When guitarist Jon Gutwillig co-founded The Disco Biscuits at the University of Pennsylvania in 1995, the jam band scene was reaching new heights. They've helped steer the genre ever since, most notably by incorporating electronic elements into their jams and setting off the “trance fusion” movement, which showcases itself annually at the band's popular “Camp Bisco” festival in Mariaville, N.Y. Now, with their latest studio album, Planet Anthem, the Biscuits are gearing up to reach an entirely new generation of fans. TDI caught up with Gutwillig to talk about the evolution of American culture, the massive popularity of jam bands, and why, for artists willing to work, the music business has never been better.

So people are already referring to Planet Anthem as the Biscuits' “pop album.” Did you guys make a conscious decision to record a more mainstream album, or was it just a collective impulse?

People say that about Planet Anthem – that it's a different album, it's gonna bring in a different cross-section of people. And Planet Anthem has things on it that are unusual if you're a Disco Biscuits fan. It's not gonna sound like a live Disco Biscuits concert. It's just not. It's gonna sound a little different. The studio already is a weird animal for us. So, hey, it is what it is.

I don't necessarily think the album is that poppy – I just think the pop world has gravitated toward the general kind of music The Disco Biscuits make. If 3 Doors Down was still dominating the pop charts, no one would be calling this album poppy. But that 3 Doors Down stuff isn't really doing it, and people are moving toward more electronic music. So pop has become us, instead of we've become pop. And I still don't think it's that poppy.

So what does that mean for the trance fusion movement? Is it merging with pop, or is there still a subculture there to be had?

Well, the trance fusion movement is an improv thing – it will never really be pop. You can take the vibe of it and the attitude of it and pull pieces out of it, and that could become pop – which is sort of what happened with our album, because we took cool, electronically-inspired moments into the studio and sang verses and choruses over them.

I guess you could say that the whole music business has sort of gravitated toward trance fusion, but I don't think they're necessarily merging. What The Disco Biscuits do, and what the essence of trance fusion originally was, there's a lot of improv in there. The trance fusion movement has got like 50 bands in it at this point, it's fantastic, everybody's loving it, the crowds are loving it. And to some degree, the world at large wants to know about it – whether they know about it or not, they want to know about it.

With Phish getting back together and everything, are we seeing a jam band revival of sorts?

I guess Phish coming back officially creates a jam band revival, because they have such a wide reach. I mean, they're on Saturday Night Live. Those guys are huge and legendary. If they leave, it would cause a large number of people on the outskirts to not know about the genre anymore. And if they stick around, then all those people are going to come back.

But I don't know if it's necessarily a revival. Bands like the Biscuits and STS9, we all got bigger when Phish was gone. “Revival” sort of implies that something needs to be revived. It didn't need to be revived. We were all doing great with Phish being gone. With Phish coming back, things are pretty similar from my point of view. We're still getting bigger. It's sort of an onward-and-upward kind of vibe. It was like that when Phish quit, and it's like that now that they're back. It hasn't really changed.

So the jam bands have been consistently thriving, and the mainstream only periodically decides to pop in and pay attention? Like when Phish comes back?

Well, it depends who you're talking about. I don't think you're talking about 16, 17, 18-year-old kids who also listen to dubstep – and that's who our fans are. You're talking about 28-year-old dudes who love their band and it's more about the iconography than it is about the music. For them, a band like Phish leaves and there's a huge hole in their iconography. They spend all day feeling this vibe, and then when that vibe leaves, they leave.

But a lot of kids who see the Biscuits, who see the trance fusion groups, they never heard Phish. When Phish came back, I would be talking to some of the people at our shows, and they would be like, “I'm excited to see my first Phish show.” I heard that multiple times. And every time I heard it, I was extremely shocked. Because I've seen a lot of Phish shows, and I figured everybody's seen a lot of Phish shows. But not the kids! These kids, when Phish quit, they were 12! They were listening to G-rated Christina Aguilera!

That was me!

Yeah! A lot of kids were in a pop phase and just never got into a jam band phase. A lot of kids get into their jam band phase in college, and there was a whole generation of college students without Phish during that period. For us, it's interesting that there are people who haven't seen Phish shows and have seen 35 Disco Biscuits shows. Never seen a Phish show. That to me is amazing.

Phish being part of the scene is interesting, because it takes away from our draw, to some degree. And on very important nights, like Halloween and New Year's Eve. They draw from our draw. But we keep getting bigger, which leads me to believe that there are just more people who want to be part of the trance fusion scene.

And I like to separate the trance fusion scene from the Phish jam band scene. Because the Phish jam band scene is a real rock and roll, country-based thing. It's less based around dance music, and it's a little more mental. Which is cool, it's just different. So I consider that to be “jam band.” Then there's the trance fusion scene – STS9, Biscuits – dance-y shit. In my mind, it's different fans. In my mind, it's a different style of music. But with the improv, and with the fact that all of us influence each other...

Obviously, Phish is a big influence on the Biscuits. I've heard people say that Biscuits are a big influence on Phish! Obviously, when they go into like a techno jam, and they do a Biscuit-y thing, it's influenced by the Biscuits. So we're all influencing each other, and the common thread is improv.

And I think that, in general, people are very turned on to the idea of improv now. Whereas maybe ten years ago that wasn't the case. Maybe ten, fifteen years ago there were people who liked improv, but it was very demonized. The whole Grateful Dead thing came from a very demonized position.

At this point, it's not quite so hippie, it's very modern, the government isn't sitting around discrediting a pot-smoking lifestyle. The government is embracing a pot-smoking lifestyle in multiple states! Nobody hates on the lifestyle anymore. Back then, you were a child of the 50s and you were like, “Let's just have a hamburger and go to work in the morning.”

Nowadays, the world is much more open-minded, so people hear this kind of music, and instead of turning their brains off to it and asking about the iconography behind it, nobody fucking cares! Nobody cares about “rock gods.” Except for the 45-year-old dudes still praying for the lost souls of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page – and Jimmy Page is my favorite guitar player ever, so don't get me wrong, I have my own icon identification with Jimmy Page – but I just think that in today's world – and a lot of this has to do with hip hop making shit real – it's not about iconography, it's not about being larger than life, it's about making good fucking music that people like to listen to. It's sort of cool. I think people are psyched about it. They're jumping on the bandwagons and listening to the music.

I mean, we've sold thousands of copies of our New Year's Eve show already. And it's available for free! People have bought thousands of copies of that show from us, because our version sounds better. And you can still get it from a friend – it's not like we're policing it. Thousands of people have paid for this thing, which is at least 50% improv, and there are probably tens of thousands more who have just gotten it for free, so we're talking in the neighborhood of 100,000-200,000 people listening to this concert. That's huge. People like it. They like the freshness.

There was never any revival because there was never really any death. I made more money when Phish was gone than I made in my whole career. We're selling even more tickets now that they're back. It doesn't make sense! You would think that if Phish came back, Biscuits numbers would be down. But they're not – they're up. So if the scene couldn't survive without its cash cow, then why did all these bands get bigger? Nobody played Red Rocks when Phish was around, and then Phish left, and boom! All of us are playing Red Rocks right now, which is a huge venue for bands that aren't on Saturday Night Live and have no radio play and no record labels even in business to sell their shit.

So, people are asking us what this pop album – or whatever people are calling it – is gonna do to the world. Well, it's not gonna do anything! Everything's gonna be exactly the same. Everybody's freaking out. Nothing's gonna change. Phish has proven it. The Grateful Dead proved it 25 years ago. You could play Giants Stadium, which is 100,000 people, as a jam band. You don't need to cut the jams out of your songs and add dance routines to play Giants Stadium.

People are asking me, are you going to have dance routines now? And I'm like, what are you talking about? And they're like, you have songs on MTV now. And I'm like, MTV doesn't even exist! And they're like, well, you have videos out, and you have radio and all this other stuff. And it's like, great! But it doesn't change what I'm doing. It just is what it is. If you work hard and stick around long enough, people will notice. That's really what it is. The bands who say, hey, let's just make real music for people, skip the dance routines, skip the bullshit, that's the scene that's making it.

Look at Camp Bisco – it's the biggest electronic festival, outside of Coachella, in the country. We could do 25,000 people this year. Coachella does like 40,000, so here we have two electronic festivals doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 65,000 people between the two of them. That's Bonnaroo size! By the way, Bonnaroo is a jam band festival – we're playing it this year, and we've played it five times already. It's like all these things that my band and a couple of friendly cohort bands are putting their energy into are succeeding.

And the reason they're succeeding is that everybody is invited. Everybody is allowed to come. You can come and do whatever you want! We had Nasty Nas on our stage at Camp Bisco. And Snoop Dogg! We feel like hip hop is what made things more real. Before hip hop it was like, OK, walk out on stage, sing the hook, flash your abs. Look at Incubus! Incubus is fucking huge! One of their songs is a complete rip-off of Pink Floyd, and if their lead singer wasn't as good-looking as he is, they would be nowhere! They're the last of this generation of what-the-fuck – music that record companies were able to force down the throats of the world. And now that it's over, people actually want real music. They're actually paying for real music. And for a guy like me, who does not have washboard abs but writes a pretty decent song every once in a while, maybe a good guitar solo every once in a while, it's like, hey, this thing can work out.

With the broadening of your audience to people from all sorts of different backgrounds – kids, pop fans, rap enthusiasts, whatever – does that change how you approach your music, and how you approach your live shows?

Is the fan that's listening to it different, though? The paradigm of “I listen to X kind of music. I listen to alternative rock, I listen to blah blah blah” – in 1995, that was totally awesome. But in today's world, it doesn't work anymore. It just doesn't work. You've got everything on your freaking iPod. Even my dad has more kinds of music on his iPod than you can even understand! The whole genre thing – this is what you're supposed to sound like, this is what you're supposed to do – it doesn't work anymore.

There has always been a subculture associated with jam bands, though. It's not just about the music – it's something bordering on a lifestyle, even if it's less stigmatized and more broadly appealing than it used to be. So is there still that culture around the music, or has it been eroded by the fact that everyone listens to all sorts of stuff?

There's still a culture around the music. And people have gotten better at providing a culture. I mean, look at Woodstock 1999 – the 30-year anniversary. It was like Limp Bizkit and all of the day's big pop bands, and it was a disaster. It was a disaster because the people who did the festival didn't understand how to create the event.

And now you look at Bonnaroo, which is as big as Woodstock – maybe not as big as the original, but as big as the 30^th anniversary – and a couple others that are that big, and you look at the huge sporting events. You have this world where instead of selling music, you're selling culture to some degree. That's not really my job, but it is a part of what you want to do. It's part of reaching your customer on a good level, it's part of reaching your fans, it's part of connecting with your audience. You want to connect with them. You want them to not only take home, “Hey, that was a great party, I met a cool girl, blah blah blah.” You want them to have a little moment of inspiration in there. Maybe they go home and have a little realization or something. You can't force the realization, you just have to be like, hey, here's the material, here's this kind of world, we're trying to make it as nice as possible for you.

And I think, generally, the club owners, the different bands, the management companies, the concert throwers around the country, they're all pretty hip to this idea. Whereas in 1995, not so hip. It was more about treating your club like it was the Berlin wall, treating your fans like they're lucky to be there and you can throw them out at any second. Now it's different. You try to embrace the culture and you try to add to it. You try to contribute to it in a positive way, and you try to connect with your audience. I think everyone pretty much agrees that's the way to do it.

So every band has their own culture. Every band's culture is not uniform, and no band's culture is in a vacuum. Except for maybe Owl City. Owl City's in a vacuum of Christian rockers who don't want to break out into the real world. But I'm sure even Owl City would tell you that he's got a bunch of people in his sphere of culture. So that's what it is. Every band has a culture. The Disco Biscuits have a culture, the Grateful Dead had a culture, Jay-Z has a culture. You know, the Philadelphia Phillies have a culture. There are people who go on Philadelphia Phillies tour – they go see 68 Phillies games a year! I like the Phillies, but I'm like, who the fuck wants to see 68 baseball games in one year? That's crazy. But it's a to-each-his-own type of thing.

Is that culture for the Biscuits the same in 2010 as it was in 1995? Or has it evolved a lot?

Well, in 1995 it was me and fifteen other dudes and a couple of random girlfriends sitting around playing rock music and going to the bar afterward. You can't compare the two. Had the Biscuits been as big as they are now in 1995, would it have been a different culture? I would say yes. I think the concepts of open-mindedness and diversity have really taken hold in this country. It constitutes a major evolution of thought for our species. And I don't think you can say anything is the same now as it was fifteen years ago because of that.

Is the Biscuits culture any different from any other jam band culture? Not really. They're all the same pretty much. Everybody's got the same idea. I'd say Jay-Z's culture is probably the same, except his fans are probably older. Obviously there's a different demographic with his fans, but there's a lot of the same demographic in both cultures. They're both buying hats, they're both wearing shirts, they're both supporting music and sports teams. And it's all the same kids.

It's American culture. We're not really aware of the culture in Germany. We're not too aware of what's going on in Spain movie-wise, or anything like that. But we're all very, very dialed into American culture. And it's because there are so many different components of American culture, so everybody can find something that works for them. And then they all just sort of work together: if you watch the Yankees, you end up being a Jay-Z fan – you have no fucking choice really, because every time Jeter comes to bat, the fucking “Empire State of Mind” song comes on. That's just how it works. And with the advent of the internet and all this other cool stuff, you can reach your audience very quickly. You can get out there, and you can be an artist if you want to be an artist.

A lot of people are pissed off, because they're like, “I wanted to get my record album out, sell a million fucking copies, and then go back to my ranch.” A lot of artists are pissed off about that. And you know what? I would probably be a really rich person right now if my band was around fifteen years ago. So I get it. But at the same time, money isn't everything. Money comes, money goes. And if you sit around worrying about money, well, then you're just gonna be pissed all the time.

Some people have to get past that. It's not a money situation. It's about whether you want to be an artist. Do you want to make music? Do you want to wake up every day and say, “I need to find a new, cool guitar lick”? Do you want to run your scales every day? Do you want to be an artist? Do you want to be a good one? That's what it's all about. If you wanna do that, then this business is awesome right now. It's fun as shit, there's a lot of opportunity, and there's a lot of work to be done.

How many one-hit wonders are there nowadays? There are a lot, but the difference is that they aren't getting rich like the previous ones were. You gotta get out there and hustle. But it's good, because there are a lot of hard-working musicians out there. There always have been, there always will be. It's a passionate vocation, and it's hot right now to be passionate about your music. It's hot to give a shit about the music you're making. And I think that's cool.

You gotta hustle a little bit, but I think everybody's hustling in every business. I don't think there's anybody out there who's sitting around going, “I've got it easy in this country right now.” So why should musicians be any different?