Jon Gutwillig of The Disco Biscuits Tries Therapy

While sitting backstage at hipster mecca Brooklyn Bowl with Jon Gutwillig of The Disco Biscuits, the curly haired, baby-faced front man asks if I’d object to him lying down on a couch for our interview. He explains that it's half because he's been on a bender and half because he may need some actual therapy. We proceed to talk about his life in a mock session for the next hour, until the fictitious buzzer goes off. This particular show came as a pleasant surprise for the jam band’s New York fans, as an official celebratory show of sorts for the release of their EP, On Time. Their last studio releases came back in ’06 (The Wind at Four to Fly and Rocket 3), leaving time for building anticipation. “'On Time' is totally for the chicks,” says Gutwillig of the feature track, “We put two remixes of it on the album -- one for the dudes and one for the chicks.”

The dude’s version is remixed by Eliot Lipp, while the chicks will evidently prefer the remix executed by Twisted D. “That remix is going to be the number one on the Billboard Club Remix Charts. Because that’s what happens when Twisted D catches fire on your shit,” says the guitarist, now comfortably sprawled out in our pseudo-psychiatrist’s office, littered with food scraps left over from the band’s ravishing of available sustenance before the evening’s sound check.

The “patient” starts to explain how the Biscuits have escalated from a normal jam band to super jam band status since Jon Gutwillig, bassist Marc Brownstein, keyboardist Aron Magner, and original drummer Sam Altman (current drummer Allen Aucoin was inducted into the band in ‘05 after a drum-off in Atlantic City) met at the University of Pennsylvania over a decade ago. When I admit that I was unaware of the existence of super jam bands, Gutwillig throws some cultural knowledge on the table. “Jam bands play electronic dance music with modern sounds and computers. And then there’s bands like us, Sector Nine, and a lot of DJs like Pretty Lights, Eliot Lipp ... they’re all part of the super jam band scene. Phish is the iconic jam band. Allman Brothers are a jam band. Umphrey’s McGee is a jam band even though they’re sort of in the super jam band scene. They’re a fish out of water, if you will.”

The Disco Biscuits are a touring band. Perhaps even a touring giant. They sell out shows without the traditional marketing campaigns of mainstream bands that have been together for just as long—many times, solely by word of mouth. Like fellow jammers Widespread Panic and Phish, they attract hardcore fans that follow them from city to city when real-life schedules permit. I tell Gutwillig that my parents were Deadheads for a period of time, which, to me, always seemed like a romantic way to live. Evidently, the trend didn’t die with the Dead. I ask a few stragglers standing on the fringe of the crowd at the Brooklyn show if they could point me towards a diehard fan or two, and there I meet Will Wertheim, who was rumored to have been on his 55th show. “They mimic the Grateful Dead in the way that they’ve built a community of fans where it’s all about the music, the love,” says the 22-year-old architecture student. “I wrote a message to Brownie (Marc Brownstein), and that’s the only reason I have a ticket for tonight ... He wrote back to me the same day and said, ‘You sound like a real fan.’ And he said he’d get me in. It was a dream come true.” Bandmate Gutwillig has left his mark on fans as well. Most significantly, on a fan’s body. “I wrote a passionate story of love and made it into a rock opera, and some dude took the lyrics and tattooed them all over his body. He came to the show and was like, ‘Hey, dude, look what I did with your words.’ And I was like, ‘That’s gangster.’” Gutwillig smiles while staring up at the ceiling from his place on the couch.