Goose: Same Old ‘Shenanigans’
Like many, Goose’s Peter Anspach was in denial when the coronavirus first landed in the United States.
“A couple days after we got pulled off the road in March, I was like, ‘We’re not canceling spring tour, right? We can’t do that!’” the guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist says, as he recounts the whirlwind period last year when the entire live-music scene came to a screeching halt. “Everyone was so naïve; literally, a few days after that, everything was canceled. I thought, ‘Well, summer festivals—those will be good.’ A week later, those were gone, too.”
The forced pause was unfortunate timing for Goose: In January 2020, they had performed two shows at Dead & Company’s Playing in the Sand event in Mexico. And the musicians were about to break into the upper echelon of the modern jamband scene, with a sold-out spring tour on the books and an eventful summer—filled with festivals and marquee headlining dates—on the horizon.
“We were opening for Pigeons [Playing Ping Pong] and we had our first tour headlining 400-1,000-person rooms all sold out,” drummer Ben Atkind recalls. “It felt like our big breakout tour, and we were looking forward to all of these festivals—and then everything was just canceled.”
Soon, as it became abundantly clear that the quarantine was going to last for quite some time, the band began to figure out a plan of action that ultimately made them one of the most productive acts of the pandemic era. Over the summer, they organized and performed the Bingo Tour, a series of livestreams during which bingo balls were periodically pulled with prompts such as “20+ Minute Jam,” “No Drums” or “Take a Lap.” Their fans were able to play along at home on digital bingo cards, adding another interactive element to the shows. The Bingo Tour was a huge success; the band even assembled a concert film highlighting the best moments from the event.
This past fall, Goose also became one of the first bands to return to the stage in front of an audience, performing socially distanced and drive-in shows in the Northeast at venues such as Connecticut’s South Farms and Vermont’s Champlain Valley Expo. While the gigs felt odd at time, Goose wound up drawing some of their largest audiences yet.
“Most of those drive-in shows were bigger than any other headlining shows we’ve ever done,” Atkind posits. “So, all of a sudden, we went from being bummed to saying, ‘Well, now we get to do the biggest shows we’ve ever done.’ Yet, it feels really different.” Atkind remembers needing to make an adjustment, as he “vibes off the people in the crowd” while onstage. “It’s a little tougher at the drive-in shows because you’re just that much more disconnected. But at the same time, the energy from everything being so big was definitely there.”
“It felt great to be back onstage again,” adds bassist Trevor Weekz. “It’s obviously different than a packed club, but it’s still awesome.”
Goose’s 2020 culminated with one of their biggest events ever, their annual Goosemas holiday show. The band— which actually added a new member, percussionist Jeff Arevalo, during the pandemic—wound up hosting a livestream from a rooftop at Rockefeller Center in New York City. (The event was streamed on The Relix Channel on Twitch.)
“It was just surreal,” guitarist/vocalist Rick Mitarotonda says, thinking back on the genesis of the Rockefeller Center event. “That was a moment where we thought, ‘OK, here’s the plan. This is what we’re gonna do—sounds great.’ And then we get there and it’s like, ‘Holy shit. How did we get here?’”
“[Goosemas] has always been a good indicator of where we are,” adds Weekz. “The first four years, we did it at Factory Underground—which is this recording studio in Norwalk, Conn., where we’ve done a lot of our recording—for maybe 175 people. After that we moved to this Tiki bar in Norwalk, which was probably double the size, and then [in 2019], we moved over to the Wall Street Theater in Norwalk. And that was right around when things were really picking up for us.”
“Going from a local thing for us to the roof of Rockefeller Center was just…,” Atkind recalls, before trailing off. “I found myself speechless. A lot of times, my girlfriend and I would look at each other or the band members would just look at each other and say, ‘This is real; this is happening.’ Because it did not feel real.”
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Considering the breadth of Goose’s concerts, both during and prior to the pandemic, one might think that their live performances are their sole focus. But behind the scenes, the band has had another goal that’s been in the works for many years—completing their sophomore LP, Shenanigans Nite Club.
The LP’s arc truly spans Goose’s history. In fact, some of the record’s tracks—and its title—have origins that far predate the band. “Honestly, a lot goes back to when I was in high school,” says Mitarotonda. The album’s namesake is a shuttered Norwalk, Conn. venue called the Shenanigans Nite Club. The space holds a special place in the guitarist’s heart.
“I had grown up hearing stories about the club,” Mitarotonda says. “It was a huge scene in like the late ‘80s and ‘90s. It was romanticized in my mind.” He channeled those feelings into two tracks on the record, “SOS” and its companion “(dawn),” which he calls “the heart of the record.”
“When I was a teenager, I kind of I wrote those lyrics about the stories that I had heard about the Shenanigan’s Nite Club,” the guitarist notes of “SOS.” Meanwhile, for “(dawn),” he “envisioned someone stepping away from this crazy party scene and having a moment of self-realization and growth occurring.” –
Mitarotonda eventually formed a band in high school, which he aptly named The Shenanigans. “We played pretty much exclusively covers—everything from Elvis to Phish,” he recalls.
However, Mitarotonda did write one original for that band: “The Labyrinth,” an intricate instrumental which now appears on Goose’s new record. While the guitarist admits that he has since “dialed in the composition,” the “bones of the idea” did not change from his original composition. “It’s the very old, new thing,” he concludes.
While some of the album evokes a time predating Goose, another song, “Spirit of The Dark Horse,” harks back to the band’s nascent days. In the early 2010s, prior to Goose’s formation, Weekz, Mitarotonda and Atkind played together in the band Vasudo. The bassist and guitarist had attended the same high school, and Atkind connected with Mitarotonda while they were students at Berklee College of Music.
The project ultimately fizzled out but, after a couple of years, Mitarotonda and Weekz reconnected. At the time, the guitarist had just moved back east after living in Colorado, and he and Weekz decided to work on some new material and refocus on a band. “Spirit of a Dark Horse” was one of the first songs they wrote.
“We just sat down one night and were like, ‘Let’s write some material,’” the bassist remembers. “Rick had kind of a musical idea that he was toying with, and it sounded almost like a horse galloping through the night. So I just started laying some lyrics on that and then we were riffing back and forth. And I’m pretty sure we came up with the whole thing in a day or two. It might have even been that night.”
With some new material in his back pocket, Mitarotonda then reached back out to Atkind, who was playing with a general business band at the time and eager to make a change.
“It’s like weddings, private parties, clubs, corporate functions—and I was contracted doing 175 gigs a year,” Atkind explains. “I was making good money, but I was miserable. Right when I was getting so sick of playing in the wedding band, Goose started up. I got the call to do that and it was kind of perfect timing.”
Despite now thriving in an improvisational setting, Atkind (as well as Arevalo) didn’t grow up on jamband music. “At first, I thought it was funny to be the pretentious, snobby music-school kid,” he says with a laugh. “Which I was—and I still am, unfortunately, a little bit snobby, no matter how much I try to pretend like I’m not.” That being said, Atkind has embraced both the music and culture of the jamband scene throughout his time in Goose.
“It just started hitting me. I had these moments where I would hear it and, either because of my mood or because I was just in the right mindset, the music started making sense to me,” he says. “I see the community around it as another big thing. Coming from the jazz-school vibe, you play shows, and everyone’s got their arms crossed like, ‘What can you do?’ And then you play for jamband fans, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, we love music so do whatever you want to do. And, if you mess up, that’s OK. Just have fun!’ So it’s just a much more welcoming environment, and I think I just started having more fun playing music.”
Meanwhile, Anspach came into the fold in early 2018, no stranger to the jamband scene. He had worked as a roadie for Dopapod prior to joining the band and had his own project, Great Blue. He describes becoming a full-time Goose member as “a big transition.”
“I was trying so hard with Great Blue to make it as a band—to be on the road and tour,” he says. “I really wanted to do that, and Goose basically gave that opportunity to me—they were a touring band. So I was like, ‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’ It was a big leap.” Prior to joining Goose, Anspach considered himself a guitarist, but he quickly learned keyboards on the fly, practicing his Goose parts while traveling between Great Blue gigs. Anspach says that it took some time for him to be comfortable in his new band but, eventually, everything fell into place.
“Now it feels like more of a family than anything I’ve ever been a part of,” he says. “Even the people who have joined as crew members—it all feels like such a tight-knit group now.”
While it took some time for Anspach to find his footing in his new band, it’s now abundantly clear that Goose is his primary focus.
“I work on Goose every day,” he says. “I’m bringing everything I have to the band at this point. I’m fully invested.”
Soon after he joined, Anspach was also able to showcase his skills in the studio as well. It has already been a few years since the band released their debut album, 2016’s Moon Cabin, and, by the time Anspach signed on, Same Old Shenanigans was already in the works.
“It was recorded over a long period of time—longer than I care to admit, honestly,” says Mitarotonda. The process was interrupted by the ensemble’s commitment to touring. Yet, the lockdown actually provided the band a chance to finish the album.
“For me, the album came together last year, while [Rick and I] were living together,” adds Anspach. “Over the course of the past year, there wasn’t one day where we didn’t work on the album.”
Despite Goose’s live expertise and success, Mitarotonda’s original musical obsession is creating records. “My first love, and hardest fiery passion when it comes to music, is recording,” he explains. “When I was in middle school, I got a 12-track recorder. I recorded an album in 8th grade, sold a CD around school and made $600.”
In fact, each of the members relished the idea of honing their new tracks in the studio, including ones they had played live before.
“It kind of gives us a chance to get under the microscope,” says Weekz. “I really like jamming in the studio; I think it’s easier to be more focused and be more patient.”
“In the last couple years, we’ve gotten way better at just working with each other and dealing with constructive criticism because we’re all really working on the same thing with the same goal, and everyone has a different perspective,” adds Atkind.
Shenanigans Nite Club strikes the perfect balance between reflecting the band’s live energy while still using their studio steting to its full potential. “Madhuvan” is an encapsulation of this idea; the song is a staple of Goose’s live shows, and they have performed many versions well over 20 minutes. The album version contains a rip-roaring jam, culminating in a pitch-perfect transition into the song’s coda. However, that moment, despite evoking the band’s live performance, was actually created by layering various parts tracked during various sessions to create the final product.
“[‘Madhuvan’], in a way, encapsulates the process of this album,” Mitarotonda says. “It’s basically laying into what you can do in a recording context that you can’t do live. This whole process of taking things from different places, and laying them over each other and laying them into each other, and combining them in a unique way—that’s kind of the idea, or ended up being the idea, behind the whole album.”
Shenanigans Nite Club also possesses an eclectic quality that will surely pique the interest of a wide variety of listeners. It contains elements of progressive rock (“The Labyrinth”), live-show staples (“Madhuvan,” “Flodown”) and even poppier tracks (“So Ready”). But the band did not design the album for ease of accessibility. Both for this album, and in terms of their career in general, Goose has not attempted to hit the zeitgeist; rather, they have simply stayed true to themselves and to their vision.
“We’re not going in with the attitude of, ‘People are gonna like this, so let’s do that,’” explains Atkind. “I think the biggest thing is that we’re just enjoying playing with each other more and more now. When that happens, everything becomes cohesive—the music, the jams—and I think that resonates with more people. We’re doing what we like and what feels good to us. But we’re doing it because we love this music, and it’s what really hits us.”
Mitarotonda echoes this idea. “Honesty and truth are what’s most important to me,” he says. “Music is kind of like church to me. In a lot of ways, it’s sacred and it needs to be sacred. But, it should also be fun and reflective. And it should be something that you learn about yourself through. It should be— above all else—true.”
