Dopapod guitarist Rob Compa recently took to the band’s Instagram to tell the story of a problematic crew member the band let go following an incident at The Peach Music Festival 2014. That kid’s name was Peter Anspach, and the jam band world never heard from him again… Just kidding—Peter is now known to many as a member of Goose.
As Rob explains in the (actually very wholesome) video, Dopapod has had a number of crew members come and go over the years. “They would tour with us for a little while and then they would find something else to do, and then somebody else would come in for a while, you know. But for a while, one of our crew members who would basically, I would say his job was just to do whatever Luke Stratton told him to do … was Peter Anspach, who plays guitar and keyboards in the band Goose. I think he toured with us for six months or something. He was very young at the time, just old enough to drink, maybe.”
Ahead of a Dopapod appearance at The Peach Music Festival, Peter had let the band know that this would be his last show. “For him leaving,” Rob explains, “We had this late-night set on the Mushroom Stage, big crowd… and we brought Peter out onstage, gave him a cake with, like, candles on it, and had the entire crowd chant, ‘Peter, you’re fired! Peter, you’re fired! Peter, you’re fired!’ at Peter, and that was his going away celebration.” [Note: You can listen to a full recording of the show here featuring the aptly named track “Peter You’re Fired.”]
The band played right up until its strict curfew, after which local noise ordinances would kick in and any more noise would result in fines for the festival. “We hit that point,” Rob continues, “so we stopped playing: Thank you, good night. And we get off stage and we’re like, ‘Ah, that was fun,’ and then we hear on the stage this voice being like, ‘Did you guys have fun!?’ Pumping the crowd up, like, ‘Do you want one more?! How ’bout one more song?!’ And we look onstage and it’s Peter who, against all of his job description, has decided to go onstage and get on the microphone and hype everybody up to get us to play another song.”
Rob goes on, “The festival higher-ups who were there were like, ‘No, you absolutely cannot do it, we’re gonna get fined, you can’t do it.’ But the crowd wouldn’t let us not. … They wouldn’t let us go away and it was all Peter’s fault, so we had to go up and play another song. I don’t know who got in trouble. Peter definitely got in trouble with our manager, I think he kinda yelled at him afterwards.”
“That was a very funny send-off for Peter, who very obviously was not content being behind the scenes and wanted to be onstage,” Rob laughs in conclusion.
In the comment section of the video, Anspach remembered his Dopapod firing fondly: “Ahhhhh! One of my favorite memories 
that was such an epic summer with you guys,” he wrote.
The band’s then-manager, Jason Gibbs, also corroborated the detail about scolding Anspach for the incident: “I definitely yelled at [Peter] for that as he walked off stage while also trying to not crack up at how hilarious the whole thing was,” Gibbs commented. “Rightfully so!!” Anspach added in a reply. “Sorry if anyone got fined 
.”
Watch Rob Compa tell the full tale in the video below and scroll down to view the post-curfew “Onionhead” Dopapod encore from The Peach 2014 inspired by stage-crashing hype man Peter Anspach.
Dopapod will wrap up 2023 with a three-night New Year’s run in Columbus, OH from 12/29–12/31 before hitting the road for an extensive early-2024 tour in January. For a complete list of upcoming Dopapod tour dates, head here. Peter Anspach and his Goose bandmates will make their Hampton Coliseum debut on 12/8 and 12/9 for their tenth annual Goosemas celebration. For a complete list of upcoming Goose tour dates, head here.
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Dopapod – “Onionhead” (Encore) – The Peach Music Festival – 8/14/14
[Video: ErikInBelAir]
The post Did You Know: Goose’s Peter Anspach Once Got “Fired” From The Dopapod Road Crew [Videos] appeared first on L4LM.
