Goose Rules the Jam at Madison Square Garden

The jam band culture traces its roots to the 1960s, a movement pioneered by the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band. Fueled by the love of a free-flowing blend of psychedelic rock, folk, blues, extensive live improvisation and a unique repertoire at each performance, a subculture of tape traders and touring fan bases was born. A second generation of jam bands arose in the 1990s with Phish, the Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, and similar bands. The culture is currently in its third wave, now with musicians too young to have experienced first-hand the original phenomena. The leader of this newer movement might be Goose.

Goose’s rise in popularity is meteoric. Formed in 2014 in Wilton, Connecticut, the band began gaining national traction in 2019 and 2020 with high-profile performances at the Peach Music Festival and Dead & Company's Playing in the Sand festival in Mexico. Goose earned further jam band credentials in the following years with guest appearances at their shows by Trey Anastasio of Phish, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, and members of Umphrey’s McGee.

Largely unknown outside the jam band community in 2025, the jam band sold out the 22,000-capacity Madison Square Garden. Since then, increased radio airplay has attracted mainstream attention, and the band this past January announced it would return to the World’s Most Famous Arena on June 19 and 20. Both shows sold out quickly. Earlier this week, the band announced an underplay show at the 5,500-capacity Rumsey Playfield for June 21.

Goose presently consists of its founder and sole remaining original member, guitarist/vocalist Rick Mitarotonda, with bassist Trevor Weeks, keyboardist/guitarist Peter Anspach, and drummer Cotter Ellis. The fans cannot get enough live Goose; the band released 17 live albums between 2020 and 2025. With the June 12 release of its sixth studio album, Big Modern!, featuring 15 new songs, Goose has cemented itself as a top-tier jam band for the 2020s.

Goose’s return to Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Knicks, came six days after the team’s NBA championship win. Just before the musicians walked on stage, the public address system excited the audience by playing sportscasters’ sound bites from the end of the final game. “Go New York Go New York Go” played as the stage lights brightened. The stage was immense, although the four musicians quartered themselves in a comparatively small carpeted area. Unfortunately, that meant that the closest fans to the band were about 30 feet away.

On opening night, Goose performed three songs from the album released a week earlier. The first set included the live debut of two of these songs, “Pop” and “Savenger.” The first set included a cover of Future Islands’ “Peach,” the second set opened with a cover of Great Blue’s “Pancakes,” and the encore was a cover of My Morning Jacket’s Jim James’ “State of the Art (A.E.I.O.U.).” Frequent Goose collaborator Stuart Bogie joined on clarinet, saxophone and flute for most of the second set. The concert played past the venue’s usual union curfew, ending about 11:30 p.m.

Goose ignited many songs on strong hooks, catapulted into very extensive guitar and keyboard jams, and returned to earth on a different song. Mitarotonda capitalized on repetition, sometimes playing a lick and then repeating it three times with slight variations before improvising another lick. The jams often were trance-hypnotic raves, showing no signs of coming to a close until they finally did. Other times, they built on intensity and erupted like a volcano. The rhythm section anchored all the musical passages. Curiously, while the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band both had two drummers playing simultaneously, new Goose drummer Colter Ellis pounds alone but is so proficient that he sounds like two drummers.

Due to shared musical roots, Goose frequently gets compared to its predecessor in jam band hierarchy, Phish, who will headline five nights at Madison Square Garden in July. Goose’s MSG performance showed the two band’s similarities and divergences. Goose’s song base is founded on a wider range of influences, however. Opening night’s songs sometimes sounded like they could have originated with Jackson Browne or the Eagles, and other songs sounded like they were inspired by more modern indie-rock bands. Goose’s songs, at least shortened versions, have mainstream radio and soundtrack potential.

In an age where lead guitar work is regularly memorized and polished, Goose’s concert provided a blast of fresh air. Lead guitar is at the very foundation of good rock music, and Goose provided this in copious amounts. With Goose, the newest era of jam band music is well underway and in good hands.

Setlist

Set 1

1. Thatch

2. Borne (->)

3. POP

4. Savenger

5. Peach (Future Islands cover) (->)

6. Seekers on the Ridge pt. I (>)

7. Seekers on the Ridge pt. II

8. Echo of a Rose

Set 2

1. Pancakes (Great Blue cover)

2. Into the Myst (partial, with Stuart Bogie) (->)

3. Good2B (with Stuart Bogie) (->)

4. Elmeg the Wise (with Stuart Bogie)

5. The Empress of Organos (with Stuart Bogie)

Encore

1. State of the Art (A.E.I.O.U.) (Jim James cover)

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The Manhattan Beat covers New York City's live music circuit. All articles are written by Everynight Charley Crespo. All photographs are taken by Everynight Charley Crespo, except when noted otherwise.

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