“We certainly miss Wetlands Preserve. I mean, the legendary eco-friendly concert hall, that was our place!” declares New Potato Caboose drummer John Trupp as he considers the band’s relationship with the storied Tribeca venue. Indeed, NPC was the initial band to headline the club, on February 18, 1989.

The very first Wetlands strip ad in the Village Voice pledged that the group’s “San Francisco psychedelic sounds will set your feet on fire!” New Potato Caboose was from the DC area but at that point in time, a few years before the term jamband entered the common parlance, Wetlands’ founder Larry Bloch was highlighting the band’s spiritual lineage.

Rykodisc released the group’s debut album, Promising Traveler, that same year, one of the first studio records from bands in the Wetlands scene. The album showcased the group’s vocal harmonies, rootsy songcraft and musical interplay.

New Potato Caboose continued to build momentum, sharing stages with Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic, Dave Matthews Band and many other peers. By the mid-90s the band members began moving on to other endeavors but occasionally reconnected for gigs.

Then, in 2022, the group reconvened at Dave Matthews’ studio in Charlottesville, VA. John Alagia produced the sessions at Haunted Hollow, which yielded It Ain’t A Thing, a warm and winning statement from the group.

This weekend NPC will take to the road for three shows. The group will appear at the Ardmore Music Hall in Ardmore, PA on Friday, July 24, at Hub City Vinyl in Hagerstown, MD on Saturday, July 25 and finally at Brooklyn Bowl on July 26. These will mark New Potato Caboose’s first gigs in two of these markets after a long interval. “We haven’t been in Philly or New York City for a while,” Trupp affirms. “We’re really looking forward to it. We just have so many wonderful memories. Great towns. Great times.”

Can you talk about your musical origin point and how you came to play in New Potato Caboose?

Music is a calling for almost every musician I’ve ever been involved with. It’s not something that you can just turn on and off. It’s not a hobby like a lot of things. It’s something you feel in your spirit that you can’t make go away. I know people who have taken time off of playing music, but it’s always there, calling them to come back and play more music.

For me, that calling and that spirit of music goes back to when I was a very small child. I would look at a vinyl album and watch it spin around in amazement. The idea that this sound could come out of this disc was so wonderful. Of course, it was probably The Mamas & the Papas or Joni Mitchell. Although my dad was a real jazzbo, so it might’ve been Miles Davis or Coltrane or Brubeck or Evans or one of those greats.

From there my path is relatively common. When I was a kid learning to play music, my father was a drummer. He let me use his drum set to play gigs when I was a teenager. My first show that I ever played was at the Marble Bar in Baltimore when I was 13. Things were a little looser back in 1978. [Laughs.]

As for my connection with the Caboose, there’s a lot of confluence with the people in the music scene at that time. I was in a band with one of the great guitar players in the scene, Felix Renschler, who was living at the Caboose house on Perry St. in Washington, DC.

I was kind of a jazzy prog rock kind of guy, who was into Mahavishnu, Return to Forever, that kind of feel. Then the Caboose was doing the Grateful Dead, Little Feat and The Band, all of which I loved.

I also loved Bob Marley and I had tickets to see Bob Marley and the Grateful Dead at the Cole Field House [at the University of Maryland]. He was sick and couldn’t make it, then he died two months later. So I just missed Bob Marley, which was very sad.

In 1985 I beamed aboard for the summer with the Caboose. We were both testing each other out. We traded some gigs in order to make it work. That’s how I got into it. So it was just a lucky confluence of gigs and people that were all in the scene together. It was a thriving scene back on the East Coast in 1985.

I first saw you at Wetlands in the spring of ’89. I picked up your album, and to my mind you were a band that focused on original music, with some sweet, select covers. Over the years, I’ve heard from a few folks in the South who also have positive memories of the band’s early days when there was more of a focus on other artists’ material. Can you talk about that initial transition?

New Potato Caboose modeled themselves after the Grateful Dead very early on, with two drummers and all that. We liked that music and that sound. It also made it easy for us to get together because we had all these shared songs, so we could just go on stage and play. We would play new songs almost every night.

Then we started writing more originals. So those covers would go away because everybody was writing. Then there came a point where if you saw the Caboose, you were not going to see a lot of cover songs.

That’s certainly true today where it’s more original than it is covers. We still play covers, but we’re constantly generating new material.

When I first purchased Promising Traveler, I was struck by the fact that you had your own lyricist who did not perform live with the group, which certainly reminded me of Robert Hunter. Can you talk a bit about that aspect of the band’s creative approach?

It goes back to our revering not just the Grateful Dead’s music, but the arrangement of their business. Mark Mondok, the lyricist, the person who wrote “Promising Traveler” and many other songs, was our manager.

He was the one who was scooping all the kids together, getting them organized, dealing with the money, booking the shows and all that stuff. He was standing in the shadows making everything work but he was also an excellent poet and wrote a lot of great lyrics for us.

What’s interesting about Mark is that he couldn’t sing at all but he had a certain attitude. I wrote a fair amount of songs with him and I would take these feelings and that attitude, then capture some melody from what he was doing. Unfortunately, he left us early. He died young.

What comes to mind when you think back to opening night at Wetlands in ’89?

I remember coming to the Wetlands and there was a basement lounge scene where people would hang out. A very special thing about the place was that it had this giant lounge area where people could enjoy a reasonable level of debauchery together. It was really quite incredible. I had never seen anything like it. When I first walked in and strolled downstairs, no one had prepared me. So I was: “Wow, look at that. New York, let’s go!”

But the Wetlands was so epic and such a legendary place. It’s so wonderful to be a part of it.

In terms of your touring ambit during that period, how far did you get out across the country?

We mostly would go up and down the East Coast. We did a little better in the South, partly because of our repertoire and partly because Doug Pritchett, our lead singer and front man is from the South.

New York was an exception for us where, for some reason, we found our people. We also did well in Philly at places like the Chestnut Cabaret and the Trocadero.

Something we would do is we would trade with Blues Traveler. We would open for Blues Traveler to get our footing in Philly. Then they would open for us at the Cotton Club in Atlanta to get their footing down there. So that was nice. It was something that bands would do where they would share their audiences to build their scene up together, which worked very well.

What can you say about the band’s decision to wind things down in the mid- 90s?

The road gets complicated. People make life changes. People want to have families and be with their children or people get job opportunities that they want to pursue. There are all kinds of reasons, physical, personal, that lead to people breaking up and going in other directions.

I was in a few acts that went in a couple of different directions. I played with John Alagia and Doug Derryberry in their Derryberry & Alagia band. That was something I did after the Caboose. So there was just a lot of that going on.

Bringing the narrative forward, what pulled the group back together?

We started to do reunions. It was shocking to us that right away for the first one or two reunions people were there for us and in a big way. We’d sell out these 6-800 capacity halls.  

It was really rewarding and thrilling to do that but because people had moved across the country, it was harder for us to pull it back together and play on a regular basis. Don Laux, our excellent singer, songwriter, guitar player lives in Carlsbad, California. Mike Mahoney, our bassist, he lives in Columbia, South Carolina. Doug Pritchett, our fabulous lead singer, songwriter and guitar player lives in Charlotte. Get where I’m going?

John Redling, Red, one of the greatest keyboard players on the East Coast lives in Hopewell, Virginia. I live in America’s favorite city, Derwood, Maryland. Tim Pruitt lives in Sykesville, Maryland. John McConnell, the fantastic second drummer in our band lives in Morgantown, West Virginia. Our newest member, our bass player, Stephen Leroy, who’s fantastic, lives in Washington DC.

It was complicated to get everybody together. But we’ve managed now that people’s kids are growing up where we’re able to play more shows. This year we have played more shows than we’d played in a long time. We’re back and playing a lot more up and down the East Coast, which is nice. We’ll probably wind up playing about 18-20 shows this year.

What led you back into the studio to record It Ain’t A Thing?

We had been playing some more and writing additional material, but something happened right before those studio sessions: there was a global pandemic. It allowed us to refocus and think, “Wow, maybe we could bring something new. We haven’t recorded an album in a very long time. Let’s do it.” This was towards the end of the pandemic where we reached out to John Alagia, and maybe we were lucky that John Alagia was having a slow month because of the pandemic. But he said yes and he committed to the project.

It was such a godsend because he was able to talk with Dave Matthews to allow us to be at Haunted Hollow, which had bedrooms for everybody and a living space. It was a beautiful place to hang, an incredible studio and pros there who run it.

It was just an ideal situation for us. We were actually able to live together for 10 days and make an album.

Can you describe a memorable moment that comes to mind from your time at Haunted Hallow?

There are a lot of them. One is a huge thanks to the fans for making that happen for us. It was crowdfunded. That in itself was very fulfilling and heartwarming—that our family, friends and fans would make this thing occur. In a lot of ways it’s something that’s just carried on.

As far as some special moments, it was really nice to make music together, but it was really spectacular to be able to live with these guys. I hadn’t really been on the road with them in a long time. You know how it is at a gig, everybody is doing their own thing and they have their own people coming in and there isn’t the kind of warm hang for the kind of time that we were able to do at the studio.

We were able to be a family and listen to each other’s stories about our families and our lives and how we’ve grown and how we’ve changed and what’s gone wrong and what’s gone right. It was amazing.

That time together was wonderful. When you make a record, it is an album, just like a photo album. When I listen to those songs, it takes me back to that feeling of the family that the Caboose has become.

What are your memories of recording Promising Traveler for Rykodisc? Danny Gatton appears on a song. How did that come to pass?

We were dumb-ass kids and we were thrilled that somebody would pay for us to go into the studio and record an album. We didn’t really fully understand our value but they supported us and allowed us to record.

Elliot Mazer, who was the producer, was a heavy hitter guy. So as young guys we were feeling the weight for the first time. It was thrilling but it was a lot to handle. We recorded it here right down the road from me at Omega Studios in Rockville, Maryland.

As for Danny, he was in the studio at this place called Big Mo [in Kensington, Maryland] where we were doing some edits. He was recording an album for Guitar Player magazine. You remember when they have those little albums that they would stick in the middle of the magazine? He was recording one of those. Elliot had worked with him and said, “Danny, come on in here. Give it a go.”

So Danny Gatton sits down, puts on his cans, we roll tape and this guy lays down the most badass business. Everyone’s wide-eyed. But Elliot was like, “Yeah, that’s really, really good but it’s not to the music. You’re playing something really killer, but it’s your style.” So the producer wound up dialing him back. To this day, I sure do wish I had a recording of that first stuff that Danny Gatton put down. It was amazing.

You’re returning to Philly and New York City for the first time in a while. How would you characterize New Potato Caboose’s musical strengths in 2026?

First off, I think we have some great energy. Even if you’re completely unfamiliar with the kind of music that we do, I still think you will enjoy the songs we play and the feeling that we put into it.

The second thing about our band, if I may toot, is we have two drummers. Not only is that rare but John McConnell and I go back to elementary school. We are two locked-in brothers who play with a kick ass groove.

Number three, we have four excellent singers. There’s a lot of good harmony that is a part of the Caboose experience.

Then, of course, number four is epic jams. John Redling on the B3 brings it out and Tim Pruitt is killing it on lead guitar. It’s absolutely great stuff.

So the energy and the spirit is there.