Friends With Benefits

John Kerry only wishes he were in Guster. Sure, the Massachusetts senator hasn’t done too shabby on his own merits. But when it comes to building a rabid base of loyal supporters, the POTUS hopeful could perhaps learn a trick or two from his Boston neighbors when it comes to building a rabidly loyal fanbase.

Hordes of Guster admirers follow the band from city to city, taking in shows, composing Guster haikus, preserving witty stage banter as MP3s and swapping bootlegs like spit at a make-out party. The level of dedication is an anomaly in a throwaway consumer culture. So how exactly does the band do it?

“Um, I don’t know,” percussionist Brian Rosenworcel says. “People identify with us. There’s not much imaging going on or too many facades to get through, so it’s easy to feel connected to us, I guess.”

Indeed, the trio resembles three former frat boys in town for a college reunion, weekend warriors dusting off their guitars to get the band back together for old times’ sake. Anything but the touring machines they are. Anything but a band that drew 50,000 people to Boston’s City Hall Plaza last June for a free concert.

Guster is just too … normal.

The band’s easygoing nature extends to “Team Guster,” the auxiliary touring crew that has its own section on the Guster Web site. The band and its crew travel on a single bus while on tour, which creates “a big family,” according to Guster merch girl Allyson Fief. And being a member of the extended family gives insiders like Fief a chance to give an outsider’s perspective on the secret to the band’s success.

“Every person I’ve taken to see them live is blown away,” Fief says. “The energy from their live show is just amazing. They’ve done Jay Leno, they’ve done Letterman. They’ve done these things, but they’re still down-to-earth. They’re making music for their fans. I’m sure they would love to get a gold record, but they do it for the passion of it. When you see them live, you feel it.”

Guster’s three members — Rosenworcel and guitarists and singers Adam Gardner and Ryan Miller — began honing their concert chops as Gus in a dorm room at Tufts University in the Boston suburb of Medford in 1992. Soon, they were selling homemade tapes and busking in Harvard Square, a magnet for the quirky independents who aligned perfectly with Guster’s free-form folk aesthetic and penchant for offbeat covers.

Kenta Koga watched one of those informal Harvard Square gigs and became an instant fan.

“When we got there, Guster — or, actually, Gus— was already playing and had a small crowd around them,” writes Koga, who is now the Webmaster of www.guster.net, in an e-mail. “The first thing that struck me was probably Rosenworcel’s percussion setup, but what really got me hooked was that they covered Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Down in It.’ At the time, I was wearing a NIN T-shirt. I’m not sure if one of the band members saw my shirt and figured I’d enjoy the cover or if it was just coincidence. Either way, I was hooked.

“Since my friends and I were all still in high school, with barely enough money to afford tokens for the T [the Boston subway], we each pitched in a buck and bought their demo tape,” Koga continues. “I spent a lot of time listening to that demo tape. It was definitely time for something new … not too gritty, not too poppy: Guster.”

The band’s latest disc, Keep It Together, certainly shocked fans who, like Koga, grew up on the acoustic, rootsy version of Guster. The album is anchored by a jangly kiss-off to an ex (“Amsterdam”), and R.E.M.- and Beatles-influenced nuggets abound. The record is further augmented by mellotron and keyboards (“Backyard”), bass (“Keep It Together”), strings (“Long Way Down”) and a full drum kit (“Red Oyster Cult”).

Rosenworcel admits that purists weren’t immediately receptive to the fleshed-out sound. But he says most fans have found the new direction to be a beneficial part of the band’s growth.

“A lot of people were introduced to us through it [Together],” Rosenworcel says. “I feel almost completely liberated now that we’ve transitioned from our original instrumentation into an anything-goes studio band. I’m pretty happy with that. It’s so much more exciting to write without any rules.”

The anything-goes concept described Guster’s stage demeanor long before their studio flexibility. Last September, the band re-created Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood at a Boston concert by wearing blue Keds and cardigan sweaters and renting a big red trolley to make its grand entrance. The band has also mimicked The Price Is Right, and Rosenworcel recalls an incident when Barenaked Ladies singer Ed Robertson exposed his barenaked manhood to a member of the Guster film crew while crashing Guster’s rousing snippet of the Chariots of Fire theme.

“The guys are very real onstage. A show is their personality coming out,” says stage manager and drum technician Sean Lynde. “That’s very important. I think people feel that and feel some sense of friendship with this band. With the music they project, their actions onstage, the interaction between crowd and band, it really starts to feel like a friendship.”

Guster.net features a section called “Fan2Fan” that features more than 250 profiles with pictures and contact information, which allows fans to arrange get-togethers to coincide with Guster shows. The cyber-camaraderie is reminiscent of the traveling hippie communes that link followers of bands such as Phish or the Grateful Dead.

“If you’re not at a show, then you’re planning on your next show,” Koga writes. “Over time, you run into the same people over and over again, and eventually you become friends. I find myself saying, ‘Hey … I haven’t seen you since … insert venue name here.’

“The weird thing is, as they get older (and I get older), the demographic at the shows seems to get younger and younger,” Koga continues. “I see people at shows now who are easily ten years younger than me, and there’s still this bond because we like this band and not, say, Justin Timberlake.”