On Tour With Eggy: Waiting Game is a long-form story that takes place over the course of six days during the summer of 2023. It is intended to be read in order. Since it takes roughly 45 minutes to finish, we’ve included links to the individual chapters for those who want to read it in stages. We hope you enjoy.
Table of Contents
Foreword: Waiting Game
Chapter 1: It’s Time to Cut the Cord – Charlotte, NC – 8/15/23
Chapter 2: Let Me Feel Reborn – Charlotte, NC – 8/16/23
Chapter 3: Tethered to a Weathervane in a Lightning Storm – Raleigh, NC – 8/17/23
Chapter 4: Fill the Room With the Days That Left Too Soon – Baltimore, MD – 8/18/23
Chapter 5: In A Moment’s Notice We Find… Bethel, NY – 8/20/23
Chapter 6: We’re Caught on the Other Side – The Van – 8/21/23
Foreword: Waiting Game
My outspoken support for Eggy, the rock quartet from New Haven, CT, has never been entirely objective. I’ve been following this story since before it began.
I remember meeting Jake Brownstein (guitar, vocals) as the younger brother of a middle school classmate and watching him excel on a Gibson SG that was nearly bigger than he was. I remember Dani Battat (keys, vocals) teaching himself the piano because his friend Jake was already a talented guitarist and he wanted to play along.
I remember Mike Goodman (bass, vocals) burning me my first Phish CDs in his mom’s kitchen. I remember joining his band, Uncle Hank, and learning the song he wrote, “At The Carnival”, only to freeze up and forget the lyrics when we performed it at a Battle of the Bands. I remember the band that beat us that night, too: Francis Drive, a pre-Eggy group led by Jake and Dani. I remember when Mike, the best bass player any of us knew, finally joined them. I remember meeting the group’s new drummer, Alex Bailey, and trading tactics for finding last-minute tickets as we wandered New York’s 7th Avenue with fingers in the air during the Baker’s Dozen.
I remember when Dani and Jake named the band after their friend Edward “Eggy” Torrence in an attempt to make him squirm. (“He hated the idea. We loved the idea the more he hated it so, thusly, we’re called Eggy,” Dani explained.) I remember when Edward passed away in 2017, adding weighty purpose to the mantle they wear in his honor.
I remember learning about Live For Live Music in college from a post shared by Jake, and the thousands of stories I have written under the publication’s masthead en route to becoming its editor-in-chief.
My proximity bias has always dissuaded me from interviewing Eggy, even as my genuine thoughts have shifted from “I’m proud of my buddies” to “this band is fantastic.” I never wanted to write a feature about “my friends’ band.” When the time was right, I figured, I wanted to write a meaningful story about a meaningful group, untarnished by my connection to the characters. I was happy to wait.
But those reservations remained in August 2023 when I traveled to Charlotte, NC to finally accompany Eggy on tour for a Live For Live Music profile. Could I ever really be objective about this band’s success? At what point do I stop curbing my enthusiasm, believe the ever-louder word on the street, and accept that my friends’ mission—always believable but inherently improbable—is coming to fruition?
When I arrived, however, I found Jake, Dani, Mike, and Alex amid a similar process of internal reconciliation. As I attempted to separate affinity from actuality during my time in the van—a run of four shows in six days among the 115 gigs on the band’s 2023 schedule—I watched the members of Eggy navigate an exciting yet disorienting inflection point in any success story: the point when your actions and intentions begin to ripple beyond your reach.
When you’re too close to be objective, you have to look for signs—and those signs have a way of turning up where you’d least expect. If you practice your patience, you might find something that changes your perspective, something that allows you to detach your instincts from your inhibitions. It’s time to cut the cord…
Chapter 1: It’s Time to Cut the Cord
8/15/23 – Charlotte, NC
I arrive in Charlotte on a Tuesday. The band and crew, already a week into a Southeastern run, pick me up at the airport in their Ford Transit van. There’s no Eggy show tonight—they play in town tomorrow—so most of the touring party is using a rare night off to catch the sold-out show by alt-country tastemaker Tyler Childers at Skyla Credit Union Amphitheatre while Dani Battat (pronounced like “Donnie,” not “Danny”) sleeps off a stomach bug.
Childers’ music seems like a far cry from Eggy’s improv-oriented rock sound, but they remind me that those stylistic boundaries have blurred over time. After all, the last stop on my run in the Eggy van is set to be Catbird Music Festival, on the site of the iconic Woodstock Music & Art Fair, where Childers will follow jam scene dignitary Trey Anastasio to close the event. We laugh about the coincidence as we make our way from the van to the venue on foot: My time on tour with this jam band would both start and end with concerts by the country singer.
The members of Eggy are fired up for the show. Beyond being fans of Tyler’s vivid songwriting, they’re excited to see their friends Craig Burletic and Rodney Elkins, the bassist and drummer for Childers’ longtime backing band, The Food Stamps.
Craig and Rodney also back up singer-songwriter Brad Goodall, who has opened for Eggy on various occasions. While touring together, Jake Brownstein explains, they got into impassioned discussions about The Band drummer Levon Helm and his storied Woodstock, NY space, Levon Helm Studios. When Eggy got the chance to play a show at Levon’s in 2022, the band tapped Brad Goodall as the opening act—largely because they knew from those chats how much it would mean to Brad, Craig, and Rodney to play there. Tonight, Eggy will be Craig and Rod’s guests, instead.
“How long ’til we meet someone who recognizes us?” Mike Goodman muses as he scans an entering crowd comprised of far more cowboy hats and far less tie-dyes than they tend to see on the jam band circuit. “Won’t happen here like Phil & Friends at Westville.”
As if on cue, a fan in tie-dye pauses his search for a ticket and comes up behind us, one finger in the air and $50 bill in his fist. “Are you guys jamming anywhere tonight?” he asks. They tell him no, but they’re playing tomorrow. He says he’ll be there. As they part, Jake slips Dani’s unused ticket into his hand.
…
There’s a striking sincerity in Childers’ stage presence. At one moment during the show—a quiet interlude when Tyler is moved to tears while giving thanks for the opportunity to share his art—I watch Brownstein silently surveying him, absorbing the impact of his vulnerability.
When The Food Stamps leave the stage, Craig Burletic points to Eggy in the audience and mimes the shape of a heart before disappearing from sight. After the show, Craig and Rodney’s eyes light up when we meet them backstage. “I was a little nervous seeing you guys out there,” Craig says, likening it to spotting a family member in the crowd. “I just want you to have a good show.”
As Childers and the rest of the band mingle behind us, grabbing hot dogs off a grill that rides along with them on the road, Craig and Rodney catch up with their buddies in Eggy. They trade stories about grinding on tour, about looking forward to getting home. The specifics of their itineraries differ—Eggy is working up the ladder in smaller rooms while Tyler Childers & The Food Stamps are growing out of amphitheaters and into arenas around the world—but scope is secondary to sentiment as they savor a rare moment when their routing intersects with their friends’.
Both groups bemoan the fact that they can’t make the other’s show the next night—they play at the same time a few miles apart—but they take solace in the fact that they’ll link up again in a few days at Catbird as they say their goodbyes.
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Chapter 2: Let Me Feel Reborn
8/16/23 – Charlotte, NC
Jake Brownstein and I are the earliest risers at the band’s Airbnb the morning of the Charlotte show. We use the first moments of downtime since my arrival to catch up on how the tour’s been going. He tells me about the festival they played the weekend prior in Richmond, VA, JamPacked, where Eggy performed to a sold-out crowd 5,000 strong, as well as the gig the following night at a brewery in Berlin, MD, where the attendance barely passed 30.
They hadn’t discussed what they would play when they stepped onstage for their encore in Berlin, Jake explains, but they decided they would make everyone regret missing it. That night’s curtain call went on to last for nearly an hour as it wove in and out of a dozen different songs, from covers by Traffic, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Rush, and Little Feat to a set’s worth of Eggy’s own crowd favorites and deep cuts. “You can’t miss any shows,” he says, grinning.
He has enjoyed the band’s approach to the last few gigs—one long set, no pre-planned setlist—but he’s open to whatever achieves the best results, and that target is constantly moving. “If it’s good, it’s good,” he says.
That commitment to regular reinvention has made Eggy an alluring live band to root for. New sounds, new songs, new layers are entering the equation just as steadily as new people are catching on, giving each show an air of timeliness. But even as their live shows continue to act as a lightning rod for new fans, Jake, Dani, Mike, and Alex have been busy honing their studio style with their forthcoming sophomore album—an album that will represent a reinvention of the Eggy sound.
When Jake and Mike play it for me in the van on a coffee run, the evolution is clear. Its stylistic shift is notable—labels like melodic indie-folk, Laurel Canyon-inspired pop-rock, and emotive Americana feel more appropriate than “jam band,” which Jake tends to classify as a “community” rather than a “genre,” anyway—but one element in particular sticks out: While Jake and Dani, along with longtime lyricist Pat Amarante, are the primary songwriters on the record, drummer Alex Bailey sings lead on every track.
The band hadn’t set out to make an album of “Alex songs,” Jake says. During the four-week recording process with producer James Petralli (White Denim) in Los Angeles, both he and Dani tracked lead vocals for songs they had written on the album. In both cases, they elected to go with Bailey’s take.
On the band’s debut LP, 2019’s Watercolor Days, Jake had leaned into the “guy with guitar singing” archetype of the bands he grew up on. On the new record, he aimed to break that mold. “I love singing,” Jake explains, “but when Dani and I started the band, we sang the songs because we had to sing the songs. I have probably too many songs I sing now,” he smiles, “and we’ll always have those songs. I’m tenured.”
“If Trey Anastasio was going to check us out on Spotify, or Robin Pecknold [of Fleet Foxes], artists I admire, I would feel a little embarrassment [about those vocals],” he adds. “Most people kinda cringe when they hear what their voice sounds like on a recording. It’s jarring. I’m the same way, but not Alex. He loves it, he knows it sounds great.”
“I see the comments on our videos,” he smiles. “On songs I sing, it’s like, ‘I love the harmonies, they sound so great together, that guitar solo was awesome,’ and on songs Alex sings, it’s like, ‘Voice of an angel, voice of an angel, voice of an angel.’ I’ve put enough of myself into this music that I’m not really worried about giving songs I wrote to him to sing. Now, I just want this thing to be as good as it can possibly be.”
…
[Photos: Andrew O’Brien – Load-in, Charlotte, NC, 8/16/23]
The afternoon sun is sweltering as we load in at Heist Brewery and Barrel Arts. “They do heat different in the South,” says Dani Battat.
The four band members discuss their approach for the Wednesday evening show as they sound-check on the compact stage. They throw out a few song ideas—including a Mike-sung cover of Little Feat’s “Rocket In My Pocket” that they haven’t played since last year—but decide to keep it loose and mirror the taproom’s informal ambiance.
The musicians seem confident, no doubt riding the momentum of a string of notable shows, but every available moment is spent fine-tuning something. Brownstein often takes the lead in the running shop-talk. He speaks about the nuances of certain songs, certain sections, certain attitudes with disarming earnestness, but he clearly gauges the resonance of each idea by the reaction it gets from his bandmates.
Bailey’s takes are guided by feel and momentum—where this song wants to go, how this change wants to feel. Battat is inclined to slide into the conversation with laid-back confidence, affirming and expanding upon his cohorts’ musings with charismatic “yes, and” sensibility. Goodman may utter the fewest words in these discussions, but his insights seem to carry outsized weight among his bandmates.
Mike’s perspectives, after all, are filtered through his experience with a specialized music education: He might be in a rock and roll band now, but this was never exactly his plan. “I was going to be a jazz musician. I went to school for it,” he reminds me, “[But] there’s such a culture right now with a lot of the straight-ahead jazz guys—it’s like, ‘Man, if you don’t wear the button-down t-shirt and shiny leather shoes, you don’t belong in the club.’ I think there’s a lot of gatekeeping with it nowadays,” he adds. “The only gatekeeping back in the day for jazz was, like, ‘Can you hang? Can you cut with the best of us?’”
He chalks his eventual disillusionment with that world up to the “commercialization of jazz pedagogy. … It’s like a lot of people’s jazz teachers were like, ‘Man, what has it all come to? It used to go this way,’ and then the kids start getting the idea that it has to be a certain way. … There’s a pretentiousness to it that I don’t think the greats of jazz had. Like a Herbie Hancock—clearly, you listen to his music over the years and it goes all over the spectrum. It wasn’t, like, a gatekeep-y thing. It was like, whatever was cool and sounded good and felt good was ‘jazz’ enough. Miles Davis, towards the end, you could argue that it wasn’t really jazz. Again, you could argue, but a Miles Davis concert in the ‘80s was a rock concert. It wasn’t a jazz thing.”
As we gather before showtime in the Heist “green room”—a small, curtained-off corner of the stage housing a handful of chairs and music stands—Mike excuses himself to the van outside to run through the “Rocket In My Pocket” vocals a few more times. He’s got it down, he thinks, but those sliding high notes might require some stretching.
While Alex shows off the rubber eggs a fan threw at him from their car window outside, Dani takes a seat on the ground by the trash can to attempt a classic tour meal: takeout from a local restaurant (a gift from a Charlotte-based fan), served with plastic utensils on a limp paper plate and a road case tray. It might not be an ideal scenario, but they appreciate it all the same. To them, any logistical setback is an occupational hazard, any long-haul drive is a tool of the trade, any encumbering environment is a valued stepping stone.
[Photos: Andrew O’Brien – Backstage at Heist Brewery and Barrel Arts, Charlotte, NC, 8/16/23]
They huddle to chant their recent mantra—”truth, love, family“—before taking the stage to a respectable Wednesday crowd of more than 200, several times the total from their last show at the venue. Building the song list on the fly as planned, the band feeds off the energy of a lively crowd for a two-hour, single-set performance.
While we had spent much of the day talking about the new album and Bailey’s increased role as a lead singer, the well-received performance features no songs with the drummer singing lead. Instead, Mike’s rendition of “Rocket In My Pocket”—finessed after the extra pre-show reps—is the vocal that most captures the crowd’s attention in Charlotte. If it’s good, it’s good…
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Chapter 3: Tethered to a Weathervane in a Lightning Storm
8/17/23 – Raleigh, NC
Raleigh, NC is a relatively new market for Eggy, but the early signs have been encouraging. After logging opening sets at the Lincoln Theatre with Spafford (in 2021) and Dopapod (in 2022), tonight will be the band’s first time headlining the venue.
As we walk in search of food before load-in, a fan inside a bar spots Mike Goodman and Dani Battat through the window and speeds out to the sidewalk to catch their attention. “He was like, ‘I’m coming with 15 of my friends!’” Battat tells Jake Brownstein back at the theater.
There may be some element of whiplash in darting from sold-out festivals to small rooms, opening sets to headlining gigs, but they’re doing their best to savor each step. “We’re very much still in the stage of, like, whatever the show ends up being is a win,” Jake explains.
“It doesn’t change the quality of what we’re doing,” Dani adds from an overstuffed couch in the venue’s green room, a notable step up from his seat the previous night. “In some ways, you play harder to fewer people—give these people something that they’re never gonna forget. It matters to the ten people there.”
“People usually come up after those shows being like, ‘I’m gonna brag about this a year from now, two years from now,’” Jake adds. “People feel like it’s important. Even last night [in Charlotte], someone came up and was like, ‘You know, I missed the come-up of the Grateful Dead, I missed the come-up of Phish, but I feel really honored to be a part of this, and catch you guys at this point in time.’ Them saying that, seeing where I know it’s bound to go… It’s cool to share those moments.”
Brownstein’s optimistic foresight is bolstered by what he knows is in the works, from the new album to Eggy-curated special events and beyond. “I hope it always feels like that,” he says. “I hope we always feel like what people are seeing is a couple steps behind what we’re seeing. Otherwise, you feel like you’re chasing your tail.”
Eggy’s measured rollout of the songs on the new album has echoed that sentiment. While a handful have made their way into live sets, all have been conspicuously cut from the nightly recordings the band releases to fans on nugs.net.
“I think for many people that love music,” Jake says, “we all share in the fact that we’ve had some album that you put your headphones on or went for a drive and ended up listening to the whole thing and had a life-changing experience.”
“When I listen to these songs,” he continues, “I remember not leaving this four-block radius and living in the studio for weeks, and the conversations that we had, and the nights that we would stay up and listen to it, or come up with new parts. It’s visual for me. There’s a whole moment in my life that that album represents.”
By keeping the songs close for now, they hope to facilitate for listeners a similarly vivid connection to the fully realized album. As we walk to front of house to listen to a new working mix of album track “Must Come Down” through the Lincoln Theatre P.A., Jake adds, “It hasn’t gotten away from us yet. It’s in its purest form.”
All four band members seem to retreat inward as they listen, perhaps revisiting those weeks they spent in L.A. creating the track. Each of them has thoughts once it’s over—notes on the clarity and texture of various passages, on the ways certain parts should feel to the listener. They want this song to glow the way it does in their rosy studio memories, to feel as good for all as it does for them. It’s not quite there, they say, but it’s getting closer.
[Photo: Andrew O’Brien – Listening to new “Must Come Down” mix at Lincoln Theatre, 8/17/23]
…
As showtime approaches, Mike, Jake, Alex, and Dani discuss whether they’ll play two sets or one over swigs of Espolòn and “Yamz“. The consensus leans toward one long set, same as the last few nights—no setlist, no breaks, just get out there and play. “Love you guys,” Jake says over his shoulder as they take the stage.
Despite the pre-show plans, however, the band returns to the green room just over an hour later for set break. Something is off.
Jake is already holding court when I get backstage, the others alert and engaged as they work through the hangups that hampered the set. The atmosphere is anxious but focused, like a promising team’s locker room after a disappointing first half.
The topic of discussion is a miscue on the show’s opening song, “Backyard Bear”. While a quick recovery and a strong finish had rendered the mistake an afterthought in the audience, it had ignited a chain reaction of self-doubt onstage.
It’s immediately apparent that they’re deep in their own heads. While their confidence has been building with each packed show, each fawning fan interaction, they’re still not immune to persistent creep of insecurity. It would be easy to make excuses or point fingers here, but I sense a conscious effort by all four band members to keep the discussion constructive.
“I get some timidness,” Jake offers, “about, like… [‘Backyard Bear’], if we put it on the setlist, I feel like no one would have been like, ‘Oh, I need to sound check this.’”
“Right!” Mike agrees.
“I think in some ways it makes us feel like we maybe overcompensate,” Dani says, breaking a pensive silence.
“It’s like that Santana quote,” Jake agrees, assuming a laid-back slouch and his best Carlos impression, “‘Man, if you don’t look like this it’s not gonna sound like that.’ It’s being f—in’ cool! I don’t know how to be cool right now.”
“We could be talking about you, or we could be talking about any of us, but it happens,” Mike says, his self-assured perspective easing the tension in the green room. “That s— does happen. We don’t want it to happen, and it happens less and less as we’ve been improving, but when it does happen, it sucks. Literally, it’s the only way I can internalize it, is that it f—in’ sucks [laughs].
“The thing that f—ed with me,” Mike continues, “‘cus I can pinpoint it, is when you said [key of] F, I was like, oh, we’re gonna do ‘Boom or Bust’, not ‘Backyard Bear’. And it just… It just f—ed with me?”
“You didn’t know?!” Dani ribs him, well aware that they had not settled on an opening song ahead of time. “You didn’t know it was gonna be ‘Backyard Bear’, man?!”
“You know what happens when you assume?” Jake asks, his expression softening.
“That’s exactly what happened,” Mike says, cracking a grin. “I made an ass out of me, and leave you out of it.”
“My judgement’s off,” Jake relents. “Everyone always judges the highs but never analyzes, like, as the highs get higher, the lows [get higher], too. What you perceive to be shitty is also improving throughout your career, so even when you think it’s not great, it’s still baseline pretty good. I’m trying to embody that. … I was like, we’re gonna take f—n’ set break, we’re gonna come together, and just try to chill…”
“To quote our favorite coach,” Dani reminds him, “‘Be a goldfish.’”
By now, jokes have started making their way into the discussion. The mood has shifted. High-fives and toothy smiles break the tension. “F— everybody, right? Especially ourselves,” Dani quips, clearing storm clouds once and for all.
“T-minus two minutes ’til we’re back on,” Mike reminds them.
“So, in this spirit, what do we do?” Jake asks.
“You wanna do a setlist, or you wanna let it fly?” Dani responds.
The answer to Dani’s query arrives in pieces from his bandmates, now unified on the same wavelength once again: “Write enough for me to…” Jake offers. “Think about…” Mike adds. “And then ignore it,” Alex agrees.
Dani scribbles a few songs on a sheet of paper and shows it to Jake, who glances at it and nods, then crumbles it up and throws it over his shoulder as he leaves the room. “Turning off your mind is a tricky thing,” Jake says to Mike as they walk toward the stage. “The trickiest thing,” Mike agrees.
There’s a shimmer of relief in their posture as they return to their posts. They may have just waded through a shallow river of self-doubt backstage, but the audience is none the wiser. The second set is a triumph, a fluid performance packed with inspired playing, attentive interplay, rare song selections, British accents, barrister wigs, mid-song hand-holding, vegetable puns, laser-beam assassinations—joyful absurdity between old friends. The collective enjoyment that was missing during set one is now present in abundance. The secret ingredient in the Eggy recipe has been restored.
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Even a post-show dinner stop at Sheetz, the only business open at this hour, feels more like a celebration than a logistical necessity. Moments like these ground their self-doubt: No matter what thoughts might seep in onstage on any given night, the fun they have when the lights come up—the inside jokes, the laughs, the connection that can only come from knowing you’re right where you should be, with the people you should be with—leaves no question that they’re on the right track. A gas station dinner is an adventure worth savoring, too, if it helps them move together along their path.
As we start our overnight trek to Baltimore for the next day’s show, I can’t help but recall the artist bio the band had asked me to write in 2022, a longer piece that they eventually trimmed down to just two lines: “Song by timeless song Eggy reaches out a hand, inviting you along as a great story unfolds. Eggy’s music traces the full spectrum of emotions evoked by a life well-lived alongside friends well-loved.”
[Photo: Andrew O’Brien – Post-show Sheetz run in Raleigh, 8/17/23]
Chapter 4: Fill the Room With the Days That Left Too Soon
8/18/23 – Baltimore, MD
The road to the next day’s gig—an opening slot for Umphrey’s McGee at the waterside Pier Six Pavilion in Baltimore—is a long one. The band and crew rotate between the driver’s seat and the makeshift bunk in the back of the van as we travel through the night from Raleigh to a budget hotel in Richmond, VA for a few hours of shut-eye, then continue on to Maryland.
Right now is a strange moment for Umphrey’s McGee. With the band’s regular drummer, Kris Myers, on the disabled list as he recovers from a rotator cuff surgery, the prog-jam veterans have recruited various notable substitutes to man the kit for their summer tour dates. Alex Bailey, a lifelong Umphrey’s die-hard, is acutely aware of the possibilities at the Baltimore gig: He’s opening for one of his favorite bands, and that band is currently rotating drummers. There’s always a chance…
While Bailey tends to spend his van hours mixing the band’s live recordings and prepping them for release on nugs.net, on the road from Raleigh to Baltimore I watch him quietly practicing the drum parts to a few Umphrey’s staples on a practice pad in the back seat. None of the band members thinks it’s likely that Alex will be invited to sit in—Duane Trucks from Widespread Panic is subbing in on the kit tonight—but he’s making sure he’s ready just in case.
[Photos: Andrew O’Brien – En route to Pier Six Pavilion, 8/18/23]
…
Mike, Jake, Dani, and Alex don’t seem to be thinking much about the previous night’s emotional arc as we finally settle in backstage in Baltimore, but I’m curious how they feel the Raleigh show turned out in the end.
“I thought it was a good, um, departure from taking things too seriously,” Jake decides. “Lot of laughing onstage, which is always good. I don’t think any of us have any hesitations to talk things out during set break.”
“It’s always worked out in our favor,” Mike agrees. “Any time we’ve had a rough or rocky first set and we’ve come back and been like, ‘What the heck, guys? What do we gotta do differently?’ we’ve almost always come out on top during the second set. Like, alright, we conquered it.”
Rather than harping on last night’s mistakes or questioning their own reactions, their tone is aspirational as they contemplate the art of letting things go. It’s possible, they explain, for the mistake to be the best part.
As Jake runs a few songs on an unplugged guitar, he offers, “With Jerry [Garcia, of the Grateful Dead], I feel like when he’d f— up some lyrics or something, you’re like, ‘Man, I know this solo’s gonna be amazing.’”
“Like Holmdel!” Mike interjects, recalling a Phish show they attended more than a decade ago. “The Holmdel ‘Divided Sky’. Trey tanked it on the solo … and then it goes to the break where it stops, and everyone’s screaming, and he’s smiling. He’s like, ‘I did it on purpose.’”
Jake’s noodling turns into “Divided Sky” in real time as he remembers the experience. “People are very good at mirroring how you [react],” he muses. “With the [classic] Bobby [Weir] response, which is like, ‘F—!’… It’s like, should we be panicked right now? Is this not a good version anymore? Did we throw it all away? But Trey is laughing so much that, like, this isn’t bringing him down, it’s not gonna bring me down, either.”
“That’s when I got it,” he says. “People are there to see you win, and when you fail, people are there to see you get back up. … I think that’s the confusing part about where we are in our journey. We’re constantly playing to first-time people, so there is a sense of, like, no one’s there to see you fail, but people aren’t so in yet to know how to root you on when you feel like you’re not winning. It’s still gotta come a lot from within.”
[Photos: Andrew O’Brien – Warming up in Baltimore, MD, 8/18/23]
…
Eggy has opened for Umphrey’s McGee a handful of times before, but they don’t know the members of the headlining act well enough to call them “friends” just yet. The two groups mingle briefly throughout the day but mostly wind up keeping to themselves—save for Alex, who strolls onstage ahead of Umphrey’s sound check to talk chops with Duane Trucks.
With no sit-in invitation extended, Bailey and the rest of the band’s focus reverts to their opening set—a gig that comes with its own set of obstacles.
[Photo: Andrew O’Brien – Backstage in Baltimore, MD, 8/18/23]
While their musical approach doesn’t change for an opening gig, they admit that the stakes can be disorienting in the moment. “The mindset before you hit the stage [as an opener] is, like, ‘We’re playing for other people’s audiences,’” Jake says. “When it’s our show, there’s a little bit of mojo you have going into it being like, ‘Everyone’s here to see us.’ You don’t have to remember to be like, ‘By the way, we’re Eggy!’
“We did so many opening slots,” he recalls. “Eight weeks with Spafford, cumulatively, three weeks with Dopapod, ten shows with The Motet, bunch of shows with Twiddle, sprinkle in Pigeons [Playing Ping Pong] and moe. and this and that. I remember playing [headlining] shows, and it was like, ‘Finally, this is our crowd,’ and then somebody would be like, ‘Hey, we’re Eggy,’ and I’d be like, ‘Of course we’re Eggy!’ We finally get to not have to be like…”
“Thanks for checkin’ us out!” Alex chimes in, laughing.
“We had to work through that,” Jake continues, “being like, ‘Dude, stop telling people, ‘We’re Eggy!’ They know.”
“We’re the only name on this bill,” Alex concurs. “They bought a ticket to our show.”
Eggy’s opening set itself seems to fade into the background of our day in Baltimore. The crowd reception is positive, particularly to one of the new album’s songs, “Smile“, sung with charisma by Alex Bailey from behind the drum kit.
“We’re Eggy,” they tell the crowd various times throughout the set, a necessary concession.
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…
The band is eager to get moving after the gig. Umphrey’s McGee still has one set left to play, but we have another long drive ahead of us—and, at the end of it, Eggy’s first day at home in two weeks. The conversation drifts toward end-of-tour reflections while we wait with packed bags for Alex, who is suddenly nowhere to be found.
“Basically everybody that’s affiliated with us, except for booking, is in that van,” Jake reflects. “It’s hard to keep track of all these creative endeavors you want to do other than just touring. … There’s been so many times on a long run where we’re like, ‘Man, I wanna do this when we get home,’ and you get home and you just f—ing collapse.”
“It’s like why on the off day on tour, I get sick,” Dani says, calling back to his absence at the Tyler Childers show earlier in the week. “It just catches up where you’re like, ‘Guess we can be kinda sick right now.’”
“Everything propels everything forward,” Jake adds. “It’s good to get out in front of people, but we’ve been trying to find that sweet spot of, ‘What allows us to be out in front of people as much as possible while also really taking care and tending to the million other things that a band should and could be doing?’ … There’s just so much to build.”
Beyond what they hope to build, however, the members of Eggy are still coming to terms with what they have already set in motion. For more than a decade, they’ve been digging in their heels and throwing their weight behind this project to get it rolling, each new milestone the result of a proportional push from them. In some ways, they explain, it’s strange to accept that momentum is kicking in.
“It blew our minds at, like, Hulaween [2022],” Jake says. “We knew we played a big set, people were loving it, and somebody went up to us after the set with all of his homies and he’s like, ‘Yo, this is Eggy.’ I thought it was gonna be the usual, ‘Oh, you guys killed the set,’ but he’s like, ‘Dude, last night we were up ’til 5 in the morning playing you guys at the campsite.’ I mean, this was us, we were going to festivals, looking up at the stars, laughing with each other, staying up ’til six in the morning and listening to music on our speakers. That was a trip for me. These dudes had that time but were listening to us all night, just chilling at the campsite.
“You don’t realize at a certain point we’re not touching everything,” he adds. “People are taking it upon themselves. … Those are the times I feel like I never considered. Like, people are doing a four-hour drive or working out at the gym being like, ‘I’m gonna blast some Eggy.’ It’s what you hope is going on.”
“But you never experience it,” Mike chimes in. “You’re never there.” Adds Dani, “We’re not there when someone’s telling their friend about us, or discovering us on nugs for the first time and falling in love with the music.” In a movie, we joke, that scene would be a montage.
“Whatever personal experiences [people are] having us be the soundtrack to, that’s the biggest trip of the whole thing,” Jake continues. “That’s a heavy weight to consider, how much it means to people. But at the same time, it’s good to tap into that place, because we’ll be kinder to ourselves. Being like, man, you don’t have to win anyone over. They’re already there. … I think we haven’t fully accepted that.”
Acceptance aside, all signs indicate that the momentum will continue to build. The next few years, I say, are going to happen quickly—a series of new levels in quick succession.
“It already feels like that,” Jake responds. “It’s funny talking with you, somebody that we’ve known since we were kids. You were there in the beginning 11 years ago when things were just getting started.”
“You played a show with Francis Drive!” Dani smiles. “Amity Teen Center, baby!” Mike laughs.
“It’s a testament to how exciting everything is and where we’re at,” Jake continues. “In no reality should I be like, ‘Oh, we’re just getting started’ 11 years in, but at the same time, the journey really has just begun. It’s cool that everything has been going so well that we can even put all those years behind us. It’s not just fans that are like, ‘Oh, you guys are up-and-coming.’ I feel up-and-coming.”
Soon enough, Alex shows back up at the van. He’s been hanging out with the Umphrey’s guys in their green room during their set break. Bashful but buzzing, Alex explains that Duane Trucks, in particular, had been impressed by the drumming during Eggy’s set. “And he can sing, too!” Trucks had told Ryan Stasik. “Oh, I know,” the Umphrey’s McGee bassist responded. Alex hadn’t gotten the sit-in he had hoped for—not yet—but it was hard not to feel that those wheels had been set in motion.
[Photo: Andrew O’Brien – Backstage in Baltimore, MD, 8/18/23]
Chapter 5: In a Moment’s Notice We Find…
8/20/23, Catbird Festival, Bethel, NY
After a day off at home, we’re back in the van early Sunday morning to head to the site of Woodstock ’69 for the inaugural Catbird Festival.
The significance is striking to Mike Goodman as we approach the festival grounds. “My dad was at Woodstock when he was 16,” he says, “and I didn’t get to hear many stories about it, unfortunately, because my dad passed away when I was, like, ten years old. It’s definitely really special. Especially, like, being on this road knowing that this was full of cars and people just walking down because they couldn’t get in. It’s pretty surreal.”
The band is scheduled for a 30-minute slot today, the shortest Eggy set in seven years. No one is particularly thrilled about the logistics—several hours in the van, one day into being home from tour, just to spend more time setting up than actually playing.
Still, they’re determined to make the most of it—to appreciate the history of the locale and reach some new people with different tastes, people who might one day stay up until 5 a.m. listening to Eggy and laughing with their friends. Plus, they’ll get to see some cool bands—Dispatch, Trey Anastasio Band, and Tyler Childers all play after them. At the very least, they figure, they’ll get to hang with Craig and Rodney.
After two weeks in the South, far away from their home base, today is effectively a “local show” for Eggy. Girlfriends have joined the crew. Band parents are milling around the grounds. Once the set is done, Dani predicts, today may feel more like attending a festival than playing one.
We head to artist catering to grab some food before load-in. Tyler Childers and The Food Stamps are there, too, and the old friends in the two bands quickly pick up where they had left off in Charlotte. “Thirty minutes?” Craig jokes about Eggy’s set time. “That’s like one song for you guys!” In fact, they tell him, they’re going for five songs. For this gig, they’ve written the setlist ahead of time.
Alex arrives late to meet us, leaving just enough time for him to set up and jump onstage. Eggy’s set, however brief, goes off exactly as planned. The band fits five tunes, two of them from the new album (“Smile” and “A Moment’s Notice”), into the half-hour slot. The response from the crowd—at least 1,000 strong, many of them unfamiliar with the band beforehand—leaves them satisfied as they pack up.
“We’ve done ‘A Moment’s Notice‘ like twice now, but not to a crowd like that,” Alex Bailey notes. “I feel like that was the move for this set: Just play a bunch of songs, a lot of stuff that’s fresh for us and for the crowd. … It was better received today than it has been the last couple shows. The headlining shows we’ve done [recently], it’s like, people that are really familiar with our music and hoping to hear certain things, hoping to hear jams and stuff. Not that they didn’t like the new songs, but I feel like they were more like… surprised by it? But today, it’s just people hearing us for the first time and hearing quality, catchy songs, and the response was way bigger.”
While Bailey appears unfazed by his increased role on the mic, he’s working on approaching the new songs thoughtfully. “I need to go back and rethink how I’ve been doing it,” he says, “talk to whoever wrote the lyrics, understand where they came from in their writing process, and then figure out within that how I can have it mean something to me.. … It’s not like a cover, you know? It’s actually, like, I am the face of that song to everyone that’s watching us, even though I didn’t write it. I don’t feel like I’ve unlocked it completely yet, but it’s been so great. I f—in’ love these songs. I feel like they’re getting the same reaction from the crowd that we’re having from them.”
“What we’re doing with the new songs,” Jake adds, “keeping them off of the live recordings, that’s unique in our scene but it’s not necessarily unique in the world of music. We didn’t wanna withhold the music. This festival’s a perfect example of, like, I want to play ‘A Moment’s Notice’. I want people to hear what we feel is more present in how we’re writing music, and not withhold the evolution from our sets. … Everything is building.”
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Mike and Jake hitch rides home with family after Eggy’s set, but the rest of us stick around to enjoy the festival. Alex, who missed lunch by arriving late, just needs to go to grab some food first.
While I wait in the green room for him to return, my thoughts drift back to our chat in Baltimore about momentum, about how the band has reached the point where the fruits of its labors are coming to bear. Today’s set had played out like a tidy affirmation of that revelation: In just 30 minutes, they had captured the sound and energy of Eggy’s current moment while a new batch of listeners reflected their enthusiasm. Their intentions are starting to connect. I could end my story here, I think to myself.
When Bailey rolls back into the green room with his girlfriend, Juliette, and the band’s tour manager, CJ, in tow, his face is frozen in a stunned smirk. “Alex just met Trey,” CJ deadpans.
Adrenaline still pumping from the interaction moments earlier, Alex sets the scene: Artist catering was wrapping up service, but he and Juliette had gone to see what scraps were left. When they arrived, they found Trey Anastasio eating with [TAB trombonist] Natalie Cressman and a member of the band’s crew.
As they quietly settled in a few tables away in the nearly empty dining area, Alex and Juliette were at odds. Bailey admits that he was starstruck, intent on not drawing attention to himself. Juliette, on the other hand, wasn’t content to let him miss this moment.
“She’s looking over at [him]. I’m like, ‘Stop it! Stop looking at him!’” Alex recalls, recreating his sheepish reaction through spurts of laughter. “But then, I see that they’re wrapping up. She’s nudging me, like, ‘Get up!’ And I’m like, ‘No! No!’”
Juliette wasn’t having it. “I intercepted him,” she says, laughing. “I said, ‘Hi, I’m Juliette, I just wanted to make the introduction.’”
With no way to back out now, Alex continues, he did his best to keep his composure as he introduced himself to a man who has surely been approached in similar fashion by young musicians for decades: “I’m like, ‘Uh, hey, Trey, great to meet you. I played in the band Eggy, um… earlier.”
Alex had expected a friendly response from Anastasio, but the jam icon’s reaction to the introduction took him by surprise: Trey’s eyes widened in recognition when he heard the band’s name. “I’ve got a story for you,” the Phish guitarist told him. “It’s a good one.”
“You know that King Gizzard [& The Lizard Wizard] song that you guys play, ‘Interior People?’” Trey asked Alex. In 2022, he explained, Phish learned how to play the song in order to cover it during the band’s year-end run at Madison Square Garden.
Phish had started practicing “Interior People” in July, Trey told Alex, and had gotten it down by mid-December. “He played me a voice memo of it from December 18th, 2022, right before the New Year’s run.” Alex says. “Him and Page [McConnell, Phish’s keyboardist] sitting and playing through the whole thing.”
Then, they found out about Eggy. “[Trey] was like, ‘When we were preparing for it, one of my friends called me and was like, hey, just letting you know, this band Eggy has been playing this song. Alright, well, I gotta check it out. … I checked it out, watched the whole video. After that, I pulled the plug on it.’”
Bailey’s smile widens as he repeats Trey’s words out loud for the first time: “It was hints of being like, ‘F— you guys,’” he estimates, “but in a very, very playful way. … He was like, ‘All of the people at the Garden that would’ve been psyched to hear that, they have you to blame. … When you see the rest of the Eggy guys, tell them that.’”
“So, you’re on the radar,” CJ musters.
“On the radar!” Alex grins, still dazed by the series of events that turned him from “shy Phish fan” into “unwitting Phish disruptor” in an instant.
[Photos: Juliette Cahill – Trey Anastasio meets Eggy’s Alex Bailey, 8/20/23]
Riding high from the Trey interaction, we make our way outside to find Dani in the crowd. Alex recounts the tale while we watch Dispatch’s set from the lawn.
Dani has hardly had time to digest Alex’s story when we walk backstage again soon after and see Trey standing across the back lot, guitar in hand, preparing to take the stage.
“You want me to introduce you?” Alex asks.
Dani pauses for a moment as he considers the surreal proposition: not just that his bandmate, roommate, and Phish tour buddy for years—who had definitely never met the man as of this morning—is about to introduce him to the jam giant, but that Trey has a great story to tell about him. “I mean, uh… yeah,” he replies.
[Photo: Andrew O’Brien – Alex Bailey introduces Trey Anastasio to Dani Battat, 8/20/23]
“Alex got to introduce me all casually,” Dani later tells me of the exchange. “[Trey] was like, ‘So, you heard about the Gizzard story?’
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I thought it was hilarious. It’s hard to believe that we were able to ripple space-time in that way that you guys would choose not to play the song.’ He was like, ‘You know, we were trying to do the jam band-courteous thing. … If anything, you guys kind of gave us permission not to do it.’ … Like it was almost relieving, in a way, ‘cus it’s a tough song, although I feel like Phish would nail it.”
“And then he had to walk away,” Dani continues, “and we were saying goodbye, and I was like, ‘I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to let you know how important what you do is and what Phish means to me… Countless times going to see Phish and then after the show talking with my bandmates about our hopes and dreams as a band… Just, there is no Eggy without you and Phish, so thank you.’
“He just looked me right in the eye and was like, ‘Thank you so much for telling me that. It’s really only our hope that we can continue to pass this down the stream.’ He was, like, congratulating us on our success,” Dani says, the words landing with a note of disbelief. “I was just like, ‘To be able to play a small role in the stream is an honor.’ And he’s like, ‘It’s not small. You guys are doing it.’”
The rest of the evening is an idyllic blur. Craig Burletic and Rodney Elkins filter into our group in the crowd as we watch Trey Anastasio Band perform, then disappear to take the stage themselves with Tyler Childers for a set that feels more like a show by old friends than a top-billed festival headliner.
The world seems a little bit smaller as we finally pull out of the backstage lot. Eggy’s ride may be a modest van among massive tour buses, and the band’s Woodstock story may be a pebble in the footprints of music giants, but none of that seems out of reach as we begin the trek home.
Chapter 6: We’re Caught on the Other Side
Early-a.m. 8/21/23, The Van
Dani Battat’s thoughts spill out as he pilots the Eggy tour van home from Catbird well after midnight, as if he has to speak them aloud to believe they’re real. “I think we might have underestimated this festival,” he says.
The “stream” Trey spoke about mirrors Dani’s thoughts on creativity as a whole. “It’s this river that flows, and you can be aware and open towards receiving it. I think the same is true with a good idea. If you think [something’s] a good idea, someone else will probably think it’s a good idea. You have to jump on that idea that moment… or it’s gonna [float] down to Phish,” he adds with a laugh that peters into a reflective sigh.
He’s glad he saved a moment for vulnerability with the Phish guitarist. “I’d be kicking myself if I didn’t say it. Like, [if] I met my hero and didn’t take the 30 seconds to express how important that is,” Dani says. “Dude, I was shook. Not even that I met him, but like… how he met me—that he reciprocated the energy that I gave him, that he made me feel, in a way, like he knew that it was important for me to be able to say that.
“I remember after seeing Page [McConnell] and the Funky Meters, Page was shaking everyone’s hand [after the show], and I didn’t know what to say to [him], so when he went to shake my hand, I was like, ‘Go Mets!’ Now, I’m like, why did I tell Page ‘Go Mets?’” he wonders aloud, chuckling in hindsight. “Of all the things I could’ve said, like, ‘Dude, I f—in’ love you, you’re the man…’ But like, ‘Go Mets?!’
“It’s vulnerable to express things like that,” he continues, “and I was walking away today being like, ‘That’s the person I wanna be like.’ I wanna be someone that responds with that same energy. If a fan comes up to me that’s like, ‘Hey, this song got me through something,’ or ‘Hey, I just had the best time at you guys’ show,’ make them feel the best about expressing themself. I get to express myself all night long. ‘Thank you for telling me.’
“I walked away from that conversation with Trey being like, he definitely doesn’t, like, know my name, you know? But he knows f—n’ Eggy’s name,” Dani says, referring this time to the person, not the band. “He knows Edward’s name. Eggy. Like, f—! He doesn’t know that’s who it is, but he knows his f—n’ name.”
“It’s bigger than me, it’s bigger than any of us,” he goes on. “It’s easy for us to get in our own heads, to spin ourselves out with, like, waiting for the rain to make your crops grow. There’s so many things that happen that you can’t control, but if it was started the right way, and done with intention, it’s going to ripple out.”
When you hold something close—your work, your friends, your story—it’s hard to ease your grip as it expands beyond your reach. Dani Battat, Alex Bailey, Jake Brownstein, and Mike Goodman are still getting comfortable with the ripple effect. Pivotal scenes in their story are playing out as we speak, well beyond their view, but they’re learning to go with the flow. No one knows how far the ripples might carry Eggy, but they’ve seen enough to recognize the vast possibility in learning as you go, trusting what you’re doing, and doing it with grace.
They’re in the stream—same as Trey and Phish, same as Tyler and the Food Stamps, same as the countless others whose paths they’ve crossed along the way—and in this stream, the current moves fast. In an instant, aspiration becomes interaction, impostor syndrome becomes validation, intention becomes reality.
In a moment’s notice, we find, we’re caught on the other side…
[Photo: Andrew O’Brien – Eggy prepares to take the stage in Baltimore, 8/19/23]
Waiting Game, the sophomore album from Eggy, is due out on September 6th, 2024. Pre-order your copy of the album on vinyl here. For a list of the band’s upcoming tour dates, head here.
The post On Tour With Eggy: Waiting Game [Feature] appeared first on L4LM.
