Being a Disco Biscuits fan in 2024 is sort of like being a Boston Red Sox fan in 2004 when the team won baseball’s World Series, which snapped an 86-year drought of championships.
The Disco Biscuits are playing champion-level shows following a period of rebuilding and recalibrating that brought the band out of semi-retirement, rewarding the faithful who hung in there through the lean years and welcoming returning fans as well as new ones.
The Disco Biscuits formed in 1995 and enjoyed a top-tier status in the jam-band scene from the late ’90s to the mid-2000s. The band set itself apart from the pack with a techno-influenced sound coupled to an adventurous approach to improvising that owes as much to jazz fusion pioneers as it does to jam grandads the Grateful Dead.
The band then stumbled when it came to generating new material, performing with inspiration in its live shows, and holding its audience. But, around 2015, the band started to turn things around, playing more and experimenting more.
Now the Disco Biscuits is in the midst of its most extensive national tour in years as it touts its new album, Revolution in Motion, which will be released on March 29. The so-called “Why We Dance Tour” passed through Portland, ME, and Boston last week, and the Disco Biscuits looked and sounded like a band fully reborn.
The shows were provocative, both in terms of introducing new material and re-imagining older songs. The band members pulled apart and reassembled tunes in ways that demonstrated how effective they could communicate with each other on stage. It was also a testament to the high level of confidence each player had in his own abilities.
In both Portland and Boston, many in the audience mentioned as they were waiting for the band to take the stage how they had not seen the band in years. Opener Karina Rykman proclaimed from the stage in Portland that Disco Biscuits is in peak form. In Boston, Disco Biscuits bassist Marc Brownstein welcomed all the new fans that came to hear the band. And the music backed up this pride in the band’s ascendence.
