For three nights this week, Milwaukee will welcome ever-growing jam band Goose to the Miller High Life Theatre. The band has built their momentum over the past decade, but have reached new heights in the past couple of years, elevating to headlining amphitheaters and arenas. This year sees the band playing a string of multi-night residencies, as well as organizing their own festival, Viva El Gonzo, in Mexico. 

New to the fold in the last year is drummer Cotter Ellis, who checked in with OnMilwaukee from Vermont ahead of this week’s shows, which will kick off their 2025 touring run: 

OMC: Goose are heading to the Miller High Life Theatre for three nights. It's the start of a busy 2025 for you guys. How are you feeling going into playing some of your first live shows of the year?

Ellis: Really good. I feel like, you know, last year was my first year. These are going to be some of my first shows, almost exactly a year into being announced. I learned a lot and got more comfy with the songs and just being on stage like that. I’m really excited for this year.

OMC: With the nature of what you guys do, it probably takes a little bit to just learn everybody's style and get everybody tight and together. How did you feel initially, and were you able to quickly adapt to everybody else on stage?

Ellis: Part of the reason that I’m here is that it felt really good right away. It’s hard to explain that musical connection with people; It goes pretty deep, But I felt good right off the bat.

OMC: You joined the band as Goose are playing some of their biggest venues yet. Are you excited to take what you do and bring it into larger venues?

Ellis: I just started to get a taste of arenas, and we played a few amphitheaters on my first summer tour. There's an energy to those big shows. I’ve been playing clubs and small theaters for most of my musical career before Goose ended. With the bigger venues, it's less of an individual connection with the crowd and more of this ball of energy. It’s definitely fun to jam in that environment, because you can feel that give and take on a whole other level.

OMC: In terms of just interacting with the other band members, because there's so much space from one guy to the other and it doesn't feel as intimate, is there an adjustment there to play in that environment?

Ellis: I feel like I took to it pretty quickly. The fact that there's more space in between band members, actually had us switch up our stage plot. Now I'm down on the floor and we're kind of in a straight line with Jeff (Arevalo.) We can all see each other a lot better. It actually helps with the sound, too. Obviously seeing each other is great, but hearing each other is the most important. When you have more space between band members, there’s not as much bleed between everyone. So you can hear them a lot better, which actually helps the connection.

OMC: So you’ve got three nights in Milwaukee, and really three nights all over North America, and you've got a festival that the band is putting together too. I noticed that you guys put a lot of recordings up. How does the band determine when you're going to put the recording out?

Ellis: So we actually put all of our shows up on Nugs, which is a streaming platform. So you can listen to every single minute of every show. For our official releases, it’s when we felt like a show went really well front to back. When we're listening back and we're like “Wow, this just has a lot of stuff.” I think the nature of being in an improv band is that every night is different. It gets pretty subjective between us. A lot of times we’ll get off stage and be like “that one was special” and that will end up being an official release as opposed to just a recording that we put on Nugs like any other night. 

OMC: So any show really has the potential of becoming forever enshrined beyond Nugs, then. They could be on all streaming services at any point then?

Ellis: For sure. We ended up taking the three nights from the Fox Theater. I think we took two of them and we released them on vinyl. Then we put the L.A. shows up just because when we got off stage we were like “that was awesome.” We announced Madison Square Garden, and unless that goes really badly, which I expect it won't, that would be like a special show. We really want to have that up, to be our first time at MSG. It’s a special moment, but any show could end up being something that we end up releasing on more platforms.

OMC: Speaking of recording, there's studio records as well. Have you guys been working on anything for a new album, or are you moving into the live space more?

Ellis: I’m not sure how much I'm supposed to talk about it, but I think I can say that there's studio stuff. It's been weird because they have a ton of material that we'd like to get out there, but with the transition, it kind of threw a wrench into the whole process and just prolonged it. We’ve been focused on hitting the road a lot, but the studio thing is definitely important to the band. I think that’s what separates Goose from a lot of bands in this scene; we really like to make good studio songs. Our producer Dan Goodwin is amazing.

OMC:  What is the one big thing for this band heading into 2025 that you guys are really looking forward to most? 

Ellis: I'm looking forward to it all. I'm really excited for this February tour because it will be different from all of our other tours. Instead of being on a bus for like six weeks, we’re just doing multiple nights in these cities. And I think the multi-night thing is really special, especially on a bigger stage. Sometimes you'll get on a bigger stage and you kind of have to get used to it and sometimes it takes a whole show to really feel comfortable. So if you have multiple nights, it’s like you don’t have to do anything extra the next day. You show up, you soundcheck, but you’re really just running stuff at that point. With all this production, you know, variables like sound and vibe, I’m really excited to do multi-night shows because I think that gets the best out of any band.

You can catch Goose this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at Miller High Life Theatre Tickets are available via the Pabst Theater Group website.