Flying High: How Jam Band Goose Is Bringing The Genre To New Generations

This spring, The Shed, a massive cultural complex on Manhattan’s West Side, hosted “Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy,” an immersive exhibition filled with carnival attractions designed by revered artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Roy Lichtenstein. But on one March evening, these hulking installations were just a backdrop: Goose, and 1,000 of its most ardent fans, descended on the space for a special event promoting the ascendant Connecticut jam band’s new album, Everything Must Go (released April 25). Costumed actors modeled after the figures on the album’s Where’s Waldo?-esque cover — a maid, a burlesque dancer, an old-timey weightlifter — wandered about, interacting with attendees. More than an hour of fully improvised music capped the evening.

“That’s the kind of stuff we want to be doing a lot more of,” singer-guitarist Rick Mitarotonda says. “We just want to do more weird s–t, frankly.”

Two months later, Goose is fresh off another high-concept event: Viva El Gonzo, its first Mexican destination festival. Welcoming more than 3,000 attendees, the group curated a bill for the three-day May fest that included both jam regulars (Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, Eggy) and indie-rockers (The War on Drugs, Dawes). “We get excited anytime there’s any kind of blurring of the lines between those worlds,” says Mitarotonda, 34. “With our own music, we’re kind of flirting with those lines.”

Since exploding during the pandemic, thanks in part to its savvy embrace of livestreams and drive-in concerts, Goose has become a touring force: The band that was playing small clubs in 2019 will headline New York’s Madison Square Garden in June for the first time. Jam-world titans like the Grateful Dead’s Bobby Weir and Phil Lesh and Phish’s Trey Anastasio have helped to burnish Goose’s credentials as the Next Great Jam Band, performing with its members and exposing it to veteran audiences in the process. “The most valuable things you pick up are not tangible,” Mitarotonda says of rubbing shoulders with these legends. “You’re not able to articulate them; they’re not said. They’re just this osmosis-type thing.”

But the quartet is also reverent of millennial indie-rock favorites: It has covered the likes of Spoon, Radiohead and The National. At a 2024 concert, Vampire Weekend joined Goose for a 33-minute version of the rock mainstay’s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.”

Goose, which is rounded out by bassist Trevor Weekz (35), multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Peter Anspach (32) and drummer Cotter Ellis (33, who joined in early 2024), may jam with the best of them, but the band’s aspirations go beyond that scene. Loaded with slick, funky grooves and heartfelt ballads, Everything Must Go notched Goose the best chart marks of its young career — No. 3 on Vinyl Albums and No. 6 on Top Album Sales — upon its April debut. The group’s team is servicing its music to radio, including “Give It Time,” which hit No. 10 on Adult Alternative Airplay in May.

Mitarotonda, Anspach and Weekz grew up in Wilton, Conn.; after playing in another band, Mitarotonda and Weekz debuted Goose in 2014, and three years later, Anspach joined the fold. Goose quickly started garnering buzz, thanks in part to an opening slot for the jam band Spafford and a widely shared 2019 performance at the Allman Brothers Band-founded Peach Music Festival. As touring resumed after the pandemic, Goose bolstered its repertoire with two well-received albums, 2021’s Shenanigans Nite Club and 2022’s Dripfield.

For Goose — which is signed for management with the boutique 11E1even Group (releasing music on 11E1even’s No Coincidence label, with distribution by Secretly Distribution) and for U.S. booking with the indie Arrival Artists — independence has been a huge factor in its success, from its quirky live shows to its strategy for Bandcamp, where it releases recordings of its concerts within hours. “We have a pretty easy time floating ideas and executing them,” Anspach says, “which is awesome.”

The studio version of Everything Must Go is a polished, straightforward affair — but it’s a different beast on the road, where Goose has been performing much of the album’s material for three years, often stretching the set’s songs past the 20-minute mark. “The music that they’re writing, when they get on the stage, they’re able to dig deep into jams, which is appealing to a lot of the jam-band folks,” says 11E1even Group’s Ben Baruch, who manages Goose alongside Dave DiCianni. “And then the songwriting is appealing to not only those fans, but also connecting to people outside of the jam world.”

That wide appeal has fueled Goose’s live ascent: From 17 shows reported to Billboard Boxscore in 2024, the band grossed $6.1 million and sold 91,400 tickets. So has its commitment to the community-oriented, fan-first approach that has long kept die-hards returning to Phish: Like “Luna Luna,” art installations featured prominently at Viva El Gonzo, and the band has turned its annual Goosemas event into an ambitious production (at 2024’s bingo-themed edition in South Carolina, its setlists — and other onstage antics — were dictated by drawing balls at random). For Goose, these types of shows are “a core tradition,” Anspach says. “Our production [team] gets a chance to really flex their skills. They get to flex what their creative brains are thinking about and create some cool concepts and stories.”

In late May, Goose embarked on a major summer tour, where in addition to Madison Square Garden, it’s headlining amphitheaters and has prominent billings at festivals like Bonnaroo and Newport Folk Festival. But the group already has its eyes on the future, from ideas for the next Goosemas and even a second Viva El Gonzo, which Mitarotonda says the foursome is excited to get to work on “as this annual thing.”

“The connection between the four of us is amazing,” he says. “It feels like the most connected the band has ever been. The way we’re able to communicate, and things like that — it does, to me, feel unprecedented. It feels like we’re catching a new wave.”

And as it adjusts to bigger venues and the challenges that accompany them, Goose is taking care not to abandon what got it there. The goal, Mitarotonda says, is “making an amphitheater feel like a basement party.”

This story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.