And you can’t hide your broken heart
Listen to the sparrow’s art
When you’re, when you’re, when you’re out of doors
Lonely engine puffing steam
Everybody has a dream
Baby baby baby baby baby
Can I be in yours?
Moes Haven is the duo of Matt Farley and Tom Scalzo, formed in the late 1990s while both were students at Providence College in Rhode Island. The band are one of the most prolific in the Motern Media universe and in the contemporary canon of music in general, having released 25 albums (plus several compilations) within two decades.
Farley and Scalzo met their freshman year and lived on the same dorm room floor. Both English majors, they united through their shared love of music, and began recording together, changing their band name with each new album. Past names for the band included 46, Scalzo, For Now, For Now, and Prozets, among others. Eventually, they settled on Moes Haven, a misspelled tribute to jazz pianist Mose Allison and folk guitarist Richie Havens.
In their earliest days, Moes Haven had no real way to release their music. They started off recording their music to tape and making two cassette copies of each of their albums, or one each for Farley and Scalzo. In 2001, Farley purchased a digital recorder, which made it easier for the duo not only to record their songs, but to make multiple CD copies as well. From this point, Moes Haven would make around a dozen copies of each album and share them with friends, leave them in public locations, or send them out to publications.
In 2004, Farley discovered CD Baby, a distributor which sent recordings to streaming services such as iTunes. At this point, Moes Haven had over 40 hours of finished recordings, from which they began to compile their best works for wider release. Out With The Old (released June 10, 2004) marks Moes Haven’s first “official” record, consisting of the band’s earliest and “more serious” fare. Dislocated Songs (released November 3, 2004) contains more of the band’s sillier recordings.
As Moes Haven, Farley and Scalzo did not often play live. They played a battle-of-the-bands in college, and a coffeehouse in Wisconsin in 2004. They also played in a fan’s basement (“Tim’s Basement”) in Jefferson, Massachusetts on May 26, 2007. Because the band is so prolific, they have often noted they can’t even remember how to play all of their songs. (However, in later years, Moes Haven songs have become fan favorites and mainstays in Farley’s live shows.)
In 2006, Moes Haven engaged in a project to record one album every day. For each month of that year, they released one album based on that month’s best work. In Feburary 2007, Farley hosted an eight-day nonstop listening party for all of their 2006 output.
While this project got Moes Haven some press attention, the duo decided to slow down their process and spend years working on their next album. On the final track of December, the last record of their 2006 album-a-day project, they said on “Moes Haven’s Five Year Plan” that they would not release another album for five years. However, with the next album completed and ready to release in 2010, the band decided to break their pledge. Stromboli’s Alarm Clock came out on December 14, 2010, one year ahead of schedule.
Around 2008, in the era between the album-a-day project and Stromboli’s Alarm Clock, Farley realized that among all of the Moes Haven songs available online, only the silly songs were making any real money. Songs like “Shut Up Your Monkey”, “I Love Hugh Grant”, “Pickle Sandwich”, and other tracks with funny titles were getting $2 a year. Farley realized that earning that much money on one song wasn’t much, but earning $2 on thousands of songs could turn into real income. If nothing else, it would be quite amusing.
After the release of Stromboli’s Alarm Clock, Farley threw himself headlong into writing and releasing novelty songs, and Moes Haven did not release another album throughout the 2010s. During this time, Moes Haven put out four discs of unreleased content, consisting of three volumes of Songs From Deep in the Vault and the rarities compilation, Unheralded Origins of Genius.
In Farley’s 2013 autobiographical film Local Legends, he claims that in 2023, Moes Haven would reunite to record an one last album titled (Several Supreme Beings Told Us To Make This) One Last Album. The album did in fact get released on December 28, 2023. It is Farley and Scalzo’s final album as Moes Haven, although the duo have continued to record together under different names since then (looping them right back to where they began, in a way.)
Releases
| Year | # | Album | Tracks | Release Date |
| 2004 | 1 | Out With the Old | 14 | June 10, 2004 |
| 2 | Dislocated Songs | 35 | November 3, 2004 | |
| 3 | Svetlana Finds Solace in the Arms of English Men of Letters Vol. 1 | 14 | February 2, 2005 | |
| 2005 | 4 | Someone Else. | 14 | June 3, 2005 |
| 5 | Explorations in Madness | 23 | September 12, 2005 | |
| 6 | Moe’s Haven | 16 | October 18, 2005 | |
| 7 | Sir Paul Made Ram. We Made This. | 17 | November 7, 2005 | |
| 8 | Down With Memories | 29 | December 7, 2005 | |
| 2006 | 9 | January | 14 | February 1, 2006 |
| 10 | February: From the Bayou to the Beyond and Back | 14 | February 28, 2006 | |
| 11 | March: Of The Aliens | 9 | April 3, 2006 | |
| 12 | April: What A Cruel Month | 18 | April 23, 2006 | |
| 13 | May: I Buy You A Sandwich? | 13 | June 14, 2006 | |
| 14 | June | 10 | July 7, 2006 | |
| 15 | July: In The Sun With Me? | 13 | July 21, 2006 | |
| 16 | August: Of Temporal Inconsistency | 18 | August 30, 2006 | |
| 17 | September: In Manchvegas | 16 | September 27, 2006 | |
| 18 | (SH)OC(K)TOBER | 16 | November 9, 2006 | |
| 19 | November the ‘Tar! | 17 | December 6, 2006 | |
| 20 | December | 18 | January 11, 2007 | |
| 2007 | 21 | Victory Is Ours! (For Now) (compilation) | 16 | March 16, 2007 |
| 22 | If Not Us, Who? | 13 | August 28, 2007 | |
| 2008 | 23 | This Is My Millennium | 12 | March 25, 2008 |
| 2009 | 24 | It Takes a Lot of Guts! (compilation) | 16 | May 13, 2009 |
| 2010 | 25 | Stromboli’s Alarm Clock | 16 | December 14, 2010 |
| 2013 | 26 | Songs from Deep in the Vault, Vol. 1 (compilation) | 77 | November 25, 2013 |
| 2017 | 27 | Songs from Deep in the Vault, Vol. 2 (compilation) | 49 | May 28, 2017 |
| 28 | Songs from Deep in the Vault, Vol. 3 (compilation) | 49 | May 28, 2017 | |
| 2021 | 29 | Unheralded Origins of Genius: Analog Archives 1997-2000 (compilation) | 33 | December 10, 2021 |
| 2022 | 30* | Metal Detector Maniac | 24 | February 14, 2022 (vinyl only; Amazon release date March 2, 2022). This album is by the fictional Moes Haven in Metal Detector Maniac. |
| 2023 | 31 | (Several Supreme Beings Told Us To Make This) One Last Album | 13 | December 28, 2023 |