The Core: Disco Biscuits’ Jon “The Barber” Gutwillig

The Disco Biscuits’ guitarist opens up about his band’s first West Coast tour in a decade, their upcoming rock opera and returning to life as a 24/7 musician.

On the Road Again

Our West Coast tour this summer was a really fun experience. It was our first West Coast tour [since 2011], and the band was playing better at every single show. It was also our first tour of that length in as long as I can remember, and it was wild. I can’t recommend touring enough to people out there who have a jamband and haven’t done it in a minute. [Laughs.]

It seemed like everywhere we went, the crowd was different, where it used to be it was the same people every night. And what that means is that if you do a bustout in July, then you have to play that song again in August because different people are gonna come to those other shows and want to hear it as well. So we ended up playing songs like “Trooper McCue” a couple of times, where we used to just bust them out once. But that helps keep the setlist fresh from the fan perspective.

Everyone was clicking on such a huge level—I don’t know if we’ve ever clicked like that in the past. It was really fun and then, in LA, we hit a moment in the show where, the way the band was playing together, it reminded me of so many great shows in the past—there was something about the way that we were playing together which created this flood of memories. The band was locked in and the crowd was screaming at the same time. I need to go back and listen to the show to see if it was just a moment of magic, but I remember thinking, “I hope that happens all the time now.”

This is a Real Thing

We are working on a rock opera, “The Space Opera;” it would be a quadruple album if it was released on vinyl. It’s a bunch of monster songs that are now the big songs in the set. They were all put into the live show between June of last year and today. The album is wrapped from my point of view; everyone in the band is done working on it. During the next couple of months, we’re going to be dropping videos and different little collections to get people up to speed on the story, the characters and everything that happens. The music caught fire in the studio; I took four or five of the best guitar solos I’ve ever taken on wax.

From a songwriting perspective or a composer perspective, an opera is the kinda project you want to say yes to when you have a lot of music and you don’t know what to do with all of it. I was in that situation, so we cooked up the whole “Space Opera” idea just for fun randomly after the New Hampshire show we did during the pandemic. [Disco Biscuits performed at Swanzey, N.H.’s Northlands on Aug. 20-21, 2021.] We were just having fun, making up this funny story, and then we decided to sit down and mash the song ideas to the music that I had. We got really far in just three days and then we were like, “This is a real thing.” So it happened in an organic way during the pandemic.

Some people on Phantasy Tour have already gotten almost the entire plot correct, but we are still excited because nobody knows all the plot twists that are still on the table for the album release since you can’t get them all from the lyrics. But the lyrics were descriptive enough that people who really listened to all of the songs, and thought about everything that was going on, have a pretty good idea of what is going to happen.

From Nothing to Something

I’ve been working on everything with Aron [Magner] recently. We live close to each other and we’ve been spending a lot of time just taking the songs from nothing to something. I wish we did that more back in the early days. But, back then, I was doing the hardcore acoustic-guitar artist thing, where I would sit alone and write. This is a little bit of a different vibe; everybody’s putting their own ideas together in a fast and furious way. It’s really fun. You don’t have to sit by yourself. You’re in a group with a bunch of people having fun and the songs reflect that. The songs have a lot of joy in them. The other person who’s the force behind the project is Joey Friedman, who I’ve known forever. We thought of “The Space Opera” premise together backstage in New Hampshire, and he’s really run with the task of organizing the story, writing the lyrics and coming up with these character arcs. So the three of us are doing a good job of keeping each other going.

Aron and I also did a workshop in May of a project we are calling The Very Moon, which is a reboot of [the 1998 Biscuits rock opera] Hot Air Balloon. But, this time, the band isn’t on the stage, singing or playing; though I wanna sit in the pit and play guitar for a little bit at a future workshop because that sounds like a ton of fun. The whole idea was to have other people onstage acting out the songs and singing. We started writing together here in my studio—I have a great piano here and Aron will come over and we will work on ideas. I’ll sometimes play drums—any excuse to play drums is sweet. Nicholas Schmidle, who’s a writer, is also involved; he is in charge of the lyrics and a lot of the organization for the project. And the three of us cooked up 16 new songs and that became The Very Moon. There’s a little bit of the Hot Air Balloon in there, but there’s also a new plot, new characters. We are raising some money and hope to do four shows with a band, costumes and stuff like that.

We had a song called “Falling,” which was this moment in The Very Moon where the main character jumps off a cliff; he swan dives off the mountainside and the cast all sings together in this huge chorus. I was sitting in the crowd during the first workshop we did, and I was like, “Wow, this is massive.” And then we put that song in with the Biscuits and people are saying its our “song of the year.” I don’t know if I agree, but it’ll get there. In that sense, if I get one song to move from this project to the Biscuits’ stage—and people love that song—then the whole 6,000 hours is worth it.

A 24/7 Job

I’m already doing a little bit of work on what will be the next real Disco Biscuits album—no overarching characters or anything like that. We’re three or four songs into it right now. We can get to eight—we have so many new songs—but there are three or four that are definite. The Disco Biscuits is a 24/7 job right now for me. It’s full time, all the time. We’re making movies for “The Space Opera” songs and we are playing new songs from the other album live every night—trying to get the lyrics, vibe and feeling right. And then there’s this third category that nobody really sees which is me, Aron, Marc [Brownstein] and Allen [Aucoin] getting together and sharing little snippets of music. Joey, Nick and Alex Mazer, who is a longtime friend of Disco Biscuits team member Drew Granchelli, are involved, too—we are trying to see what gets everybody excited. If everyone is excited about something, then you know you have something there, and it’s worth it to really put in the time and energy to try to make something good. The group effort—everybody being involved in the songwriting—makes it easier to write better music and easier to stay on target. I used to write these long, way-off target songs when I was younger. There is something beautiful about that as well—me and an acoustic. There’s this joie de vie there, but it does take a group of people who are focused on making sure the product is banging the whole way through to really make it pop. You can be part of the emotional reaction to the music—you don’t have to prime load everything all the time.

We were doing a little bit more of this modern technique for a while—where everybody cut their parts individually— but then we started doing more of the group thing where everybody is recording their tracks together in the studio. We would bring everybody to this studio in downtown Philly called Spice House Sound and that is where we recorded a lot of the bass, drums, guitar, piano and organ. So while people did add some tracks from their home studios, the bones of the songs were played together and that’s why these studio tracks are sounding true to the band. Living in Philly again near the guys has been convenient to say the least. 

Music Is the Best

We have new management, 11E1evenGroup, and the first two things they wanted us to do were a West Coast tour and a Camp Bisco-style festival. So this year, we [did] Biscoland in Lafayette, N.Y., in October and it happens to fall on what has historically been a great weekend for the Biscuits. The band usually plays great outside when it’s a little crispy and cool. When we started, we would play fraternity shows in the fall in Philadelphia. They’d put us in the little wooden cube that each building has out back, and it would be freezing out there. We’d have gloves on and a little fire to warm our hands between songs, so we’re very comfortable in that scenario.

At the end of the year, we are also going to play a few old spots that have new names, not that a new name changes the show—The Palladium Times Square in New York and the Franklin Music Hall in Philly. [Those venues, which were previously known as the Best Buy Theater and the Electric Factory, happen to be of the two venues that the group has played the most, though not under their current monikers.]

We are also excited to head back to the West Coast in 2024 and to play “The Space Opera” for everyone next year. I’ve done a lot of things in my life and I think that the decision to be a musician is the best. And all the other guys in the band— and everybody else who makes time for the band to happen— really loving what they are doing now is real confirmation that we are doing something right. Everybody sees it that way internally now. In the past, we were young and crazy and things were wild. Nowadays, we are very focused on having the music that we’re playing reflect the dedication we have to this idea that “music is the best.” It’s something that’s inspiring to everybody.