In rock and roll, getting banned from a place is a badge of honor. Think Johnny Cash being blacklisted at the Grand Ole Opry after smashing out the lights with his mic stand or Björk becoming persona non grata in, well, all of China. (Turns out the Chinese government doesn’t love when you talk about Tibet.) Sure, it probably stresses out promoters and agents to no end, but nothing boosts outlaw rocker cred like getting booted from a venue — or an entire country.
It’s not easy to get banned in Vermont. My favorite ban of all time: When the folks at the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival clearly didn’t do their homework and in 2005 booked indie-rock outfit the Jazz Guys, whose chaotic set resulted in them being barred from ever again playing the Church Street Marketplace.
So I was shocked to learn that in 2001 the jam band moe. were banned for years from performing at the Flynn in Burlington. The jam scene doesn’t scream “unruly” to me, but I don’t know, maybe someone ate a bad goo ball and put a Grateful Dead sticker on a urinal?
Not quite; moe. drummer Vinnie Amico recounted the real story in a phone call from his home in upstate New York. “Before everybody started vaping, we had a lot of fans who decided to smoke cigarettes inside the Flynn,” he said. “Somebody burned one of their nice seats, and the folks at the theater were none too pleased about that. So we got the hook and couldn’t come back for years.”
Fortunately, moe.’s long, dark exile from Burlington’s swankiest concert venue has come to an end: The band is set to return this Saturday, April 19. And it’s not just any show, but part of the band’s 35th anniversary tour and a celebration of sorts for their latest album, Circle of Giants, recorded at Tank Recording Studio in Burlington with local producer and engineer Ben Collette.
“Burlington has definitely become a kind of second home,” said Amico, who joined moe. 29 years ago. He’s somehow the band’s fifth drummer, but he’s stuck around for the long haul, helping moe. avoid the Spinal Tap curse of a revolving drum seat. (And no spontaneous combustions, thankfully.)
Amico says the Queen City is an almost yearly stop for his band, which played at the now-defunct Memorial Auditorium after the Flynn ban, before moving on to multiple-night stands at Higher Ground in South Burlington. Guitarist Al Schnier has a place in Stowe as well, further connecting moe. to the Vermont scene. After the band’s gig at the Flynn on April 19, Amico is even playing an aftershow at Nectar’s with a crew of local musicians, including Seth Yacovone and Alex Budney.
It’s the Tank that really keeps moe. coming back to Vermont, though. Amico raved about Collette’s studio, where moe. also recorded their previous LP, This Is Not, We Are.
“It’s such an amazing studio,” Amico said, noting that moe. were the first band to record at the Tank after Collette moved the studio to its current Old North End location in 2019. “It wasn’t even fully done yet, but we just love working with Ben. He’s so good at getting the exact sounds you want.”
Amico reckons that one reason moe. have existed for 35 years — no mean feat for a band — is their drive to evolve and continually create new, original music. Circle of Giants, which dropped in January, pushes deeper into the band’s arena-rock DNA, as evidenced by album opener “Yellow Tigers,” a big riff-rocker that features Amico doing some cowbell work that would make Christopher Walken salivate.
“If you’re going to stick around as long as we have, you have to keep making music that people still want to hear,” Amico said, noting that longtime fans have brought their kids to shows, who then grow up to be fans. “We’ve become one of those generational bands, which kind of blows my mind.”
Any band that clocks the miles moe. have also experiences its share of adversity and heartbreak. They went on a brief hiatus after bassist and vocalist Rob Derhak was diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer in 2017. They returned to the stage in 2018 after Derhak was declared cancer-free, but then guitarist Chuck Garvey suffered a stroke in 2022 that left him having to relearn how to speak and play guitar.
“We’ve always been a tight band, but Rob’s cancer and Chuck’s stroke really brought us closer,” Amico said. “We’re all attached at the hip now.”
It’s definitely not the norm for a band to be hitting its stride 35 years in, but moe. might be doing just that. They’ve got a rocking new album and are entering a new phase after a few years of setbacks and tragedies. They just have to hope their fans, now older and maybe wiser, behave themselves at the Flynn and don’t get the band kicked out again. It’s 2025; they’re all vaping now, right?
For more info or to purchase tickets, visit flynnvt.org.