It was at the Sail Inn, and I had been listening to their tunes for a while. They were getting weird. They were doing a web video series and a guy named Danny Torgersen seemed to be behind it all. When I asked to meet him, someone pointed out a ginger in tie-dye who looked like a psychedelic Irish cartoon. I decided not to meet him that evening. Still, their sound was ramping into something completely different from their ska-soaked Soap Suds days. It was sometime after the release of Nothing vs Everything, and they were moving well beyond the Uprising days. I remember thinking at the time, “Captain Squeegee is not like any other band right now in this town.”
Years later, that’s still true. Captain Squeegee isn’t like any band in this town or anywhere else on this terrestrial plane. On Friday, December 16, Captain Squeegee will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Captain Squeegee we’ve come to know and love, with the likes of Torgersen and Austin Mack leading the mix. Theoretically, it’s the overall band’s 14th anniversary, since they formed in 2002, though the Captain Squeegee of today shares no original members with that group. One must assume they are using the Behind The Metal And Metric Pace EP as their starting point. Still, since that time they’ve released two landmark albums and have finally finished three years of promoting To The Bardos!, arguably their best album to date and certainly the most accomplished.
The 10th anniversary celebration will see the band performing songs from the entire 10 years and maybe even before that. This will be an aural journey as you discover how a ska band became a seven-person psychedelic prog rock band obsessed with aliens, conspiracy, and mysticism. There will also be special appearances from former members of the band and a lot of musical surprises. Captain Squeegee has always known how to put on a great party, and this one will include Fayuca, Bear Ghost, and Hideout. With Torgersen having been featured on Fayuca’s records and toured with them, I’m certain there will be many crossover moments throughout the night. If nothing else, it will be an exhausting evening for him.
The celebration is a capstone in the three years they’ve been out and about supporting their masterpiece To The Bardos! After releasing six singles, each accompanied by their own brilliant concept video, Captain Squeegee is holding this celebratory show not only to look back on an amazing decade of some of the wildest music a septet could come up with, but also as a demarcation line where they start looking ahead once more. They’ve already been laying down some new songs in their set, and a new release from Captain Squeegee is sure to be one of the most highly anticipated events of 2017. When you run into Torgersen lately, you feel the electricity pouring off of him, sparks arcing like they did when he was in the middle of recording Bardos. This spectacular show is bound to present the Captain Squeegee of the past, the present, and the future. With that in mind, it will play out like a prog rock A Christmas Carol on acid. ’Tis the season.
Captain Squeegee is scheduled to play its