Welcome back to Shecky's Jam Bands. I'm Shecky and today we've got a story that I love because it starts in a basement. Not a famous basement, not a legendary club, just a basement in Wilton, Connecticut where four high school friends started playing music together because they had nothing better to do and everything to prove. In that basement something started that is still going and still growing. and still capable of stopping
a room cold. Today, we're talking about Great Blue, the band that Peter Anspach helped build before he became one of the half of the Guitar and Keys partnership at the center of one of the most talked about jam bands in the last decade. The band he keeps coming back to, the band that when you see them live for the first time, makes you wonder how they aren't in every festival stage in the country. I personally had a chance to see them at the CAP in Portchester, New York.
They were playing in the bar area before the Spafford Pigeons Playing Ping Pong concert last year. I loved them so much, I decided to include an episode dedicated to them. And I promise, this story has a golden retriever in it. Stay with me. Great Blue was formed in Wilton, Connecticut, a small town in Fairfield County. The kind of place where the trees go right to the edge of the road and nothing happens unless you make
it happen. Peter Anspach, Ethan Michael, Seth Zucker and Nick Hanna were friends in high school. And like a lot of bands that last, they didn't really start as a band. They started as friends who played music together because the music was good and the company was better. Anspach on guitar and vocals, Ethan Michael on guitar and keyboards, Seth Zucker on bass and vocals, Nick Hanna on drums and vocals, and as you'll learn, saxophone on occasion. Because Great Blue is not a band
that limits itself. Together they built the sound rooted in progressive rock, funk, and psychedelic improvisation, and they've been doing it together for well over a decade since those early basement sessions. Their first album, Great Blue Vol. 1, came out in 2013, produced by Anspach and Hanna themselves, and they were off. Four studio albums followed, consistent gigging in the Northeast, a dedicated fan base that grew quietly and loyally. Then, in 2017, something changed. Peter Anspach
joined Goose. the Wilton -based jam band fronted by guitarist Rick Mitteratanda, and they would go on to become one of the breakout acts of the early 2020s, playing at Radio City Music Hall, Red Rocks, headlining arenas, and eventually sharing the stage with Trey Anastasio himself. Suddenly, one of Great Blue's founding members was in the fastest -rising band in the jam world. Great Blue went into a kind of a hiatus, still alive, still relevant, but quiet. That is, until
Goose fans started doing their homework. First, the name. Great Blue is a reference to the Great Blue Heron. If you spent any time around the rivers and wetlands of New England, you know this bird. Tall, elegant, patient beyond belief, standing perfectly still in shallow water before striking at exactly the right moment, with surgical precision. It's a Connecticut bird, a New England bird, and it perfectly captures the energy Great
Blue brings to the stage. A long patient build and then a strike that leaves you breathless. Now, the Goose connection. When Ann Spatch joined Goose, they didn't leave his old catalog at the door. Songs from Great Blue's repertoire started surfacing in Goose's set lists. Doc Brown, Butterflies, Yeti, songs written by Great Blue that founded new audiences through Goose's rapidly expanding fan base. For many Goose fans, hearing one of these songs dropped into a Goose set was the
first introduction to Great Blue. The Curious fans did what Curious fans do, they went looking for the source. What they found was a band that had been quietly doing extraordinary work for years. a band with four albums, a thick catalog of original songs, and a live reputation built night after night in basements, clubs, and small theaters without the benefit of a breakout co -pilot. Now, the Golden Retriever. I promised you a Golden Retriever and I'm going to deliver.
In the early days of Great Blue, back in those Connecticut basement sessions, the band had a mascot. His name was Leo, a Golden Retriever. He would sit on every practice session no matter how loud the PA got turned up. He just stayed right there patient and loyal and happy to be in the room while the music happened around him.
Leo has since passed and at a 2022 show in Saratoga Springs, Anspach paused before playing a song called Line in the Grass and he took a moment to reflect on their old bandmate and mascot. Then they played the song in Leo's memory. That is the kind of band Great Blue is. The kind that names a song for a dog, remembers him on stage years later, and plays it with everything they've got. My one song for Great Blue is Doc Brown.
Yes, as in Back to the Future, Great Blue wrote this song, a bass -heavy, reggae -tinged, absolute, irresistible groove, and it has taken on its own life far beyond the band that created it. Goose plays it regularly. Goose fans know it like a standard. But it started here in Wilton, Connecticut and these four friends who wanted to write something that made a room want to move. And it works every single time. Here's what makes Doc Brown special as an entry point into Great
Blue. It has an immediate recognizable feel and you know within 10 seconds whether this song is going to live in your body. The reggae rhythm is patient and deep and the melody comes in and it's playful and warm, with just enough quirkiness to keep it interesting. You can dance to it, you can drive to it, you can play at a party and watch half the room look up and ask, what is this? Find Doc Brown on live recording. The live 2024 album on Bandcamp has a great version.
Press play, let the bass hit, you'll understand. Now, for an unforgettable night in Saratoga Springs, May 19th, 2022, at Putnam Place in Saratoga Springs, New York, Great Blue's first tour in five years, Goose fans who had found the band through the connection to Anspach were showing up alongside longtime Great Blue diehards, and the band came in ready. The review that came out of that night described Great Blue as setting their controls for the sun and lifting off like a rocket ship
from hell. That is a beautiful sentence and I believe it completely. They opened with Lily's Tiger, then Willie, old Great Blue songs played with the confidence of a band that has never stopped believing in its own material. Then together not the same which features what the reviewer calls an insane guitar solo from Antspatch who completely lost himself in the music, smiling ear to ear while thrashing about the stage in
pure punk rock fury. He was not in goose mode, he was fully completely himself, the version of Peter Antspatch that existed before the fame, before the arenas, before Radio City Music Hall. The band worked through Banana Jam, and a cover of Vampire Weekend, Sunflower, and then the Doc Brown moment. The bass -heavy reggae groove settled into the room and Goose fans audibly responded. Then mid -jam, the band pivoted to Whale's another Goose song with great blue DNA before seamlessly
returning to Doc Brown's reggae roots. The two songs from two different bands braided together live with no seams showing. Then came the Lion in the Grass tribute to Leo. Then Ant Spatch and the guitarist Ethan Michael played a portion of the song while both of them were lying down on the stage floor, on their backs playing guitar, on the floor because they could, and because Great Blue is a band where that kind of thing happens without warning and feels completely
right. As the house lights came down that night, multiple people in the crowd were heard calling it the best show they'd ever seen in years. The best $15 they've ever spent, that's Great Blue. That's what happens when four lifelong friends who have nothing to prove and everything to enjoy get on the stage and just play. All right, things you should know about Great Blue. They played
at the Capitol Theater. In December 2024, Great Blue played at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York, one of the most storied small venues in the Northeast, a room that has hosted everyone from Grateful Dead to Fish. to Goose's own landmark five -night stand. For a band that started in a Connecticut basement playing at the Cap feels like a particular kind of homecoming. Last fact that you should know, the band covered Weezer
at the Saratoga show. At the 2022 Saratoga Springs show, they played Weezer's Undone, the sweater song, as part of the set and then covered Red Hot Chili Peppers later that night. This is a band that plays music it loves with zero genre anxiety. Reggae, funk, psych rock, Weezer, it's all in the same night. Here's what I want to
leave you with about Great Blue. There's something genuinely rare about a band that started in a basement as teenagers, has outlasted lineup pressures and hiatuses and competing band commitments, and still plays with the same energy and joy they had when Leo the Golden Retriever was sitting in on their practice. Great Blue is not trying
to be anything other than what it is. Four friends from Connecticut who love playing music together, have an incredible catalog of original songs, and bring every ounce of themselves to every stage they walk onto. One of those friends happens to also be in one of the biggest jam bands working today. that visibly has brought new listeners to Great Blue's door, and every one of those new listeners finds the same thing, a band that has been good for this long, without anyone making
a fuss about it. Start with Doc Brown, then Butterflies, then find the Saratoga Springs 2022 recording on their band camp, and if Great Blue is playing anywhere near you, and they have been touring more frequently in recent years, please go. Bring a friend, spend your $15, you'll walk out calling it the best show you've ever seen in years. That's Great Blue and that's Shecky's Jam Bands. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.