Goose Sells Out Two MSG Nights on Big Modern Tour
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- Goose played two sold-out nights at Madison Square Garden on June 19, with MSG welcoming them back via an LED display and by playing the Knicks theme song — an unusual embrace for a jam band at the venue.
- Goose sold 280,000 tickets across 60 shows in 2025, and their new album Big Modern draws explicitly from Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, My Morning Jacket, Vampire Weekend, and EDM textures rather than the Grateful Dead/Phish forebears of the genre.
- Mitarotonda says he caught criticism from jam purists who view the band's approach as 'rehearsed and corporate,' but frames Goose as 'cowboy, fast and loose' — and points to their willingness to make studio albums as proof of artistic intent in a scene famously indifferent to LPs.
- Goose toured Europe earlier in 2025 with stops in London and Paris, a rarity in the genre — Phish has not played Europe since 1998 and Dead & Company never did overseas.
- The band — Rick Mitarotonda, Peter Anspach, Trevor Weekz, and Vermont-born drummer Cotter Ellis — hails from Wilton, Connecticut, and is arguably the biggest act ever to emerge from the state, per the article, with John Mayer (a friend who has never played with them) and the Carpenters as the only credible rivals.
- 51-year-old Paul Keuker of Niantic, Connecticut, fell to his death from a balcony at the second MSG show, a tragedy the article notes in the same breath as Goose's commercial coronation.
Why it matters: Two MSG sellouts and 280,000 tickets in 2025 position Goose as the most commercially significant jam band of its generation — a potential heir to Phish and the Dead — but Mitarotonda's stated mission to absorb Fleet Foxes, indie rock, and EDM into the jam framework is precisely what grows the audience and draws the loudest fire from purists who want the genre left as it was 50 years ago.
