Aged Jelly:
A History

Prehistoric Jelly

The Year was 2013…

Fresh out of the dorms of CU Boulder and living on their own for the first time, 20-year-old roommates JD Rodgers and Evan DePuy wrote a song. It was the first song either of them had written in at least a couple years, and they were so proud of it that they immediately scheduled some studio time to record it professionally. The song was called “Long Distance Paranoid Blues.” At the time it was written, the instrumentation included just a single acoustic guitar and a djembe, with JD on vocals. The duo agreed it needed more, so they walked next door and enlisted the help of guitarists Andrew Schuster and Ben Nash—and thus, the very first lineup of what would ultimately become Intergalactic Peace Jelly was formed.

“Long Distance Paranoid Blues” was a blast to record and came out sounding better than anyone expected, so the band resolved to write another song and do it again. First, though, they needed a name. After about a week of ideas that nobody could agree on, they finally started using a random word generator to see if anything popped. “Peace Jelly” came up and caught a little bit of traction, but was ultimately vetoed… until a couple days later, when JD overheard one of his roommates watching a documentary narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and for some reason or another, one word stuck out to him. “Intergalactic Peace Jelly” was the name—they all knew it as soon as they heard it. It was inevitable. Finally, with that little technicality out of the way, they released their first song, announced their existence to the world, and got to work on the sequel.

JD already had the beginning stages of a second song in the works, but the group decided that if they were going to have three guitars and minimal percussion, they should also, at the very least, enlist a bassist. Wesley Niemer, a friend of JD and Evan’s from the dorms the year prior, was more than up to the task. Together, the fivesome sat down to write “Bird,” and about a month later they were back in the studio for the second time.

The band was on a roll. Everyone was itching to try new things and expand the sound. They didn’t know any drummers, however, and they weren’t even sure they wanted one. So many ideas were flying around that the only thing anybody was entirely sure of was that they wanted to play live. JD booked a half hour slot in an amateur showcase at the Oriental Theater in Denver. During the practice sessions leading up to the show, another friend from the dorms, Andy Erickson, stopped by a few times and jammed along on a drum pad. The electronic backdrop provided an entirely new element to the band’s sound, and they quickly invited him to perform with them at the upcoming gig.

Intergalactic Peace Jelly took the stage for the first time ever on February 27th, 2014 at 9pm to a crowd of about 35 of their closest friends. Their time slot was only 30 minutes, but it was a raging 30 minutes—and that was about the length of all the material they had ready anyway. They played “Long Distance Paranoid Blues,” “Bird,” and the new original “Study Drugs;” as well as covers of Martin Sexton’s “Can’t Stop Thinkin’ ‘Bout You,” and The Beatles’ “Come Together.” A few weeks later, they were back in the studio—with Andy in tow—for what would turn out to be the final time with the acoustic lineup.

Classic Jelly

While 2014 started off with a bang, it ended up being a mostly uneventful year for IPJ. Their second show went… poorly… and sent the band back to the drawing board in a way. Their progress was delayed even further when JD took a summer internship in New York and wasn’t around to practice, write, or record for three months. However, the internship did provide him some work when he returned to Colorado, and at one of these jobs (selling magazines at a Joe Russo’s Almost Dead Show), JD and his acting assistant that night, Evan, finally met a drummer.

Gordon Lindley “tried out” for Intergalactic Peace Jelly about a week afterwards. He was the first drummer the band had ever played with, and within a few minutes they knew they didn’t need to look any further. His loose style of jamming and general willingness to shake things up was exactly what they were looking for. He was the guy.

Unfortunately, a drummer wasn’t all they needed. Ben had also dropped out to focus on school, but that wasn’t so much a problem since there were already two other guitarists. Wesley, however, was moving back home to Aspen, so the band also needed a new bassist, as well as a new spot to practice. They rented an 8’x12’ spot at a local rehearsal studio and invited Schuster’s friend from school, Max Gilbraith, to play bass. By the end of their first practice with him, they had almost entirely written their most ambitious song yet—”Goliath”— and classic Intergalactic Peace Jelly lineup was born.

With a full electric lineup and a pricy new closet to practice in, it was like a fire had sparked underneath IPJ. They started booking shows all over Denver and Boulder, all the while writing new tunes and stockpiling covers into their arsenal. The shows were inconsistent—other than Gordon, none of them had ever done any sort of on-stage improvisation before, and that was very much the direction they were trying to go—but they were never afraid to take risks or overstep their own boundaries, and in the decreasingly rare moments that the whole band clicked, the result was often exhilarating.

In 2015, the band went back into the studio with the new lineup and recorded their first EP, Allegedly Gelatinous. Wesley had returned from Aspen and re-joined the band as a saxophonist. The EP includes fully electric versions of “Bird” and “Study Drugs,” as well as “Goliath,” and another new song, “The Circus.”

2015 also included the first of the Planetarium shows, which would become a staple of IPJ’s early years. These shows, which took place underneath the dome at Fiske Planetarium in Boulder, CO, featured stunningly dreamlike 360 degree visuals and state of the art surround sound—although the band’s heads were above the speakers and the venue’s monitors weren’t yet set up, so to this day none of them are really sure whether or not the shows were actually any good. Either way, they very well received, and always featured other stellar local acts alongside IPJ.

Another staple of the era was the Lazy Dog Open Jam, also in Boulder. While the open jam eventually couldn’t sustain itself, and the Lazy Dog finally had to close its doors, for a while there was no better place in town to spend a Tuesday night. A carousel of local bands and touring acts hosted from week to week, and Intergalactic Peace Jelly managed to hop into the rotation for a bit. The band made tons of invaluable connections at the Lazy Dog, and to this day continues to benefit from a lot of them.

Towards the end of 2016, Wesley once again moved back to Aspen, and instead of filling his spot with another saxophonist or horn player, the band decided to extend an offer to a friend they had only recently met to join them on the keys. Erique “The Swiss Army Knife” Johnson would soon become a quintessential member of the Jelly, essentially holding the band together through some of the rougher times ahead. The band would frequently only-half-joke that Erique could play any one of their instruments as well as, if not better than they could themselves. While Erique started with the band on keys, a severe injury to Gordon’s right wrist in 2017—and his subsequent failure to treat the injury (which itself was a result of the band refusing to stop booking gigs)—would eventually result in Erique’s unintentionally elongated stint as the IPJ drummer.

Classic Jelly reached its highest high at the Fox Theatre in Boulder on May 12, 2017. Performing as the first of three bands, IPJ played to a crowd that peaked at roughly 120 people—nowhere near the venue’s max capacity, but still notably more people that IPJ had ever seen in a crowd before. Opening with a fiery cover of Rush’s “YYZ,” the band ripped through a 50 minute set full of experimental jams that reached soaring heights and spacey depths. The set reached an epic conclusion with a special appearance by then-new-to-town Bert Cheshire (Akenda, Kessel Run), who rained down the musical hellfire with his guitar on the set-closing “Study Drugs.”

Funk Jelly

Most of Intergalactic Peace Jelly lived together under one roof in Boulder, CO from midway through 2015 until midway through 2017. At first, the arrangement worked out extremely well and resulted in a handful of original songs that are still frequently played live today (“If You’re Given a Mallet,” “K-Walking,” “Colonel Birkenstock Misses His Stop”). Eventually, however, a variety of internal and external conflicts began to wear on the band. Creativity slowed to a virtual halt after the 2017 Fox Theatre show, and tensions between band members began to grow ever more prevalent. Practices with all six members in the same room at once became a rarity.

When the lease was up, IPJ broke off to live in fragments. Schuster, JD and Gordon all moved out to Longmont, CO, to live within a mile of Erique, with the plan of using his house as the new practice space. Evan and Max each moved to their own respective houses in Boulder. With practice no longer being something that could be agreed upon by five roommates at a moment’s notice, and the seeds of their first tour having already been planted, some hard decisions had to be made. JD, Schuster, Gordon and Erique decided that they would take their next step as a band with what they hoped to be a slimmed down and revitalized lineup—one that unfortunately did not include the bandmates who had stayed in Boulder. Erique’s roommate, the extremely talented Zach Soczka, who was available to practice essentially any time at a moment’s notice, was invited to take over bass duties; Evan was never replaced on percussion.

With the loss of Max and the addition of Zach, IPJ gave up some of their progressive/hard rock edge in favor of deep and seemingly endless funk. Zach’s jam band influences lined up with those of Gordon and JD much more than Max’s prog-rock and metal influences ever had, and as a result, the band’s improvisational style became more focused and funk-driven.

In February 2018, Intergalactic Peace Jelly hit the road for the first time. The Interstate Conquest Tour took the band hundreds of miles farther from home than they had ever been, but stayed within Colorado state lines. Their Telluride debut at Floradora Saloon garnered two separate encores and remains one of the most legendary IPJ shows to date—particularly because the recording of the show was somehow lost and has never been recovered. The tour lasted about two weeks, and by the end, one thing in particular was very clear: driving two cars and splitting hotel rooms between five people wasn’t going to work. The band needed a bus.

Enter Bessie; aka The Jank Wagon; aka Jelly Force One—the 27 foot long, 1996 Chevy 3005 that would become IPJ’s home away from home for the next two years. Originally used as a juvenile hall transport bus, IPJ bought Bessie third or fourth-hand from their good friends in Policulture, another local band that had decided upon more fuel-efficient (and decidedly less awesome) methods of travel. When she finally came into the possession of IPJ, she had about 95,000 miles on her, and by the time they finally had to retire her to the junkyard, she had somewhere around 115,000—every single mile earned against all of their friends’ and families’ best bets. In April of 2018, after about two weeks of entirely gutting the bus and re-setting it up as a rolling 4-bunk, 1-couch, and 0-toilet apartment, IPJ finally revved Bessie up for her maiden voyage.

The Intergalactic Conquest Tour included shows across Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California and Arizona. The Jank Wagon travelled about 2,500 miles with no major problems to speak of—including a death-defying trip in and out of Yosemite National Park through its notoriously dicey northern entrance, and a minor fender-bender in Tempe, AZ, the morning after the band’s final show of tour.

The tour itself was—while musically full of highs and lows—inarguably a couple of the most fun weeks that any one of the band members had ever experienced. Their route took them to Lake Tahoe, into Yosemite, through Santa Monica, and eventually stopped for three nights in Las Vegas—just to name a few notable spots. Standout shows included a raging night in Elko, NV, as well as a redemptive second set explosion in Vegas (after a regrettably clumsy first set fumble). The tour closer in Tempe, AZ, however, found the band at what was then their absolute prime, and provided more than a couple tracks worthy of the highlight reel.

Economically, the tour was a mixed bag. The band actually made so much money through the first half of the outing that they took it upon themselves to spend about $100 each on seafood as they passed through Santa Monica. Before they even had the chance to fully comprehend their budgeting error, they raked in another unexpected surplus of cash at the Vegas show, and with two days to kill before they had to skip town, proceeded to do Vegas… predictably. The final two shows in Arizona taught the band a worthwhile lesson: never assume your income is permanent. Almost as if prophesied by nature, the band ran dry in Arizona, and had to resort to pocket change to get the bus back home after their final show.

Despite their general musical success and the exhausting amount of fun they’d had on their first real tour, the economic tension of the final week, coupled with the stress of their minor collision on the way out of Arizona made for a less-than-triumphant return home. After a couple local shows over the next month and a half, Zach decided to move on from the band, and Gordon made the heart-wrenching decision to move back to his hometown of Boston.

Streamlined Jelly

With Zach and Gordon both out, all that remained was JD, Schuster, and Erique. The keys were abandoned as Erique moved over to full-time drums, under the common understanding that he wouldn’t have to play them forever. JD had already been in touch with Max, who had expressed interest in rejoining the band if things with Zach didn’t work out, so filling the bass slot was no trouble at all. After taking a couple months off to work on new material and refine the old, IPJ began playing local shows again as a streamlined foursome. Longing for a revival of the early days’ band camaraderie, they would have almost certainly invited Evan back as well, but he had moved into the mountains, far out of practice range.

At this point, JD immediately got to work on booking another summer tour for 2019. The lineup played a handful of local shows together, as well as their annual two-night run at Slow Groovin’ BBQ in Snowmass, to raise some money and prepare their material for the road. Max had returned with a few new cover ideas that were quickly integrated into the rotation, as well as some newly improved vocal skills that provided a new layer of harmonies to much of the band’s catalogue. During the months leading up to tour, and due to the return of Max, IPJ was also able to dust off a handful of their more complicated originals that they had never had the time to fully teach Zach (including “If You’re Given a Mallet” and “Colonel Birkenstock Misses His Stop”).

By the time they set out for the first leg of tour, the band was sounding tighter than they ever had before. One of their constant struggles from the very beginning had been to cut down on extraneous sounds and notes. Too often, too many people would try to lead a jam at once, or would try to personally carry the entire weight of a song and end up simply over-playing. With the streamlined lineup, they finally managed to put this problem behind them. Over the course of ten days, Intergalactic Peace Jelly played six shows in Utah, Idaho, and Nevada. Their return to Elko, while in the middle of the week and sparsely attended, included a second set segue marathon that served as the first leg’s high point. Their first show in Pocatello, ID also stood out, largely because of an extremely rowdy crowd whose energy fed the band all night.

There was a little under a month between the first leg of the tour and the second. About a week into break, due to unfortunate personal circumstances, Max announced he would not be able to continue touring. Given the fact that touring was going to be a large part of the overall plan going forward, this meant that IPJ was once again without a bassist. With ten shows scheduled in ten brand new cities to the East, the remaining members of Peace Jelly never once considered canceling the second leg of tour. Instead, they began working tirelessly on solutions. There was no time to find a bassist and teach him the new material. The band would push forward as a trio.

The Trio Tour

The band had one show in Denver to test their mettle as a trio before they hit the road. They tried out a couple new ideas that night to cover for the loss of Max, including a few songs that featured Schuster on bass. What seemed to work the best, though, was playing without a bass and then using effects pedals to help cover the low end whenever they needed that extra punch.

The first couple shows on the road were a little shaky—adapting to the trio format wasn’t easy. By the time they got to Springfield, IL, however, the band was firing on all cylinders. JD had found the perfect mix of effects—usually heavy fuzz accompanied by an octaver—and would often play droning bass lines, run them through a loop, and reverse the loop to create psychedelic soundscapes to jam on top of. For a little over two weeks, Intergalactic Peace Jelly became something like a raw psychedelic grunge band.

Against all odds, The Trio Tour went very well. Highlights included the absolutely raging two set night in Springfield—which drew an unexpected encore—as well as a funky throwdown in Wausau that closed out the band’s first ever five-night stretch of shows. Another unexpected bright spot of the tour was that the band got to spend an afternoon in Illinois grilling out with the family they had written their first ever Sing Me a Story song (“Pull n’ Peel”) for.

By the end of The Trio Tour, Erique had long surpassed his agreed upon drummer’s tenure. While he was willing to move back to keys, or even to take up the bass, the band didn’t have any candidates for a new drummer yet anyway. After a little discussion, JD and Schuster agreed that after five years of playing with only IPJ, they could each use a little time off to expand their horizons a little bit. Schuster picked up the bass and joined a second band. Erique continued to play as a multi-instrumentalist in a variety of bands throughout the Denver/Boulder area. JD set to work on his first Solo EP, Hunker Down.

Modern Jelly

The band had been on hiatus for about six months when the COVID-19 pandemic completely shut down the entire entertainment industry. Because they weren’t doing anything live at the time anyway, the pandemic didn’t rattle IPJ as hard as it did many of their peers, who already had festivals and tours lining up well into the summer. Still, it meant prolonging the hiatus indefinitely.

Sometime in the late spring, Schuster and JD got together for the first time since the pandemic had separated their household. They jammed on some IPJ tunes that neither had touched in so long that they had each forgotten how to play various parts. The rust dusted off easily enough, though, and pretty soon they started discussing the possibility of rebuilding the band for an eventual relaunch as soon as events started happening again. They had both been in frequent contact with Erique throughout the quarantine, and he had mentioned to them that he had found both a drummer and a bassist who he felt could be perfect for Peace Jelly.

It took less than two jam sessions with Devon Lindsay (drums) and Bennie Herdman (bass) to convince Schuster and JD that they had found who they were looking for. Their styles were both comfortably familiar, with Devon’s drumming often resembling that of Gordon, and Bennie’s style of bass being an almost perfect middle ground between the prog-rock driven riffs of Max and the funk grooves once brought to the table by Zach. At the same time, each of them brought their own distinct energy to every song and jam. Suddenly, the band sounded heavier than they ever had, while simultaneously maintaining their ability to dive deep into oceans of face-melting psychedelia. This was not a return to their roots, or a shift in style altogether, as many of their previous lineup changes had been; this was IPJ doubling down on everything they loved most and did best.

The modern Intergalactic Peace Jelly debuted on October 29th, 2020 at Herman’s Hideaway in Denver, CO. It will be their first live performance in over 16 months.