Video Premiere: moe. Looks Back 30 Years with “Skitchin’ Buffalo”
moe. is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary. In conjunction with this milestone, on June 26, the group will release This Is Not, We Are, moe.’s first studio album since 2014. Every Tuesday and Thursday the band has been sharing a song from the forthcoming record, which is now available for pre-order. The group has accompanied each of these with a live video for each tune on the album that the band has played live. Today it’s “Skitchin’ Buffalo” performed just a few months ago at The Observatory North Park in San Diego on 3/7/20.
The song looks back on the group’s early days. Rob Derhak was prompted to write it following a conversation with Mike Norris, the singer for Monkey Wrench, one of the band’s early contemporaries. Derhak recalls, “The first time I had ever heard of ‘skitching’ was when I was hanging out with him and it was icy and snowy in Buffalo on some winter night. We were on our way home and he grabbed onto the bumper of the back of a car that had stopped at a stop sign and then just got in a squatting position and the car took off. He hung on and it’s basically like water skiing off the back, except you’re holding onto the bumper. He called it ‘skitching’ and we called it ‘bumper sliding’ where I grew up, and he thought it was funny. He held on and kept getting dragged. His belt buckle was completely scratched up and it looked like he was completely shiny and we were laughing about that incident. And then later, I was like, ‘This is what the song can be, about the memories of Buffalo.’ Basically, I took a bunch of memories of fun stuff we did when we were in college and playing in the band and I put it into one incident. One thing after another.”
