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or the sake of brevity, let’s skip the primary verse and the refrain. Let’s bounce over some ambient noodling and the gradual constructing of musical rigidity. Let’s start, in jam-band parlance, on a peak, a second of sonic fruits. Let’s start at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor on June 25, 2022. Particularly, we’re two hours and 12 minutes into the night when the home lights come up, a red-haired 57-year-old man with a guitar walks onstage, and all 6,000 folks in attendance collectively lose their minds as they understand what they’re witnessing.
The redhead is the Phish entrance man Trey Anastasio. However this isn’t a Phish present. The headliner tonight is Goose, a band of 5 30-somethings within the midst of a meteoric rise. That is Goose’s second-straight sold-out present at Radio Metropolis; simply three years and three days earlier, the band was enjoying at Kenny’s Westside Pub, in Peoria, Illinois.
In his first tune with the band, Anastasio, the most effective guitarists of his or any period, holds again, letting Goose’s guitarist, Rick Mitarotonda, lead advanced improvisations. Because the pair proceed to commerce riffs, a smile seems on Anastasio’s face. Usually, a customer of his stature would play simply a few songs earlier than taking a bow. However after two, he leans into Mitarotonda to whisper just a few phrases the viewers can’t hear. When the huddle breaks, Mitarotonda smiles wryly. “He’s gonna keep,” he tells the ecstatic crowd. They play collectively for one more hour.
If you happen to don’t know a lot about Phish, Goose, or the jam scene, the importance of Anastasio’s presence is likely to be onerous to parse. The Radio Metropolis present was a landmark second for Goose—a sign to anybody with a passing curiosity within the style that it was time to take the band critically.
I’ll pause right here to say that I’m keenly conscious that even a passing curiosity on this topic could also be greater than some readers will be capable of muster. I’ve apologized sufficient for my musical proclivities through the years to know that jam band could be a freighted mixture of phrases. It’d convey up recollections of patchouli oil and Hacky Sacks, of stoned liberal-arts grads arguing about which 16-minute model of Phish’s “Reba” is superior. With out listening to a observe, you’ll have already made up your thoughts about Goose.
Then once more, possibly not. Not too long ago, I’ve discovered myself needing to apologize much less typically for my tastes: After years of stigma, the jam scene is having fun with one thing like mainstream acceptance. Final summer season, Useless & Firm—the newest incarnation of the Grateful Useless—offered out reveals throughout the nation and, in accordance to The New York Instances, made the Useless “a cultural touchstone once more.” With John Mayer now put in as lead guitarist, the group has recruited a brand new era of followers, a lot of whom weren’t even born when Jerry Garcia died, in 1995. Useless & Firm and Phish are actually packing audiences into the Sphere, the towering orb simply off the Las Vegas Strip, whose spectacle is made for social-media sharing.
One purpose for this renaissance is the stultifying nature of listening to music within the period of streaming dominance. Platforms corresponding to Spotify search to establish customers’ tastes after which serve up extra of the identical. Jam bands, in distinction, are unpredictable by definition. Within the mid-’60s, the Grateful Useless established an ethos of fixed experimentation: No two stay reveals are ever the identical, and, certainly, no efficiency of a given tune is ever repeated. Every present is a feat of improvisation, and a part of the enchantment is witnessing this high-wire act alongside fellow vacationers. Not like the atomized expertise of streaming music by means of a set of earbuds, following a jam band is a communal journey. The music, in different phrases, is a robust rebuke to the concept our tastes could be analyzed, quantified, and glad by a pc.
Goose has been particularly effectively positioned to profit from a newfound openness to the jam scene. Whereas the Useless is a band with a long time of esoteric lore and a sound cast within the ’60s, Goose is accessible and fashionable. The band’s influences are rooted within the indie and rock acts its members grew up admiring: the Crimson Scorching Chili Peppers, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Radiohead, and, sure, Phish.
Onstage, Goose builds little worlds. “I’m always trying to create one thing that I really feel like I may get misplaced in,” Mitarotonda advised me not too long ago. In the midst of a tune, he’ll conjure winding, hypnotic melodies, then weave them along with the notes and rhythms the 4 different males are enjoying. The band composes ephemeral songs inside songs, bending genres alongside the best way—plodding organ funk could give technique to vivid, looking major-key bliss rock. A distorted, menacing collection of guitar riffs and bass strains could construct to gnarly peaks earlier than touchdown softly and ethereally. Or the band may break into certainly one of its trademark reinterpretations of ’80s pop: Kenny Loggins’s “Hazard Zone,” from the High Gun soundtrack; Eddy Grant’s reggae-fusion hit “Electrical Avenue.”
Jerry Garcia’s dying tore a gap within the jam-band scene, making a vacuum nobody was able to fill. Former members of the Grateful Useless performed on, as did Phish and bands corresponding to Widespread Panic, however no rightful inheritor had been named. The consequence was an immense strain, particularly on Phish and Anastasio, to soak up the viewers and legacy of the Useless whereas preserving their very own sound. In championing Goose, Anastasio was maybe making an attempt to level a approach ahead, not only for the band, however for the now-resurgent style. Useless & Firm, too, has collaborated with Goose, providing the group its personal imprimatur.
For all their latest success, Phish and Useless & Firm are the previous and current, not the long run, of the scene. It might fall to Goose to be the group that escapes the confines of the outdated tie-dyed touring circus, reimagines what a contemporary jam band could be, and awakens a wider viewers to the limitless potentialities and pleasures of improvised rock.
Goose formally grew to become a band in 2014. The group slowly assembled its lineup by cobbling collectively Mitarotonda’s mates from Boston’s Berklee School of Music (founding drummer Ben Atkind) and his hometown of Wilton, Connecticut (the multi-instrumentalist Peter Anspach in addition to the bassist Trevor Weekz, who seems just like the chillest worker at your native ski store). Anspach began as a Goose fan—and rival band chief—earlier than becoming a member of in 2017. He embodies Goose’s nerdy power: Onstage, he could be discovered behind an array of keyboards, a guitar slung over his again, arising and right down to the music. However Goose didn’t settle absolutely on its trademark sound till 2020, when it invited a longtime collaborator, the percussionist Jeff Arevalo, to return on full time. Arevalo can complicate a rhythm in a approach that pushes a tune into new territory.
The early days have been a grind. Jam bands show themselves on the street, and Goose spent a number of years enjoying 100-plus reveals. There’s a word-of-mouth ingredient to the scene: When followers hear the real article, the information travels. A bar gig can result in a small college-town present, which may garner an invitation to a competition—and the fan base grows.
Even when Goose was enjoying the smaller competition circuit, it maintained a prolific on-line presence, posting live performance clips on YouTube, livestreaming virtually every day by way of a subscription service, and making soundboard recordings of reveals obtainable, a lot of them free of charge, on platforms corresponding to Bandcamp. A lot of this was initially Anspach’s doing: He mastered the soundboard audio from reveals and dutifully posted it to Bandcamp not lengthy after coming offstage. Because it’s grown, Goose has constructed out a crew of videographers and administrators who proceed to livestream most reveals—a live performance movie launched practically each evening the band is on tour. In its personal approach, the band is updating a convention began by the Useless, of constructing the band’s central output—stay music—as obtainable as doable.
The coronavirus pandemic arrived at a hinge level for the band’s reputation. Reside music was primarily canceled—Goose, nonetheless, continued to play. It booked a slate of socially distanced reveals at drive-in theaters, and streamed “bingo” nights, wherein the band picked songs and musical challenges (20-minute jam; rotation jam, the place band members swapped devices) out of a bingo cage.
Goose’s sense of play has been on the coronary heart of its ascent. One Halloween, the band carried out an Austin Powers live performance, in costume; Mitarotonda delivered Dr. Evil’s Mini-Me rap. Final 12 months, I used to be within the viewers at a live performance at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre. The official theme for the night was “Sleeveless in Seattle”; all the band was clad in tank tops. Minutes into the efficiency, the venue’s PA system malfunctioned, flooding the room with gnarly static. When Goose lastly went again on, following two unsuccessful makes an attempt to begin, the band responded with a 45-minute improvisation—a right away Jam of the Yr contender. “It was like, We don’t know if it’s going to crap out once more, so let’s simply ship it,” Mitarotonda advised me.
Tracking Goose’s rise over the previous 5 years, it’s tempting to see a narrative of linear success, of fine vibes solely getting higher. Nevertheless it hasn’t at all times felt that technique to the members of the band.
I first met them in 2022, outdoors Denver, the place the band was enjoying that 12 months’s Goosemas live performance, an annual vacation custom that had began eight years earlier in a Norwalk, Connecticut, basement. Backstage, about two hours earlier than the band would play certainly one of its greatest reveals so far, I stumbled upon Mitarotonda alone within the greenroom. We had an interview deliberate for later, however he appeared keen to speak then and there.
The early years of Goose weren’t at all times straightforward for Mitarotonda. He wasn’t certain he may ship what audiences have been coming to anticipate from him. “I simply felt so toppled by the notion of those massive crowds and going on the market,” he advised me. The nerves are comprehensible—improvisation, even for probably the most seasoned practitioners, carries real danger.
An awesome jam is an artwork type, and probably the most essential ability is listening—it’s about “locking in on what any person else is doing, and making them really feel like their thought is tremendous worthwhile,” as Anspach put it to me. Sometimes, in a stay present, you’ll hear Anspach whoop and holler throughout a solo, as if he have been nonetheless only a fan. After I requested him about these bursts of encouragement, he advised me that he does it as a result of, onstage, it’s onerous for the opposite musicians to listen to the group’s cheers. “However they’ll hear me,” he mentioned.
The highs are excessive, however each jam band has to stay with the truth that it’ll typically swing and miss. The occasional off evening or unhealthy run will not be unusual; even die-hard Useless and Phish followers will dismiss complete years of the bands’ stay music. However Mitarotonda’s anxieties have been persistent. I introduced up a present I’d seen that summer season, in Portland, Oregon, the place I watched Mitarotonda virtually liquefy the strings of his guitar over the course of three hours. He checked out me with fascination. We’d had two fully totally different experiences that night, he advised me: What I noticed as virtuosity, he described as combating to get the notes out of the guitar.
The inevitable comparisons to Phish and the Useless, whereas flattering, may also be exhausting. They usually can stoke rivalries between the bands’ fan bases. Detractors argue that Goose is an overrated “pop jam band”—some songs do have a pop-inflected sound, particularly in contrast with Phish or the Useless—or that its improvisations are inclined to fall into same-sounding ruts. Largely, the band’s critics take subject with the concept it’s been topped as the following massive factor within the scene, when there are different contenders for that crown. At a latest present, I noticed quite a few Goose followers carrying shirts bearing the phrase not one hundred pc offered on Goose—a jab at holdouts from different camps. As intense are the expectations of the already-won-over followers, who could make contradictory calls for. They need to see the band evolve, but on the identical time, there’s already a way of nostalgia for the scrappy experimentation of the early days.
For Goose, this has meant strain to maintain up a near-constant touring schedule whereas additionally perpetually reinventing itself. Within the jam-band custom, the set lists are totally different every evening. Over dinner one night, I watched Anspach and Mitarotonda concoct a plan for the evening’s present and realized that the pair evaluation lists of songs they’ve performed in every metropolis, to verify native crowds get one thing new each time the band comes by means of. I watched them throw out songs after which whittle the listing down utilizing a shared iPhone Word—to my dismay, “Madhuvan,” an awesome car for Goose’s darker jams, was nixed, having been performed in the course of the band’s summer season run in Colorado.
Over time, the calls for of the street precise a toll, because the band turns into so targeted on performing that it has no time to work towards one thing new. Mitarotonda refers to touring and performing as inventive outputs, and to writing and practising as inventive inputs. There have been instances, he mentioned, when the band was placing out way more than it was taking in.
It was at a second when street life had began to weigh a bit heavier on Mitarotonda that Anastasio took an curiosity within the band. After the Radio Metropolis present, he invited Goose to co-headline a fall tour with the Trey Anastasio Band. A childhood good friend of Mitarotonda’s advised me that in a Phish present in 2009, Mitarotonda, then about 18 years outdated, turned to him mid-jam, pointed to the stage, and mentioned, I feel I need to do this. 13 years later, he was on tour with Anastasio.
The collaboration helped Mitarotonda determine some issues as a musician. Of their free time backstage, Mitarotonda and Anastasio geeked out on the craft of constructing stay music. In a single video the band launched on YouTube, Anastasio enthusiastically describes his amp settings. However Anastasio bestowed nontechnical recommendation too. Minutes after their first present of the tour, he requested Mitarotonda how he thought Goose’s set went. “I advised him it was high-quality and that we eased into the night,” Mitarotonda recounted. “And Trey was like, That’s attention-grabbing. I don’t ease into it.” The offhand comment was a revelation. “It’s like, Oh, in fact it’s best to go on the market and simply punch the viewers within the face with it,” Mitarotonda mentioned. “I really feel like I’ve been each residing life and enjoying guitar so defensively for thus lengthy. And now I’m enthusiastic about the best way to go on the offensive.”
Positive sufficient, after I went again and listened again to the second present on the tour with Anastasio, the distinction was clear: a high-intensity opener that set the tone for the night.
Few bands can expertise an ascent like Goose’s and emerge unscathed. Inventive variations led to the departure of Ben Atkind late final 12 months. For followers, the primary few weeks of 2024—one of many uncommon instances that the band went off the grid—appeared to sign that the fairy story was over. However after I spoke with Mitarotonda just a few months later, he argued that it was throughout this quiet interval that the band as soon as once more discovered its approach: It used the downtime to fill up creatively and apply obsessively in order that it may head again on the street with one thing the members felt good about sharing.
In early February, the band introduced Atkind’s substitute, Cotter Ellis, by releasing a video of his closing audition—a 32-minute jam. Over the following month, the band launched Ellis to a legion of involved followers, culminating in two lengthy YouTube live shows recorded in Mitarotonda’s Connecticut barn. Within the movies, the band cycles by means of basic songs with a brand new enthusiasm: Weekz’s bass is louder; Arevalo tries his hand at rhythm guitar; Anspach performs the keys so onerous that his glasses fly off his face. The cameras linger on Ellis too, who bounces in his seat. The subtext of the movies is obvious: Don’t fear, we will nonetheless rip.
After I requested Mitarotonda what this iteration of the band can be like, he demurred, arguing that it wasn’t for him to say. But it’s clear—each from talking with Mitarotonda and from observing the band play—that Ellis’s enjoying type and technical prowess have impressed the band. A couple of weeks after our dialog, in early April, Goose performed its first stay reveals in its new configuration—a sold-out four-night run at New York’s Capitol Theatre, a storied jam venue. With Ellis, the music is extra affected person, extra mature, but additionally extra energetic than it’s been in years.
The band could also be at one other hinge level. In some ways, that is what’s interesting about not solely Goose but additionally all the jam style. Being a fan hyperlinks you to the previous—to this lengthy, painstakingly documented historical past of improvisation and evolution—however you’re at all times targeted on what’s coming subsequent. The long run could also be unpredictable, however one factor is fixed: There’s at all times the following present.
Close to the tip of my final dialog with Mitarotonda, I reminded him about our first assembly and his candid uncertainty about Goose’s rise and his personal standing as a entrance man. Had his outlook modified? “It sounds such as you’re asking, ‘Does it really feel such as you’ve arrived?’ … And it’s like, I don’t really feel like I’ve arrived,” he mentioned. “I really feel assured within the route I’m shifting in, you realize, and that’s possibly all that issues.”
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