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Pivoting between anthemic prog riffs, knotty jazz fusion breakdowns, and hypnotic psychedelic elaborations on deep grooves, Squeaky Feet are one of the most exciting bands in the U.S. jam scene. The band brings a wealth of conventional musical training to a world of freewheeling and improv-oriented performing that encourages risk taking and experimentation.
When Squeaky Feet guitarist Greg King first began his studies at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, he - by his own admission - didn’t give jam bands the time of day. Then, schoolmate Kevin D’Angelo - Squeaky Feet’s drummer - started turning him on to acts like Phish, Umphrey’s McGee, and other staples of the scene. King had his a-ha moment at a Dopapod show in 2013.
“And those are Berklee guys too, so, I think that was for me the big, oh, damn, I should pursue what these guys are doing, because they went to the same college, and are highly educated and fluid in terms of their vocabulary and technique on their instruments, as well as, obviously, the music was just super, super fun, and it was a very cool thing to witness in person," he told WAMC. "And then with all these bands, you get the crazy light show and the sound’s really cool. You can't really put a stamp on, honestly, any of these bands, genre-wise, right? There's prog, electronic, jazz, funk, fusion, rock, bluegrass, country- It spans pretty much anything any young musician like myself was studying at that time.”
Rather than being at odds with the conservatory experience, King found the jam band ethos complementary.
“So many people at Berklee, for instance, don't know about these bands that could easily be teaching some of these techniques and songs and stuff in the classroom, but nobody's really aware of it," said the guitarist. "The traditional studying of music as well as the jam scene just go hand in hand so well, especially these days. Because you have jazz, which is largely based on improv, and then you have jam bands, which are largely based on improv, and I feel like they go hand in hand perfectly.”
While Squeaky Feet’s compositions are intricate and performed with polish, their longform improvisation – at least once stretching a single song to over an hour-and-a-half journey – is where the band truly takes flight into the cosmos.
“A lot of times, too, when in the middle of playing a song, we might have another song on the setlist that's coming up where it's like, okay, we're going to go into this song- And sometimes on the talk back mic, [guitarist and vocalist] Colin [Shore] or Kevin will be like, do we want to go into the next song, or do we want to just keep jamming?" said King. "And I would say, more often than not, we're like, this feels good, let's just keep jamming, and we'll scrap a song.”
King initially thought that fans of the band’s prog rock DNA would be harder to charm than its jam band followers, but he actually found it to be the complete opposite.
“Some of the Squeaky Feet fans that I've met that traditionally have never listened to jam bands are like, now I'm going to Phish concerts, or now I'm going to go see Spafford or something like that, or the Disco Biscuits or whatever, which is a super cool thing to see in real time,” he said.
Looking ahead into an already-packed year of road dates, King says Squeaky Feet’s future is being written one day at a time.
“In terms of sky's the limit- I mean, I guess it's to grow this thing to the biggest thing we potentially can," he told WAMC. "And I'm sure as the band evolves and as we tour more- I mean, I felt a huge shift in our songwriting and compositions over the past year, and I'm sure that will continue to evolve, which I'm sure in some way, shape or form, will alter the evolution of the band and where it goes in terms of popularity or growth.”
Squeaky Feet play at Lark Hall in Albany with support from Saratoga Springs-based Nymbis on Wednesday.
