Sara Toth
Editor
Julia Weber
Staff Writer
Indie rock bands Guster and the Mountain Goats are embarking on a quick, eight-concert co-billed tour along the East Coast, and it all starts at 7:30 p.m. tonight in Amphitheater. Not only is tonight the first stop on the bands’ tour and the first time they’ve performed together — Jon Wurster’s pretty sure it will be the first time Guster and the Mountain Goats … even meet.
“I think this tour was the wizardry of both of our managers. As far as I know, I’m the only person who has met a member of Guster,” said Wurster, who has been drummer for the Mountain Goats since 2007. He met Brian Rosenworcel at a show for another band that Wurster plays in — an REM cover band fronted by, of all people, actor Michael Shannon.
“(Rosenworcel) was very nice,” Wurster said. “I think it’s going to be a really fun tour.”
Though the bands haven’t toured together before, they have a lot in common, and Ryan Miller, co-lead singer of Guster, said he had “been an admirer for many years” of the Mountain Goats.
Hailing from Somerville, Massachusetts, Guster formed at Tufts University in 1991 — the same year John Darnielle started performing (solo) as the Mountain Goats. Since then, Darnielle has remained the core member of the band with bandmates and collaborators making up “various permutations” of the Mountain Goats over the years, Wurster said.
“We’re a weird band, and we get weirder every year. … We’re all over the place in a really good way, I think,” he said. “It’s kind of rock ‘n’ roll, it’s kind of jazz, it’s kind of folk-punk. There’s a saxophone.”
Guster, too, has grown and evolved — while maintaining a presence in the “dad rock sphere,” Miller said — alongside its fanbase.
“A lot of our fans have grown up with our music — we’ve grown up with our music,” he said. “We keep trying new things musically and in terms of how we present ourselves.”
Miller said the band’s sonic presence is melody-forward, and he draws inspiration from the pop music of 1960s and 1970s artists, like Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson; Wurster “doesn’t even know who (he) would say (the Mountain Goats) sound like at this point.”
Thanks to Darnielle’s writing — from concept albums dedicated to endearing and bizarre characters to autobiographical songs mining teenage trauma — “lyrics are the focal point of the Mountain Goats,” Wurster said.
“But,” he added, “it’s fun to see how the musical aspect has changed over the years. It’s a lyric-driven band that’s got bass, drums, keyboards, saxophones and all kinds of other weird things in it. Every show is pretty different, and they’re getting even more different as we get older.”
For this tour, Wurster said the band isn’t focusing on one record or era but “kind of a little bit of everything.” The setlist could include anything from the brightly anarchic “Up the Wolves” or gleefully defiant “This Year,” to character-driven songs from the band’s concept albums like All Hail West Texas or Jenny from Thebes.
And then there are songs that are the perfect mix of lyricism and music — like “The Diaz Brothers,” inspired by the off-screen but oft-mentioned leaders of a rival cartel in the movie “Scarface.”
“It’s the most fun to play,” Wurster said. “It’s probably the most kind of straightforward, regular rock song we have; it’s almost like an Elton John kind of song. But the lyrics are about these two Diaz brothers wreaking havoc everywhere — that’s the one that’s the most fun to play on a primal level.”
Guster, too, is known for a unique sound — particularly vocal harmonies, with both Miller and co-lead singer Adam Gardner simultaneously singing different lyrics on certain songs, and Rosenworcel’s wide array of percussion instruments. Whether someone in the audience is there for Guster or the Mountain Goats, Miller said he feels that fans of either group will enjoy the other’s music, as well.
“There’s a lot of overlap with the kind of fanbase (the Mountain Goats) has, like people that have tattoos of words on their arms and have been listening for decades,” he said.
With the emphasis on dad rock, Guster keeps its performances focused on the music — “There’s not a lot of pomp and circumstance unless it’s with a wink,” Miller said. (Band members, it should be noted, are known for the humor they bring to Guster’s shows.)
In the quintessential Chautauqua spirit of fostering interdisciplinary art, Guster has experimented with other art mediums in a variety of ways; they’ve done shows with improv comedians, played alongside orchestras and even performed a theatrical concert retelling the history of the group.
As the Mountain Goats get back on the road for the first time in six months — Wurster thinks it’s the longest the band has gone without touring — Guster is looking at ways to make the touring industry as a whole more sustainable. Gardner, the band’s co-lead singer, co-founded the nonprofit climate organization REVERB in 2004 after realizing just how much waste the band and its fans were generating.
“We were watching as we threw away 200 water bottles every night and realized that we had the ability to have a conversation with our fans about things that were important to us,” Miller said. “Especially stuff that was going on around climate change — especially 20 years ago before the term ‘green’ even existed.”
Since then, Guster has implemented a number of changes to how they tour to lessen their environmental impact. Miller said some of the changes include opting for a water cooler and reusable water bottles instead of disposable ones, using biodiesel in buses and trucks when touring, and providing fans with resources to learn how they can reduce their environmental impact.
“It’s really about building up a community and having a conversation — not from the stage directly — but from our platform, which is the venue, for people that are interested (in what they can do),” Miller said.
