Just days ahead of its headlining debut at Madison Square Garden, Goose treated WFUV (90.7 FM) community members and a few resourceful fans to an invite-only benefit show at Racket NYC, formerly the Highline Ballroom, for a massive underplay. A noncommercial, member-supported public media service of Fordham University for over 75 years, WFUV has championed music discovery and showcased an eclectic blend of rock, roots, and world music from emerging, indie, and established artists while contributing to its New York City hometown through community engagement and public service.
Playing a 650-capacity venue five days before filling the World’s Most Famous Arena feels like the right time to frame Goose’s meteoric rise as a reflection of its brief history with New York City. Conceived in Connecticut in 2014, Goose didn’t visit nearby New York City until April 2017, when it played the now-shuttered American Beauty with a configuration that only loosely resembles today’s lineup. In fact, keyboard player Peter Anspach would make his debut with original band members Rick Mitarotonda (guitar) and Trevor Weekz (bass) later that year, before the band returned to New York City for the second time to play Drom in April 2018. Another year would pass before Goose again visited the Big Apple for a sparsely attended show at the 250-cap Mercury Lounge in April 2019.
Its core lineup now solidified, the quartet played a string of milestone festival performances during the summer of 2019, most notably defined by a storied performance at The Peach Music Festival in Scranton, PA, whose subsequent live video has since garnered just shy of 450k views. With increased buzz came increased demand, and by the time Goose returned to the Mercury Lounge on Halloween 2019–my first show–$19 tickets were fetching upwards of $100 on secondary markets. Goose would triple its audience on its next visit to NYC just a few months later when the band sold out the Bowery Ballroom (575) and Music Hall of Williamsburg (650) on consecutive nights in January 2020.
The global COVID pandemic that began in March of 2020 barely interrupted Goose’s momentum. While the entire music industry was figuring out how to survive, Goose was deepening its connection with fans through a series of streaming events like June 2020’s Bingo Tour before returning to touring in the fall of 2020 with a series of drive-in and pod shows. By the time Goose returned to New York City in December 2020, it was livestreaming the seventh iteration of its annual Goosemas celebration from a rooftop in Rockefeller Center in what was surely a pinnacle moment for the band at the time.
Goose’s next ticketed shows in NYC were a pair of sold-out nights at Terminal 5 (3,000-capacity) on 10/8/21 and 10/9/21, the second of which was a surprise three-set show. Parabolic rise in full effect, the band next visited Radio City Music Hall (6,000-capacity) for a pair of storied three-set shows that mimicked the Grateful Dead’s Reckoning/Dead Set acoustic-electric-electric format from the same venue on 6/24/22 and 6/25/22. Notably, the band also welcomed guests Father John Misty and Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio on the second night. Connecticut’s hottest indie-groove act would also visit New York City’s airwaves, playing the CBS Saturday Morning Show (June 2022) and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (December 2022).
It would be almost two years before Goose returned to NYC to make its Garden debut as part of the SOULSHINE all-star benefit for hurricane relief in November 2024. First to the stage that night, Goose played a five-song set that saw the band welcome luminaries Dave Matthews, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, and Robert Randolph. Notably, this was also Goose’s first New York City performance with drummer Cotter Ellis, who had replaced original band member Ben Atkind in the winter of 2024. Less than two months after SOULSHINE, Goose announced its first headlining show at Madison Square Garden.
Before Monday night, Goose’s last NYC show was an intimate one-off this past March for 800 lucky fans at the Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy art exhibit in The Shed in Hudson Yards. Welcoming Stuart Bogie for the entirety of its set, Goose laid down a single 80-minute improvisational track as part of the Everything Must Go Experience, which predated the April release of Goose’s newest album and current tour namesake.
All of which brings us to the present day, just days away from Goose’s long-awaited Garden Party. With Goose 20 shows deep into its Everything Must Go Summer Tour, the band played its fifth show in as many nights for a warm and appreciative crowd at Racket NYC. Taking a stripped-down stage largely bereft of its two semis’ worth of lighting and equipment, the band that will soon pack The World’s Most Famous Arena fielded a quick Q and A in front of 650 fans before tearing into a nearly two-hour, 12-song set.
With ten of the night’s 12 songs taken from the band’s new 14-track album, this was a showcase of Goose’s newest studio work. Opening with “Animal” and “Hot Love & The Lazy Poet”, Goose would keep the first few tracks of the night true to form before flexing its improvisational chops a little bit—and loosening up the room in the process—during “Hungersite”.
“Silver Rising” and “Dustin Hoffman” followed, the band once again exploring some unique sonic spaces before a nifty segue into “Lead Up”, which hit extremely hard in the tiny space. With the juxtaposition of the band’s Garden show looming later this week, being that close to the amps and live drums made this show feel more like seeing Goose in a studio or a friend’s garage than the increasingly larger venues that it has visited along the way, and the smiles on people’s faces showed their genuine appreciation for what was unfolding before them.
The comfortable crowd found its groove during the John Mayer-esque “Your Direction”, the whole room singing and dancing arm in arm as Goose laid down its track with the highest Top 40 potential. “Atlas Dogs” followed before Peter Anspach moved from keyboards to guitar, and the band found some of the night’s deepest improvisation during “Iguana Song”. Title track “Everything Must Go” was extremely resonant, heavy with emotion and gravitas, before “Give It Time” closed the set with energy, vigor, and a message that punctuated an extremely special night with a tight little bow, “It’s a revelation / It’s a hallelujah / It’s the nature of the spirit running through yah!”
Twenty shows deep into a summer tour that began less than a month ago, Goose is running at peak performance and when the band returned to the stage to close out a Monday night for the ages with a “Thatch” encore, the tiny room was barely able to contain the band’s confidence amid the song’s explosive peaks. This was a song-heavy show for a band known for its improvisation and deep jams, and the quality of those songs was on full display in the small space. Those lucky enough to be in the room will surely remember this one forever. I know I will.
Goose’s most anticipated show of all time on Saturday is now in the on-deck circle just behind a visit to the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion on Friday. Find tickets and a list of tour dates here. If you can’t make it in person, nugs All Access subscribers can stream all of the band’s shows at no additional cost. Not a subscriber yet? Sign up for a discounted subscription for only $5 a month here. [Editor’s note: Live For Live Music is a nugs affiliate. Ordering your subscription via the links on this page helps to support our work covering the world of live music. Thank you for reading!]
Check out some videos from Goose at Racket NYC, along with photos from this past week’s shows in Cleveland and Canandaigua, NY courtesy of photographer Daniel Ojeda.
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Setlist: Goose | Racket NYC | New York, NY | 6/23/25
Set: Animal, Hot Love & The Lazy Poet > Hungersite, Silver Rising, Dustin Hoffman -> Lead Up, Your Direction, Atlas Dogs, Iguana Song, Everything Must Go, Give It Time
Encore: Thatch
