Photo: Juliana Bernstein

***

Sometime during set break, Rick Mitarotonda realized the band needed to make a call. The clock was rapidly ticking toward 10 p.m., and the singer/ guitarist, and the rest of the extended Goose organization, had a feeling they weren’t going to make Madison Square Garden’s 11:30 p.m. curfew.

“We had a decent amount of time to do two 90-minute sets and an encore,” he says in early July, four days after his group’s headlining debut at the New York arena. “We cut maybe one thing, but we pretty much played what we had landed on. Then, we got off stage after the first set and realized it had been like two hours and the conversation started—‘What’s this gonna look like if we go late?’ And we ended up blowing past curfew.”

Mitarotonda grew up in the Fairfield County section of Connecticut, in the shadow of New York City, and the significance of selling out The World’s Most Famous Arena was not lost on him. He admits that Goose will often craft their setlists “more last minute” than they should—with keyboardist/second guitarist Peter Anspach handling the more statistical information about what tunes might be unique for a given tour stop, or fit into a run’s overall arc, while Mitarotonda considers how things weave together harmonically and tries to thread a larger story. Sometimes he’ll get stuck and ask for input from the rest of the band, co-founding bassist Trevor Weekz and new drummer Cotter Ellis, and he mentions that it’s always great when the entire group hashes things out together.

“A massive influx of people from the past reached out,” Mitarotonda says, noting the mix of friends, family and familiar industry stalwarts in the house that night. “It was really special in that regard. But, in the moment, I wanted to stay locked in with the band and our touring crew.”

The guitarist is acutely aware that Goose’s recent MSG play was a big moment for his community. It’s been a number of years since a rising jamband has ascended to Madison Square Garden for the first time—or even longer depending on how orthodox one’s definition of a jamband is and if you take multi- band bills out of the equation. The show arrived at a pivotal moment for Goose too, just after the release of their fourth studio album and first in three years, Everything Must Go and shortly before the surprise announcement of another full-length LP, Chain Yer Dragon—which they dropped seemingly out of nowhere while playing The Tonight Show in August. Both records showcase the band’s growth as they’ve settled into summer sheds around the country. Both records also document a period of profound change within the ensemble, as the group parted ways with founding drummer Ben Atkind in late 2023 and percussionist Jeff Arevalo in 2025, and welcomed Ellis in 2024.

Likewise, it’s been quite a while since a band that came of age on the jamband club circuit has achieved such broad recognition. In the past few months alone, the group has appeared on CBS Saturday Morning, sat for interviews with The New York Times and GQ, and taped an intimate spot at the New York club Racket for NPR station WFUV. “Give It Time,” a melodic, standout single from Everything Must Go, has received considerable airplay on AAA stations around the country and, as 2024 faded in 2025, Mitarotonda took part in all-star Grateful Dead tributes at both the Kennedy Center Honors and MusiCares’ Grammy Week gala. The guitarist also offhandedly mentions that Jack Antonoff, one of the biggest pop producers working today, will sometimes check in on him after they shared the stage at both Bonnaroo and Newport Folk a few years ago. (Moreover, at Newport Folk this July, Kenny Loggins served as a special guest during Goose’s marquee set.)

But, staying true to their live-music roots, Goose still hyped Everything Must Go with a fully improvised set at the immersive art installation Luna Luna, responding to cues from the audience, and hosted their first international festival, Viva El Gonzo—which brought together both post jam-approved indie darlings like The War on Drugs and Dawes, and rising improv acts like Eggy, Dogs in a Pile and Pigeons Playing Ping Pong. A consummate host, Mitarotonda joined most of those bands on stage as well.

The bond on this tour has never been stronger, and I’ve never had more fun,” Mitarotonda admits. “The language that we’re building—the experiences and energy between the four of us and the extended crew—has never been better. The communication is great. It’s a testament to things moving in the right direction and making the right decisions—putting everyone where they do best, experimenting and improving at every aspect of what we’re doing.”

The MSG gig took place on the penultimate night of a multi-week run full of benchmark moments for the band. In Boise, they stretched “Rosewood Heart” to almost the 40-minute mark, the second longest they’ve ever extended a single song. (Their 45-minute spin on “Echo of a Rose” in Seattle, on April 22, 2023, still has a slight edge.)

Shortly after, they headlined two revamped old-school jamband festivals, All Good Now and Mountain Jam, a sign of renewed interest in the genre in general. And, the day after MSG, they closed things out close to home with a festive gig at New Haven, Conn.’s Westville Music Bowl; after the pressure of the Garden, Mitarotonda woke up on the bus and “played Frisbee with some homies in the yard pre-show” as a release.

“There was a very funny energy [in Bosie], and we locked into that groove,” Mitarotonda says. “We could have played for five hours. We couldn’t stop. It was a crowd-rock thing.”

photo credit: Adam Berta

***

Goose started on the albums that became Everything Must Go and Chain Yer Dragon in upstate New York during the spring of 2023, once again partnering with D. James Goodwin, who they initially brought into the mix for Dripfield thanks to his work with the indie-folk trio Bonny Light Horseman. As Everything Music Go’s title suggests, Goose’s newfound energy and momentum has inspired them to let out a number of revamped songs, some of which predate the band itself. In 2023, Anspach says, they had about 24 selections they planned to record—and then kept ducking back in and adding tunes between tours.

“As we got the basics done, it became more obvious that we should hone in on Everything Must Go, so we put all our efforts into those tracks,” says the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Anspach, who also functions as Goose’s main on-stage MC and social media guru. “And then, as changes happened in the band, a bunch more songs came out. So, in 2024, we were like, ‘OK, let’s record these, too.’ It was a marathon.”

With Dripfield, Goose set out to craft an album that leaned into their song-centric, alt-pop influences and utilized the range of modern recording techniques at their disposal. They picked up on several of those themes with Everything Must Go, but, bolstered by the newfound confidence that comes with their recent recognition, also made sure to nod to their funk and jam roots.

“We were chasing the explosive energy that was going on at the time,” Mitarotonda says. “It started to feel like these songs were very much a pack—a core family and the weird cousins and uncles. It was the hardest sequence I’ve ever worked on because a lot of them share DNA, and there’s some really left-field stuff. Finding a throughline was a challenge.”

“[Goodwin is] family at this point,” says Weekz, while checking in from his home in Easton, Conn. “With Dripfield, we wanted to hand over the keys to someone and put our trust in them. He’s really helped us hone our craft. The writing is tighter. Everything Must Go feels like a collection of characters, which is displayed on the artwork itself.”

Then, after parting ways with Arevalo earlier this year, Goose regrouped with Goodwin and cut most of Dragon live. The project places a particular focus on material from the Vasudo days. Mitarotonda notes that they looked to “‘70s rock bands who would go for it” in the studio as a sonic compass, unlike the more processed approach they took with Everything Must Go. For the sessions, the musicians went in and “ripped takes,” capturing their concert energy as best they could.

“We were working on this body of music simultaneously and seeing where the chips landed, but we ultimately took very little from those early sessions,” Mitarotonda says. “We basically banged this record out in March, which was refreshing. We were coming off the most recent change in the band and, with everything that was going on with that, we just wanted to be fresh. And, honestly, as weird as all of that stuff was— and everything that was going on was—the band, the four of us, was feeling so good and our dynamic was really strong. We just wanted to lean into that.”

Anspach adds that the extended process helped. “It deepened a lot of the songs queued up for [Dragon]—a group of songs that are locked in,” he says of the LP, which includes definitive versions of both “Factory Fiction” and “Echo of a Rose,” as well as several other Vasudo favorites. “It stayed the way it was, except ‘Your Direction’ was supposed to be on that album and then we ended up thinking it was so strong that we were like, ‘We gotta put this out ASAP.’”

The Burlington, Vt.-based Ellis notes that Goodwin played him some Everything Must Go mixes during one of his first rehearsals. “When I joined, they were like, ‘We can’t release this without you,’” he says. “It was a little weird because I heard these mixes and was like, ‘You guys sound amazing.’ I was intimidated to come in and be a part of something they had already put so much effort into. But the way that I was put into the record was really organic. For example, during the audition process, they gave me a few songs and asked me to add my spin on them and add my voice.”

In the end, the sibling releases track the band’s various transitions during the past two-plus years; Atkind and Ellis contribute to both LPs, making them feel like a natural segue.

“Everything Must Go was this exclamation point on the journey, getting to this point,” Mitarotonda says. “But it’s also a doorway into wherever we’re going from here. The world of [Dragon] was created in the Vasudo days—and we are continuing to bring it to life in our current form, which is really refreshing.”

***

Mitarotonda’s multi-story house is situated in Redding, Conn., a rustic town located near the border of Westchester County, N.Y., and a quick drive from his childhood home of Wilton, Conn. Weekz, Anspach and Matt Campbell—his former Vasudo bandmate and close songwriting partner—all hail from Wilton as well. That section of Connecticut has a distinct energy—a tree-lined sprawl in the suburbs of a major metropolitan city. It’s also a comfortable middle ground between the hip pull of New York’s downtown swagger and the refined, jazz-fusion precision of the Berklee-honed Boston scene.

The guitarist moved to his current home a few years ago, after living with some of his bandmates during the pandemic, when they expanded their fanbase exponentially through a series of creative livestreams. On this May afternoon, he’s sitting at his kitchen table by a glass door that overlooks a neighbor’s pond as his dog scurries around. He recently dug out some Goose album artwork and hung it on a nearby wall by a record player; it seems to tie the room together.

In a few days, the rest of the band will come by to rehearse for their upcoming outing in a clubhouse-like space he’s built elsewhere on the property. Unlike many of his peers, Mitarotonda never decamped to New York, Los Angeles or Nashville when he decided to pursue music full time.

“I thrive when no one’s looking,” he says, referencing both his secluded locale and his group’s circuitous rise. “I’m not a city guy—I like staring at the trees and having a dog, though I need to go have some other experiences because there’s not a lot of people that I can relate to on a lot of levels out here.”

Mitarotonda has the longest history with Weekz, who was two grades ahead of him in school. The bassist spent his early years raiding his older brother’s CD binders, developing an affinity for both classic jambands and some harder-edged music. He was introduced to his future bandmate by guitarist Peter Castaldi—another core character in the Goose Cinematic Universe— around 2007.

“Throughout high school, I jammed with Peter a bunch—he taught me a lot through osmosis,” Weekz says. “Rick’s family friends were throwing a New Year’s Eve party on a farm in Vermont, so the three of us put together a band. I was four months into college, so during the summers, we would get together and jam at my place. Matt Campbell came over and played with us a few times, and there was some chemistry there.”

A lifelong music fan, Mitarotonda recorded his first album in 8th grade on a 12-track recorder his dad gave him and ended up making $700 selling copies. Through his sister, who is 10 years older, Mitarotonda started getting into Dave Matthews Band, which went from being something he was “forced to listen to” to a North Star. As is often the case, he learned about the Dead and Phish through older friends and family members and, with the latter band inactive for much of his formative years, went to see bands like Umphrey’s McGee and STS9 in NYC. He eventually attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music, where he met Atkind, who is from Needham, Mass., and Arevalo, whose father played with Dickey Betts for many years. In 2012, Mitarotonda started what became Vasudo with Campbell, who had just graduated and briefly interned at Red Light Management before leaving to travel in South America. Weekz and Atkind held down the rhythm section for the beginning of Vasudo’s run, with Arevalo eventually filling in on drums as well. (Vasudo technically had four drummers during the year-and-a-half period they were around.)

“The Vasudo stuff was some of the greatest times,” Weekz says. “I wanted to keep that vibe rolling and thought we could make something out of it.”

In one bit of band lore, Mitarotonda describes a U-Haul trip to “kidnap” Weekz from his school to play with Vasudo, and the nascent group began working on a batch of originals. Mitarotonda calls Campbell a “force” at that time, a talented vocalist who showed early signs of his songwriting prowess. “Matt was a little older than me and the lead singer in those days—I was a pretty awful singer,” Mitarotonda admits. “Not to say I’m great now, but I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable. It was a really formative experience for all of us.”

Vasudo gained some regional traction—Weekz says he missed his college graduation for a mini tour—but broke up after an action packed 18 months. Around the same time, Mitarotonda ended up dropping out of school and moving to Colorado.

“Every once in a while, Jon and Trevor would get loose and send me a late night message being like, ‘What’s it gonna take to play again?’” Mitarotonda says of Weekz and longtime friend and crew member Jon “Coach” Lombardi. “I had been in Colorado for about 10 months—it was just enough time to gain perspective on things because I was pretty down and out, and pretty sick at that time— really struggling with my health and the direction I was going to go in and if I was going to keep doing music. I had a couple of other opportunities on the East Coast, so I would fly back and do a gig with those guys, and that’s how things started.”

Mitarotonda and Weekz played their first show as Goose with Ben Teters and Isaac Slutsky in September 2014 at Stamford, Conn.’s Jimmy’s Seaside Tavern, and the first permanent lineup—featuring Mitarotonda, Weekz, Castaldi and Atkind—coalesced shortly after. They had a little momentum behind them, but it was still a slog.

“We were just throwing something together,” Weekz says. “In the Vasudo days, we’d have our rowdy friends pack the venues, whereas in the beginning of Goose, there was some of that, but it was becoming harder to bring our friends out and the Connecticut shows were a little lighter.”

Mitarotonda eventually moved back to New England and ended up finishing up at Berklee. He notes that when the group recorded their first album, 2016’s Moon Cabin in New Hampshire, things started to feel more real.

“We weren’t really a band at that point,” he explains. “We were playing bar gigs with our friends and not hitting it very hard. Moon Cabin was this weird stake in the ground of whatever this thing was.”

While Fairfield lacks the club system of the major markets to its north and south, it has a robust local live-music scene. Goose’s early gigs mixed originals with covers and material familiar to Vasudo fans. In addition to expected jamband repertoire fair, they eventually fleshed out their sets with some more modern influences as Mitarotonda discovered indie-approved acts like Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, alt-J, Poliça and Vampire Weekend. (Closing a circle, several of those acts grew up on jam acts before achieving blog-era fame.) Like the bands that came before them, they’ve often used those more compact tunes as launching pads for pockets of improvisation.

Weekz characterizes their formative years as a series of small victories that propelled them forward. He and Mitarotonda cite dates in Covington, Ky., and Buffalo, N.Y., in 2018 and 2019, as pivotal stops, and they gained some footing through regular gigs at Garcia’s in Port Chester, N.Y. A number of members also came and went along the way, including Castaldi, Chris “Doc” Enright, Patrick Carr, Kris Yunker and Aaron Hagele.

“I can’t remember any chinks in the armor of determination,” Mitarotonda admits, noting the long, under-the radar gestation period that has led some naysayers to believe that Goose emerged fully formed out of nowhere. “We were failing and not doing well, left and right—it was wack for years, which is a very ironic thing about the perception of what this thing is now. I got used to, and comfortable with, failure for my entire 20s. I wanted to do it so badly and didn’t have the right tools or it wasn’t time—life wasn’t presenting the right circumstances and I had to be patient and keep working. I had to learn that the hard way because I’m not a patient person, which is ironic because I’m also a very slow person. But even in those moments, I didn’t have any thoughts of hanging it up.”

Anspach’s arrival at the end of 2017 was also a major turning point. The future Goose member had started the band Great Blue in high school. Though Castaldi, he met Weekz, who subbed at a few shows, and Great Blue ended up playing some dates with Goose. Before that, their slight age difference still felt like a big deal. “When Rick was in high school, I knew of his prog-metal band Shadow Act,” he says. “We looked up to them, but I never talked with Rick.”

During the summer of 2017, Mitarotonda and Anspach happened to sit next to each other on the same Metro-North train from Connecticut to New York on the way to one of Phish’s Baker’s Dozen performances at MSG, though they went their separate ways before the show started.

“We had an amazing conversation about music, totally natural, and he showed me the track list for [the 2021 release] Shenanigans Nightclub, which hadn’t even been recorded yet,” Anspach says. “I was like, ‘You have an amazing plan.’ And, a couple of weeks later, we talked on the phone, and he’s like, ‘Would you be interested in learning some keyboards and joining Goose?’”

Though Anspach was primarily a guitarist at that point, Mitarotonda appreciated his energy, spirit and musicality. And, as Great Blue reached an impasse, he auditioned for the group in time for their signature Goosemas event.

“With Great Blue, we were doing our best and not a lot was happening. That created some interesting tension. Ultimately, I was like, ‘I’m gonna go play with Goose. Let’s take a breather,’” he says, noting that Great Blue still regroups for occasional shows. “It was a switch to be like, ‘I’m gonna join and play some of my music. But it’s probably not gonna be all my music.’ I was convinced that Rick’s music was strong—stronger than other bands I’d heard in the scene up to that point. It seemed extremely fresh.”

Like Mitarotonda, Anspach grew up on 2000s jambands—he even “interned” with Dopapod at one point—and started getting more into Vampire Weekend, Mac DeMarco, Fleet Foxes and Tycho while in college. He notes that, before he joined, “[Goose’s] organ player was really great and had a lot funk and jazz chops from playing in organ trios, so they were leaning into that MMW/Scofield zone.”

However, at Mitarotonda’s insistence, Anspach brought some material over from the Great Blue catalog, including “Yeti.”

“I was like, ‘Are you sure? You have great lyrics about deep, emotional things,’” Anspach says. “It ended up fitting and eventually defining a certain aspect of the band. We can be silly and funny. It’s good to have a little whimsy in there, mixed in with deep, dark, introspective stuff. The Grateful Dead had songs that you could play at a funeral, but then they also had songs you could play at party.”

Another undeniable turning point took place the Peach Music Festival in 2019, when the band charged through a tight set featuring a Bruce Hornsby cover, despite Mitarotonda being forced to sit down after hurting his knee. A high-quality video of the performance quickly spread after the fact and helped propel their momentum throughout the fall. The group tested out some larger venues while opening for Pigeons Playing Ping Pong in early 2020 and then, based on internet chatter, things felt like they were about to catapult until COVID hit.

“You grind it out and are like, ‘I’m never going to get to the next step. I’ll just try doing this.’ And, at that moment, you find that collaborator or write this song that is a breakthrough, just when the pressure is off,” Mitarotonda admits. “When you’re so hyper focused, sometimes the blinders are on.”

While the pandemic paused the growth of many live-music acts, Goose was able to harness the moment and multiply their fanbase. They staged interactive livestreams such as their forward-thinking Bingo Tour, started the Dave & Tim-like offshoot Orebolo to showcase their acoustic side and scored some hipster cred when Vampire Weekend commissioned them to record a 20:21-minute version of their tune “2021.” They officially added Arevalo to the lineup and released their sophomore set, Shenanigans Nightclub, in 2021. All those experiences highlighted their creative energy and rock-forward songwriting, which had a broader appeal than the generation of more genre-specific jam-acts that preceded them.

“We were stoked, but I was pretty overwhelmed with everything that was going on, by the way my life had evolved, personally,” Mitarotonda says of the band’s rapid growth going into 2020. “The tour we had booked for that summer, we were flying across the country twice every weekend and it would have physically torn me apart. So, on a personal level, having the time to finish Shenanigans and breathe amid that chaos, while still being creative and putting out videos, was exactly what I needed.”

Mitarotonda felt the increased interest as concerts started to pop up again, but he admits his restless spirit kept him from taking a victory lap.

“Everyone’s soaking in the moment, and I pulled one of our managers aside and was like, ‘We need to go in and start working on [Dripfield] now,’” he says with a laugh. “I totally killed the vibe.” The band ended up linking up with Goodwin to track Dripfield, beginning the fruitful partnership that continues to this day. “Creatively, we had exhausted a lot of our own instincts,” Mitarotonda says. “I was at a point of wanting to surrender to someone creatively, just to open some new doors.” Dripfield and its support tour raised Goose’s profile considerably; they made their late-night TV debut and graduated to New York’s Radio City Music Hall, where both Father John Misty and Trey Anastasio sat in for an indie-jam cross-genre moment. Soon after, the latter artist took Goose on the road for a co-headlining tour of small arenas, metaphorically passing a torch through nightly collaborations. They gradually made inroads into the Dead world too, sharing the stage with Dead & Company and even participating in some pre-show workouts with Bob Weir that went viral. In addition, Phil Lesh started recruiting Mitarotonda for his rotating Friends shows. But, once again, Goose kept churning out songs.

“2022 was a crazy year for us,” the guitarist says. “We started working on Everything Must Go right after—the heart of the record is the process of attempting to reach some sort of cruise control. The first song we did was the title track, with Dan just chopping up the drum bits.”

As Goose turned into national headliners, Mitarotonda and Campbell also reconnected and formed an enduring songwriting partnership. “We went our separate ways and didn’t talk for a while, and then, very slowly, we rekindled and redefined our relationship and friendship,” Mitarotonda says. “And while we were doing that periodically, we would talk about song ideas—the idea of a werewolf EP kept popping up—and we started working on songs and playing a little bit together. I showed him the tracks for Dripfield before the record came out, and we hit this point of intentionally writing together again. The main body of all those songs [on Everything Must Go] started there. Matt and I are complimentary in a lot of ways—he writes the most, and the best, when the pressure is on.”

However, while Goose’s trajectory looked bright, a few cracks were starting to develop behind the scenes and, after a European tour and Goosemas at the fabled Hampton Coliseum, the band parted ways with Atkind. For those used to his funky drumming and bright presence, it was a shock.

A statement from the group explained, in part: “Over the last few months, we’ve had some really difficult internal conversations that have unfortunately resulted in Ben’s departure. As everyone knows, with any type of relationship, sometimes growing in different directions is beyond our control. After a great deal of time and effort working to bridge fundamental personal and creative differences, we’ve come to a place where we feel our current path to be unsustainable long-term.”

Atkind added in the same release, “Long-term creative camaraderie demands personal evolution. It demands consistent communication, mutual empathy and a willingness to compromise. Even though this is something we tried, these elements fell out of sync, which is where we find ourselves today. I will be forever grateful for my time with my bandmates and wish them the best as we prepare to go our separate ways.” (He continues to make adventurous music on his own with Houseplant and ElephantProof, which features Enright.)

After a brief period of uncertainty, the remaining four members brought on Ellis; his early test runs included a full show without an audience and some more relaxed jams that were released as “Ted Tapes.” Both Great Blue and Goose had worked the club circuit with Ellis’ band Swimmer, who injected some pop-punk energy into their jamband mélange. The band was drawn to his pocket and free-style playing while his singing has a Levon Helm-quality.

“I love the attitude and playfulness that Swimmer had on stage and still does,” Anspach says. “Cotter has brought so much energy, funk and passion that’s elevated the band way more than I thought it could.”

Though focused on his own work, Ellis appreciated Goose when they crossed paths, noting both their flair for mixing in more modern influences and strong vocals.

“They had a mature sound and approach, and they’ve only taken it more seriously,” Ellis says. “Rick, maybe to a fault, is very critical of himself in every aspect— his singing, his playing. That can be a really good thing for a musician—you don’t want to be negative, but you always have to balance being satisfied with the need to get better. All the guys are really good at maintaining that balance, which is always propelling the music forward.”

The drummer also notes the mental hurdle of joining an established band. “They were a tight, great group of musicians. The drums were great,” he says, noting that “How It Ends” was the first selection he wrote a drum part for. “So it was a balancing act of like, ‘I want to do these songs justice, and I want to do these awesome parts justice, but also put my voice in.’ Being part of an album was a great way for me get there.”

With Swimmer, Ellis was a primary songwriter; though he was happy to just focus on the drums, he’s also started to bring some of his originals to Goose.

“Rick wanted to make me feel like I was a part of the band, and one of those efforts was him being like, ‘Send me your demos and live recordings of songs that you wrote for Swimmer and we’ll pick some out,’” he says. “It’s funny that one of the ones they picked was this silly COVID song I wrote alone in my room. But that also made me feel like they were proud to have me be myself.”

For Ellis’ official debut, they camped out at Port Chester’s The Capitol Theatre for four nights in April 2024; Vampire Weekend were in town and ended up sitting in as part of their own album promo cycle.

“Ezra [Koenig] always joked about a 17-minute ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,’” Rick says of the version that extended past 30 minutes. “We went off the rails, as I tend to do, and totally lost track of time. Ezra looked like a deer in headlights by the end of it and I was like, ‘Did we get 17 minutes?’ And he was like, ‘Uh, yes.’”

Seven months later, Goose graced the stage at MSG for the first time as part of the Soulshine hurricane relief benefit. They shared a bill with numerous heroes that night, including Matthews, who joined them during their early evening slot.

“I was totally starstruck—it meant so much to my family, my dad,” he says of his father, who passed away in 2009. “My entire life kind of just came flooding in.”

photo credit: Juliana Bernstein

***

In December of 2024, Goose staged a massive-two night Goosemas in North Charleston, S.C., that featured a reprise of their bingo concept. Without a finessed setlist to work from, Ellis saw it as a test of his knowledge of their material, describing it as the moment he truly felt comfortable with their catalog.

Yet, 2025 did not start off as planned: In January, as they prepped for Everything Must Go, Arevalo announced a break from the road to focus on his mental health and personal issues, forcing Goose to go out as a quartet. Then, in March, the band issued a statement that read: “We have been made aware of behavior in Jeff’s personal life that does not align with the band’s core values. As a result, Jeff will no longer be a part of the Goose organization. This is an incredibly unfortunate, unexpected situation, and we did not anticipate having to make another painful change to the band. However, it is clear that this is the only way forward, as we remain committed to upholding the values that define our community, particularly when it comes to respecting others and creating a safe environment.”

Arevalo issued his own response during which he called out the Goose “organization.” Coupled with Atkind’s departure a little over a year earlier, it led to some interesting memes; at one point, Goose batted back with a wink, describing themselves as “the organization” while offering discounted tickets to fans.

The slimmed down lineup had an immediate impact on the music. “Obviously, it was a whirlwind because everything happened so quickly and we didn’t expect to go out as a four-piece on that tour,” Ellis admits. “But there’s some extra space now and we really grew into a new version of ourselves.”

Indeed, Goose has had to learn to deal with some outside criticism, especially from longtime jamband supporters who are not sure what to make of what they consider to be a meteoric rise that didn’t follow traditional patterns of band growth.

“The whole industry plant thing is real funny—an industry player probably would have had a lot less lineup changes,” Mitarotonda says with a laugh. “There would be a lot less past members. It’s been a long journey and a lot of those ended when we were a band playing in bars and trying different things with different people. But I do think about a band like Phish—that whole thing seems like a fairytale—or Vampire Weekend, this group of friends who have been together since college. It’s felt, for us, like a pretty rocky road— lots of incredible moments but also lots of weird moments where we didn’t know what the right direction to move in was and you are not all speaking the same language.”

Yet, he is confident in their decision to let things grow organically. He thinks back to an early conversation he had with management when the subject came up about paying for ads to boost their profile. That idea was quickly squashed. “We were having team discussions about ads,” he recalls, “and ultimately, we ended up pushing back at the time to let the natural algorithm do its thing. We were like, ‘No, whatever’s going on here with the content, the algorithm, the natural way that this stuff is happening, is working. Let’s not mess it up.’”

All four members of Goose, in separate interviews, highlight the strength of their current bond. Weekz thinks back on their bingo gag, which spawned his occasional “Trevor Reads Poetry” theatrics.

“I’m always writing down poetry or lyrics, random snippets,” Weekz says. “I’ve been writing down dirty-joke rap lyrics recently.”

Anspach is quick to echo Weekz’s continued contributions behind the scenes. “Trevor, even though he’s not one of the principal voices on stage, is so funny and has so many incredible ideas that we end up doing that are really original and absolutely ridiculous,” he says. “There’s so much camaraderie.”

Despite releasing two full-length sets in less than a semester, Mitarotonda says there is more music to come—“the queue is activated.” He also mentions an extended phone call he had with Campbell where they dug into how much life has happened since they wrote the music on their latest LP.

“We’ve all grown, and it feels right that we’ve reached the point for this record to have realized itself now,” he says. “It makes sense on some level that it’s taken this long for it to get recorded—it wasn’t ready to be realized until now. These songs feel like time-travel pieces. There are memories and experiences that they’ll evoke in me. But, ultimately, they are their own things that are growing and evolving live— in their own weird, invisible way. It’s cool how they’ve taken on different lives and been played in different ways at different times. It’s our own little microcosm of the folk tradition.”

He explains that Goose recently started playing a song whose bones are from his 8th grade recording project. And, after getting the acting bug filming some Goose promo videos, he appeared in an episode of Netflix’s Tires. Like Weir, he continues to refine his wellness routine. “I’ve found things that have helped a lot and moved the needle a good amount,” he says. “And then a lot of things I’ve tried didn’t really help. And I’m still on the journey. I’ve come a long way, in that regard, but it’s still something I’m very much working on.”

And, despite Goose’s recent success, Mitarotonda is already ready to hit the road again.

“Everything Must Go felt like the end of a phase and a beginning of a new one—there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to stop playing and wants to keep pushing and developing some of the language that we’re working on now,” he says. “It’s like we’ve got a new magic carpet.”