Goose treated its fans from Colorado and beyond to two sold-out shows on October 5th and 6th, 2023 at one of the great musical wonders of the world, Morrison’s breathtakingly beautiful Red Rocks Amphitheatre. These shows constituted the second and third time that the indie jam unit consisting of Rick Mitarotonda, Peter Anspach, Trevor Weeks, Ben Atkind, and Jeff Arevalo played at the famed outdoor venue, the last time being over one year ago in August 2022. Along with the next show to be played on October 7th at Colorado State University, the Colorado run closes out Goose’s 2023 fall tour, which began almost four weeks ago on the East Coast.
The first show of the two-nighter opened with a cover of Echo and Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon”. First played by Goose at a postponed, then rescheduled Halloween show in 2020 with the band in costume, “The Killing Moon” reappeared during this tour and has been played 3 times, always as an opener. Shenanigans Nite Club track “SOS” followed, and though many die-hard Goose fans expected it to be followed up by its running mate “(dawn)”, the tune that comes next on Shenanigans Nite Club and with which it is almost always paired, “SOS” segued instead into “Atlas Dogs” and then “Turbulence & the Night Rays”.
A brief tuning break next yielded “Bob Don” which, somewhat atypically for recent versions, had a beautiful extended outro that finally gave way to a drawn-out “(dawn)”. Many in the amphitheater expected the set to end with the completion of the “SOS”/”(dawn)” sandwich, but the band kept it going with another 30 minutes of music via “Pancakes” and a set-closing “So Ready” dedicated to their friend Bert Kreischer, who had performed at Red Rocks the previous evening.
The second set opened with a spacey, psychedelic version of “Creatures” that stretched out for 19 minutes before segueing into the band’s most requested cover—and one that is a relative rarity—“Shama Lama Ding Dong” by Otis Day & The Knights. A feel-good song that had the audience grinning and singing along, it was followed up by the only selection of the night featuring Peter Anspach on lead vocals, the funky “Feel It Now”.
The next tune, the beautiful ballad “This Old Sea”, has mostly been played of late as a relatively compact, 5-6 minute song, but on this night, similar to “Bob Don” in the first set, it had an extended outro that took the audience on a near 20-minute ride. Following “This Old Sea” Goose treated the audience to one of the absolute rarest songs of the run, an a-maze-ing “The Labyrinth”, a highly composed and snaking instrumental with passages that range from the psychedelic to the classical. Prior to this night, the song had only been played a total of six times since 2021, the last time being over one year ago at Colorado’s Dillon Amphitheatre. The band then wrapped up the second set with the longest song of the night, a funky “Hot Tea”, followed by an encore reading of the bluegrass-tinged rave-up, “Flodown”.
A decidedly chilly second night at Red Rocks had the band on fire from the get-go, urging the bundled-up audience to keep moving both to stay warm and groove to the music. An uptempo “Echo of a Rose” started things off and gave way to the band’s homage to its crew, “Mr. Action”. Mitarotonda’s newer song “Lead Up” followed, and gave way to the only first-time-played cover of the Red Rocks run, Prince’s “I Would Die 4 U”. Like most songs on Saturday night, the selection served as a jam vehicle that was stretched out with blazing solos, the band locked in and firing on all cylinders.
The first set reached even higher heights with a gorgeous, jammed out version of “Everything Must Go”. One of the elements that keeps Goose so interesting to its fans is that the band is known to play very different arrangements of some of its songs, even within the space of a single tour. This was the case with “All I Need”, which tonight was played in its slower, melodic arrangement in contrast to the fast-driving version the band had played in Las Vegas only a few nights earlier. The first set then closed with Anspach-led crowd favorite “Yeti”.
The band returned to the stage its fourth and final Red Rocks runset with some banter about how sweet it was to play Red Rocks in October, offering a big of maniacal laughter before launching into an extended “Thatch” that soared over the mountainous surroundings before touching down 20 minutes later and morphing into David Gray‘s “Please Forgive Me”. “Borne” and “Hungersite”, a pair of tunes from the band’s most recent full-length album, Dripfield, came next and segued into the third cover of the night, “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes. A great party song that had all of Red Rocks singing along, it featured a break near the end that saw Peter Anspach expressing a sincere and heartfelt thanks to the audience for supporting the band, “letting us do what we do up here”, and allowing them at times to be kind of silly.
As the crowd-pleasing cover ended, the very recognizable intro to the rare and much sought after song, “Factory Fiction” rang out to end the set. Featuring the line, “I don’t mind if things get a little weird sometimes,” it was the perfect way to cap to a set that brimmed with beautiful weirdness and drew repeated cheers from the audience. “Factory Fiction” rocked the Rocks for nearly a full 30 minutes before the band briefly left the stage. The quintet eventually returned to perform “Dripfield”, the third track of the night from the album of the same name. No perfunctory encore, the tune took the audience on a 17-minute psychedelic journey before releasing the exhilarated Goose faithful back out into the gorgeous Colorado Red Rocks landscape.
On Saturday night, Goose heads to Colorado State University to perform a show for the school’s students. For a complete list of upcoming Goose tour dates, head here.
Below, check the setlists, photo galleries from both nights via Kit Tincher (Thursday, 10/5) and David Tracer (Friday, 10/6), and a selection of fan-shot videos from both shows.
Setlist [via elgoose.net]: Goose | Red Rocks | Morrison, CO | 10/5/23
Set One: The Killing Moon [Echo & The Bunnymen], SOS > Atlas Dogs > Turbulence & The Night Rays, Bob Don, (dawn), Pancakes, So Ready
Set Two: Creatures -> Shama Lama Ding Dong [Otis Day & The Knights], Feel It Now, This Old Sea > The Labyrinth > Hot Tea
Encore: Flodown
Setlist [via elgoose.net]: Goose | Red Rocks | Morrison, CO | 10/6/23
Set One: Echo of a Rose, Mr. Action, Lead Up, I Would Die 4 U [Prince], Everything Must Go, All I Need, Yeti
Set Two: Thatch, Please Forgive Me [David Gray], Borne > Hungersite > What’s Up [4 Non Blondes] > Factory Fiction
Encore: Dripfield
Goose – “SOS” – 10/5/23
[Video: starman2112 rush]
Goose – “Shama Lama Ding Dong” (Otis Day & The Knights) – 10/5/23
[Video: Dean Novin]
Goose – “I Would Die 4 U” (Prince) – 10/5/23
[Video: Dean Novin]
Goose – “So Ready” – 10/5/23
[Video: starman2112 rush]
Goose – “What’s Up?” (4 Non Blondes) – 10/6/23
[Video: Dean Novin]
The post Things Get A Little Weird Sometimes: Goose Plays Two Sold-Out Nights At Red Rocks [Photos/Videos] appeared first on L4LM.
