the sound of Sinatra, but my personal influence for playing bass is Flee from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. As a musician, not just the bass, it’s Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, Little Feat, and Led Zeppelin. Some singer-songwriter stuff, Neil Young, that idea. I also enjoy 80’s music, pop from the 80’s. That’s why we cover Big Country. I really like that kind of stuff, Men at Work, I’m a big fan!
You made the comparison with the Grateful Dead; with the recent passing of Bob Weir can you talk about him? What was his influence on moe. and you?
Bob Weir was just an absolute wonderful, wonderful person. We met him back at Futhurfest in 1996 or 97. We were very young and immediately star struck and he said to me, don’t worry about that, that’s going to wear off really quick. I really liked to talk to him and hear his story. He was very down-to-earth even with the years passing and not seeing him. I got cancer back in 2017 and he literally reached out to me, started texting me on a weekly basis, checking in and offering suggestions. He was very concerned about my status and how I was doing and trying to keep my spirits up. I had family members who weren’t doing that, so my god, he was just a genuinely literally good person.
Wow.
He sat in with moe, I couldn’t tell you how many times. He just loved playing music. He would play whenever he could. I couldn’t think of one negative thing to say about that guy.
Moe. is unique because you as the bassist are somewhat of a front man. How does this dynamic shape the band?
I’ve kind of pulled back on the amount that I play. We have so many instrumentalists and when I was more of the frontman it was just 2 guitars, bass, and drums. Now we have, not counting me, four soloists in the band. I’ve limited my playing to sort of just driving the song and focusing more on lyrics and vocals. Instead of being more of a show-off, they just look to me to steer the ship a little bit. The bass lines are very close to the melody lines, and they are locked in with the drummer, sort of the foundation of a song. They just count on me to move the song along. I don’t have the same role I did 20-25 years ago.
Last year’s album release, “Circle of Giants” featured many new songs. What was your role writing songs for that and as a songwriter for moe. in general?
We all have the same role; we just write songs. We send them out and get a reaction from the other guys to see if they’re interested or not. Sometimes guys respond immediately, that’s awesome, that’s great. Some other guys don’t respond at all (laughs). You’ve got to figure it’s because they don’t like the song or don’t want to do the song. My role is to push new material. With Giants, since Nate Wilson (keys) has been in the band we haven’t done collaborations on stuff in the sense like the old days when we would bring an idea for a song and the whole band would collaborate and turn it into something. Back then we all lived together in a crappy house. We don’t have that set-up anymore; we are grown men living in our own homes in different states. We do have the technology to send out ideas. Nate was like I got this; can you put some lyrics to it? We ended up with “Bat Country”. Nate came up with the music, and I came up with the lyrics.
How is moe. in the studio different from moe. on stage?
Not so much difference, we take advantage of the fact that we make it closer to perfection in the studio. If you are a band that plays simpler stuff you can play the same thing. Like some bands play the same show night after night, right? They have it down, so their pre-production is down. We play stuff differently every time we play it. There will be parts that are exactly the same or different in the studio and we have to figure out what are the most important parts of the song. We don’t want to play differently, and we have to do pre-production for that. Studio stuff is a little bit more thought out. The other thing we like to do is make sure we put something down on vinyl, which is limited, some things we stretch out live are limited unless its very important for that part to be long.
Moe. has been going strong for over 35 years, how do you sustain energy and enthusiasm to perform each night for each tour?
We have some rituals we do like we always do vocal exercises. It’s tough, especially when we are like 3 weeks into a tour. In a few more years I am going to be 60. We have a shot; we all do a tequila shot before the show and we have a ritualistic way we do it. Our tour manager tries to get us pumped by acting silly. We get things going the best we can. It’s the best time, leading up to the show and after the show. It’s the reason that we all do it. The fact that we are making something, even if we are tired and old, once on stage and playing it’s a new experience a lot of the time, most of the time and that keeps us moving forward.
How has Nate’s addition to the band influenced the dynamic?
Everybody’s taken a bit of the lead from him in a way, being a little more careful about the notes they play. You can slip into different modes or into a different key and completely not notice it. When there are full keyboards going in the background playing all the notes that are supposed to be in that chord pops out more, so it has made our playing more precise and allowed us not to slip away. At the same time, he is a ripping soloist. He can command the entire building. That adds another huge benefit to the live songs. It makes Jim Loughlin (percussionist) or the other guitarists (Chuck Garvey and Al Schnier) solos sound like 5 times better, Nate can really push the dynamics of their solos, he has been a great addition!
Vinny Amico (drummer) mentioned in another interview I did with him that Nate’s musical theory background helps with setlists connecting songs with note and chord progression.
Yeah, Nate has an idea of that. Vinnie is really good at the rhythm and the tempo of songs working together. Both he and Nate have different ideas or different ways to write a setlist. Vinny just makes it a little more work for the people who have to work on the notes. When he gets it, he hits the nail right on the head, it’s pretty cool.
What is a typical day on tour like for you?
Oh god, not anything like I wish I could tell you… after I kicked the hookers out of my bedroom and do 3 lines of blow (laughs), no, nothing cool, nothing rock and roll. Uh wake up, this is the truth of it, we travel on a bus. There’s 12 of us on that bus. We each have a bunk. The bunk is like what you would see in a submarine. You are in something a little bigger than a coffin and when you wake up, whatever time depending on who you are, your 1st job… you’re not allowed to go number 2 on the bus. Because that is illegal, you can just go number 1. So, depending on who you are, it’s usually me (but I could name a couple of guys), the 1st thing we do is get out of the bus and start wandering the block or neighborhood looking for somewhere we can go and use the bathroom. That becomes the religion. Others of us wake up, brew coffee, and try to figure out exactly where we are by looking out the windows. Eventually you make your way to the bathroom, and a lot of times say like in Clevland, OH, I’m wearing slippers and pajama bottoms walking down the middle of the street like a homeless person looking for the entrance to the venue. These are the days when we don’t go to hotels, when we have to go show, show, show.
There’s a lot of hurry up and wait. My routine is I usually walk a couple of miles then wait for a shower to open. Then it’s time for sound check or you can do a little more work sometimes, like we’re doing a new song tonight so I’m learning a cover backstage, then we go on stage, play the setlist or play the soundtrack, work on sound check, work on the new tune we are doing. Immediately go offstage, dinner is there, we eat, if we have ½ an hour maybe take a nap… Then it’s time for our band meeting and vocal warm-up and our shot, then we go on stage and play the show.
Have you considered writing a book about the best bathrooms in America?
Or maybe the worst, I remember the worst bathroom I ever saw at a gas station in Joliet, Il. I took a picture of it a long time ago.
On occasion you have had the opportunity to be joined on stage by your daughter Emma to perform with the band, what is that experience like?
It’s gone from me directing like a proud dad because she doesn’t even know how to sing into the mic to her turning on this Vegas personality and taking over the band when she gets on stage. It’s pretty great and she is a great singer; I love listening to her. I went and saw her this weekend, she did her own thing. She was doing a benefit for our charity we started called “Eddie’s Hugs”. She does a duo here in Portland called “Touchy Subject”.
Talk a little bit more about Eddie’s Hugs.
The charity is for mental health awareness, for people struggling, who are considering ending their life. We are in the early stages of it; there is a lot of paperwork involved. Our goal is to get to the point where we are a resource to help figure out medication for people who can’t afford it, for people who can’t afford therapy and maybe just to be a sounding board or a safe place to go.
I’ve got some hugs to cash in at the Ardmore show, looking forward to the hugs.
Yes sir, Emma said at moe.down I should do a hugging booth.
The Born to Fly tour start this weekend in VT. Where did that name come from?
It somehow came from an album or it’s a lyric. I am not sure.
Another early highlight of this tour is a February performance by Monkeys. On. Ecstasy in Syracuse, NY, besides the obvious initials, where did that name come from?
We tried to come up with a name when we 1st did it like 30 years ago. We had the day off, I think it was in Colorado… we wanted to make some extra money. We were playing decent sized venues, and we just wanted to do something, so we put up flyers for Monkeys On Ecstasy, how do we say it’s moe. without saying it? It was all a homemade thing, like our crew decided to make t-shirts and bought t-shirts at goodwill and just spraypainted Monkeys stencils on them then sold them in the parking lot. It was us doing alternate versions of our songs and weird stuff.
How do the shows differ?
We really didn’t have a setlist; we just started with a song and went from there. Figuring it out on stage. Smaller stage, not as big of a light rig, more like an old bar gig kind of vibe. F around and figure it out.
You mention moe.down, the return of your festival this summer now in Gilbert, PA, what does its return mean to you?
We’re back baby! Pretty psyched, it’s going to be a wonderful spot. It’s been researched by the promoter; he was the one who started moe.down. We are going to have some higher-end stuff like a nice vending village and all the artists that all playing are friends of ours. Side band, family projects and bands we have been friends with for years, like the Wetlands (NYC, NY) bands we used to play with. It will be a family gathering.
You mentioned side projects like Ha Ha the Moose; can you tell me about the origins of Ha Ha the Moose?
No, that’s classified man, that’s all in the Epstein files, that’s all been redacted.
Born to Fly tour also features multiple night runs at the same venue, how does this differ from routine, performing and preparing for these residencies?
It’s nice because you can be more prepared. Get the setlists together ahead of time, stay in one place and sleep in a decent bed. This translates to better shows with a plus and a minus. The plus is you are going to see a lot of the same people there each night and the minuses is sometimes you see the same people there each night (laughs), there’s always someone there who thinks they are part of the band, part of the process. Part of the show is them just yelling gibberish.
What’s left for moe.? What is your bucket list for the future of the band?
Well, we haven’t opened for a Led Zeppelin reunion yet… that is on my bucket list. We did open for the Who though, a few shows. Which is impressive and we did open for Robert Plant. I’m just surprised we are still doing this and have been doing this for so long. I don’t ever really plan on retiring. I think as time creeps on the number of shows we will do will be less just based on our age. I am very lucky, we are very lucky and I don’t need anything else honestly. I’m happy, I am in a good place.
More information/ticket information for the 2026 Born to Fly tour and moe.down music festival is available at moe.org.
ALL PHOTOS BY CHRIS PAUL
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