Due to limited time (happy Father’s Day dads!), this writeup will be rather short.
Goose rolled into northwest New York and played the second-largest venue of their summer tour so far. This was the first time Goose would play the storied venue, better known as Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center (it now bears a mouthful of a corporate name: Constellation Brands-Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center).
What not to miss:
Drive
Arcadia
The quintet took the stage only 20 minutes after ticket time and opened with a lively rendition of Hot Love before breezing through Mr. Action and into a spirted version of Me and My Uncle. This Uncle featured some aggressive guitar playing from Rick with Cotter even speeding the song up once they entered the instrumental section. Check it out for the peak. After working their way through the second Sneakers in My Fridge of the tour, the band dove into an enjoyable Drive and So Ready while the sun still shone which closed out the first set. One thing to listen for was Peter’s guitar peak during So Ready.
The second set opened with the first Fish in the Sea of the tour but seemed like more of a throwaway second set opener. Tumble reared its head for a straightforward, albeit hot, rendition with Peter strutting around stage on guitar. Feeling left out of the guitar section of the band, he made his way between Trevor and Rick for a while which was funny to see. Peter had a lot of space to move last night, the CMAC stage is rather large with quite an expanse of real estate between the front of the stage and where the band was. The people on rail were probably still about 50+ feet away from the band.
Red Bird followed Tumble which featured a beautiful jam before working through 726 and into Arcadia after an interlude which sounded a lot like the intro of Dripfield. Arcadia finished strongly before encoring with Madhuvan. Being the first version since the epic 6/8 experience, there was a lot of curiosity if this encore version would just be a through-the-motions offering to close the show—kind of like when you get a David Bowie encore at a Phish show. It was shorter, yes, but still quite strong with a worthy finish.
This show was well crafted and fun although I can’t say it quite reaches the levels we’ve seen in the weeks leading up to it.