If you closed your eyes and threw a dart in the Amsterdam Bar and Hall in St. Paul on Oct. 18, there would be a 90 percent chance it would land either on a 23-year-old man with a mustache and a Carhartt hat or his 50-year-old father.
Geese, the band everyone (including me) seems to be squawking about in the past few weeks in the post-release of their newest indie rock smash album “Getting Killed,” took their tour to St. Paul last week.
Once again, I was on the up-and-up from a cold, but nothing would ever stop me from going to this show. Joined in solidarity by fellow Mac Weekly Associate News Editor Basil DiBenedetto ’28 and my good friend Eli Suppelsa ’27, I migrated over to the Amsterdam about an hour and a half early, well aware of the recent virality of the new album and the sold-out venue to go with it. We arrived on the fourth floor of the parking garage stairs where the line was forming. Indeed, we were not the only ones with this idea.
As mentioned above, the crowd varied in age and interests: band tee after band tee passed me on their trek up the stairs and into the line, including but not limited to The Flaming Lips, Bob Dylan, Geordie Greep, The Grateful Dead, Boris and, of course, Geese. If anything, it exemplified the many influences of the band, and the universal draw they have. However, to the woman in front of me in line swiping through Hinge, I extend this warning: I don’t think you want to find your future husband at the Geese concert.
Entering the venue and settling into the crowd, I was shocked to experience the excitement and friendliness of everyone. I talked to strangers next to me about what songs we wished to see (lots of songs off of “Projector” was the hope of both myself and the very nice twenty-something person next to me), how we’ve heard Geese is incredible live and even unsolicited but welcomed advice about post-college endeavors.
The entire population of the venue was buzzing, due to both the copious amounts of $8 beer being consumed and the anticipation of the performance yet to come.
The openers, Racing Mount Pleasant, gave a powerful show. While the saxophone, violin, and piano added to the traditional guitar, bass, and drums drew many Black Country New Road (BCNR) comparisons from myself and my companions, reducing them to a mere BCNR copy would be unfair. Their raw lyricism and slowcore track lengths struck a major emotional chord with the Geeseheads, many slowly swaying and nodding their heads as the band continued to play. Mellow yet potent, they wrapped the hall in their comforting sound, a gentle head pat before the earthquake yet to come.
At this point, I knew what I had to do. I must expose myself as an asshole who tries at many a concert to push up to the front. In my defense, this strategy would allow me to see at this show, as some other, bigger, asshole who stood at least six feet tall shoved into the middle-front at the behest of everyone around me.
I gathered my courage, DiBenedetto in tow, to rejoin Suppelsa, who had been off to the bathroom after the aforementioned $8 beer and had somehow magically reappeared in the right front section of the crowd. Directly after the unexpected success of this valiant effort, the lights dimmed.
Above the deafening screams, donning a Ween hat, Cameron Winter began to sing “Husbands,” as did the entire venue, impressively reciting word-for-word the song that came out less than a month before. The crowd bobbed side to side to the gentle twang of this first song, along with the second, “Islands of Men,” subdued by Max Bassin’s pulsating drums and Dominic DiGesu’s groovy bass.
This would not last long. The band burst into “Mysterious Love,” an energetic rock number from “3D Country,” transforming the crowd’s once gentle waves into full-on white water rapids. A pit formed, and I let myself be carried by the tide to the front. The Amsterdam is quite a small venue, with no barricade between the stage and the crowd. Before I knew it, I was less than ten feet away from the band.
Continuing with the high-energy songs, Geese sang their most popular tune, “Cowboy Nudes,” complete with replacing a shoutout for New York City for St. Paul Minnesota. Pushed back and forth, I manned my place with honor, making eye contact (!) with DiGesu as he continued to play throughout “100 Horses, ” “Getting Killed,” and to my extreme joy and tears, “Half Real.” All of the songs played sounded unique from their recorded versions, with extra vocal inflections from Winter or transcribed keys. The crowd gave a valiant effort to sing along, but most of it was in vain as Winter improvised.
Winter often interacted with the crowd, including before the next song, claiming that he was “Gonna do it.” Do what, exactly? “I’m gonna do it…” (“DO IT!” the crowd screamed), “I’m gonna do it….!” He was able to utter one word of the intro of “2122” before the entire hall erupted, overflowing with ecstasy and movement. The song continued with an almost frantic energy, before Winter… pulled out his phone? Opened the Spotify app? And from his phone… began to play “Androgynous” by the Minnesota-based group The Replacements into the mic?
In a hilarious moment, Suppelsa and I immediately clocked the song and started to sing along, as the rest of the crowd, apparently unfamiliar, stood in confusion. “Onetwothreefour!” Winter screamed before continuing the song. Awesome.
The interactions only continued, as a concertgoer screamed “CAMERON FUCKING WINTER!” in a moment of silence between songs, causing someone else to meekly chime in, “there are other people too!”
“I’ve never introduced the band before,” Winter said, smiling, “Should I?” He took the crowd’s enthusiastic cheering as a yes, introducing DiGesu (“New York City…born and raised…a child of divorce!”), Bassin, Emily Green on guitar and touring member Sam Revaz on the keyboard between the next few songs. The band members, despite their confidence and talent, seemed quite shy when called out, looking out to us with gentle waves and large grins.
The next song came as a shock to everyone, as the band “haven’t played it in a while,” according to Winter. This was the tour debut of “Fantasies/Survival” off of “Projector,” the only song they played off of their earliest album, a song with an absolutely wicked fast-then-slow-then-fast-then-slow guitar outro. They played more off of “Getting Killed” before ending with “Taxes,” with Winter afterwards thanking us for attending.
But the crowd knew better. Oh, we knew the best was yet to come.
After several minutes of chanting “Geese! Geese! Geese!”, the band re-emerged, with Winter sitting down at the keyboard to play a dramatic intro to “Long Island City Here I Come.” The crowd danced, but conservatively, saving energy for what was next. They closed with the intro song to “Getting Killed,” “Trinidad,” and the birdwatchers formed an empty circle in the middle during the whisper-sung verse. Everyone held each other back, waiting for the chorus to rush to the middle, hundreds of people screaming “THERE’S A BOMB IN MY CAR!”
Determined to join the moshing, in a shocking turn of events, I was immediately shoved to the ground with the bruises to show for it two weeks later.
But, in that moment, seeing both old and new friends who I had been previously separated from during the show in the pit reaching out to help me up and dance with me once more, I felt an almost unparalleled sense of love.
No matter if they started listening to Geese three years or three weeks ago, all of the hands extended to me seemed to say that they care not only about the band, but the community who comes from listening to it. When the lights came on and breathless smiles were exchanged, all of us knew we’d fly the nest with new scrapes and a new sense of love for the music we all share.
