Featured Image: Jake Wisdom via moe.
Al Schnier grew up on skis. From an early age, he knew the feeling: That indescribable freedom of aiming downhill, building speed and flying down a mountain. Whether it was Val Bialas Ski Center, the local hill in his hometown of Utica, New York, or the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, there was something magical, tangible and re-energizing about the experience. It wasn’t until later that he picked up the guitar that he found a new way to lose himself in the moment.
Schnier is one of two guitarists in the progressive rock, jam-focused band moe. and has been an integral part of the quintet’s three-decades of successful music-making. As a songwriter and singer, too, Schnier puts an emphasis on the band playing a variety of music, avoiding just one genre, trying to create a more organic, less “pre-packaged” style. The same as a day of skiing that consists of a different terrain and snow conditions, a moe. show brings the audience on a sonic experience that changes and evolves through every turn, every note, every song.
We caught up with Schnier to get the inside scoop on what drew him to be a ski patroller at Snow Ridge Ski Resort in upstate New York in his off-time, expectations for moe.’s upcoming round of new music and why he’s hooked on skiing for good.
How did you get started skiing? Did you know you’d be a lifelong skier?
I started when I was a kid. Growing up in the Northeast, you gotta figure out something to do in the wintertime. You’re either playing hockey or sledding or just, you know, building forts… I started skiing when I was 9- or 10-[years-old]. I grew up in Utica, New York, and we actually had a municipal ski area right in the city. It was open seven days a week, open after school, it had night skiing every day.. I’d say it had maybe 250 feet of vertical—one chair, one T-bar and enough woods to get in trouble. [Laughs] And there was no supervision. Right away, kids were building jumps… somebody was always jumping off the chairlift, smoking weed in the woods… It was a great place to grow up.
You can grow up fast when you’re around a ski hill.
And there’s really no age discrepancy, you know what I mean? If you’re a 10-year-old kid and you can ski as well as… 16- or 17-year-old kids, it’s like, “It’s cool, you can hang out with us.” Skiing broke down those barriers; you could ride the chairlift with a girl!
I loved it, as a kid, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And those are moments just from the local hill, but there were other, “bigger” ski areas… those mom-and-pop areas in the Adirondacks—where I still ski. When we were lucky, we went on ski trips to places like Whiteface or Gore; if you were super lucky, you got to go to Vermont and go to Killington. There was something about the mystique and the culture of it all that I found fascinating. We were building little kickers in our neighborhood and skiing all the time.
Did you ever seek out bigger mountains at any point? Live out West?
I’ve never lived out West; I’ve lived in New York my entire life. I didn’t ski out West until I was in college when some buddies and I took a trip out to Vail—that was the first time I got a taste of it. Otherwise, all my formative years, I grew up skiing on the East Coast, skiing on ice and granite—and that was okay with me.
Do you try and book shows where you can go ski?
It’s gotten to the point now where I need to recuse myself from the decision-making because I can’t even be objective about it anymore. I’m just going to say “yes” to anything that has to do with skiing. [This winter], we had an opportunity to change all of our plans and go to Aspen for a day… I’ll forego sleeping and eating if it means we get to go to Aspen. I can’t make an adult decision about this. [Laughs]
Speaking of making “adult decisions,” that’s one of the things about skiing that’s so special: It brings us back to that childlike happiness, that particular giddiness of letting gravity do its work.
That’s one of the things I love about [skiing] so much, the actual endeavor; it really recharges my batteries in a way that nothing else does. Just cruising down… there’s just something about it, I don’t know what it is—it’s like the closest we get to flying. It’s just really good for your soul. Maybe the only thing that comes close is scuba diving because it’s this otherworldly experience.
I’ve never heard anyone describe skiing and scuba diving in the same way…
I just feel like you’re transformed, you’re taken to this other place. It’s almost like you leave your normal being—it’s not an out-of-body experience—but you transform because… you’re flying and it’s like you’re doing superhuman shit. It’s not normal—but it is—and you feel a little bit like a superhero.
Do you find that same sort of mindset when you play music? That sort of “superhero” aspect?
The common thing there is that feeling where you get “into the zone” and you can definitely… lose yourself in it, especially in the jam world. When we’re improvising, it’s like picking a line that you’ve never skied before— there’s this unknown quality, this quality where you’re experiencing something brand-new for the first time, it’s really thrilling and you’re also relying on the skill set that you have. All of the work that you’ve done—your whole life experience brings you to that moment—and you just get “to be.” If you’re really in the moment, and conditions are just right, you can have the ride of your life. That’s what those moments are like with the band, too.
When did you start playing guitar? Why’d you choose that instrument?
It was just the the pull of rock music more than anything. I’d been playing piano since I was a kid and playing trumpet in the school band… but I started playing guitar probably when I was 12-[years-old], just a few years after I started skiing. I was just a big fan of rock music—and playing air guitar on my tennis racket wasn’t doing it for me.
Before we dive into more music, I want to touch on the fact that you’re a ski patroller. What drew you toward that type of work? Why do you find it so enjoyable?
It’s funny… I think it’s one of those things that started when I was a kid. When you see all the guys out there in red jackets, it’s kinda badass. I can’t put my finger on it, but they were always the best skiers on the mountain… I thought: “Oh man, that’d be a cool thing to do… when I grow up.” It was probably about 10 years ago, I just sort of had this epiphany: That I feel so lucky that I get to do the thing that I love—which is play music—and have that be my life. Then, I was having a conversation with somebody about skiing and they couldn’t believe that I actually loved skiing more than playing music. [Laughs]
What do you think brings the mountain-based audience to your jam-focused variety music?
Maybe it has something to do with what I was talking about before, about that mindset. Whether you’re going out and like seeking fresh tracks or you want to hear fresh music being played… it stimulates the same thing inside. [It’s] music that’s a little bit more organic and quality rather than something that’s just being packaged and presented. The jam band world is cool because you go to a show and you get you get a lot of stuff, like when you go skiing—skiing bumps, skiing powder, going off-piste, whatever.
The band has some new music coming out this year—your 30th anniversary of making music. What can we expect from this new round of moe. recordings?
We have so much music right now—more than enough music for two albums, and I don’t know what’s going to get released. We have this whole chunk of instrumental music, too. What I can tell you is that… we brought in some guest musicians to add some extra stuff to it and we’re really happy about the process.
