It may be a truism that leaving home for college is a life-changing experience, but how many people can say they met both lifelong friends and career-defining collaborators on the first day?

That’s how Adam Gardner tells the story. It’s true enough; a nice, easy shorthand version. When pressed, however, he reveals that he actually met bandmates and buddies Ryan Miller and Brian Rosenworcel shortly before that, at a wilderness orientation for freshman at Tufts University (just outside of Boston) in 1991. The trio soon learned they shared a passion, and that’s the origin of the band known as Guster—a group still going strong a quarter-century later.