Most music fans don't hear much about a band like moe. in their daily music travels. Then, suddenly, it comes to your town, and out of the woodwork more than 5,000 "moe.-rons" swarm to see them.

That's what happened when moe. played the Three Rivers Arts Festival two years ago. And now the jam band from Utica, N.Y., is on the way back to TRAF, in the midst of a touring season that involves playing major festivals across the country and reaching fans through sites like jambase.

"We're more underground than anything," says moe. guitarist Al Schnier. "We're more indie rock than indie rock. It's such an interesting scene because we always sort of maintained, and yet, as underground as it's been and as independent as it's been, there's still this factor that the shoe-gazers or indie crowd never give it any credit. But it doesn't matter. People are slowly but surely recognizing that this live music scene that is still thriving and doing well is kind of a force to be reckoned with.

"With the failing recording industry, we're still here and stronger than ever. You see bands like Wilco and Radiohead and Flaming Lips and all of these indie bands looking our way and sort of adopting things we've done all along."

One of the downsides of being a touring jam band is that sometimes the records are overlooked. But with "Sticks and Stones" moe. has made an acclaimed roots-rock album that in some ways came out of nowhere, in others, a very specific time and place. Normally, moe. creates a song and works it out on the road in front of the fans. With "Sticks and Stones," the band took up residence in a converted church in North Egremont, Mass., to write and record from scratch.

"Historically, since we're a band that tours all the time and plays a different show every night," Schnier explains, "we have fan base that comes to see us repeatedly. We have fans that have come to see us well over a hundred times. That being the case, we've created this niche for ourselves where we can't go out and play the same show every night. It's cool, because we have this freedom to go out and try new things on a nightly basis. It keeps things fresh, keeps us on our toes and keeps us creative.

"By virtue of that, we're always writing new material, so when it's time to record a new studio album, chances are we have more than a dozen songs. This time, we decided to put that material aside and write from scratch the moment we walked in the studio, so everything would be fresh and cohesive, representative of this time and space when we got together in this one place."

In other words, the members were all on the spot, face to face with their 18-year band mates.

"I really liked the process, but it was so foreign to us at first. It took a couple of days to figure out how to communicate with one another musically under those circumstances, because we hadn't done that in so long. It was awkward. I felt like I was in junior high, fumbling around on my first date. Essentially, we fell into a really nice pattern where we were writing a new song every day."

In part, for "Sticks and Stones," moe. had in mind at least the process of some of its favorite records.

" 'Workingman's Dead' came to mind and 'Sticky Fingers' and the early Band albums and Dylan albums like 'Highway 61.' Even the Pavement albums -- I know Stephen Malkmus would kind of get those guys together [at the last minute]. There were even Neil Young albums where the guys wouldn't know the material but they'd be tracking the first couple takes right away and you get the raw, impulsive nature of it. You're hearing the music in its infancy -- like, what would you play impulsively when you first hear it?"

In the 3¹/₂-star Rolling Stone review, David Fricke referred to the "early-'70s Mick Taylor-and-Keith Richards crossfire" of Schnier and fellow guitarist Chuck Garvey, recently honored by the magazine on the list of new "guitar gods."

"It was very humbling, if nothing else, because there are people in my hometown who are better musicians than I am and should have been on the list," Schnier says laughing. "The recognition was fantastic. I started getting all these e-mails and calls from friends, saying, 'Oh my God, you're a guitar god. We used to get stoned and jam together, and you're a guitar god now.' "

How would he say their guitar styles complement each other?

"I tend to go for more of a classic rock thing. And that's the world that I come from, whereas Chuck's playing comes from outside the box. His voicings are more from the jazz world, it's what's ingrained in him. But with these two unique approaches, we fill out the spectrum of notes to be played. Our playing styles are outgoing enough, and we're good enough to carry our weight when we need to and hang in there together when we need to, but our styles are different enough that it's not more of the same when one of us takes the reins."

Although people may like to paint the jam scene with the same broad brush, Schnier says there are subtle differences to the fan bases.

"We didn't end up with a lot of Phish fans or Dead fans. We have some of both. More Dead fans than Phish fans. But it's really just, they're moe. fans, a lot of music fans. It's the kids with the really big diverse music collections. It's the people who are listening to Del McCoury and Frank Zappa and Radiohead and Talking Heads and are curious about Vampire Weekend as well. Then, they come to see moe. and want us to play in odd time signatures and do half-hour guitar solos. They're super, super music geeks."