Goose singer/guitarist talks spontaneity, stage setup ahead of Pittsburgh show

Maintaining spontaneity is a crucial ingredient for a jam band like Goose, which is known for its improvisation amid fluid, marathon performances.

“That’s an interesting and ultimately a mysterious thing in and of itself,” guitarist/singer Rick Mitarotonda said. “Some nights, things just flow pretty readily and some nights they don’t. You’re kind of wrestling with it and that’s all to say, that’s just our perception.

“Sometimes the nights where we feel like we’re wrestling with stuff, people think it’s the best stuff we did in a while. So it’s kind of like a big who knows. But there’s certainly a pretty clear difference to us when things feel like they’re flowing.”

A new stage setup, just reconfigured mid-tour on Tuesday night in Miami, seems to be helping.

“The idea was to try to be in an orientation that feels more like the practice room, where we’re moreso facing each other and tuned into each other’s energy as opposed to before — for a long time, we’ve been in like these five islands basically in kind of a trapezoid configuration and it felt like we were all out there but sort of isolated in our own world.

“Now it feels like we’re kind of in one world. which is what it feels like in the practice room and our sight lines are much improved and there’s some huge sound quality improvements as a result of the new configuration.”

That new dynamic will be on display on Nov. 7 when Goose takes the stage at the Petersen Events Center in Oakland.

In a call Wednesday from Miami, Mitarotonda discussed the band’s growth, his writing process and Goose’s new festival in Mexico:

Is it gratifying to move from clubs to the theaters and the arenas that you’re doing now? (In their early years, they played Mr. Smalls Theatre, Cattivo and the Rex Theater in Pittsburgh.)

Yeah, it is. Playing these big outdoor amphitheaters and playing arenas and stuff, it’s really fun. The energy of those types of spaces, at first it’s a fun challenge and it’s still pretty new to us. But every jump along the way, the first time we started playing theaters going from clubs and stuff like that, it was intimidating, taking a big step like at first. So it takes a minute to get comfortable and feel like you have command over that type of space, and it’s definitely no different going to the outdoor amphitheaters and arenas and stuff. But as we’ve gotten a little more comfortable — and I hope we will continue to get more comfortable — it’s really fun. Those types of venues, we all grew up going to shows and seeing our favorite bands in places like that, and it’s really cool to to be on this end, pretty surreal to be on this end of it.

It’ll only be one night in Pittsburgh, but you do have a lot of stops with multiple shows. What kind of challenges does that present?

We generally prefer it, I think. It’s nice for all of us, the crew included, because you get to settle in a bit more. The type of shows we play, it really lends itself to the multi-night runs because we get to kind of get deeper into the thing that we do. It’s not the same show every night. We try to make it a different setlist, different improvisation, different things every night so kind of getting deeper into that process with a multi-night run feels pretty gratifying, generally speaking. Just sleeping in the same place for a few nights is pretty nice. Traveling every night is pretty hard on your body, so that’s also kind of a treat whenever we get to post up for a few nights in one spot.

You’ve put out a couple of live shows and “Ted Tapes 2024” this year. When it comes to putting out a live album, how do you decide which shows merit an official release?

A conversation between us and our managers, and shows that just feel like they had something special to them. It is tough, but we put out every show online via nugs.net and Bandcamp and things like that. So there’s a large contingency of our fan base that listens to all the shows basically. But then every tour, we think about a show or a couple or something. Usually there’s a segment or something that gets thrown up on YouTube from every show or at least a handful a tour and then usually about once a tour, we throw something up on Spotify that seems to stand out in some way or whatever it may be. But we play a lot of shows, and it gets back into that subjectivity of perception there. (laughs)

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How does the writing process work for you? Is that something that works well while you’re on the road?

That’s something I’ve been working at for a long time. It’s a challenge for me. Writing on the road, the place that I get inspired from, the voice that I write with, you could say, is a quiet one. So when we’re out on the road, there’s a bunch of people and performing and traveling, all this stuff, it tends to go back into its shell. So I usually find movement in those ways when I’m in quieter times. But that being said, it’s a constant process of trying to keep close to it, not let it get too far into its shell, so that I can keep things moving with all the going back and forth between being home or being on the road.

What was the inspiration behind the new Viva El Gonzo Festival in May?

We’ve become close with a team that does the events down in Cancun with the Dead and Phish and all those guys. There was talk for a while about putting something together with them, and we wanted to try something a little different … We have been circling around this location in Cabo, which coincidentally or not, the El Gonzo Hotel is kind of like this big goose-themed hotel there that’s just adjacent to this really beautiful, open estuary surrounded by desert. It was just perfect for a festival-type event, the whole setup. I went down there earlier this year just to check it out and kind of feel it out. I’m really glad I did, because it’s hard to understand without going there.

So the people that are signing on, I think when I went down there, I was pretty taken back at how cool and unique it was for this type of event, very different from the other types of events that people do down there in Cancun and stuff, which are great, too. The all-inclusive thing is really fun as well, but everyone’s gonna be spread out but close together in separate hotels within a two-mile radius of the event grounds, and there’s just a lot of really cool stuff there. Along the beach, there’s this really cool club, Crania, and it’s hard to explain without going there, but I think people are gonna have a really good time and will be in for a treat just from what’s already there.