Goose's New Drummer, Cotter Ellis, Shares His Journey to the Band Ahead of Fiddler's Concert

Cotter Ellis was understandably nervous going into his first tour as the drummer for Goose, the Connecticut-born jam band whose popularity has skyrocketed since the pandemic. But as he and his bandmates boarded their plane from New York to St. Louis, where the tour kicked off on June 4, Ellis received a divine sign that everything was as it should be.

"Who was sitting across from me on the plane, the aisle over? Jon Fishman," Ellis says, his mind still clearly processing the serendipitous encounter with the drummer of Phish, one of his favorite bands. "Like, I can't make this shit up, dude. ... I had some nerves, obviously, going into this tour. It's going to take me some shows to [get used to] playing in front of this many people and being able to relax and be myself. But when I saw Jon on the plane next to me, I was like, 'Man, this is too wild.' It's like the universe is patting me on the back and telling me it's all going to be okay.

"I gotta say, this whole experience has been one of those 'what the fuck is going on in the universe' situations," he adds with a laugh.

It was only a few months ago, in February, that Goose announced Ellis was joining the band, taking over for former drummer Ben Atkind, whom Ellis calls "a super-great technical drummer." Atkind was a founding member alongside vocalist/guitarist Rick Mitarotonda and bassist Trevor Weekz, and the news that he was leaving ignited an internet dumpster fire, fueled by creatively strange speculation from the kind of frenzied fans the jam scene typically attracts.

Ellis expected that; he knows how "passionate" the fans can be. "I've been a part of the jam community forever," he notes, "so I was immediately like, 'All right, if I get this gig, there's going to be memes of me and there's going to be a lot of people who hate me on the internet, and I'm going to have to be in a place mentally where I can be okay with that.' I don't want it to take away from me just having fun and playing music, which is what I'm just trying to do."

He says he "learned quickly" to stay out of the comments section. He'd been on a hike the day the announcement was made; when he got home and saw it, "I started reading the comments, and people were tearing me apart. It was brutal," he recalls. "And I had this beautiful day where I didn't have any phone service, so it was just two totally different worlds and mindsets colliding in that moment. I didn't take it personally; I was like, 'All right, here we go.'"

But when Goose made its debut with Ellis in April at the Capitol Theatre in New York, "it was the most heartwarming experience in my entire life," Ellis says. "People were beyond kind."

The Cap run received rave reviews, and Ellis's reception has been incredibly positive since then. Prior to Goose, he played in the band Swimmer, which he says "petered out" during the pandemic. During its heyday, however, he became friends with Peter Anspach, Goose's vocalist/keyboardist/sometime-guitarist, who was then in a band called Great Blue. "We used to play together a lot," he recalls. "We were out of Vermont and he was out of Connecticut, so we did gig swaps and stuff."

After forming, Goose even opened for Swimmer in 2018, and "we always saw them as just another band in the scene," Ellis recalls. "And then all of a sudden they're playing Mohegan Sun. Like, holy shit — these guys made it."

Ellis didn't hop on the bandwagon, though. "I was kind of set in my band ways," he explains. "I had Phish and my top bands that I would go see and obsess over, right? I wasn't really accepting applications for a new band to go see."

But Goose accepted his application, even though Ellis didn't know he was submitting it. Anspach simply called to ask if he would join the guys in a practice jam. "The best part about the whole audition process was that it wasn't framed as an audition," Ellis says. "The way they did it, it got my honest self out of the situation. ... They said what they liked about my playing and what they thought it would add to the band, and they were excited off the bat, which made me feel good about myself and feel like I could continue to just be myself and see what happened. ... It's as good of a situation as you can ask for — getting a dream gig like this by being yourself, authentically."

Ellis is now learning the band's prolific material while also juggling new songs that Anspach and Mitarotonda consistently churn out. It's a massive undertaking, and he's navigating it by jumping in head first, studying up on older songs while also working on a new album with the group. "As soon as I started diving into the Goose catalogue...I just immediately understood why they were successful," he says. "It's not only an intelligent, artful way of approaching music, but it's also a really honest way of doing it."

The tour hits Denver with a two-night run at Fiddler's Green starting Friday, June 7, and it will be Ellis's first time playing an amphitheater. He'd come through Denver with Swimmer and another project with Zach Nugent "all the time," he recalls, but they were playing venues such as Your Mom's House or Cervantes' Other Side.

"It's funny that I joined a band when they're already skipping Red Rocks," Ellis says with a laugh, but he hopes he'll cross off that bucket-list item in the coming years. Still, he says the Fiddler's Green dates are "highly anticipated" by the band.

"Denver, and Colorado in general, is special in the band for a bunch of reasons," Ellis concludes. "So I guarantee that it'll be some of the highlight shows."

Goose, 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 7, and Saturday, June 8, Fiddler's Green Amphitheater, 6350 Greenwood Plaza Boulevard, Greenwood Village. Tickets are available via AXS.