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Honk if you like to jam: Goose is getting ready to take over Boston

The Connecticut-born Goose — now with a Mass. native drummer — talk The Muppets, tacos, Berklee, Phish and having fun ahead of three MGM Music Hall shows.

Goose hits MGM Music Hall this week. Courtesy Photo / Daniel Prakopcyk

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I reach Goose at Rick Mitarotonda’s Connecticut home “in the woods” on a recent afternoon – sunlight streaming from a side door, dog barking in the background – as we talk about The Muppets.

“The Muppets— everyone says it, but it’s true — are such a special thing,” lead vocalist/guitarist Mitarotonda tells me when I ask about jamming with Animal on their song “Animal” at Newport Folk Fest last year.

“That was sick. We met the people — but once the puppet’s up, it’s not the person. It’s Animal,” he says. “I think it was the year prior Newport Folk had Kermit there.”

“I think they had Kermit back in 2019,” adds vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Peter Anspach. “I was there — it was so special.” (He’s right. Kermit sang “Rainbow Connection” with Jim James.)

I’m talking via Google Meet — their preferred connector, I’m told — to three of the five members in the Connecticut-born jam-rock band — Mitarotonda, 33, and Anspach, 31, both natives of Wilton, Conn., and newest addition: drummer Cotter Ellis, 32, a Bedford, Massachusetts native.

When their powers combine with bassist Trevor Weekz, 35, and vocalist/ percussionist/drummer Jeff Arevalo, 36, they are Goose: in some ways, Connecticut’s answer to Phish, in more ways, their Own Thing Entire.

“In college I was listening to a lot of older music — old jazz, Phish, Dead— but listening to bands like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver was a big door-opening for me,” says Mitarotonda, a 2016 Berklee grad. “I just wanted to hear a Fleet Foxes that jammed like Phish.”

And that’s just about the Goose vibe right there.

Goose is the band you or Deadhead friends got into after Peach Music Fest in 2019, and heavy into last summer, after Dead & Co. announced their final tour. Before the Sphere was a blip on anyone’s radar, flocks of Deadheads eager for a new band embraced the relative new kids on the block.

Three upcoming shows at MGM Music Hall at Fenway Sept. 2-4 mark the first time this current line-up — Ellis joined earlier this year— plays Boston. Previous drummer Ben Atkind announced his departure in December 2023. (“Creative differences,” Mitarotonda says.)

The 2010 Bedford High grad fits right into the incendiary jams on stage and silly goose vibes online. These are guys who relish in making SNL-type videos and film shorts.

Their Instagram feed is filled: Anspach as a professor talking about aliens in a History Channel spoof. Ellis as an Irish TV host named Sheamus O’Larry. Something called “Riker – The Compete Season 1” is just Mitarotonda in a “Miami Vice” jacket asking the type of inane questions that start infomercials or cheesy TV news segments: “Have you ever made love on an air mattress? Have you ever been arrested in New Haven? … Have you ever been to a Men’s Warehouse?”

It’s a playfulness that’s a cornerstone of Phish, and feels like something the Vermont Gen Xers might’ve done had Instagram existed in the ’80s.

Their iconography and merch, though, smacks of Dead lot culture.

Another thing that makes Goose Goose? Free shows. Find a healthy amount on YouTube.

“Philosophically, it’s kind of an extenuation of the Grateful Dead embracing taping,” Mitarotonda tells me. “Doing that with social media and YouTube is the modern version.”

Their website describes the guys as having “exuberant grooves and incendiary bursts of musical exploration.” Which is fair.

I love that their covers are all over the map — they cover anything from Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart” to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” to Tom Waits’s “Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis.”

From Rick’s house “at an undisclosed location,” Peter tells me with a laugh — he says most things with a laugh — we talked New England roots, Berklee, Bob Weir, Vampire Weekend, Goosemas, and more.

You said the first incarnation traces to playing around Connecticut circa 2014.

Mitarotonda: It was a slow roll for a few years. I went back to school in Boston in 2015. We didn’t start hitting it hard until 2017, when I finished. It was like, “Alright, let’s go for it.” We got a booking agent. That was the turning point.

You called 2017 your “thrown to the wolves tour.”

Mitarotonda: That’s right, we did. Wow.

Anspach: Nice.

Mitarotonda: Our agent is a great guy. We were hungry and wanted to get out there. He advised us to do it a smarter way and we were like, “No, man, screw that!” He’s like, “OK, I warned you. I’m gonna throw you to the wolves then.” A couple weeks into this tour — in the South, in July, in a van that had no AC — we were, “Cool, yeah, we get it.”

[laughs] Right.

Mitarotonda: It informed a lot of what we did and didn’t want to do moving forward. Logistical things. You don’t just go out and play a million shows to nobody.

Peach Music Fest 2019 is always cited as the moment you guys blew up. Is that what it felt like to you?

Mitarotonda: There was a gradual embering for a bit, starting in 2018. But 2019 was a big change. It happened over a series of months. That fall tour in 2019 sold out. That’s when we were like, “Okay, something’s happening.”

Rick, Peter, Trevor went to Wilton High.

Mitarotonda: Trevor was two years above me, Peter was two years below. I was introduced to Trevor when I was a junior. We didn’t meet Peter until around 2017 [at a gig where both had bands playing].

Peter’s band, Great Blue, their camaraderie was a big thing I noted. Going to music school, training, playing with people that have that mindset, is very different than when you’re a kid playing in your parents’ basement. It’s easy for this thing to get lost. I saw a lot of that [pure] energy in Great Blue, and wanted to get back to that.

Why the name Goose?

Mitarotonda: Tacos. [laughs] I worked at a taco place in Colorado, and it was kitchen lingo. Just a dumb thing.

“Goose” meant taco?

Mitarotonda: No. Just if you sling tacos for enough hours, the word “goose” becomes really funny.

[laughs] OK.

Mitarotonda: It doesn’t make a lot of sense. We called each other goose. Like, “carne asada to goose.” I thought it would be a funny name for a band.

[laughs] And Goose stuck.

Mitarotonda: Goose stuck.

Cotter, these will be your first Boston shows with the band. When it was announced the band was getting a new drummer, it felt like there was big wait, online chatter and guessing. How do you feel it’s been coming in? Did you feel any pressure?

Ellis: I think it went great. It took people a minute to warm up to me. Totally understandable. But it went over really smooth. I didn’t have to put on any kind of act at all. Super organic. I think overall, it was as smooth as it could have been.

I had a jam band before this since 2012 — it’s been my only job. So, this is a dream job. It’s kind of mind-blowing. Hard to wrap my head around, honestly.

You introduced Cotter in February through Ted Tapes 2024, recordings from his audition. What’s the title mean?

Mitarotonda: More lingo. Kind of like Wilton, Connecticut-pothead lingo.

[Anspach laughs]

[laughs] I love the songs you pick to cover, because they always feel like they’re kind of jokes, but they’re kind of fire.

Mitarotonda: Exactly! Thank you. [laughs] Like, I was at a bar once and heard Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.” For whatever reason, the frame of mind I was in, I said “Oh, man! This is the sexiest song ever.” Yes — it’s hilarious, but it’s also maybe the sexiest song ever.

[Others laugh]

[laughs] I also love your clips and shorts. It seems like you’re really putting your heart into the acting.

Mitarotonda: We love that stuff. I think the first one we really did in 2017 before Peter joined. But Peter, coincidentally, was in the video. I don’t know how it started. We made that as part of the Goosemas promo. It was one of the most fun things we’d ever done.

How did Goosemas become a tradition?

Mitarotonda: Originally, it was a holiday party for us and our friends in Norwalk. In the early years, we bought a bunch of kegs and a bunch of pizza. As years went on, it grew exponentially.

You’ve had so many cool guests join you on stage. Who stands out?

Anspach: We just had Vampire Weekend with us at [the Capitol Theatre in April], which is pretty awesome. I’ve been a fan of that band for a long time. We stretched out for a serious jam on “Cape Cod,” which was really fun.

Mitarotonda: I guess they had this inside joke for years about playing an eight-minute “Cape Cod.” So that was the goal. My perception of time is sometimes not super dialed, but we ended up jamming for 30 minutes. I honestly had no idea. I said to Ezra [Koenig] afterwards, “Did we get it? Did we get the eight minutes?” And he looked at me like I had something wrong with me.

Does that happen when you get into a long jam? Where does your mind go?

Ellis: It’s easy to lose track of time. Sometimes you hit the flow-state and you’re just in that zone.

Mitarotonda: Sometimes you ride the dragon, and sometimes the dragon rides you. And sometimes the dragon just kills you.

[laughs] So coming back to Boston, Rick you didn’t really gig in the area. Peter or Cotter, what about you?

Ellis: I played a ton of Boston clubs. I did Brighton Music Hall, The Cantab Lounge. I played the Middle East when I was, like, 14. There was a Battle of the Bands there that my high school band would always do. It was sick.

What was your high school band?

Ellis: Substance D, after “A Scanner Darkly.” A pop punk band. [laughs]

That’s great. And you always wanted to be a musician?

Ellis: Yeah, my dad was a professional musician my whole life, Dave Ellis, he went to Berklee in the ’80s. I wanted to be a musician from when I was very little. My first band was called Random Insanity in fifth grade. We did Green Day covers.

[all laugh]

Ellis: Basically it was the same band with different names as we grew up: Ducks of Prey, Juicy Tuesday when we started to smoke weed.

Classic. Then you went to Plymouth State.

Ellis: I started a band right away at Plymouth State, called Swimmer. After college, we moved to Burlington, Vermont. We used to play with Peter’s band, Great Blue, that’s how I eventually got the call for this band.

Peter, what about you? What’s your story?

Anspach: A spaceship just dropped me off. [laughs] Similar to Cotter, I just played a lot when I was younger. I grew up in Wilton. I met Trevor through another local musician in Wilton, met Rick through playing in the scene. There were a lot of great musicians coming out of Wilton at that time. The whole Wilton program is really strong, musically. I grew up playing cello in the school orchestra. My mom’s a music teacher. So a very music-oriented family.

You didn’t really play keyboards until you joined Goose.

Anspach: I had a few months of piano lessons when I was, like, 8. But never played keyboards on stage until Goose. It was trial-by-fire. The previous keyboard players were extremely good. So it was a lot of pressure.

Mitarotonda: The first guy had, like, his doctorate in piano. Literally a wizard.

[laughs] Oh geez.

Anspach: [laughs] It was a fun challenge. Definitely took a while to feel comfortable.

Rick, you said your parents aren’t musical, but you always wanted to be a musician growing up.

Mitarotonda: Early on, it was very natural and joyous. It was a major outlet. Anytime something was created, it blew my mind that something was made out of nothing.

In middle school, I had a trio called Otherwise. [laughs] We recorded an album in my parents’ basement, and sold it around school for, like, $8. [laughs] It was a good time.

Berklee was always your goal.

Mitarotonda: I stopped playing sports because it was too time consuming. My dad was a big sports guy, coached Little League games. It was hard for him when I stopped playing in high school, but he ended up being proud I was pursuing something on my own accord. My parents never made me feel like I needed to have a plan B. That’s a rare thing to not receive that kind of pressure.

You’ve played with Bob Weir, Trey Anastasio. Have they said anything encouraging to you?

Mitarotonda: We did a tour with Trey, and he was very sweet. He shared perspectives and knowledge. Early in their career, Santana took Trey under his wing. I think that was something he was thinking about at the time.

What do you think of comparisons: the next Phish, the next Dead & Co?

Mitarotonda: You do what you do and hope for the best. All that is not for us to say. I resonate with that lineage. Grateful Dead feels like grandfather to me. That lineage means a lot. Not to say that we fancy ourselves as the next anything— we’re just trying to do us the best we can. We have fun together.

Interview has been edited and condensed. Lauren Daley is a freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.

Lauren Daley

Lauren Daley is a longtime culture journalist. As a regular contributor to Boston.com, she interviews A-list musicians, actors, authors and other major artists.

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Honk if you like to jam: Goose is getting ready to take over Boston