Through its various festivals and concert-based events, The Disco Biscuits has established a brand of entertainment all unto its own. The Bisco brand of destination events has proved rather lucrative for the Philadelphia-based electronic jam band.
From July’s annual camping festival, Camp Bisco, to the band’s joint Jamaican getaway with Umphrey’s McGee, Caribbean Holidaze, Biscuits fans travel to see their band. This year, the band adds Bisco Inferno, where The Biscuits will headline Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado for the first time, with Paul Oakenfold and DJ Z-Trip supporting.
“We didn’t realize how successful it would be with the fans and how many bands we could get along with us,” guitarist and singer Jon Gutwillig said of the destination shows. “We have a lot of destinations where we’re trying to bring a lot of people together. It’s a huge part of what we’re doing these days.
“The whole Disco Biscuits thing has never been about us,” he added. “We’ve always wanted it to be a community of artists working together.”
And Gutwillig is serious about the idea of a collective, dating all the way back to the band’s collegiate origins.
“There’s no reason why you couldn’t just swap musicians with another band,” he said. “I don’t know why people couldn’t do that. In the early days we were thinking of getting two of every band member and rotating people in and out. It was more of what we were envisioning as a band and having a community be created.”
The four-piece lineup stuck (bass, guitar, keys and drums), though with all these destination-minded events Gutwillig said it’s getting tougher to see the band in a normal club setting.
“The average Disco Biscuits concert now becomes more special because it’s more rare,” he said.
Washington gets one of those tonight, two days before Earth Day – the band is one of the many groups hoping to push green initiatives in the future.
“We’d like the shows to be somewhat sustainable, and we’d like to get the word out on different forms of sustainable energy,” Gutwillig said.
It’s also on April 20, for many a destination date in itself. As the unofficial marijuana holiday of sorts, Gutwillig said the band is well aware of audience expectations.
“We’ll probably get a lot of requests,” he said. “A lot of people’s ideas of what a 4/20 show is isn’t quite what a band’s idea of what a 4/20 show is. Sometimes their ideas are wonderful and we can kind of integrate their ideas from there. It could be a very awesome show. It’s a really awesome room.”
The band also has a long-awaited and oft-delayed album in tow. The follow-up to 2002’s Senor Boombox was set for release last year, but Gutwillig said this fall is more likely. He cited perfectionism for the many delays.
“Now it’s actually almost done, or almost pretty much done,” he said. “It’s awesome – every single track is awesome. If the album was going to be done with half-awesome tracks and half-decent tracks, instead of releasing that album and saying, ‘This is the album, hope you love it,’ we’re getting rid of the decent tracks and putting in more awesome tracks. … We’re not putting out any more albums that don’t have all f—ing awesome tracks on it, it’s a waste of time.”
But it’s the special event shows the band is focusing on. July 16 marks the eighth Camp Bisco, and the lineup features its usual mix of jam, electronica and hip-hop – Nas, Damian Marley, STS9 and Chromeo top the bill. But this year, the band has added several new tents, two of which are dedicated to electro-minded record labels. The DFA Disco Tent is LCD Soundsystem leader James Murphy’s baby. His new band, Special Disco Version, heads up DFA’s offering.
“I think LCD Soundsystem would be the most killer jam band in the game, they’re just not a jam band,” Gutwillig, himself a huge LCD fan, said. “They have so many cool setups for great jams, but then they stop a song and say, ‘No, we’re an indie-rock band, the song is over.'”
The Disco Biscuits’ biggest get ever at Camp Bisco, though, may have been Snoop Dogg at last year’s festival. The Biscuits are no strangers to hip-hop – recently the band covered Flo Rida’s “Low,” and Gutwillig said the group is working on setting up a collaboration with him.
But if all goes well, The Biscuits will soon have its highest-profile collaborator ever: Jay-Z.
“Jay is a real enigmatic character, he’s like the most productive guy I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” Gutwillig said. “He’s the most busy person and he’s got the most amazing opportunities, so, hard to make that one happen, but we’ll see what happens. We want it to be really f—ing awesome, so we’re not sure. … Because at any point Jay-Z can hop on a Learjet and fly to India and live on top of a palace or something; he’s on a whole other level.”
The Disco Biscuits headlines 9:30 Club in Washington tonight. Doors open at 7 p.m. and tickets cost $30.
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