Moonalice guitar player Roger McNamee said he remembers the first time he visited Haines, he was woken up by a phone call in his hotel room at 1 a.m. It was the hotel attendant, letting him know the northern lights were out in full force.
“We got out in the parade grounds, and it was just one of those full, technicolor nights,” said McNamee, one of the founding members of the group.
The next day, they visited the grizzly bears at Chilkoot Lake. Since then, the 67-year-old venture capitalist said he has been hooked on the state.
“We are humongous fans of Alaska and of Haines in particular,” he said in a recent phone interview.
This year, McNamee is bringing a reinvented group that has added five new members for the Southeast fair gig. The San Francisco-based psychedelic soul group in 2019 added Lester Chambers, the lead singer of the 1960s psychedelic rock soul group, the Chambers Brothers, as well as Chambers’ son, Dylan. It also added a trio of singers, Erika, Chloe and Rachel Tietjen, collectively known as the T Sisters.
The group has evolved from its jam-band roots to embrace a more psychedelic soul sound based on Chambers’ influence that it will bring to its show later this month.
McNamee, a venture capitalist by day whose company oversees nearly $2 billion in investments, sounded like a Haines local when he listed off local landmarks like the Bamboo Room, Halsingland Hotel and Chilkoot Lake.
He said the group has visited Alaska about 10 times, playing across the state from Fairbanks to Talkeetna to Haines.
While the group had scaled back its touring schedule to keep older members safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has released three new albums filled with anthems like “Old and Proud,” a high-energy ode to aging and the rock-and-roll lifestyle. It also has some Chambers Brothers hits up its sleeve like “Time has come today.”
“We’re gonna make it fun for everybody,” said McNamee.
The group boasts a nearly endless list of connections to seminal acts in the history of popular American music. The group was conceived by legendary producer T-Bone Burnett in 2006. Lester Chambers’ work as part of the Chambers Brothers is considered foundational to the psychedelic rock genre. Chambers appeared in the recent Academy-Award-winning documentary “Summer of Soul” produced by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. Drummer John Molo played with Bruce Hornsby and John Fogerty, among others. Bassist Pete Sears played in some of Rod Stewart’s most famous songs, and was part of Jefferson Starship, the 1970s platinum-selling rock band.
The group has also been a pioneer in online engagement. The group livestreamed many of their shows on Twitter or on their website, moonalice.com. Their song “It’s 4:20 somewhere” has been downloaded from their website more than two million times, reflecting the group’s commitment to marijuana legalization.
Despite their pedigree, McNamee said the group isn’t doing the shows to cash in on their fame.
“We’re doing this cause it’s fun,” he said. “We’re not gonna make any money.”
And, McNamee said, the group isn’t made up of stuffy, San Francisco elitists.
“We’ve made friendships in Alaska. We don’t just play a gig and split. We hang.”