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.

Gutwillig eventually tells me about fans brawling in the name of the Biscuits. “One of my fans was at a bar in Dallas and a kid who went to college with me walked to him and was like ‘Is that a Disco Biscuits shirt?’ and the fan was like, ‘Yeah, man. Totally, dude.’ And he said, ‘I went to college with Jon. What a fucking idiot. What a dumbass.’ They got in a fight because this guy thought that I was such a moron for not doing something with my life that was real, I guess.” If building a profitable enterprise out of their band isn’t “doing something real,” then I can’t define what is. In 1999, The Biscuits started a festival called Camp Bisco, the only electronica event of its breed in the country. They’ve welcomed acts such as Nas, Damian Marley, Dr. Dog, Pretty Lights, Umphrey’s McGee, Brazilian Girls, The Roots, Slick Rick, Chromeo, LCD Soundsystem, and Kid Cudi to Mariaville, New York, just outside Albany to take part in the festivities. Last year’s festival news focused on the rain and mud surrounding Camp Bisco and the dedicated fans who withstood the conditions. Gutwillig recalls, “James Murphy, the lead singer of LCD Soundsystem, showed up entirely in white -- white shirt, white pants, white shoes -- like what the pope would wear to play tennis. There was so much mud everywhere, and I saw him before his set, and then I saw him when he was leaving. Dude didn’t get a drop of mud anywhere on his body.”

Even with the obvious adoration of kids like Wertheim and his fighting Texan fan filling a room, plus growing band esteem and popularity due to the success of Camp Bisco, Gutwillig can’t help but joke about his parent’s disapproval of his life’s path. “They hate the band,” he says. “My mom wanted me to be a doctor. And my dad wanted me to make lots of money and give it to him.” Maybe Dad would have preferred Gutwillig work for the government? “I’m already working for the government,” he answers. “I give them so much fucking money. Next year I’m going to fill out my tax form by writing ‘I’ve been on a bender for three months! I can’t give you any money because I can’t even see!’” Back to our conversation of self-improvement. He’s considering getting “a little more God in there, if you will. I quit smoking.” Next is exercise, but don’t anticipate him jumping on the wagon anytime soon. “I don’t want to become a douche.”

Last December, the band sold out Nokia theatre for five consecutive nights surrounding New Year’s Eve. This year, they’re attempting it again (December 26-31) which helps Gutwillig get past his least favorite aspect of the rocker lifestyle. “The only part of my job I don’t like is the bus. It’s hard to live your life. But when you’re doing Nokia, it’s like a nine to five -- or five to nine in this case. You go to work, you do your job, then you go to the hotel, have a massive orgy with 73 people and then, you know, it’s just like everyone else’s job,” he says. He then confesses that he's never had a 73-person orgy, “It’s the bankers who have all the orgies, I’m sure. Not the rock n’ rollers.” For Thanksgiving, the band will return to their home turf in Philadelphia and play two nights at the Electric Factory. “Thanksgiving is the easiest gig in the game, because that takes the second worst thing out of it -- the hotel,” says Gutwillig. He’ll be staying at his new home, one he acquired on the cheap through a foreclosure auction. He admits that the hardest part about buying a foreclosed property is that the previous owners will abscond with all the appliances. “The first thing I need to do is figure out how to purchase an appliance,” he says. “That could take me months.”

This brings us back to what seems to be the bane of Gutwillig’s existence: life on the bus. Musicians have been griping about the downside of touring for years, decades. And his complaints are nothing novel. “Playing music for people is great, but living on a bus sucks. I have to unpack every day, and then repack every day. What a waste of time,” he moans. Recently, he’s rechanneled that negativity inherent in touring into improving his talents. “After awhile you think you’re so good you don’t need to practice anymore, and that’s when you become a douchebag. You have to force yourself to practice. I found some things about my game that weren’t so good and I’m fixing them,” says Gutwillig. I suggest that he buy one of those hand gripper squeeze contraptions to tone up for mad guitar playing, to which he responds, “I’ll just put that in the column of unnecessary sarcasm. You don’t have to mock me directly to my face; you can wait ‘til I leave.”

Has the trance fusion electronic super-jam band singer and guitarist fulfilled his dreams? You’d assume so, or at least I did after almost an hour of our "therapy" -- but when I ask what he envisioned for the future 15 years ago, he says, “I thought I’d be doing this, which is the fatal flaw of my entire life. My goal was to be a rock star in my 20s, and then to go into some sort of financial stuff in my 30s, and then become a physicist in my 40s. All I wanted to do in my 20s was to play rock music and dance with beautiful women, and then in my 30s, I figured I’d settle down.” Now his bandmates stand at the core of the 35-year-old's hopes for normalcy. “I’m reaching a point in my life where I’m incapable of doing anything, so they’re picking up the slack,” he says of Aucoin, Magner, and Brownstein. Their 11th album, Planet Anthem, is due for release in February 2010, so Gutwillig is obviously capable of accomplishing more than he takes direct credit for.