Cooking Up Guster

If you’ve ever walked by the Pit, you’ve seen a little piece of Guster history.

Drummer Brian Rosenworcel remembers the early years when the band was trying to get its name out.

“We used to spend our summers selling our demo tapes out of our guitar cases in front of the Coop,” he says.

This Sunday, the band which built up its mailing list outside the Yard’s gates will return to Harvard, performing at Gordon Track at 8 p.m.

Guster’s ascent from a band which played free gigs around campus and the greater Boston area—including one show which Rosenworcel remembers as “something where there was free hamburgers and hot dogs”—is an astounding success.

But the concert also marks a success for the Undergraduate Council’s Harvard Concert Commission (HCC), which hasn’t successfully put together a show for any major band since the Verve Pipe played Springfest in 2002.

Prior to the Verve Pipe, the last major concert at Harvard happened when Dispatch played at Sanders Theatre three years ago. Since then, the HCC has made multiple attempts to bring major musical groups to campus—all of which, until now, have ended in failure.

In 2002, the HCC made a push to bring hip-hop duo Outkast to campus. After the Council got approval to bid on the band and use the Bright Hockey Center for the show, controversy arose when then Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 raised concerns over Ouutkast’s lyrics and their pending lawsuit with Rosa Parks over their song “Rosa Parks.”

When the concert was finally approved by the administration, the Council’s bid turned out to be too low.

In an attempt to compensate with a spring concert, the Council planned a joint performance by Wyclef Jean and Jurassic 5 for early May.

This venture fell through when the administration pulled the plug on the concert less than a week before because negotiations with the bands had not finished and no tickets had been sold.

Last spring, there was again talk of bringing in a band for Springfest, but the allotted budget was only $20,000—not enough to bring in a nationally-recognized group.

Behind the Scenes

Instead of using their Springfest budget on a smaller band, the Council decided to save the money for a bigger concert this fall, when admission fees would also allow for a much greater overall expenditure.

Even with the additional money, however, budgeting was one of the main factors in picking this fall’s act. According to HCC Director Robert G. Bonstein ’04, the HCC was looking for a group popular enough to draw a large crowd, not so expensive that ticket prices would discourage attendance, and available on a date when there would be a venue available for the show.

This last point proved especially important after a limitation on venues narrowed the range of options down to a single date.

Past spring concert plans have looked to utilize the large seating capacity of Bright Hockey Center. However, the ice has already been put down for the hockey teams this fall, forcing the HCC to find an alternative location. Consequently, they turned to the Athletic Department for permission to use Gordon Track, a move that proved to be much more complicated than originally foreseen.

Although originally assured that Gordon had plenty of space for the projected audience of 2,500, the HCC was dealt “a huge blow to our planning,” according to Bonstein.

The legal capacity of the building was only 1,500, a fact that was discovered in the last week of September. Before finally acquiring the license for the concert this week, the venue had to pass a new set of screenings by the Boston Fire Department.

The HCC has also had to hire Harvard personnel to supervise the show, as well as an outside consultant to design an in-depth emergency plan. Acting Associate Dean of the College Judith Kidd wrote in an e-mail that the expensive and complicated procedure for acquiring the license has been the “major hurdle” in the concert planning process.

Another complicating issue was the high number of approvals required for the event. In finalizing its plans, the Council had to coordinate with the Dean’s Office, the Athletic Department and the Office of the General Counsel, as well as several other campus institutions. To make matters even more difficult, last year’s bureaucratic reorganization meant individuals who had originally been working with the HCC, including Illingworth, were removed. A new group of administrators with no background on the issues was brought in halfway through the planning process.

Even with the personnel changes, however, Bonstein has nothing but praise for the administration’s support of the show.

“They’ve been amazing,” he says, “tremendously helpful.”

Council President Rohit Chopra ’04 says the complexity of organization necessary to hold major campus events has been the demise of past attempts to bring concerts to Harvard.

This time around, the Council began the planning process 6 months in advance. The Council authorized the HCC to plan a fall concert last spring, and got a head start over the summer.

“I realized if we were going to do it in the fall, we would need to get started in the summer, and the best thing to do was to get everyone together in one room,” Chopra says.

Bonstein said Chopra’s assertiveness proved invaluable.

“He has the leverage to command [administrative] audiences and ask them for their help,” he says. In Bonstein’s opinion, it was this early coordination that made this fall’s concert attempt successful where so many others had failed.

However, all the careful planning would have been in vain without a band, and Boston’s own Guster was a perfect fit. The combination of the $35,000 band fee and $8,000 in production expenses fell within the HCC budget while still allowing for affordable ticket prices.

Guster was also willing to play a much longer set than some of the other acts the HCC had looked at. As a bonus, Katheleen Edwards (Rolling Stone’s Artist of the Year for 2003), who had been touring with the band, has agreed to make Harvard her last date with the band. Working through Pretty Polly Productions, the HCC signed their final contracts with both acts on Oct. 22.

From Gus To Guster

The three original members of Guster—Adam Gardner, Ryan Miller and Rosenworcel—met at freshman orientation at Tufts University in 1991. Originally called GUS, they had to change their name in 1995 when another artist with the same name signed a major record deal.

Since their formation, the group has released four major studio albums, leading up to 2003’s Keep It Together. The first three albums have been described as “acoustic pop,” with Gardner and Miller on guitar and Rosenworcel on a variety of hand drums, mainly bongos and congas.

Lost and Gone Forever, their third album, was a stylistic breakthrough for Guster, in addition to producing “Fa Fa,” their first radio hit.

“We always felt like we had something to prove with Lost and Gone Forever,” Rosenworcel says. “We still hadn’t made a record that captured our signature live sound.”

The band wanted a finished product that was true to its instrumentation, so they turned to Steve Lillywhite, who has produced albums for U2, The Rolling Stones and most recently, the Counting Crows.

In the past, Guster kept their equipment set up in their living room, building songs from Miller’s melodies and lyrics. For Keep It Together, the band used “more of an evolving process.”

Rosenworcel describes the new setup: “We pretty much filled a room with every sort of instrument you could think of, other than two guitars and some drums.”

From there, the songs developed out of jam sessions, with all of the band members contributing to the composition and lyrics.

One of the major new components was that each of the band members picked up a new instrument for the album—Gardner on piano, Miller on bass and Rosenworcel abandoning his hand drums for a traditional drum set. At other points they add in banjo, clarinet and even a Jew’s harp.

Picking up a new instrument is no simple task, Rosenworcel admits.

“It was so hard. I’ve always been more of a creative drummer than a technical one...so getting all four limbs to coordinate at the same time took a while,” he says.

The additional instrumentation has also brought a fourth member to the band’s live performances. When Guster performs on Sunday, they will be joined by longtime friend Joe Pisapia.

Despite recent performances at Radio City Music Hall in August and a free concert for an estimated 45,000 people in Boston this September for their album launch, Guster’s members don’t feel that they’ve made any huge leaps in popularity. In the past few years they have appeared on Leno, Letterman and Conan and toured with the likes of Bob Dylan and the Dave Matthews Band.

However, Rosenworcel says the group’s rising popularity has been “a steady gradual trip. None of us really feel like we’re the next John Mayer. It’s pretty easy to stay grounded.”

They are not sure what to expect from a “proper” Harvard show.

“We’re afraid you guys are going to make fun of us,” Rosenworcel jokes.

Overall, he says the band was “really looking forward to the show. We’ve played every school in Boston I can think of a lot except Harvard...I hope they like us.”

Looking Forward

With one successful concert under their belt, the HCC hopes to bring two major shows to campus a year. After Sunday, the Council will begin planning for a spring hip-hop show in Bright Hockey Center. There are a number of issues the HCC would still like to resolve, including the administration’s insistence that shows be restricted to members of the Harvard community and their guests, and the possibility of subsidies from the University to help pay for shows.

However, both the Council and the administration see this fall’s success as a significant step forward.

“We have all learned a great deal from the experience,” Kidd says.

She says both the HCC and the Dean’s Office will use the information to draw up handbooks on what steps to take in planning future events. Chopra agrees that the trials of the past six months will facilitate further concerts.

“Once it’s happened once,” he says, “it should be easy to do it again and again.”