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Phish in the New York Times

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Phish’s Breakup? That Was Then. But Tough Times Call for a Reunion.

New York Times

By JON PARELES

Published: March 4, 2009

HAMPTON, Va. — Onstage at the Hampton Coliseum, Phish was rehearsing for its resurrection: its first shows since it announced it was breaking up forever. That was in 2004, when the jam band played one last summer tour that ended with a marathon weekend festival for 65,000 people on a farm in Coventry, Vt. At the time the band’s guitarist and main songwriter, Trey Anastasio, had announced, with purposeful finality, “We’re done.

phishbig191.jpg

[color:gray]Trey Anastasio at a rehearsal with his band in Hampton, Va.

Final wasn’t final. Now, with three shows here this weekend and a summer tour — all sold out — and recording sessions next month for a new album, Phish is gearing up not for a brief, grudging reunion or a second farewell tour, but for a sustainable Phase 2 in the band’s peculiar career. “We’re trying to create a format to keep playing for a long time,†Mr. Anastasio said backstage.

He also has another mission in mind. As a longtime fan of Depression-era swing bands, he has been thinking about Phish’s role in the current recession. “For people in hard times, we can play long shows of pure physical pleasure,†he said. “They come to dance and forget their troubles. It’s like a service commitment.â€

The demand is there. When seats went on sale for the first announced concerts through Live Nation Ticketing, 10 million requests — from both rabid Phish fans and brokers’ automated Web bots — overwhelmed the relatively new Web site (livenation.com), which nonetheless sold more than 250,000 tickets over a weekend. “This was like a tsunami that they weren’t expecting,†said Coran Capshaw, Phish’s manager who runs Red Light Management.

The tour includes amphitheater-scale shows, like those at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, N.Y., on June 4 and 5 and two nights headlining the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee.

Tickets for Phish’s return concert on Friday night sold initially for $49.50, but are being resold for $1,000 and up. For those who can’t attend Phish plans to post recordings of all three Hampton Coliseum shows as high-quality MP3 files for free downloading at livephish.com.

In rehearsal the band plunged into its most complicated music: long, mostly instrumental excursions that segue between contrapuntal, key-changing composed passages and quick-fingered group improvisations. One of them, “Stash,†breezed from a Latin-jazz-tinged melody to busy cacophony, and the band members grinned wider and wider as it ascended. Afterward the keyboardist Page McConnell exulted, “That’s the best jam in five years.â€

Possibly longer. Phish was not playing its best before the breakup. The Coventry shows in particular had both Phish’s longtime fans — possibly the most detail-oriented and judgmental cult in rock — and the band members themselves calling the performance sloppy, as Mr. Anastasio did. “If there was ever a concert that represented a band smacking into a wall, that was it,†Phish’s drummer, Jon Fishman, said. “I think that was one of the great train wrecks in live concert history.â€

What broke up Phish was pressure: emotional, physical and chemical. “We were just exhausted on every level,†Mr. Anastasio said. The band that was formed at the University of Vermont in 1983 and settled its longtime lineup — which also includes Mike Gordon on bass — in 1986 was predicated on youthful energy and a full-time commitment.

“Our dream, our manuscript, the architecture of our career was written when we were 18 years old,†Mr. Anastasio said. “We’re never going to stop! Three hundred shows a year forever!†Alert to detail, he immediately added that 300 shows was an exaggeration.

Still, the band typically hit the road for three and a half months at a time, often twice a year. As a jam band following the example of the Grateful Dead, Phish got a major-label recording contract but built its career around performing. According to Nielsen Soundscan, its best-selling album was 1994’s “Hoist†(Electra), at 662,000 copies. Now independent, Phish is still deciding how best to release its next album; live shows from its archives have been appearing on the band’s own label, JEMP. “The Clifford Ball†(JEMP/Rhino), a two-day 1996 stint at the air force base in Plattsburgh, N.Y., has just been released as a seven-DVD set.

In its first years Phish practiced constantly. Songs were “pouring out,†Mr. Anastasio said, and the band took time to perfect every transitional passage and meticulously map every set list, particularly during what many fans consider the band’s heyday, the mid-1990s, as Phish moved up to arenas from theaters. Then, as band members started families and Phish’s business operation grew, there was less time for the music.

In Burlington, Vt., Phish employed three dozen people in management and merchandising. Knowing that the entire payroll hinged on the group’s tours made the band members feel compelled to stay on the road. “It has the gravity of the Sun,†Mr. McConnell said. “Once it’s going it’s difficult to draw yourself away from it. It’s warm and it’s wonderful and it’s a good thing, but it can easily take over your life.†The number of hangers-on grew so large, Mr. Anastasio said, that there were 3,500 people on the backstage guest list at Coventry.

Mr. Anastasio also fell into a drug habit that bottomed out, he said, when he was arrested in 2006 in Whitehall, N.Y., on charges including possession of heroin and prescription painkillers. The arrest pushed him into rehab, and he is now sober, he said. “What I thought at the moment was the worst thing that could happen was absolutely the biggest gift I’ve received.â€

After the Coventry farewell concert Phish lightened its load. Looking back, Mr. Anastasio said, his pronouncement that “We’re done†was partly about “telling everybody it was time to go home.†Phish shut down most of its Burlington operation.

The breakup, all band members insist, was never bitter. While Phish was defunct, members made solo albums and stayed in touch. Mr. McConnell and Mr. Gordon, who still live in Burlington, played regular chess games. On the ever-fluid jam-band circuit various Phish members often turned up together onstage, and Mr. Gordon and Mr. Anastasio toured with the Benevento-Russo Duo.

The idea of reassembling Phish emerged about two years ago and lingered. While Mr. Gordon was making his 2008 album, “The Green Sparrow,†Mr. Anastasio was also working in the same studio. The producer Steve Lillywhite stopped by, Mr. McConnell said. “The conversation moved to, ‘What if we did an album?’ That may have been the spark.â€

Late last year the four band members came together, by themselves, to make music in Mr. Anastasio’s Burlington barn and studio. They liked what they heard. And they resolved to be the version of Phish they prized most: the intently practiced, well-prepared Phish from the mid-90s. They started their Vermont rehearsals not with their countryish three-chord songs but with their intricate, suitelike songs that verge on progressive rock, like “Split Open and Melt†and “Foam.†Although Phish has recorded demo versions of 20 songs for its next album, only one is likely to be heard this weekend: “Backwards Down the Number Line,†a fond birthday song that asks, “Do you know why we’re still friends?â€

Figuring out what to play for its first three reunion concerts became “one of those exercises in overthought that Phish is known for,†Mr. Anastasio said. Band members went in a circle naming the songs they wanted to play, deducted some, consulted a list of every song Phish ever played, did some trading and eventually arrived at about 80 songs. Mr. Anastasio started constructing three nights’ sets. “It’s like Tetris,†he said as he showed a visitor the list, a printout full of handwritten changes from six different pens.

Phish can’t be the same band it was. It’s no longer the sole outlet or commitment for the band members, who are maintaining solo projects and raising families. But onstage at the coliseum Phish savored the once familiar sound of the band they had grown up in, echoing off arena walls. Hearing those reverberations again, Mr. Gordon said after rehearsal, “was like a door opening.â€

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backbacon Newbie

backbacon

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Agreed!

"Late last year the four band members came together, by themselves, to make music in Mr. Anastasio’s Burlington barn and studio. They liked what they heard. And they resolved to be the version of Phish they prized most: the intently practiced, well-prepared Phish from the mid-90s. They started their Vermont rehearsals not with their countryish three-chord songs but with their intricate, suitelike songs that verge on progressive rock..."

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DevO Newbie

DevO

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Agreed!

"Late last year the four band members came together, by themselves, to make music in Mr. Anastasio’s Burlington barn and studio. They liked what they heard. And they resolved to be the version of Phish they prized most: the intently practiced, well-prepared Phish from the mid-90s. They started their Vermont rehearsals not with their countryish three-chord songs but with their intricate, suitelike songs that verge on progressive rock..."

I wonder if they've still got the chops..

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Schwa. Rookie

Schwa.

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And 3500 on the guest list at Coventry? HOLY SHIT!

i managed to weasel my way on that list...yeah there tons of people "backstage"

me too! thx chewie. the only real perk simone and i got was the toilet in the "special" drinking lounge....oh, and not waiting in that HUMONGOUS line to get in ;)

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tweezer2001 Newbie

tweezer2001

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[color:green]Who knows if this is true, but here you go.

http://thewagger.blogspot.com/

Phish Hampton Rehearsal Setlist & New York Times Story

This comes from a very reliable source -- friend who is working production inside the Hampton Coliseum. Apparently, Phish played a mock show for about 20 people, all working personnel, inside the Mothership today, and we have the exclusive setlist:

HAMPTON REHEARSAL

MARCH 4

SET ONE

46 Days --> Pebbles and Marbles, Down with Disease, Possum --> Carini, Taste, Seven Below --> Fast Enough for You

SET TWO

Mike's Song --> Harry Hood, Waste, Ya Mar, Chalkdust Torture, Stash

This was a full-on dress rehearsal with a light show included. Checking the International House of ZZYZX website, this is the first time Mike's Song has ever segued into Harry Hood. Nice!

Also, here is a great story in the New York Times about the Phish reunion, and in fact it mentions the Stash played at rehearsal. And here are the photos from the dress rehearsal at Hampton as taken by Jay Paul for the New York Times.

Apparently, they've gone back to their original stage setup with Fishman's drum kit over on the right. That's a nice little surprise!

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Basher Newbie

Basher

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the other photo from the article (below)' date=' shows they are back to the old stage set-up, with Fish on the right.

[img']http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/03/05/arts/05phish2.650.jpg

Is he very small? I don't see him in that photo.

The fact that you don't see him in that photo is confirmation, as he would have been behind Mike and Trey. Now he is off to Mike's left.

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