GOOSE: MGM Music Hall at Fenway Boston, MA SEPTEMBER 4, 2024 (Night 3)

Sep 19

Article and Photographs by Joshua Touster

I came of age in the 1960’s. As a teenager growing up in New York City, I would lug my camera to the Fillmore East, Hunter College, and to free concerts in Central Park to photograph the many bands that would play such an important role in my life moving forward.

I was heavily into The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Mothers of Invention, Cream, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and many other bands and musicians that were so influential during that time. But the band that truly moved me, and who’s community I felt a member of, was the Grateful Dead.

The Dead were the soundtrack of my life growing up, but once Pigpen died, opiates replaced psychedelics as the band’s drug of choice, and Jerry began to burnout, the Dead’s newer music stopped resonating for me, and also it seemed, for many of the children of Deadheads who were born in the 1980’s and 1990’s, who had adopted the Dead, but were looking for a band that did not belong to their parents, and that they could call their own. The band they found was Phish.

Phish had catchy tunes, were excellent musicians, jammed at the highest level, and like the Dead allowed their shows to be taped for free, so the music could be spread far and wide creating even more diehard fans. Phish were truly the natural and rightful heirs of the Grateful Dead.

As the decades passed, and as Phish got older, the next generation of jam band fans, the children of Phish Phans and the grandchildren of Deadheads, now needed their own jam band to call their own….

Enter Goose.

Goose, an American Jam band from WIlton, Connecticut was formed in 2014 by singer and guitarist Rick Mitarotonda, drummer Ben Atkind, and bassist Trevor Weekz. Rick, Trevor, and Ben had previously played together in the band called Vasudo. Three years later, in 2017, multi-instrumentalist Peter Anspach joined the band, followed by percussionist Jeff Arevalo in 2020, and then drummer Cotter Ellis in 2024.

Goose (along with Billy Strings), now leads a new generation of jam bands, and they seemed to make all the right moves in cracking the genre’s elusive mainstream, including playing a different setlist each night, and incorporating a trippy light show second only to Phish’s lighting master, Chris Kuroda.

In the fall of 2022, Trey Anastasio asked Goose to tour with his band TAB, thus officially anointing them to take the jam band reins, and to follow in the footsteps of his band, Phish.

So on September 4, 2024, cameras in hand, and with the bands history in mind, I was excited to make my way to Boston’s two year old MGM Fenway, to photograph the last of Goose’s three night, sold out run at the beautiful, fan friendly, 5000 capacity venue that sits right next to the home of the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park.

I had not listened to much of Goose’s music, and what I had listened to did not particularly excite me, but I went with an open mind, and with the hope of possibly finding a new, favorite jam-band.

The scene, and size of the venue immediately reminded me of my times shooting Phish. Many fans were in costumes, the line to get posters stretched all the way up the 2nd floor stairway, and Goose T-shirts were everywhere. As the band hit the stage, the crowd packed in shoulder to shoulder, went crazy, singing every lyric along with the band.

I want to admit that I am not very familiar with Goose’s music, so I am handicapped by, and do not feel comfortable in writing a formal review of the show. I am primarily a photographer, so what follows are just a few random thoughts from the mind of a lifelong jam-band fan, listening to a band live for the very first time.

So here goes….

I was finding it difficult to get anywhere as close to excited about the music as the crowd that was surrounding me. To my uninitiated ears each song seemed to have a tendency to blend into one another, adding to a lack of distinction between the tunes.

All of the members of Goose seem to be extremely good musicians, but their playing and their songs did not move me beyond many other very competent current jam bands. I found Rick Mitarotonda’s guitar playing a tad clinical, and lacking the emotional subtlety of say a Steve Kimock or Lyle Brewer, the guitarist for Neighbor, an up and coming jam band who I had recently spent five years covering for an ongoing photo project. The other members of Goose played their supporting rolls well without making much of an impression on me. Like many jam bands, the moments of interaction between players were rare making decisive moment photographs difficult, but I did find myself visually keying in on Peter Anspach as he moved fluidly between guitar and keys.

The thing that most impressed me was how the band would build a song over an extended period of time, eventually having it reach towards a towering crescendo, and sending the Goose faithful into a complete frenzy.

Exiting the venue, I began thinking why one band” makes it” while another band with equivalent talent might not, and how much both luck, and being “in the right place at the right time” plays such an important part in that rise to the top. It seemed that Goose was a band that had grabbed that gold ring of both timing and luck.

After spending my past five years photographing up and coming bands in small clubs it was a pleasure being back in a larger venue, with thousands of diehard fans communing with a band that they truly loved. And I looked forward to seeing Goose again in the near future, with the hope that this time, I might be touched with at least some of the magic that so many of their fans were feeling that night.

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Goose:

Rick Mitarotonda (vocals, guitar)

Peter Anspach (vocals, keys, guitar)

Trevor Weekz (bass)

Jeff Arevalo (vocals, percussion, drums)

Cotter Ellis (drums)

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