week4paug.net

we have some random interviews scattered around the paug.
let's keep them all in one thread.
if you've got a good interview (new or old) post it here.

here's a good one i want to share with you guys from Jon Fishman after he played a 10KLF with JMP.
he touches on some very interesting topics.
enjoy!

Quote
Allow me to set the stage for the most exciting interview of my journalistic career thus far. It is Saturday evening at the 10,000 Lakes Music Festival in Detroit Lakes. A thick, black cloud rolls into the venue and to conceal the bright blue sky which had shone above us an hour prior. As the rain begins to flow from above, the resilient fest goers were dancing happily outside to the sounds of the Radiators. Before long, they were forced to shut down the stage and many folks retreated to their campsites. I wandered up to another stage which was half covered by a canopy. This bluesy rock band, The Greyhounds, was playing vigilantly through the storm. Their keyboard player was covered in a tarp, literally wrapped up like a mummy. After their set had ended and Jazz Mandolin Project was setting up, the skies began to clear and a brilliant rainbow hung in the distance. Jon Fishman walked to the front of the stage to greet some fans; I asked him for a five minute interview after the show and flashed him the media pass around my neck. The show was truly a spiritual experience; it�s amazing to sincerely feel the music with so much passion. The combination of Jamie on mandolin with the talent of his band coupled with Fishman�s ability to have the percussion flow through him was radiant.


A: Thank you for tonight; I have seen a lot of shows and this was the most beautiful musical experience of my life. The energy from the storm and the rainbow didn�t hurt either. What did you feel about the vibe tonight?

J: It seems like we�ve been running into a lot bad weather, a lot of storms at these outdoor festivals so we�re actually used to it so we�re sort of in a groove with the bad weather. From May 27-June 14, I had a run with these guys and then went home and did the Phish thing and then back out for these gigs � so I�m kind of going back and forth. In the beginning of the last run, we had Peoria. IL which was the Summercamp festival and there was a big tornado that touched down about 2 miles away from where we were, which was in the basement of some farmhouse on the grounds of the festival. That seemed to set the tone for the rest-of course you have the indoor gigs-but there were a couple of other ones 3 or 4 in a row where we had to deal with it.


A: It seems like the universe is thanking you for your music

J: That�s one way of interpreting it. But, I�m more interested in your story and organization which is kind of funny because that is of course not why you�re interviewing me. My friend Deb is in charge of the non profit organization called the Pangaea Project, I had a big benefit for them in Portland. It focuses on making the world a smaller place by introducing 10 and 11 grade students to other environments worldwide. It�s just getting off the ground but the ideal vision is to have a regular rotation of kids in the Portland, Oregon area that would enter into the program to learn, right now the specific country is Mali, Africa and it is an exchange with them. They�re just getting off the ground; there are just 2 women right now. Pangaea is the name of when all of the land mass was one continent. So it�s sort of like the name implies that its an effort to try and make the world unified � instead of how we see people in other countries in the media, like these people getting bombed in Iraq now, it�s like there isn�t enough of a connection. From her experiences traveling around the world, there isn�t enough connection between the reality of our own lives and the fact that someone else�s life halfway across the world has the same issues, the same problems, just to different degrees. If we were more connected, like if you actually knew someone in Mali, Africa if something like what is happening in Iraq now occurred, then there would be much more of a heartfelt connection toward what was going on instead of a distant perception of that over there. So the first stage is taking under-privileged youth, but the term she uses is underserved because she feels that everybody, like that Dylan song �you gotta serve somebody�, ideally in a community there is an exchange of giving and taking.


A: I�ve heard of that group from Kai from Garaj Mahal. Isn�t the idea to take these kids out of their current environment and teach them new ideas and leadership, so they can come back and be leaders in their communities?

J: Exactly. They learn about the culture of Mali, gender roles, religion, and they live with a host family. It�s only six weeks right now but if they had more funding it would be longer. They live and serve in that community as a member of someone else�s household.


A: So, I�m wondering why Phish was never really political or took a stand for social issues, the environment, whatever. You have so much power � whatever you would say, people would do because you�re Phish.
J: Well that has been said to us many times.


A: I mean that with all due respect, I don�t mean to offend.

J: No, no. I�m not offended at all. It�s actually one of the more interesting things to talk about in the Phish world. If you�re going to do an interview, it�s much better to talk about real things. Years ago, we did a pro-choice benefit where we debut 5 new songs � it was in 92 or 93 or something. Our manager had come to us � we have never done any politically loaded issue. Honestly, I don�t think you can pick a more politically or socially loaded issue. For me, it�s a no brainer. If the Congress and the Senate were nothing but a bunch of women and they decided that it should be legal or illegal, I would feel a lot better about it. Let�s say they make it illegal, which I don�t think is the way to go. I�m not saying I�m pro-abortion, I am pro-choice. I put the choice over the abortion itself which definitely kind of gives you the creeps on a certain level, which I think is natural. At the same time, to take a choice away from an individual to make a decision about their own body and if they want to be a parent; let�s face it, the woman is the one who is really stuck being a parent if the father wants to hightail it out of there. The mom is the one that really has to deal with the bulk of the responsibility and if she is really not ready, you�re not doing the kid any favors. I�m pro-adoption myself because I was adopted.

The truth is that I ran into this issue, I was 20 yrs old, my girlfriend got pregnant and she elected to have an abortion. She came to me and said, �What do you want me to do?� and I said, �I�ll support whatever decision you make.� And she said, �Well, that�s a cop-out. I want an answer, I want your choice.� All right, I said if it were me, which it never will be in this lifetime at least, then I would probably, maybe, I can�t even say, but force me into it I�ll say maybe I would elect to have the child and put it up for adoption because I don�t want to a parent. That was her next question, �Do you want to be a dad?� and I said, �I am not ready to be a dad� and she said, �And I don�t want to be a mom.� I said, �Okay, if I was in your shoes, maybe I would put it up for adoption but that�s because I�m adopted myself and I have a personal relationship with that whole thing. If you decide not to do that, I would never judge you�, but it sucks ya know. She wasn�t any happier about it, but you�re backed into this corner and so she said, �Well, if I�m going to do this, you�re coming with me.� I said, �Okay, that�s fair.� So we went and got counseling and I would actually say if I felt that there was a bias in the counseling that we received, it was one that leaned toward going through with the pregnancy. Such as, there are people that can help, you might feel overwhelmed, and there is a lot more support than you think. However, that being said, they wanted you to have all the information. They didn�t want you to feel cornered, they wanted you to make the decision in the best frame of mind that you could under the circumstances. So, she still elected to have the abortion and I held her hand through the whole thing. It�s one of those things that you remember forever, you know, and from that point on I was like Mr. Condom. I never wanted that to happen again. I�m 39 now and when my girlfriend got pregnant this time, we were purposefully being negligent. We had conversations about it, �What happens if you get pregnant?� She�d say, �Well, I�m having the kid.� And I said, �Well, I could live with that.� This was a new thought for me like wow.


A: How old is your child?

J: My daughter is 2 and a half and my son is 9 months.


A: Are you thinking that you want to take a step back and enjoy your family? Are you going to stop touring?

J: Well, for me, I think Jamie (from Jazz Mandolin Project) has a really good thing going here, I mean I have to talk to him about it.


A: In terms of Phish solo projects, you could play with anyone. I mean, you are Jon Fishman, one of the best drummers that ever was.

J: I don�t know about that�


A: The music just comes through you.

Humbly, he looks down at the ground


J: Well, I�m getting better. I�m feeling very relaxed and comfortable.


A: Are you happy with where things are right now? Do you feel sad with things winding down with Coventry approaching?

J: We are just ripping away and we are playing really well, we haven�t been partying at all, everybody is really straight. I think that we�re in two places, one everybody is very in the moment and more focused on it and more wanting it to be the best that it can be. All distractions in the moment are being cast away whether it�s a shot of tequila or a beer � we�re just saying we are just going to play the music the best we can now. It lit a fire under our ass � a wake up call- like this is really going to end. I think any laziness or any complacency that started to leak into our career has gotten consciously�well, it�s pulled us out of that and woken us up. What I�m getting at is that if it weren�t ending, t">I don�t know that there would be as much vitality in it now. Your life changes subtly along the way until you�re already in it. Kids, my family life is developing and that�s really attractive to me.

I was making this analogy to someone else, I was reading this article in Sports Illustrated about the Army Rangers and they have the �best ranger weekend� where they have teams of 2 rangers that team up for like 60 hours straight and these teams compete against each other for all of the things that you learn in ranger school. These guys can definitely be considered among the top athletes in the world given the things that they have to do. In fact, a lot of other athletes do these things but they do it in combat boots and 70 pound packs but it�s crazy. One of the things that they have to do is the �unknown distance run.� It�s one thing if someone says, �Run 5 miles�. It�s another thing if they say, �Just run and we�ll let you know when you can stop�. And even if it is only one mile, that mile is probably harder on your mind then the 5 miles is � knowing that the 5 miles ends. I was reading that article and I went, man, that is what our career was starting to become like, the unknown distance run. I think that there was maybe that aspect. So now that we know the distance, you�re coming towards the finish line. And any runner of any race would be doing the same thing and when they get so far out from the finish line, they just sprint the rest of the way. And I think that�s what is happening to us. If we weren�t ending, I don�t think we would be playing as well. I�m personally feeling great about the whole thing. Every once and a while, my mind jumps ahead a little to when it�s actually over and I think that maybe right now I am underestimating the effect it�s going to have.


A: Psychologically?

J: Yeah, I think that there is going to be some kind of unraveling that I�m not aware of psychologically. Way back in mid-May, I knew what I was getting into and I made up my mind it was time to get my act together, and then Phish, and then nothing until January. Mentally, I�m not really letting myself let up at all until mid-August when the Phish thing is over. Every once and a while I jump ahead; I want to set up solar panels and I want to develop this sustainable lifestyle where I can grow most, if not all of my own food and we are going to get some goats.


A: That�s a movement � Look at the earth right now

J: We need to get off oil for one thing. That�s such a critical thing � I know that me personally getting off the grid is just one person, but it starts with individuals, and then all groups and communities, all states and eventually the whole country. In my mind, there is no excuse for a city like Phoenix, Arizona to be using petroleum. They should just go set up a couple of square miles of solar panels out in the middle of the desert somewhere which wouldn�t occupy nearly the space that the city itself does �it�s just sprawling out in every direction. There are cities in this country that could immediately be taken off the grid with very little effort in 5 years. Like Phoenix could be off - not a drop of oil would be used to air condition or anything they use electricity for.


A: But big businesses would never have that

J: Well, it will happen when drilling is so expensive to get to the oil that is left in the ground and such a pain in the ass; it will be worth going the other way more. Ya know what I mean? When it hits them in their pocket book, but they�re going to suck every last dollar out of oil that they can. It never made any sense to begin with, sucking dead dinosaurs out of the ground and putting in the air to breathe is just stupid. We�re like these big mosquitoes and everyone wants to kill mosquitoes, they�re the one creature I have no guilt killing. I realize that they�re good food for other things, but I feel like we�re a mosquito if we don�t stop soon enough the earth is going to invent its own version of the mosquito magnet or it�s just going to slap us out of existence or something. It doesn�t have to be this apocalyptic nightmare; it can be a gradual and sane transition from one energy source to another. Like that Planter�s peanut can lid, there are so many petroleum based things but now we can recycle it and use it to make solar panels. There�s a guy working for the Department of Energy in Boulder at one of the alternative energy research programs, federally funded, and they�re working on using hydrogen fuel cells. Right now, they have to use fossil fuels to generate this reaction and to separate the hydrogen. But they�re working on a way of doing it with solar power so using the sun�s energy to create the hydrogen fuel which creates water as a waste. That would be an unbelievable system that could be viable and maybe in the beginning some wealthy people could use it as a residential thing but eventually you�ll have super sonic jets with hydrogen fuel cells. Look, it�s this simple, if you took 100 of the smartest scientists in the world right now and you stuck them in a room and you said that things are so critical that we have to be off fossil fuels and nuclear energy and within 10 years we want you guys to come up with a viable energy source that will be able to replace the grid without whole systems having to crumble. I bet they�d have it done in 3-5 years if you gave them 10 years with all the funding they needed.


A: It�s all about funding

J: Yep, like when Kennedy said I want a man on the moon at the end of the decade, they shot him a year later, but they still got it done by �69 � it�s where you put priorities.


A: What do you think about the war?

J: The war is ridiculous! Right now there is genocide going on in Sudan and Colin Powell gets up at NATO and says, �I want these guys to stop murdering the Africans in 48 hours or else.� Or else what? I saw Clinton talk on Larry King. Larry asked Clinton what his biggest regret was and he said that it was not jumping on the Rowanda situation fast enough. But he said the whole thing happened in 90 days and some crazy number of people was totally slaughtered. By the time they were really able to grasp the situation, it was over. This administration was so concerned with hating Clinton that they didn�t bother to check the memos he left behind about a Bin Laden and I�m sure that they�re not bothering to reflect on Clinton�s experience with Rowanda. Now that same shit is going to happen in Sudan. It�s happening as we speak, right now they�re mowing people down, murdering people, raping the women, killing the kids, and doing all kinds of terrible shit, totally out of control. And what�s our government doing? Have they learned anything from Clinton on Larry King saying that he really wished he would have gotten on that? Where�s Bush? Is he watching it? Does he care? Looking at any of the memos that came before? No. I feel that politics has gotten to where it has become to the issue of not right and wrong, but good and evil. The idea of bi-partisanship has gotten so volatile. In the old days of politics if you strongly disagreed with someone, there was still some sort of respect. There was agreement or disagreement � now it�s if you don�t agree with me then you�re evil. What this comes from is the failure to keep separation of church and state. The chipping away and letting religion and religious fanatical ideology whether it�s Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hinduism, I don�t care what it is. This is why I was not into Joe Lieberman, I was raised Jewish but I don�t believe that an Orthodox Jew should be the President of our country. There�s no way that he could separate religion - look at the Palestinians and the Jews right now. Do you think for one second that if Joe Lieberman was the President that the United States would have any credibility to the Palestinians as a broker for peace in that region in the world? No, No way. They would think that he is so biased.

It all started with Reagan. Okay so the guy is dead, but if the dead did wrong, you�re going to learn from history. Look, we�re alive, I have to live in this world going forth and I�m not going to sit here and suck up to some notion that this guy was just all roses and rainbows and now that he�s dead we�re going to play up the nice stuff. He was the President that married the Republican Party to the Christian right, it started with him. He didn�t keep that separation of church and state, for whatever reason he allowed their influence to become much stronger and his Republican world. Who was the head speaker at the Republican National Convention for Bush�s attempt at a second term? Jerry Farwell. In the old days, even though there was always foul play in government, always wheeling and dealing � that�s the way the world is, right? But, I�ve always felt historically that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were documents which previous administrations have relied on as a guide when things got dark. When you say separation of church and state, you can argue all day long but I think it�s Argue, Apply, and Observe. You argue about how it should be, you apply the conclusions you come up with, and you observe what happens. Does it make society more stable? Does it make us more able to tolerate and accept each other? Does it make us more multi-ethnic? Does it make us evolve and grow? Or is it something that is creating walls? I would say that from what we�ve learned from history, across the board, whenever governments are run by religious law you get nothing but trouble. You get Spanish Inquisitions, you get public beheadings, you get soccer stadiums turned into execution chambers. I think that the previous leaders used these interpretations and applications, it seems like for a while there was an evolution and I think that we have a de-evolution now where you have people in the government who actually view the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as an obstacle, as something in their way. Find the loopholes; they get around that free speech thing, detaining people, whatever it is�

He pauses and comments about John Mayer playing his bluesy guitar solo

J: Wow, He�s pretty good. I didn�t know he could actually play guitar.

A: Yeah, it�s definitely good background music. A lot of people gave him flack for coming here, thinking that he was too mainstream.

J: I just hated that �Your Body is a Wonderland� song. But you know that�s so funny because it�s typical and it makes sense to me. I should definitely know better by now that you can never begin to judge somebody by hearing what their radio song was. That�s was our whole thing the whole time, �You gotta see Phish live.�


A: So when�s the reunion tour?

J: You can never say never, but you can�t see how far down the line the next time would be so it�s not worth sticking around for. Like I was saying before, we hit some sort of wall. Things change, priorities change. You have life changing experiences like you had�


A: They give you strength

J: Right, exactly. Whatever is good or bad happens you don�t have a choice but to get the good out of it. I feel like if you have a chance to speak out and someone gives you that exposure then you should say what you think because it�s all part of the discourse that we need to be having in the world. Ultimately, Phish decided consciously that there had to be things that were for their own sake and despite the world we live in, if every art form, if every human expression was turned into an opinion about the political environment, then there was something wrong with that. It�s okay for some things to just be beauty for beauty�s sake, art for art�s sake; that at the end of the day ended up being the winning argument.


A: The separation of church and state

J: Yes, exactly! Music is a religion. Trey said before that people go to church but I think God is music. God serves humans but humans serve God. It makes a lot of sense that it�s a good idea to keep it out of politics. And not that many people are very good at being political singers; there are very few people that can motivate you politically to get involved in the process. I thought Bob Marley was amazing. �You can fool some people sometimes, but you can�t fool all the people all the time. Now you see the light� That�s amazing � it�s so direct, right into your brain. You could be high or half-dead and I am awful at remembering words but for Bob Marley you do not miss the words. They�re not just sounds that are going by. His drummer was my favorite drummer of all times. So that was our final decision and we learned after doing that right to choose event, from that experience Trey had received some mail. I never saw it myself, but he said it was very reasonable and presented very compelling arguments for choice not getting a priority. I couldn�t disagree with it, ultimately I still feel the way I do, but I have more respect for people that might have a different opinion. So again in that experience it became less about good and evil but it was a balancing act. Having had that experience made it easier for all of us to see the value in keeping the art for art�s sake. We felt that it undermines the original reason why we started Phish. The one thing that I was really into was the vote registry and we have voting registration at all of our gigs. I feel that it�s a great thing because that�s just telling people to vote and it�s not saying who to vote for, it�s just saying get involved. I don�t think it�s wrong to try and encourage. You�re not shoving it down their throats; it�s their choice and you�re not telling them how to think.


A: Just to think!

J: Yes, it would be better the more we all can think a little bit.

http://www.desertrosepromotions.com/jonfishman.html

sweet apostrophes.

Quote from: blatboom on January 02, 2009, 12:45:17 PM
sweet apostrophes.

:lol:

+k good read!

Quote from: August on November 21, 2007, 09:25:08 AM
The first half is conducted at a local Diner and the second part is backstage at the Somerville Theater.
Trey speaks about the phish.net, Picture of Nectar, writing songs for Rift, signing with Elektra and how Mango Song is about a junkie (he said, back then, that it was not about him).
Pretty interesting listen.

Interview
11-21-1991 Somerville, MA (40:59)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/080p51

one of my all-time fave Phish-related interviews was the monster one Jambands.com did with CK5..
http://www.jambands.com/Features/content_2008_05_04.00.phtml

and here's another great in-depth conversation, this time with Brad Sands
http://www.jambands.com/Features/content_2006_01_15.02.phtml

^^^nice! +K's


not really an interview but trey speaking.
incase anyone missed this last time.

Quote
Trey Anastasio
Unknown Guitar Class
July 1, 1993
This is Trey Giving a lecture on Guitar theory, and Phish's use of the knowledge within The Helping Friendly Book. Very interesting and entertaining.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/kcmxgh

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSmenx1KlPs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIA6myV8xFw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q01mwjFzPvw

+K's to caravan & sls for posting these.
i'm only putting them here for easy access.

QuoteA sure fire way to test the knowledge of any Phish fan is to ask them about Trey Anastasio's old friends from school and their contributions to Phish songs. Aside from Phish lyricist Tom Marshall, there's Dave Abrahams, a childhood friend of Trey's immortalized in the lyrics of McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters who co-wrote classics like Runaway Jim, Glide and Fast Enough for You.

There's Steve Pollack, better known as The Dude of Life, author of Suzy Greenberg and lyricist of Fluffhead, Skippy the Wondermouse, Run Like an Antelope and more. Founding Phish guitarist and vocalist Jeff Holdsworth was the first band member Anastasio met upon his arrival at the University of Vermont in 1983, and the duo would go on to recruit Mike Gordon and Jon Fishman in the following weeks.

However, other than Holdsworth, no one in this group played a more central role in the formation of Phish than former percussionist Marc Daubert, an official member of Phish from September 1984 to February 1985. Like Holdsworth, Daubert's songwriting contributions such as The Curtain and I Am Hydrogen remained in the Phish's live repertoire throughout the band's career. Today, the percussionist is now a guitarist and vocalist who has just released a new album of all original compositions entitled Parlor Tricks.

READ ON to find out why Marc Daubert left Phish, the meaning behind the lyrics to The Curtain, what Marc's up to now and much much more...

In 1979, Daubert would attend the Princeton Day School, where he met Anastasio and Tom Marshall. "Trey left Princeton Day School in the tenth grade," recalls Daubert. "His dad sent him to boarding school. He still came home for the holidays and summer vacation. Tom and I formed a group called And-Back. It was experimental music and all of the songs that we played were our own. Soon, there were other members of this group with the addition of Peter Cottone, Roger Holloway, and David Abrahams." Peter Cottone would eventually play drums on the Phish studio version of Slave to the Traffic Light from the band's 1986 self-titled album known as The White Tape, and would later join Tom Marshall's Amfibian as a second drummer in 2000. Roger Holloway would duet with Anastasio on the acoustic instrumental Aftermath from The White Tape.

Anastasio, Marshall, and Daubert would briefly part ways after school. Daubert attended Embry-Riddle University in Daytona Beach, Florida. "I did not do well in my first year at college and I came home in 1984," remembers Daubert. This period marked the beginning of the lesser known Phish hiatus, which took place during the first seven or eight months of 1984 as Anastasio briefly left UVM after a prank gone wrong involving a human hand and a goat's heart. It was during the 1984 hiatus when Anastasio, Marshall, and Daubert would record the now legendary Bivouac Jaun sessions, some of which later appeared on The White Tape.

One of Daubert's major songwriting contributions from these sessions includes the Phish staple I Am Hydrogen. According to Daubert, the song "was a collaborative effort. Tom Marshall and I wrote the background music for a fantastic lead by Trey. This was a defining moment in these sessions. At the time, Trey had his amp positioned in his father's basement to give a sort of natural reverb to the sound. This combined with a Mesa-Boogie amp created a Duane Allman-sounding effect."

When Anastasio returned to UVM in the fall of 1984 and reactivated Phish, he invited Daubert to join the band as a fifth member alongside himself, Jon Fishman, Jeff Holdsworth, and Mike Gordon. The band initially had a tough time filling the three to four hour time slots required by many clubs and bars around the area, but the lack of material might have been the catalyst of the Phish improvisational approach. "We only had about two hours of music," remembers Daubert. "Soon, we learned that by jamming for long hours, our song endings were becoming elaborate and longer. Often, we would lose track of time and the ending of a song became longer than the song itself. This is where Phish music came from."

The band used a number of different names before finally using the name "Phish" at the legendary 12-1-84 show at Nectar's. "That was a defining show for all of us," says Daubert. "Something just clicked. We felt the first real pulse that night. That show gave us more fuel for further ideas." For years, this show was the earliest circulated live Phish recording until the band's 11-3-84 show at UVM's Slade Hall appeared in trading circles. "This was a multi-media show," recalls Daubert. "It started with strange sounds that Fish and I had put together." Daubert explains the show's sub-par sound quality. "It was a great show, but the guy who did the recording did not realize that he had the meters peaked in the red zone for the whole show. We figured that out after the show was over. During that show I was playing a four foot long, West African wooden xylophone called a 'balaphone.'"

Of course, the band didn't have the luxury of giant trucks and a crew full of workers to help break down the gear back then. "Before gigs, we would all have a pow-wow about the list of songs. Then we would break down the equipment at Fishman's place on the other side of town. This took a few hours. The only working vehicle we had was a small Japanese car. We overloaded it and packed it solid with equipment. The car was weighted down in back so we had to drive slowly to the gig. We would make at least three trips with the car back and forth, just loading and unloading equipment. Almost all of the gigs back then were in Burlington, which was luckily only about three miles away from Fish's place."

Just as soon as Daubert was in Phish, he was out, playing his final shows with the band in February of 1985. Details surrounding Daubert's departure have been sketchy until now. "Playing gigs in Burlington at that time, I was earning very little money," recalls Daubert. "Trey had the support of his dad as always. Jon Fishman came from a cool family; his parents were supportive. Mike's dad was also quite positive with him about the band, but school was encouraged over the musical pursuits. The music was considered to be extra wasted time and money, and the real reason that they were up there was to graduate from college. I was doing the band full time and was not attending college, so I did not fit in. The main reason Jeff left the band was simply because he had completed college. The band thing was seen as something to do while he was at college, or so I was led to believe by my conversations with him. So finding a job was a priority for me at that time. I could no longer live off of my friends and their handouts."

However, it seems as if Daubert may have been forced out of the band. "Trey was becoming increasingly domineering about the band," says Daubert. "He wanted things to be his way. It may be that he thought I needed to be eliminated so that he could move ahead with his plans for the band. I represented a creative orb and that, to him, seemed amorphous. I was used to this sort of treatment before in my life, so Trey's animosity towards me was not a surprise. Trey came back in January 1985 from a holiday break. He found that I had not gotten a job over the break and that I had and I had gone on a 36 hour music, alcohol, and drug binge. He was upset that I was still there. Rightfully agitated, he said that I did not fit in anymore. He then began to literally toss all my belongings out on the curb. At that point, Tom Marshall and Dave Abrahams arrived. They had taken the long ride up to Vermont to see Trey and I."

"After Trey tossed all my stuff on the curb, I went outside to pick it up and take it to somewhere for safe keeping. I was worried about my guitar. I found that a friend of mine had a used VW bug parked behind her apartment. I asked her if I could use it to store my stuff. She agreed after about a day. Her boyfriend was hot-headed. She said that I could not meet with her unless her porch light was on in the back of her apartment. Meanwhile, the vicious Burlington winter had frozen one of my feet to the point at which I could not feel it anymore. It was blistered and bloody. I had to find some shelter fast, or else. Dragging my foot like a weight, I began the long trek up the hill to the part of campus where Mike's dorm room was. I had hoped he would take me in, but I was doubtful about it. When I finally made it up the hill, luckily, Mike was there. He took me in for a few days. He gave me some of his colored drafting pencils so that I could draw during the day. He told me that it was not everybody's idea to throw me out of the band. I thanked him for his honesty. I could not stay in his dorm room as it was against the campus regulations. I then went back down into town to find the men's shelter there. I lived there for about two months and eventually found a job in Essex Junction. After I had worked up enough money for a deposit on an apartment, I began to live on the other side of Burlington."

Two years later in 1987, despite the messy split, Anastasio combined his music with Daubert's lyrics to create The Curtain, one of Phish's most beloved songs. There have been many theories as to the song's lyrics and the meaning behind them. Is it a song about the downfall of Jimmy Swaggart with the line "chanting words from a psalm?" Or is it more of a biographical song? "When I was much younger, my parents tried to get me to believe in God," says Daubert. "They forced me to go to church on Sunday. I rebelled eventually and was left at home on Sunday mornings. This was the best time for me to practice music. So, music became my religion. Eventually, that became confused and entwined with the meaning of this song. 'Chanting words from a song' is the correct phrase. 'Please me, have no regrets' came from the baby's mouth. The song that the baby is singing is an expression of sacrifice. There can be no love without sacrifice. This is the greater meaning in these words."

Initially, Daubert did not keep in touch with Phish, but he eventually reconnected with the band over time. "They did come to several places close to New Jersey (where Daubert had relocated), so seeing them was not a big deal. For about the first seven years, the band was not doing that well. They would patch together a tour schedule based on where they had played in the past. They were gone for weeks at a time on tour. They kept touring despite setbacks. It was an important step for them to put out the Lawn Boy CD. Their persistence paid off and they began to become noticed by a wider audience. I went to several shows then and was happy to hang out backstage while the band played. I would never be a fan. I had been on the inside and that is what made me different. As the years went on, I was looked at as a nostalgic figure. Phish fans did not know much about me. Eventually, in 1998, the band decided to acknowledge me for my contributions. Trey described me as 'one of the original founding members of the band.' I had helped to plant a tree, figuratively speaking. That tree was to bear fruit later in the band's career."

Daubert has spent the last twenty years writing songs, resulting in over 64 hours of recorded music. In late 2006, Daubert released his first official album, Parlor Tricks, which is available by visiting www.marcdaubert.com. So how did Daubert pick the thirteen songs on Parlor Tricks out of 64 hours of material? "After hours of searching my music collectives," says Daubert, "I came up with the tracks that represent a message that I would like to give. I have developed some fans who know me through my own music, not through Phish. They have always liked these tracks. Those fans wanted me to put out a CD. This is my gift to them. It is also dedicated to those people who have passed away. Both my parents died of cancer in 2001. My uncle died of cancer also in 2003. I saved the essence of who they were in my music."

http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/hidden-track-interview-former-phish-percussionist-marc-daubert-has-no-regrets/
http://week4paug.net/index.php?topic=11022.0

QuoteBob Weir: The Music Never Stopped

By Lloyd Peterson

This interview will appear in Lloyd Peterson's upcoming book
Wisdom Through Music.

It has been said before but there really has never been a group of musicians quite like the {{Grateful Dead}}. And as the years have passed on, I can no longer, as I did then, take their ability to turn sound into magic for granted. It didn't happen at every performance, but when the heavens opened, a perfect harmony existed between audience, band and sound that became a phenomenon beyond the written word. It was part of the elusiveness that was the Grateful Dead.

Musically, they might not have been the technicians found in jazz but their creative minds and spirit allowed them to improvise far beyond the boundaries of any artistic form and genre of traditional thinking. Where most improvisation takes place within a rhythm section, this was a band with a fierce disregard for convention, where each member would improvise independently against and with each other... all at the same time. And though effort could never influence the process of transcendence, it was part of the challenge of reaching this realm with every performance.

Bob Weir left High School and joined the Grateful Dead at the age of 17 and never looked back. He was able to develop a style of rhythm guitar playing that was unique in its time and was a significant part of what was to become one of the world's most creative but unorthodox bands. While the media focused on the drug culture, there was very little understanding and focus on the creative process, a process that was firm and confident in its direction, yet completely open to new realms and possibilities. They were and remain an exception in a world of increasing contradiction.

Lloyd Peterson: {Ornette Coleman} and {Miles Davis} developed a new found freedom for other musicians by breaking down the boundaries of jazz. Almost simultaneously, the Dead proceeded to open a new creative dimension and then invited everybody inside. Did you guys know you were expanding upon the musical universe and tearing down creative boundaries?

Bob Weir: We were well aware of it but there were others such as Big Brother and the Holding Company. We were all listening to the same music such as Coltrane but the Dead just stayed with it longer. With Janis's meteoric rise, things changed for Big Brother. Early on, Phil Lesh provided a lot of new information and by the age of seventeen, I was listening to Pendericki and Stockhausen. Further on, when we developed more facility with our instruments, it became possible for us to start exploring those new realms. So there was this overlay of modern classical along with the avant garde and though there are some classicalists that claim the avant garde isn't classical, they use the same instruments and sit in the same concert halls so it's all the same to me. It just comes down to how far you are willing to take it.

There was this soul romping of jazz in the 60s' and it was furious and cooking so we concentrated on that along with what Ornette was doing. In the early 70s,' Miles came out with Bitches Brew and Live Evil but we also listened to {Return to Forever} which was fusion that hadn't slipped into its dry and intellectual mode yet. Those fusion guys had monstrous facility which seemed unattainable but Bitches Brew was more groove oriented and a clear light post so we did that stuff in rehearsal all the time. We could also pull it off on stage from time to time.

LP: Did the audience always follow?

BW: We would take the temperature of the audience and though nobody ever discussed it, there was an understanding. An understanding that there is only so much of this that we are going to get away with because for the most part, the audience came to hear songs and of course we loved to deliver songs. We were story tellers and that's the whole secret of music as far as I'm concerned, actually of any art. You are telling a story. We used bridges from the developments of new jazz along with the modern classical influences of Penderecki, Stockhausen and ol' Uncle Igor Stravinsky. I also listened to a lot of Bela Bartok and wrote a tune based on a concerto of his that just floored me for at least a month. I listened to it every other night until it was coming out of my ears and fingers. It was a full Bartok progression with lots and lots of dissonance that worked well to my satisfaction. That kind of stuff was happening.

LP: The song," Let it Grow" seemed to develop into an arrangement with many of its harmonic relationships in fusion.

BW: Well, when you couch it like that but I tend to think of guys like Return to Forever as being a little more harmonically developed than we were. But thinking about it, I guess "Let it Grow" was harmonically developed and I wasn't really listening to anything at the time I wrote it. It just came out.

LP: Pablo Cassal's said that "The heart of a melody can never be put down on paper" and in a sense, that was the magic of the Grateful Dead in performance. At times, one couldn't help thinking that there was no other place in the world where you would rather be.

BW: The moment that the music kicked in and the heavens opened, you were in that moment and nowhere else, and there isn't anywhere else that anyone ought to be. (laughs) We were no longer in the physical realm anymore. We were far past that.

LP: There was also a transformative power with the Dead. When exactly did you guys know that the music you were creating had this kind of transformative or perhaps even spiritual power?

BW: Well it was undeniable the first time that it happened to us and that was all that we needed to know. Of course we could also feel that the audience was sharing in that. We knew we had a good thing going.

LP: Were you conscious of trying to get inside the center of the sound and were you aware of what you were creating?

BW: We were not consciously creating it, but we were conscious of finding it. And when we found it, we found it without looking. We were aware of it and it's like mantra. I hate to wax metaphysical on you but in the Vedic Tradition, sound perceives reality.

LP: The Dead's music was also completely committed in its vision. It was very, very sure of its direction, yet at the same time, it remained open to new possibilities. That in itself is a contradiction. Can you explain what made it work?

BW: We were just kids following our footsteps. That said, there were some interesting places where people would find contradiction but usually where we found none. If you are able to find that thread, the contradiction completely falls by the wayside and everything falls into place. We never had any idea what we were chasing but when we caught it, we knew it.

LP: Is there a separation between expressing love through music and where your soul or spirit begins to influence the creation?

BW: When we get to where we want to go, time evaporates and there is no sense of time. The only sense of time is the beat but that's different. It's not the clock ticking. That time is infinite and elastic. And given that we evolved to a timeless place, there is no act of creation. It just is. I'm not doing it, it's just there.

LP: The great innovators have always pushed on the boundaries of creativity. This was clearly the case of the Dead but towards the end that might not have always been the case. And as most musicians as they mature, they become more conservative with their creative approach. But with your more recent work with Ratdog, there seems to be more confidence and a desire to take more risks in your search for creative discoveries. You are pushing on those boundaries again. What drives you? What makes it work?

BW: I really cannot take all that much credit with Ratdog because all the band members have just as much influence with the writing as I do. But that's the way I wanted it because it brought the band together and with my experience of setting music and lyrics together, stories can merge out of that. But everybody was invested in the writing and it gave us a sense of what we could do and it worked very well for us.

LP: But you personally must have been very open to it.

BW: My responsibility on stage is to leave nobody in the audience behind. So once again, we read the audience and we try to develop our shows so that we are opening up ourselves every night and at the same time, try to gauge how open the audience is becoming.

LP: One of the areas that separate creative artists from most other musicians is that most are interested in the answers, but artists are more interested in the questions, in the search itself. This was clearly part of the foundation of the Dead but the chances of six like minds coming together (Weir laughs) searching within that same universe is quite extraordinary. Visionaries are rare and usually walk alone. When did you guys know that you had something special in a creative way?

BW: Well, the Beatles were notable for that.

Each one of us had our own particular pied-a-terre, nebulous amorphous pieta tear, and we kind of relied on each other to pursue our own direction. However, as soon as a melody or a harmonic progression started to emerge, everyone would ferociously kick in, trying to push and develop where they found it wanting to go. Everybody was different, so it developed in surprising ways.

LP: There is a quote from Dennis McNally's book (A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead) where a club manager states, "You guys will never make it, you're too weird!" (both laugh). But you guys always received criticism yet always followed your own creative vision. Did you consider the criticism validation of your work?

BW: For certain types of criticism but that statement was also a challenge to us, it was a challenge. If we are too weird, well that's just what we're going to hang with (laughs). We have to hang with it. We were born with it and it's also how we were made.

LP: But isn't that also a kind of validation that you are going down the right path, not just the traditional one?

BW: It was more of a challenge than a validation at that point. I had just turned 18 so I wasn't looking for validation (laughs) I was only looking for challenges and was looking to get into it. And at that time, Billy and Pigpen were a year and a half older than me and Jerry and Phil, not much older than that.

LP: What was it about the Dead's music that kept capturing the imagination of youth for several generations?

BW: It takes a great deal of luck to find what the Dead found in finding the right collection of guys who can keep cranking stuff out that relates to youth. Dylan and Neil Young are elemental writers who compose songs with infinitive eternal things who have the gift of the ears for eternal youth. That's wisdom and it's nothing less than that.

LP: There seems to be a correlation with artists and higher awareness levels. As an example, there are many that seem to have the ability to look past and beyond cultural differences. Have you noticed this and can it be attributed to the power of music or is it perhaps from a particular type of spiritual or cultural enlightenment?

BW: You know, artists are probably born and not made. It's the questing soul. But you can also be a questing soul and fall into science as well as engineering. But the questing soul who is born with artistic aesthetic sensibilities is probably going to fall into art. For me personally, I have never looked for answers, I have been looking for the burning questions that could beg answers and draw stuff out of the universe.

LP: There has always been a sense that the members of the Dead were driven by some other outside force or that somehow the stars lined up just perfectly. Did the band feel this power and did you feel a sense of responsibility to nurture it?

BW: I always felt that that was what we were here to do and I still do feel that way. I'm here to take that as far as I can.

LP: But is there pressure with that? Do you still feel that you have a responsibility to carry this on?

BW: You learn to live with pressure and I think all successful people have pressure. However, it needs to be balanced with the joy of discovery along with the ecstasy and elation of being able to deliver as well. And when you are delivering to an audience and they are getting it, it is a two way deal. They are working too. Everybody is. You know, many hands make light work.

LP: To jump off the cliff" during a performance requires a musician to let go of their ego and be extremely committed in their vision. Very few reach this level to that extent. Where did you guys get your collective commitment and passion to search and discover?

BW: I came around very slowly but it still came within the first few years and I think LSD probably had something to do with that. But for awhile now, my contention has been that it really wasn't the LSD so much. The LSD was sort of a sacrament to get everybody involved, such as with the acid tests. "We're going to step off a cliff here." So I guess that compulsion to go cliff jumping came relatively early on. Eventually, we became a little more intelligent about it and developed our sense of feel with regard to what we were going to use to fly and see if it kept us aloft. We had some miserable crashes but we also had some soaring experiences too.

LP: You are one of those rare musicians that brings it to the table every single night. From the moment you begin fine tuning your equipment until the end of the performance, your focus is completely in the moment. Why is music this important to you?

"When the music is happening and the song is being sung, whether by instrument or by voice, there is no place I would rather be."

BW: You know, it always has been. When I was eight years old, my brother taught me how to tune a radio and I knew at that moment that it was music. I knew that that was what I was going to amount to. And by the time I was 15, I was already on my way and I met Jerry just after I had turned 16 and have been a professional musician ever since. Music has always been very good to me. There were a few lean years in the mid-sixties but those were the starving artist days and you don't want to skip that, you just don't want to skip that.

LP: You seem to be sensitive and passionate about everything that you get involved with and that's not only in music. Can you explain where these roots are from and what continues to drive you?

BW: If I'm going to get into something, I'm going to want to dive in. I want to feel it.

LP: Do you still have that same passion today?

BW: Claude Monet developed cataracts in his eyes and his color perception slowly changed over the years. For him, all of those fantastic colors were just natural, but to the rest of the world, they were super natural. And he had no idea what was happening to him but after he had cataract surgery, he wanted to destroy all of his paintings. So your perception changes over the years and though I feel passionate, there is nothing that I would rather do than catch that next wave on stage.

LP: There is now a younger generation coming to Ratdog performances. Do you sense the same vibe from this audience and the same search for wanting something more?

BW: It's still the same. It's the kindred spirits. It's a certain kind of person that requires a little bit of adventure in their lives and in their music. And we are more than happy to provide that because that's what has kept us going. We are all kindred spirits and actually, I'm just a professional adolescent anyway.

LP: Can this culture sustain itself for many more generations?

BW: I think it has been in our culture since the fusion of African and European music. By the time of the late 20s,' people were listening to Afro Euro music. That was open ended music and there was adventure there. There were jazz bands that were jammin' and the more rigid folks responded with, "Stop this noise! Stop this noise!" They couldn't relate. Look at what happened when Stravinsky debuted the "Right of Spring". People hooted, booed and stomped out but the younger folks got it. And Stravinsky was only about 21 at that time.

In our culture today, there is an understanding that art can be derived from a more elemental part of ones being and its there before one reaches adolescence. And just before early adulthood, the more intelligent ones start to develop enough appreciation for art and music that they can handle the complexity in art. They are going to go with this new creative form and it was proven again with the emergence of rock and roll. And when I talk about rock and roll, I am talking about a specific period and era, a specific kind of music. After the late 50s and very early 60s, it had already started to dissipate, turning into rock music, the heavily amplified electric bass and driving stuff. The lithe part of rock and roll was gone. I developed that awareness a little further on in my career and by the time I was in my mid to late 20s, I had realized that, "this isn't rock and roll," this is something else." It's good and I don't mean to devalue it, it's just that it's not rock and roll. If you are going to play rock and roll, it has to have the swamp factor with varying degrees of shuffle within straight rhythm, which is mathematically imprecise and necessarily so. And a certain kind of person can do that but you have to be free of neurosis; neurosis being the inability to accept ambiguity.

LP: The following quote is from the great classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin: Improvisation is not the expression of accident but rather of the accumulated yearning, dreams and wisdom of our very soul. Does that resonate with you?

BW: I agree with that to a certain point but accidents do happen. An intuitive improvisatory musician hears an accident and immediately makes that a positive development. But Yehudi Menuhin probably said that back before Bitches Brew. Today, if someone adds a note that doesn't necessarily work, somebody else in the band might hear it a little differently and compile something completely different where that mistake now works and it's all because of the collaborative experience. And suddenly, "Oh, there's a new harmonic territory here that we are going to overlay and then find meaning in the juxtaposition."

LP: There is an argument that can be made that perhaps no other time in history did music have such a profound affect on society and politics than the 60s. It was a time when music actually did make a difference in society and in a positive way. Did you know at that time that music was having this type of influence?

BW: We were pretty aware of that, yeah. But I think you can attribute that to the baby boomer demographics. There were a lot of kids listening to youth oriented music and from that; anthems emerged that shaped the culture of youth. We were a part of that. We were generating that kind of stuff but also appreciating that kind of stuff. We were embodying it and commenting on it. Everyone was doing that.

LP: The band never stood on a pedestal and made political statements yet you supported causes that you believed in. Your actions spoke louder than words. Is it still that way for you?

BW: Yes. After a show is over, I work with an organization called "Headcount" which is trying to register young voters at concerts. My feeling is that we need to get kids interested in voting now because it's their future that is being decided and I think that the direction of government is becoming more far sighted. When people start to get older, they start to lose that thousand yard stare that a child is sort of born with. We need the youth of our country to right the ship.

LP: Is it a case of kids feeling overwhelmed and too insignificant to make a difference?

BW: And that's what I'm trying to influence, that they can make a difference.

LP: We are now at a place where questioning one's government is perceived as questioning one's love of country. How did we get to this place?

BW: My understanding is that that's wrong! It's straight up nationalism, unquestioning nationalism. The whole idea of democracy, especially as embodied by the founding fathers was to take nationalism out of government and put pragmatism in, pragmatism in the highest possible sense. That's a reversion to the more basal instincts in human nature and it's horrendously shortsighted. It's fascism, pure and simple. Because the people who decide that the questioning of government is the questioning of ones national identity... I mean come on. That just gives the leaders all the rope they need to hang our entire culture. And as we have seen in recent years, that's what they will try to do, such as stacking the Supreme Court and politicizing the justice department. The intent is to try and hold their power with no intention of governing for the better good of all, which is way down on their list of priorities. The first priority is consolidating your power and marginalizing your enemies, your perceived enemies and that is unbelievably short sighted. And I hate to use words like wrong but if I'm going to use one, that whole notion that questioning your government is unpatriotic is pure unadulterated horse **** and is not what our founding fathers would have told us.

LP: When you think about it, it's really quite incredible to think that a group of people were able to come together and find a way to agree on the form of government that we still have today...

BW: Well interestingly, that was accomplished by a collection of young people that were involved in that movement, people that had retained their spirit of youth and had acquired some wisdom. But again, it's that questing spirit of youth and they were able to retain that and acquired wisdom and acumen and came up with the constitution of this country. And it has lasted into our 3rd century. I think what happened in the mid 60s' and up to the very early 70s' will be culturally retained for the next few hundred years. It was another step forward for our culture where we found a newer and fresher well to draw our art from, a newer, deeper and fresher well.

LP: The events of 911 influenced compassionate and sensitive feelings towards the U.S. in a positive way for the first time since the Vietnam War. Now we have lost that. Does that concern you?

BW: Greatly.

LP: Do you see the difference when you travel, do you sense that or see it?

BW: Looking the way that I look, it couldn't be more obvious to most people that, "there is one of those American's that doesn't really buy into what is going on in Washington." So I don't get flack for it. People are sympathetic to me and they can see on my face that I'm embarrassed by our government and I'm embarrassed by this war like nationalism.

LP: Why did things change for the worse after the 60s? Why did we fail at the most opportune time to make and sustain a difference with our sense of ideals and values?

BW: I think that as the bulk of the people got older, real life concerns such as making a living, started inserting itself into our reality and that reality was basically a bubble. I have never left that but when we were living in Haight Asbury, I was only 18, 19 and it was quite easy to be idealistic at that age. But as you gain more experience, a conscious reality starts to creep in and not just our little havens reality, but with the rest of the world as well. And if you are an open minded person, you are going to take that into consideration and put it into balance. And if you are not, then maybe you can stay with that earlier subjective reality but you are going to lose touch with a whole lot of folks. I'd rather be in touch.

LP: The politician has to sometimes compromise their own beliefs but the artist will not compromise his or her art form which usually doesn't reflect the compromised vision of leadership. That in itself is a clash of values and seems to be part of the challenge for what is at stake for our future. How can we get them to work together?

BW: Every now and again, a politician comes along that is actually artful. We had that in John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. They were eloquent and there was art to what they were doing and from what I can see, the same with Barack Obama who is also a rare transcendent politician. And most politicians are just technicians, they are engineers. It's apparent to me that not everyone can be an artist who is born with those sensibilities. God I wish it were possible. My hope is that in some age, we will find that everyone is an artist. Perhaps at the end of the year 2012 in the Mayan calendar and at the end of the Kaliyuga... the end of time as we know it, which is predicted to occur and at that point, everybody wakes up and they discover that they are foremost an artist. I'm going to go on that hope for a few years.

LP: Hazrat Inayat Khan who was from India wrote a book titled, The Mysticism of Sound and Music and stated that, "Someday music will be the means of expressing universal religion. Time is wanted for this but there will be a day when music and philosophy will become the religion of humanity." Do you think music has this kind of power?

BW: It's done that for me. When I'm on stage and the bond is strong between the band and audience, a higher truth becomes injected into that bond and the commonality that everybody in the assemblage shares. There is a higher humanity that is brought into play and it cannot be done without all those folks. I suppose it could be done but I'm not doing it. But I do manage to get there with the help of the audience and with the guys in the band.

LP: There has been an imbalance in the world for a long time now. Can music be the liberator?

BW: When the music is happening and the song is being sung, whether by instrument or by voice, there is no place I would rather be.

LP: As human beings we need love, we need compassion and we need peace yet we don't seem to have the desire or sense of necessity to make that a priority. What are we missing? Why is it not a priority for us today?

BW: I think you are going to have to go to India or Tibet or the mountains of Mexico or South America. I'm not entirely equipped to answer that but I do know that we have our best guys on it.

LP: The great artists do not separate life and music, they bring it together and you cannot tell where one ends or one begins. The love and commitment is always there. Can you explain what has influenced you to this degree?

BW: That's the whole point of art. For me, any artist is a story teller and a story teller brings the listener and the story together until they are all one so everyone is living in the same place and that's really living, in capital letters. That's true living and people are really alive at that point.

LP: Do you miss Garcia; do you still feel his presence?

BW: Sure, I miss the warmth and brotherhood that we had and the music was a just a part of our relationship. We spent a lot of time traveling together, entertained each other and there were always a lot of laughs. And having a guy live in your head for thirty years is not going to go away right away but then I don't suspect that it ever will.

When we played together, I would start hearing what he was doing from the downbeat and I could feel his directives. "Don't go there, but go here." There were some nights where I felt like I was in conflict with him and some where I was in complete harmony with him but Garcia wasn't looking for slavish emulation. And if I was playing something and being completely hard headed about it, just maybe there was a reason for it. With some of those conflicts, sometimes there would be a breakthrough where that conflict would result with great things happening. In the realm of intuitive music, that's where it really gets interesting. A lot of great art is born from tension and we had total respect for that. The harmony that happens from the downbeat can make for a wonderful night but the ones where there is conflict are probably the more interesting nights, especially if there is a resolution found.

LP: If you could move forward 200 years from now and people were interested in knowing what your fondest memories were, what would you tell them?

BW: Well, when we were playing in Egypt and let me first say that we really didn't play that well, which was a result of being jet lagged along with other numerous difficulties. The electricity was hit and miss and was very disruptive to our flow. And the first night that we went on stage, we sound checked and tried to get everything as right as we possibly could but the electricity was on and off. We were playing at the Salumina Theater which is at the foot of the Sphinx, which in turn is at the foot of the great pyramid with two other pyramids behind it. They were all lit up spectacularly. But the problem was that we were also close to the Nile River and there were lots and lots of these big mosquitoes. After the stage lights came on, I saw this cloud of mosquitoes and I was getting bit and my immediate thought was, "welcome to hell." And just as I came to that conclusion, something flew by my head, and then another and then another. I looked across the stage and there were these big bats, a foot across feasting on all of these mosquitoes. And they saved our asses, and this happened every night.

On the third night, there was an eclipse with a full moon that lit up everything. I looked out across the moonscape along with the silhouette and there were two ridges that were lined up with Bedouins on their horses and camels, guns slung over their backs. And at that moment I thought, OK here are the Bedouins on the bluffs, silhouetted under a full moon and then in the backdrop is the great pyramid and the Sphinx. And then there is this thousand year old stage and on that stage is a rock and roll band surrounded by a cloud of bats. It was then that I had one of those moments where I thought, "Take me now lord, just take me now. I want to remember it just like this."


"Cassidy" by John Perry Barlow and Bob Weir

I have seen where the wolf has slept by the silver stream.
I can tell by the mark he left you were in his dream.
Ah, child of countless trees.
Ah, child of boundless seas.
What you are, what you're meant to be
Speaks his name, though you were born to me,
Born to me,
Cassidy.

Lost now on the country miles in his Cadillac.
I can tell by the way you smile he's rolling back.
Come wash the nighttime clean,
Come grow this scorched ground green,
Blow the horn, tap the tambourine
Close the gap of the dark years in between
You and me,
Cassidy...

Quick beats in an icy heart.
catch-colt draws a coffin cart.
There he goes now, here she starts:
Hear her cry.
Flight of the seabirds, scattered like lost words
Wheel to the storm and fly.

Faring thee well now.
Let your life proceed by its own design.
Nothing to tell now.
Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine.

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=31645
http://week4paug.net/index.php?topic=11026.0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EkU64hjVAc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY5eydSJ-Ww

sweet find redrum

+k

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 23, 2009, 03:34:41 PM
sweet find redrum

+k

So if I understood that correctly, the light show for Fluffhead and Divided Sky was pre-planned and was the first time he's ever done that.  Interesting.

thanks for sharing those.  I'll check em out when I get home.

Very cool to see a technical interview like this with CK5.

I had thought the new rig had the "clean" look of LEDs but wasn't sure without seeing them in person. 

Sounds like the lights this summer are gonna be crazy!   :banana:

QuoteConducted by Masato Kato May 10, 2000
© 2000 Masato Kato, www.philzone.com
and www.2012productions.com
All photos © 2000 Eri Sakai
All rights reserved.

This interview may not be reprinted anywhere in any form
-- online or offline -- without the express written
consent of Masato Kato and Philzone.com.
However, we certainly encourage you to link here.

I talked to 21st century jamband icon Trey Anastasio on the phone on May 10, a week before the release of the new album Farmhouse and a month before their much anticipated Japan club tour. I was supposed to receive a phone call from Trey at 10 PM (Japan Time), but ever-busy Trey had something else going on and was "missing in action." It was at 11:30 that at last the record company people were able to track him down so he could call me. I was thrilled to talk to him!

In Japan, jambands are not so popular yet, and there are only a few shows a year where taping is allowed, so these shows were a really big deal. To the delight of all us tape-toting, audio-loving music fans in Japan, there was a large taper's section - one of the first like it ever! It was obvious that hundreds of American Phish-heads flew all the way to Japan to see these concerts. There were so many foreign people in the audience that we Japanese Phish fans felt like we went to the USA. Wow - it was quite an incredible experience!

Click for larger..........Click for larger

Masato Kato: Let me tell you my opinion of the latest Phish album, Farmhouse. Farmhouse is a great mixture of your musical roots and up to date, very advanced Phish music. Do you agree with me?

Trey Anastasio: Yes. I do agree with you.

MK: Farmhouse has a lot of acoustic instruments. Do you have any difficulty when you play them live on stage?

Trey: Actually, I'm having less difficulty over the past year. We're really starting to figure it out and on top of that, it's a direction that I'm very interested in going in. Since we've finished that album, the only music that I've been writing has been acoustic music and the band is now practicing for our upcoming tour and we're going to include much more acoustic music in that tour.

MK: So you play acoustic guitar also.

Trey: I've started playing acoustic guitar a lot in the past year.

MK: I see. Unlike the other records you made before, you maintained complete creative control when you made Farmhouse. Do you have any fear that it will cause problems in the band?

Trey: I actually don't have much fear. I think the band was ready to give me that space because I had always played that role in the past anyway. If you really look back, I wrote a lot of the music and stuff on the old albums. This time they made extra space for me to play that role and I think they were happy to let me do something that was obviously important to me. They felt pretty good about it I think.

MK: So this time you were the leader with Farmhouse. Will Fishman, Page or Mike have the leadership in the future when you make the next albums?

Trey: Well, in band practice I've been encouraging everybody to write more music so that we can have songs by each band member. I think that it's important to realize that in a certain way I've always had that role. It was more a matter of just accepting the fact that that was the role. On all of the other albums it really wasn't very different. We've struggled for so long to question our roles, but in the end it was more a matter of just acceptance. Taking Rift or Billy Breathes, for example, those were very similar experiences. I think what happened was we got to a point where we just decided to not worry about it so much. (laughs) Do you see what I mean?

MK: Yes. Some of the songs have been played for a couple of years. What songs were born in the studio?

Trey - Click for largerTrey: Well none of them were born in the studio this time. A lot of them were played shortly before we went into the studio. We started trying out most of those songs so that by the time we got to the studio most of the songs were performed on at least one tour.

MK: Some of the songs were two or three years old. I think that "Piper" is a live take.

Trey: Nope it's not!

MK: It's not?

Trey: The first 5 or 10 seconds of "Piper" there's a cross-fade. We couldn't get the intro together as good as it was live. I'm talking about the very quiet stuff in the beginning. We edited a bit of a live take but as soon as those 10 seconds are up it's completely live in the studio. We played it all in the barn.

MK: As far as the latest album I like the contrast between the laid back acoustic songs and the live and heavy music. Do you like it too?

Trey: I like it very much. I get bored if there isn't variety. To me it's like a really good piece of classical music. It's been a musical technique for hundreds of years and I think sometimes bands are a little narrow-minded and only decide to play one thing. If you listened to the Beatles White Album you've got "Helter Skelter" and "Blackbird" on the same album.

MK: What composer do you listen to?

Trey: Right now I listen to Ravel almost daily. I'm a little obsessed with Ravel right now. (laughs)

MK: Would it be fair to say that Ravel had an influence on the Farmhouse album?


Trey: I'd say yes to that, but it's really going to have an influence on the next album. (laughs) It probably had mostly an influence on a tune like "The Inlaw Josie Wales" or the end of "Dirt" where there's a little bit more....there's a piece of his music that's called "Le Tombeau de Couperin" and that kind of cycling, well, it's just one of my favorite pieces of music ever. I'd love to write music like that. It'll never be that good (laughs) – but sort of like that. (laughs)

MK: (laughs) I see. Some of my friends went to Florida last December to see the New Year's Eve 2000 Show. Whose idea was it to play for 8 hours?

Trey: It's something that the four of us have talked about for years. We use to talk about doing a 35 hour long gig. (laughter) That never worked. The eight hour gig was fantastic and I'd love to do it again. It was an incredible experience to see the sunrise with all of those people!

MK: A friend of mine said you stayed up all night long without going to the bathroom.

Trey: (Laughs) No, I went to the bathroom. We had a port-o-lid on stage.

MK: On stage? So people can see it?

Trey: (laughter) No. We kept it behind the drums. We like to keep that kind of thing private. (laughs)

MK: How did you stay so energetic during the show?

Click for largerTrey: Well, at one point we had some hors d'oeuvres on stage during the show. (laughs) I think that the thing about it was that there was so much energy coming from the people. You know there were 70,000 or 80,000 people that stayed up all night for the show and when you have that many people keyed up for us, it was easy. Surprisingly, it was one of the easiest and most incredible nights of my life. You know the music, the dancing, and the vibe - it just kept getting better and better! At five o'clock in the morning it just started to get really good!

MK: One of my taper friends sent me a copy of the show...

Trey: Did you hear "Piper"? One of my favorite parts of the show was when we played that song. Right around there it started to get incredibly good for me and that was at five in the morning!

MK: Wow, that was great! At what time did you play "After Midnight?"

Trey: I think we played it before midnight and then we played it again after midnight. (laughter)

MK: (laughs) I see! A lot of tapers were there and they tried very hard to capture the whole concert without any cuts in their tapes but most of them failed. What would you say about that?

Trey: Well, Murphy's Law would say the moment that their tapes stopped would probably be the greatest moment of the whole night. (laughter) We should've been selling blank tapes - we could've made some extra money! (laughs)

MK: That's a great idea! Please consider it when you come to Japan! (laughs)

Trey: We could make more money selling blank tapes than we do selling our albums. (laughter)

MK: Did you have a definitive setlist before the New Year's show or was it spontaneous?

Trey: No – it was completely spontaneous. There was no setlist.

MK: Is that the case for every concert – a spontaneous show?

Trey: That's been the case for the past few years. We used to have setlists and we might have them again. I don't know. We didn't that night though.

MK: For Halloween you've played some other artists' classic Rock n' Roll albums such as: The Who's Quadrophenia, The Beatles' The White Album, and Pink Floyd's Darkside of the Moon. How do you choose which albums you'll cover and play?

Trey: Well, the first two years we let the fans vote and they voted for The White Album and Quadrophenia. The second two years we chose the Talking Heads' album Remain in Light and The Velvet Underground's Loaded which are just two of our favorite albums. These are albums that I listen to incessantly.

MK: I see. When I listen to the Farmhouse album I think it would be great for you to play some of Creedence Clearwater Revival's album Willy & The Poor Boys.

Trey - Click for largerTrey: Oh I love that album. It's one of the greatest albums ever. We'll think about it. (laughs)

MK: If you'd like you can play it in Japan next month! (laughs) What made you play the Fuji Rock Festival last year?

Trey: Well we've wanted to play Japan for many years – you know, it's a long way and the opportunity never arose until we were asked to play the Fuji Rock Festival. We took the opportunity and we can't wait to go back for this tour. We had to choose between a few different possible tours because there's only so many months in the year and [playing in] Japan is something that we're very excited about. The response we got was great and we've met so many cool people. We had a great time and we can't wait to come back.

MK: John Fishman came to Japan two years ago before you came here. Did he tell you anything specific about Japan?

Trey: Oh he definitely encouraged us to go after having visited. He met so many people, like I said, and he had such a great experience over there that he was telling us to drop everything and go to Japan. (laughs)

MK: Is playing in Japan or Europe any different from playing in America?

Trey: Well, playing in Japan is very, very different from playing in Europe.

MK: How is it different?

Trey: The response from the fans in Japan is....

MK: ...very quiet?

Trey: Well, yes, you can tell the Japanese fans are listening very intently and it was really exciting for us. It's always exciting for us to play in front to a crowd of people that are involved in that way. Europe is very different from Japan – it's night and day. (laughs) I don't know how else to put it. We really enjoyed playing in Japan. We're not going back to Europe this summer. (laughs)

MK: I see. You like to play with other musicians outside of Phish. How was the concert with Stewart Copeland and the bassist from Primus, Les Claypool?

Trey: Oh it was great! We wrote an entire night's worth of original material and it was incredible to play with both of them. The fact that I was able to play with Stewart Copeland was just an honor. He's just such a good drummer. He's really one of the greatest rock drummers ever in my opinion.

MK: How about Les Claypool from Primus?

Trey: Oh that goes without saying too. The two of them together was just a storm of energy.

MK: Will you release an album with them?

Trey: Well, I just was talking to them and we've talked about it. We'd like to but the biggest problem right now is time. It's just not a real great time for me to start another band. (laughs) Do you know what I mean? (laughs)

MK: Did you call them and ask them to play with you or did they call you?

Trey: Well they called me. Les called me and I asked him to ask Stewart Copeland. He asked me if there was anyone that I wanted to play with and I said Stewart Copeland. He called Stewart and Stewart said that he wanted to do it. We actually played in my barn where we recorded Farmhouse and we really hit it off. There was just this chemistry and we just decided to do the show.

MK: Is it very easy for you to play with outside musicians?

Trey: I usually don't have much trouble and I enjoy it so much. I always feel like it helps Phish. In the back of my mind, usually when I do shows Mike Gordon - Click for largerwith other musicians, and I do them fairly often, I feel like my intention is always to make Phish a better band. So that's why it's a little odd when we start talking about doing an album with Stewart and Les. You know, I have a band that I love being in. I could never ask for anything more from a band than I get from Phish. So when I do these projects, to me, a lot of it is a learning experience and I always want to bring what I learned back to Phish and hopefully make Phish a better band. Phish, other than my family, those guys are the center of my universe. That's always the way I look at it.

MK: Do you think it's difficult for anybody outside of Phish to jam with you guys?

Trey: (laughs) Oh, I think it's pretty easy to jam with Phish. We've had many, many different musicians play with us over the years.

MK: Who?

Trey: Oh, Alison Krauss, Neil Young a couple of times, umm - horn players, string players – we always invite people to come up onstage. I'd like to think that we're a fairly easy band to jam with because hopefully there's a level of respect and also we're fairly competent in lots of different styles of music. If somebody comes up to play with us, we can usually do a good job backing them up. (laughs)

MK: Who would you like to play with in the near future?

Trey: Oh – Eric Clapton! (laughs) That's who I want to play with.

MK: Did you hear that Eric Clapton had played with Santana in Japan this past month?

Trey: No, I didn't hear about that. You know Santana has played with Phish.

MK: Oh yes...was it in Europe?

Trey: Yes in Europe, and we also played with him in the States in Vermont. We played with him and then he played with us. He is a wonderful man – he's an incredible guy. If you talk with Eric Clapton tell him that he has to play with Phish. (laughter)

MK: Yes! That's a great idea. I heard a rumor that Phish will stop touring and take some time off – but here you are on tour. Can you explain that?

Trey: Yeah, you know what happens, at the end of our last tour I wanted to take some rest and then I haven't been with those guys since New Year's Eve – so now I just want to play with Phish. You see, that's the reason that I like to play with other bands. In between our last Phish tour and this Phish tour I got together with Stewart and Les, wrote all of this material, performed, got to play with these people and by the time that that was over all I wanted to do is play with Phish again. So right now on the wake of this Japanese tour I am dying to play with Phish. I can't wait. I think all four of us are really excited to play together. We've been practicing and are ready to go. (laughs)

MK: You are always touring arduously. It reminds me of the Grateful Dead. Do you agree?

Trey: Oh yeah! I'd say yes!

MK: You played with Phil Lesh in April of last year. Did you call Phil or did he call you?

Trey: I got a phone call from Phil.

MK: What was it like?

Trey: It was great! I was just with him two weeks ago. I did an interview with him for Revolver magazine – the two of us. It was incredible – not just to play with him but to talk to him. We spent a week together rehearsing.

MK: Only a week?

Trey - Click for largerTrey: Yeah, if even that - it might've been four days or something like that. But it was every day and we got to sit and drink coffee and talk. He's an incredible guy and obviously he's got such an amazing history as a musician and just as a person that it was great for me – that was my favorite part – just the rehearsals – because, like I said, we would just sit and talk. I learned so much about music and living – you know, and just about being a good human being. You know, he has a lot of integrity.

MK: Oh, I see. Did playing with Phil Lesh have any influence on the Farmhouse album?

Trey: I'd say yes to that but you know everything that you do influences an album. I think it had a big influence on me in the same way that playing with Stewart Copeland or playing with Santana had an influence on me. You know, that's how a young musician learns – by playing with older musicians who are more experienced. And every time I get the opportunity to do that, regardless of what style of music they play, if I'm lucky enough to play with an older musician, I try to take in as much as I can. So playing with Phil, like I said, I just kind of sat there and listened to him talk and listened to him play and tried to let him influence me as much as I could. (laughs)

MK: Will there be any official release from the Phil and Friends shows from April 1999?

Trey: Not that I know of. I mean people were talking about it, but at this time there are no plans.

MK: I see. Let's talk about the upcoming Japan tour. What would you like to do in Japan aside from the upcoming concerts?

Trey: I would like to see a lot more of the country than I did the last time. We were not there very long. I only managed to have one afternoon that I could travel away from the Fuji festival and we went to a hot spring. The country was beautiful. Other than that we were only there for about three days or something like that. So I'm really hoping to have a lot more time to travel. We walked around Tokyo last time, but I'd also like to see some of the other cities rather than just flying into Tokyo and flying out.

MK: So you went to the hot springs last year and a friend of mine met you there. He was naked and so were you! (laughter)

Trey: Yeah, I remember that. We were both naked! (laughter)

MK: (laughing) That friend of mine was very surprised!

Trey: Yeah, everybody get naked! (laughter)

MK: Yeah the hot springs - that's a great experience!

Trey: Maybe next time when I come back we can meet clothed. (laughs)

MK: I heard a rumor that you want to play three sets for the Sunday afternoon June 11th show. Is it true?

Trey: I can't verify what we'll be doing on June 11th. If they want us to keep playing, then we'll keep playing. We're always ready to keep playing.

MK: A friend of mine would like to know if you'll eat raw fish this year?

Trey: I did last time. I ate a lot of raw fish and I'm ready to eat more! (laughter)

MK: Do you like sushi?

Trey: I do. I love sushi. That was one thing that we got to do - our promoter brought us to a great sushi restaurant in Tokyo and we had a wonderful meal. Like I said before, we were only there for three days so this time we'll have a little more time to explore.

MK: You allow people to tape your live shows. Does circulating tapes have any influence on your live music?

Page McConnell - sorry no largerTrey: Definitely – a huge influence. People listen to the tapes and we know that we can continue to play a lot of new music. On this next tour we'll be playing a couple of songs that are brand new and people will listen to the tapes and become familiar with the new material. It's a big help in my eyes.

MK: Robert Fripp from King Crimson is completely against taping concerts. He said, "Being taped by a member in the audience is like seeing his girlfriend being raped right in front of him." Have you ever felt the same way?

Trey: (laughs) No never! In fact, I think that being taped is like making love to every girl in the entire audience. (laughter)

MK: Oh (laughs) I see. I see! All right!

Trey: It's like all of them taking me home at the end of the show simultaneously.

MK: Please do me a favor and leave a message for all of the Japanese Phish fans.

Trey: Right now? Ok... LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE! (laughs)

MK: We're ready to rumble – at least I am ready to rumble already! I will go to as many concerts as possible with lots of heavy recording equipment – ready to record you! (laughs)

Trey: Great! I can't wait for you all to record me - after my last comment about what it's like being recorded – I say all of you get out there and start recording me! (laughter)

MK: Okay that's all. Thank you and have a nice day. Goodbye!

Trey: Okay, thanks! We'll see you when we get there!

Always one of my favorite interviews because of Trey mentioning Clapton... the link: http://www.philzone.com/interviews/trey/ (http://www.philzone.com/interviews/trey/)

^^^ I've read that before and it is a great interview.  thanks for posting.

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 23, 2009, 05:36:54 PM

Quote
This interview may not be reprinted anywhere in any form
-- online or offline -- without the express written
consent of Masato Kato and Philzone.com.
However, we certainly encourage you to link here.

at least you provided the link  :lol: :wink:

Quote from: blatboom on March 23, 2009, 05:45:38 PM
^^^ I've read that before and it is a great interview.  thanks for posting.

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 23, 2009, 05:36:54 PM

Quote
This interview may not be reprinted anywhere in any form
-- online or offline -- without the express written
consent of Masato Kato and Philzone.com.
However, we certainly encourage you to link here.

at least you provided the link  :lol: :wink:

Either that or I have "express written consent of Masato Kato and Philzone.com." You may never know the truth!  :wink:

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 23, 2009, 05:55:37 PM

Quote from: blatboom on March 23, 2009, 05:45:38 PM
^^^ I've read that before and it is a great interview.  thanks for posting.

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 23, 2009, 05:36:54 PM

Quote
This interview may not be reprinted anywhere in any form
-- online or offline -- without the express written
consent of Masato Kato and Philzone.com.
However, we certainly encourage you to link here.

at least you provided the link  :lol: :wink:

Either that or I have "express written consent of Masato Kato and Philzone.com." You may never know the truth!  :wink:

mind=blown

cool interview...

I thought it was interesting to hear that there was absolutely no planned setlist for Big Cypress, all spontaneous.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 23, 2009, 08:27:20 PM
cool interview...

I thought it was interesting to hear that there was absolutely no planned setlist for Big Cypress, all spontaneous.

You should have seen how pissed Brand Sands was when during the first set on the 31st, Trey got word to him that he wanted to play After Midnight and needed him to get the words.  That's my one Phish claim to fame, I happened to be sitting in the production trailer when he came stomping in, and at the time for reasons I can't explain, almost no one had a computer, but having heard it on the radio earlier that day I got to help him right out the lyrics.  Neither of us could remember them that well that's why they weren't to great, but that's my "cool Phish story."

Quote from: thechad on March 24, 2009, 12:11:44 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 23, 2009, 08:27:20 PM
cool interview...

I thought it was interesting to hear that there was absolutely no planned setlist for Big Cypress, all spontaneous.

You should have seen how pissed Brand Sands was when during the first set on the 31st, Trey got word to him that he wanted to play After Midnight and needed him to get the words.  That's my one Phish claim to fame, I happened to be sitting in the production trailer when he came stomping in, and at the time for reasons I can't explain, almost no one had a computer, but having heard it on the radio earlier that day I got to help him right out the lyrics.  Neither of us could remember them that well that's why they weren't to great, but that's my "cool Phish story."

Man, that's a cool Phish story!  I remember seeing a photog on the stage during After Midnight, and he was in such awe that his camera was hanging from his neck, and he was just staring out at the crowd.

Is it just me or is the tone of the interviewer extremely silly?  The translation (I assume it's translated for Trey) is very funny.  All the "Do you agree? and I see"  comments make me laugh.  It sounds like a stereotypical Japanese translation from a movie or something.

Quote from: thechad on March 24, 2009, 12:11:44 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 23, 2009, 08:27:20 PM
cool interview...

I thought it was interesting to hear that there was absolutely no planned setlist for Big Cypress, all spontaneous.

You should have seen how pissed Brand Sands was when during the first set on the 31st, Trey got word to him that he wanted to play After Midnight and needed him to get the words.  That's my one Phish claim to fame, I happened to be sitting in the production trailer when he came stomping in, and at the time for reasons I can't explain, almost no one had a computer, but having heard it on the radio earlier that day I got to help him right out the lyrics.  Neither of us could remember them that well that's why they weren't to great, but that's my "cool Phish story."

that's a pretty damn good claim to fame

Quote from: slslbs on March 25, 2009, 10:11:56 PM

Quote from: thechad on March 24, 2009, 12:11:44 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 23, 2009, 08:27:20 PM
cool interview...

I thought it was interesting to hear that there was absolutely no planned setlist for Big Cypress, all spontaneous.

You should have seen how pissed Brand Sands was when during the first set on the 31st, Trey got word to him that he wanted to play After Midnight and needed him to get the words.  That's my one Phish claim to fame, I happened to be sitting in the production trailer when he came stomping in, and at the time for reasons I can't explain, almost no one had a computer, but having heard it on the radio earlier that day I got to help him right out the lyrics.  Neither of us could remember them that well that's why they weren't to great, but that's my "cool Phish story."

that's a pretty damn good claim to fame

love the inside scoop.  great story.

Trey radio interview in Vermont from May 2002, The Point.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?yovwdxcmb20

with in studio acoustic versions of Alive Again, Pebbles & Marbles & Driver

-----

103.7 The Mountain

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?znyzgxbnbjt

this also also has Alive Again, Pebbles & Marbles


more to come....

redrum delivering the goods this morning!!

@yerservice.  :beerbang:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScJcMwvwtw8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScJcMwvwtw8)

"Mara Davis talks with Trey Anastasio"

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on September 23, 2009, 03:44:16 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScJcMwvwtw8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScJcMwvwtw8)

"Mara Davis talks with Trey Anastasio"

thanks for the heads up. +k

all i gotta say is 10/31/09 = Britney album CONFIRMED.

that's not all i have to say:
i knew they played Katy Perry cuz his daughters listened to it.

just wait 'til you end up on

www.hotdudeswithbonerswithdogs.com

:evil: :evil: :evil:

i can't believe i just clicked that  :|   :wtu:

Quote from: mirthbeatenworker on September 23, 2009, 07:35:49 PM
i can't believe i just clicked that  :|   :wtu:

it made me think of sex.

Quote from: redrum on September 23, 2009, 07:53:25 PM

Quote from: mirthbeatenworker on September 23, 2009, 07:35:49 PM
i can't believe i just clicked that  :|   :wtu:

it made me think of sex.

that interview was horrible (hahahahahahah - seriously, come down here and we'll sing some britney spears songs)

CK5 on jambands.com

http://www.jambands.com/features/2009/09/30/looking-into-the-light-with-chris-kuroda/?1

Wow, surprised it took this long for this interview to get out. We were sitting with Jeff at Star Lake the night before. He was saying he had to get to Deer Creek for the interview the next day. Was expecting to see it around the time of Alpine.

Quote from: messengerbird on October 02, 2009, 04:14:06 PM
Wow, surprised it took this long for this interview to get out. We were sitting with Jeff at Star Lake the night before. He was saying he had to get to Deer Creek for the interview the next day. Was expecting to see it around the time of Alpine.

lol, I think I commented on a facebook pic of you guys & him...His lights destroyed at the umph show last night.

Trey interview, second track down in the audio section:

http://www.1019rxp.com/pinfield/ (http://www.1019rxp.com/pinfield/)

Phish - full band interview
(after Billy Breathes i think)

Quote
Modern Rock Live Interview:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ytzzzzmtyuz

nitrous influenced

not exactly an interview, but a lot of quotes from the band:

QuoteMOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Phish and crew bustle about Shoreline Amphitheater's backstage area, a sprawling patio where memories linger of raging parties from bygone tours.

Hours before a recent show, the scene is markedly different. Voices and footfalls carry across the expanse of empty picnic tables. A baby stroller clatters across wooden planks. As afternoon slants into evening, a ruckus finally kicks up: The clip-clop of a pingpong game between Trey Anastasio and his teenage daughter.

"Fifteen-love," says the Phish guitarist.

To understand why the touring jamband juggernaut broke up for nearly four years — only to resurface with a stunning depth of clarity in live performance, its strongest album yet and an ambitious festival slated for this weekend — measure this family centered serenity against the colossal traveling party they left behind.

"We used to have a lot of people hanging around, and it was a crazy scene backstage — CRAZY," Anastasio says later, between sips of tea. "I remember being here, a number of times, and you couldn't get through. There were literally hundreds of people, all the time. Everywhere."

The scene was a symptom of a lifestyle the members of Phish knew they couldn't sustain. So after 20 years on the road together, they staged a farewell blowout in Coventry, Vt., in 2004, their seventh massive festival. It began with a freakish downpour and ended with the emotionally shattered band flubbing and struggling to say goodbye. More than four years after the split, Phish roared back to life in March with an electrifying three-night reunion stint in Hampton, Va., followed up with a summer tour chock full of bootleg-worthy shows.

Their new album, "Joy," released last month, was critically lauded for its musical and lyrical maturity and refreshed, live-show inspired sound. And on Friday, Phish completes its comeback victory lap with the kickoff of Festival 8, a three-night marathon of sets in Indio, Calif., on the same grounds where the Coachella music festival is held. A fall tour will follow.

While it would seem Phish back at full blast could risk relapse into old habits, the band agreed on a number of changes that have made their rebirth possible. For one, the number of dates the band plays has been scaled back; for another, the members have kept their pact to put families first, even on the road.

That means lots of kids backstage — seven in the Phish family so far, most of them on tour — and not so much the hundreds of hangers-on who had snowballed out of control through the years. As Anastasio likes to point out, there were 3,500 people on the guest list at their "farewell" show in 2004. At the reunion show this year, there were 10 — "and seven of them were under the age of 13."

"It's just a very nice vibe," says bassist Mike Gordon. "And the music has been feeling really good as a result. I had no idea whether removing the party element would make it sterile or something — but the opposite happened, where it feels like we have extra consciousness left over to jam harder. It feels like a great era — it's the beginning of the rest, like we're in it for the long haul again."

For his part, keyboardist Page McConnell says he'd always figured that Phish would take up the cause anew, and spent his off-time well to that end: Serious study of classical piano and a solo album built extra muscle behind his chops, giving the band more balance through which to hear complex interplay in the middle register.

"I thought, well, I don't want to come back a little bit staler — I'd like to come back better," McConnell says. "But I really feel it from all of us; the way we're listening to each other, and the way we're communicating, we really make each other sound good."

Working with a vocal coach has also borne fruit for Anastasio and Gordon: On "Joy," the quirky, isn't-this-silly singing style has been all but abandoned. It's probably no coincidence that "Billy Breathes," another vocally strong and widely cherished Phish studio recording from 1996, was also produced by Steve Lillywhite.

"I told them, 'Look - this record is your first in a few years, you're all in a good space ... you just need to be YOU,'" he recalls. "I really felt like this was a new band. They were very relaxed, and I think one of the reasons was, they have these memories of the 'Billy Breathes' sessions, of me just coming in and taking a great weight off their shoulders."

Whatever the reason, everything about Phish feels lighter this time around. Even the selection of the Empire Polo Fields for Festival 8 was made in part to ease the usual traffic- and weather-related headaches that have plagued Phish festivals past: The Coachella site is cool and dry in October, there's plenty of lodging nearby, and there are plenty of roads leading in.

Perhaps the most pressure for Phish will be pulling off their Halloween "costume" surprise, a tradition of covering a classic album by another artist on Halloween night (Anastasio was understandably cagey about his choice — but "Thriller" was notably still in the running, according to a process-of-elimination interactive on the band's Web site.) Whatever they decide to do, Anastasio says, it'll be more fun than the last time.

"It IS more fun. It's SO much more fun. And it's hard to believe that, because it was really fun for quite some time. But ... it's fun to let all go, and just kind of ride the wave again."

tom marshall

QuoteWhat was it like to reunite with Trey, to write again, and did that begin when you sent what would become the lyrics to "Backwards Down the Number Line" to him on his birthday, September 30, 2007?

It really did. That was it, really. I was estranged from him because the program he was in didn't allow for a whole lot of communication. For many reasons, his family and others were sort of shielding information about him, even from those who thought they were pretty close to him. Part of that is the old...you know...if you're starting a whole, new life, and a whole new lifestyle, you do have to give up some of the old stuff. I think, maybe, for a while there, I was considered part of the old stuff. (laughs) I didn't want to be because I didn't really have a whole lot to do with the bad stuff happening, and Trey realized that and recognized that, so I was put on some sort of approved list.

Prior to that, to break the silence, I got a hold of an e-mail address from him, just by talking to his Dad. Out of the blue, I realized it was his birthday. I reached across the gap of not knowing really what was up with him with that e-mail. Literally, it was a birthday wish. It was funny because he called back so fast. First, he wrote back, "Oh my God!" within two hours. I was like, "What does that mean?" (laughter)

Maybe three, four hours after I sent the e-mail, he played me the song. He called me, and he was laughing. He played me the song, and said, "Oh my God! This is so perfect. It just fell together so quickly." I listened to it, and it's just amazing. I have that version, and I want it to come out, and be made public. It's so good. It's so full of energy. The Phish version on Joy is amazing. I love it. But that very first one—there's something that's incredibly crispy and magical and wonderful about it.

Was it an acoustic version?

No. When Trey was living in Saratoga Springs [upstate New York], he had a nice

little mini-version of his studio, which he calls Rubber Jungle, in his apartment there, so

he was able to do full recordings.

From there, did he say that he was ready to start writing songs with you again?

Yeah, it took a while actually. That broke the ice, and then there was sort of a process. It, literally, was like...I don't think anyone ever mentioned an approved list, but I sort of had that feeling: "Who can he talk to?" It was very strict at first—"Who can't he talk to." That settled in, and he began to know how to handle his appointments. He had a very rigorous daily schedule of meetings. Finally, he got a handle on that, and invited me up. After "Backwards Down the Numbers Line," he wanted to start writing.

I came up there. He would have to make some appointments, and I would sit there in his place, but we just realized that we still had it. We had not written for three, four years, and it was just great. It was a reawakening—not even a reawakening, so much as a realization that we could still do this. It's almost easier now because there's not this sort of weird haze surrounding Trey, or between us, or whatever.

It was wonderful. I put pen to paper, again, and started typing lyrics. I went up there with the whole ream of things again. I realized that we had gotten older. Our style has changed and yet, we're still laughing like the old days. It was a lot of fun, and we wrote a lot of songs. Even though seven songs I co-wrote got on Joy, I think we wrote about 20 songs.

continue'd here -->

http://www.jambands.com/features/2009/11/03/ode-to-joy-the-tom-marshall-interview

good read..thanks..as I stated in some other thread, it's interesting to read about the choice of Indio becuase of the ease of traffic flow and available lodging...neither of those exist in or around Limestone..so as far as future festival sites...........

Quote from: mehead on November 04, 2009, 05:09:40 PM
good read..thanks..

interesting connection in Joy/Scarlet Begonias.
i never woulda put that together.

Trey is the Ocelot.

Great reads!  Thanks.  Love hearing Tom explain things and seeing them having fun and laughing about the songs and the process.

From the olden days.  If you haven't seen this, Kalamazoo community access television show interviews Phish June 19, 1994.   
[tip: both parts have the same 1:25 intro]

http://www.youtube.com/v/5hLiaWEt92Y&hl=en&fs=1&

http://www.youtube.com/v/Lhkr8aCBqCo&hl=en&fs=1&

going through some discs today, i realized that this little tidbit is rare.
an interview from 07/03/98 Midtfyns Festival with trey, mike, and mark wahlberg's dannish doppelgänger along with performances of beauty of my dreams and sample in a jar.

things go bad when trey mentions how much oasis sucks  :lol:

enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/v/hcK4rXuL-GE&hl=en_US&fs=1&

http://www.youtube.com/v/Qwz_3VYXCuY&hl=en_US&fs=1&

Quote from: StCarl on November 09, 2009, 02:24:19 AM
From the olden days.  If you haven't seen this, Kalamazoo community access television show interviews Phish June 19, 1994.   

Nice find.  I remember seeing that on TV when I was home for the summer at my parents house.  I watched it prior to seeing PHish and thought 'those dudes are weird."  Funny to watch it again now. 

Still weird, too.   :-D

Thank for all these interviews, just finished the jambands Marshall one from recent days.

Quote
Something like we want you to be happy, come step outside your room could have three meanings. The song is referencing Kristy, of course, almost as if she is speaking to Trey, and letting him know that he offers so much joy to the world. "Just be happy, and go out and do that, Trey. That's your gift." Second, it could be a message to everyone that has stayed loyal to Trey, Phish and yourself, Tom—"Please come back. We want to share in the happiness that only you can provide. Do not be cynical, jaded, and mean-spirited, just share in the joy of Phish." Finally, the lyric could be interpreted as a simple statement to your respective daughters.

WTF Randy?  :?

I had always assumed that Joy was a one way interaction between Trey and his sister when I first listened to the song. 


After the "daughters" interpretation came along, as a father of a daughter, I prefer to identify with both. 

Quote from: nab on November 18, 2009, 01:21:03 AM
I had always assumed that Joy was a one way interaction between Trey and his sister when I first listened to the song. 


After the "daughters" interpretation came along, as a father of a daughter, I prefer to identify with both.

This.
Actually in reverse.
I first thought of my daughters, the teenager and the younger one more prone to sadness...

Then I learned that Trey meant it for his sister.

I love that song.

Interesting that no one is siding with the cynical, jaded, Phish shit head point of view Randy just slipped in there amongst the others. Think he just slipped that into the question/discussion knowing it would be read by (perhaps) thousands as a message to us all?

I don't think it was a jaded phish-head POV.

I think that he meant that the song could be interpreted to be a message from Phish/Trey/Tom to the Fans that that want us to be happy so come out of our rooms (and don't be jaded) and dance a while.

I can completely see that. And Tom gives that some credibility a few squirts down.
However, his choice of words jarred upon reading them, and I wonder if he would write it the same way again if he had the choice? Tom certainly doesn't give those words credibility.

Some brief comments about meeting Fishman by Vampire Weekend dude.

http://pitchfork.com/tv/#/episode/2092-vampire-weekend/5

Sound Off with Matt Pinfield - Trey Anastasio - Part 1.avi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EF5i2B_F1c#ws)

Sound Off with Matt Pinfield - Trey Anastasio - Part 2.avi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT-dHUJTd7U#ws)

Sound Off with Matt Pinfield - Trey Anastasio - Part 3.avi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaNCAWQU0ec#ws)

Thanks for sharing RR, I'd never seen this before...... any idea when this was filmed?  2006 I'd assume?

It definitely put a smile on my face when trey was mentioning Exile on Main St.  :-D

i'd just like take a moment to point out how truly EPIC it was that trey had a ritual of listening to Machine Gun (in headphones?) moments before he took the stage with Phish.

i'm guessing that woulda been around 97.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/davidfricke/;kw= (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/davidfricke/;kw=)[blogs,DavidFricke_April2010,150104,53849]




grrrrrrrrrrrr, why does rollingstone use [brackets] in their url's?  thats plum whacky.  you'll have to copy and paste that link. 

Phish Get Stoned: Trey Anastasio Uncovers 'Exile on Main Street'
Last October, I interviewed Phish singer-guitarist Trey Anastasio about the Rolling Stones' 1972 double album Exile on Main Street. His band was about to attempt something even the Stones had never done: On Halloween, the second night of Phish's long-weekend party Festival 8 in Indio, California, they performed all four sides of Exile in sequence. I spoke to Anastasio at length for an essay I wrote in the free Playbill the group published for fans at the show. The mushrooming hoopla over the May 18th reissue of Exile — with previously unreleased recordings from the sessions — seemed like a good reason to retrieve some outtakes from our conversation, in which the guitarist went deep on his lifelong love for the album — and the surprises he found there as he learned to play the whole thing.

Exile on Main Street was the first concept album about life in a rock & roll band — the highs and lows, women and drugs, being backstage and onstage. It literally starts with waking up in the morning — "Rocks Off" — and ends with "Shine a Light" and "Soul Survivor," like the singer is coming out of this long weird tunnel.   
The concept about being in a band — the song I really related to is "Torn and Frayed." "The ballrooms and smelly bordellos/And dressing rooms filled with parasites": We really had a problem with that for awhile. Yet it's so beautifully stated in that song. And then "Joe's got a cough, sounds kinda rough/And the codeine to fix it" [laughs]. We had one of those — the rock doctor. Every band's got one of those.

It's pretty affirming at the end. You pick up so much when you go through this process of playing every song on a record. But one of the first things I noticed, even after having listened to this record over and over my entire life, is that half of the lyrics I thought Mick Jagger was singing were wrong. And the ones he was actually singing were much better than the ones I had made up in my mind.

It's as if the Stones created their own language from the blues, to tell the stories in these songs. They have the covers — Slim Harpo ("Shake Your Hips") and Robert Johnson ("Stop Breaking Down") — but nothing that goes on in the other songs could ever be mistaken for a Southern black man's tale.   
You had all of these British bands idolizing American blues musicians, which was the birth of what we know as electric rock & roll. But a lot of those records, with time, became too transparent — the lifting from the blues guys — so it's almost not believable. This one straddles some kind of edge. They took what was good about that music and truly made it their own. Funnily enough, the songs they covered were to me the least successful tracks on the record. But when Jagger sings, "Kissing cunt in Cannes" ["Casino Boogie"]  it's so them, clearly.

Your band has a very distinct sound — you hear all of the moving parts as the members of Phish weave, bob and jam. On Exile, you can't tell what's what. The guitars are tangled up, the piano comes in and out and Jagger often sounds like he's singing from the back of the mix.   
This goes back to what I was saying about what you take on — the task of learning the whole record. The first thing I did was sit down and start learning, note for note, the two guitar players' licks. I really dug in. And lo and behold, there are incredible, distinct guitar lines. It's played with an attitude — that rock & roll attitude. But everybody's playing sloppy together. Sit down someday and try to play along with those drums. It's incredibly intricate. It comes off as sloppy, but it's not sloppy at all.

It's like the entire band is a rhythm section.   
And they have something going on between those two guitars, with the different tunings. Keith Richards has that open blues tuning. It's funny because it comes off as this rolling beast. But the deeper you dig, what they're playing becomes distinct and articulate.

I had the same experience with the lyrics. It's all garbled, but if you look at them, they're fantastic and clever. "Berber jewelry jangling down the street" ["Shine a Light"] — that's an example of Jagger using that blues "women doing me wrong" thing. But that is a total Mick Jagger line. It's not Mick Jagger stealing from a blues guy. It's Mick Jagger taking that blues concept into his world.

LOOSE AND TIGHT

It is easy to hear the deep traces of Jerry Garcia and Frank Zappa in your guitar playing. What did you learn from Keith Richards?   
Tons, especially attack. If you listen to "Torn and Frayed," check out how tight Keith Richards' guitar is with the snare drum. It's almost reggae. The rhythm guitar is almost like another drum. Charlie Watts has famously said he never hits the snare and the hi-hat [cymbal] at the same time. And the way Keith plays rhythm guitar — it's like he's filling that hole. That's the thing he's always said about that sound ["the ancient art of weaving"] — you can't separate one sound from another.

Mick Taylor often gets forgotten for his role in that blend, even though that's his lead guitar on three of the band's most important albums: "Let It Bleed," "Sticky Fingers" and "Exile."   
That was my favorite era of the Stones, when he and Keith were playing guitars. Mick seemed very shy — maybe that's why it worked. They had distinct styles. Right at the end of "Rocks Off" is the nastiest, most iconic solo riff. The song is all counter-rhythm — the two of them in different tunings. Then just as it fades out, it kicks off into that big-rock lead guitar. Turn it up really loud — that's Mick Taylor.

"Loving Cup" has been a Phish encore for many years. Why didn't you play more of Exile onstage before this?   
I don't know. I used to play this record at every party — and there were a lot of them. [laughs] This was the go-to record. I had two go-to records for 10, 15 years. One was my morning wake-up or cooking-in-the-afternoon record — Django Reinhardt. But as soon as it got dark and people came over, it was Exile on Main Street.

On Halloween, you will be playing a lot of Exile songs that the Stones never played live, such as "Let It Loose" and "Soul Survivor."   
Some of them are structured in a ballad-y way, like "Let It Loose" and "Shine a Light." Maybe that's not where they wanted to go live. I can see why they didn't do "Soul Survivor," although it's a shame. I had no idea what that song was about. Then I really got into it — all of those metaphors about water, drowning in love, the cutthroat crew.

"Let It Loose" — that, for me, may be the highlight of the record. For a guy who had so much swagger, so much history with beautiful women, it's a very vulnerable song, more than Jagger normally would reveal about himself. I love that about it. "Bit off more than I can chew/And I knew what it was leading to/Some things, well, I can't refuse" — that is classic songwriting.

Compared to other albums you've covered on past Halloweens — like the Who's Quadrophenia and Talking Heads' Remain in Light — this is the most musically focused and emotional record you've ever done.   
I feel like I embody so many of those lyrics now. We started playing "Loving Cup" on a whim. But now it feels like our song when we play it. The lines are so right-on. "I feel so humble with you tonight" — I can get behind that.

Thanks for posting, guyforget!

here's a working link...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&q=http://www.rollingstone.com/music/davidfricke/%3Bkw%3D%255Bblogs,DavidFricke_April2010,150104,53849%255D&ct=ga&cad=:s1:f1:v0:i0:lt:e0:p0:t1273639626:&cd=mg8hbORCjq8&usg=AFQjCNFCRvSSW7yI7wk0IBfNEWqC1UtljQ (http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&q=http://www.rollingstone.com/music/davidfricke/%3Bkw%3D%255Bblogs,DavidFricke_April2010,150104,53849%255D&ct=ga&cad=:s1:f1:v0:i0:lt:e0:p0:t1273639626:&cd=mg8hbORCjq8&usg=AFQjCNFCRvSSW7yI7wk0IBfNEWqC1UtljQ)

Quote from: guyforget on May 12, 2010, 03:49:58 AM
"I feel so humble with you tonight" — I can get behind that.

almost makes me want to hear them play loving cup again. :-D :clap:

Quote from: khalpin on May 12, 2010, 07:39:59 AM
Thanks for posting, guyforget!

Indeed. Very cool read.

Great interview.  It really confirms that Exile was the perfect album choice at this point in their career.

Makes me wonder about 10/31/10...

Quote from: mattstick on May 12, 2010, 09:28:04 AM

Great interview.  It really confirms that Exile was the perfect album choice at this point in their career.

Makes me wonder about 10/31/10...

gordo's desire for a funkier Phish will take off during summer tour, peaking with a Meters s/t set on 10/31/10.

No thanks.  Phish is not funky.

Quote from: mattstick on May 12, 2010, 10:16:59 AM
Phish is not funky.

Truth.

Quote from: rowjimmy on May 12, 2010, 10:21:37 AM

Quote from: mattstick on May 12, 2010, 10:16:59 AM
Phish is not funky.

Truth.

They got some funk, but not nearly enough to consider covering the Meters.

Ehhhhhh....  I don't know about that.


If Trey would turn off his overdrive and decide to use his neck pickup again.........     then I think Page's experience with PBS could really allow them to lock-in deep again.  I know that I, personally, wouldn't be opposed to the re-emergence of the 1997 min7-chord funk jams again. 


All we want to dooooooo.... is get funky with youuuuuuuuuu

Quote from: Gumbo72203 on May 12, 2010, 11:02:54 AM
Ehhhhhh....  I don't know about that.


If Trey would turn off his overdrive and decide to use his neck pickup again.........     then I think Page's experience with PBS could really allow them to lock-in deep again.  I know that I, personally, wouldn't be opposed to the re-emergence of the 1997 min7-chord funk jams again. 


All we want to dooooooo.... is get funky with youuuuuuuuuu

I don't know, dude. I saw Page with PBS and they ran circles around him. Not that it was bad at all, just that he is no Neville... and Gordo is no Porter... and don't even get me started with Fish... Party Time is as close to New Orleans funk as Phish gets. I'd hate to see them attempt a Meters album on Halloween. I fear it would just fall too flat.

you really think so? 




Regardless, either way, my vote will always be for Pink Floyd's "Animals".  I'd also toss in votes for Meddle and Wish You Were Here, but I'm not sure that Trey would be able to pull off any of Gilmour's lap-steel slide histrionics, which are absolutely necessary for One of These Days and Shine On You Crazy Diamond Pt. 2. 

I'd say 11/2/98 pretty much ensures another Pink Floyd album won't be played.

i'd like to see them do something 70's / 80's prog-y that gets back to their roots of doing tough compositions w/ open ended jamming. 


but i'd more likely expect them to do something straight up rocking, like led zeppelin or something. 

i wonder if we will see one of the 99 albums that were "killed off" appear as a halloween cover in the future....

I'm sure they were seriously considering a few of them..

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on May 12, 2010, 02:41:42 PM
i wonder if we will see one of the 99 albums that were "killed off" appear as a halloween cover in the future....

I'm sure they were seriously considering a few of them..

If it's MGMT this time I'm quitting Phish.

Quote from: Hicks on May 12, 2010, 03:56:51 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on May 12, 2010, 02:41:42 PM
i wonder if we will see one of the 99 albums that were "killed off" appear as a halloween cover in the future....

I'm sure they were seriously considering a few of them..

If it's MGMT this time I'm quitting Phish.

I'd go with you.

Quote from: guyforget on May 12, 2010, 12:11:58 PM
i'd like to see them do something 70's / 80's prog-y that gets back to their roots of doing tough compositions w/ open ended jamming. 

I'm really surprised they have not nailed a Yes album yet. Trey has teased Yes jams like mad his entire career. Page would have the vocals nailed. And Gordo's bass would fit like a glove. It's coming......or a Zeppelin album  :wink:

Quote from: Superfreakie on May 12, 2010, 07:59:52 PM

Quote from: guyforget on May 12, 2010, 12:11:58 PM
i'd like to see them do something 70's / 80's prog-y that gets back to their roots of doing tough compositions w/ open ended jamming. 

I'm really surprised they have not nailed a Yes album yet. Trey has teased Yes jams like mad his entire career. Page would have the vocals nailed. And Gordo's bass would fit like a glove. It's coming......or a Zeppelin album  :wink:

They should probably just do an awesome fun album this year, instead of trying to pick one of the best-of-all-time/most-inspiring-to-band-members-as-young-men.

Quote from: kellerb on May 12, 2010, 09:01:13 PM

Quote from: Superfreakie on May 12, 2010, 07:59:52 PM

Quote from: guyforget on May 12, 2010, 12:11:58 PM
i'd like to see them do something 70's / 80's prog-y that gets back to their roots of doing tough compositions w/ open ended jamming. 

I'm really surprised they have not nailed a Yes album yet. Trey has teased Yes jams like mad his entire career. Page would have the vocals nailed. And Gordo's bass would fit like a glove. It's coming......or a Zeppelin album  :wink:

They should probably just do an awesome fun album this year, instead of trying to pick one of the best-of-all-time/most-inspiring-to-band-members-as-young-men.

then that leaves Zeppelin.

Quote from: Superfreakie on May 12, 2010, 10:08:29 PM

Quote from: kellerb on May 12, 2010, 09:01:13 PM

Quote from: Superfreakie on May 12, 2010, 07:59:52 PM

Quote from: guyforget on May 12, 2010, 12:11:58 PM
i'd like to see them do something 70's / 80's prog-y that gets back to their roots of doing tough compositions w/ open ended jamming. 

I'm really surprised they have not nailed a Yes album yet. Trey has teased Yes jams like mad his entire career. Page would have the vocals nailed. And Gordo's bass would fit like a glove. It's coming......or a Zeppelin album  :wink:

They should probably just do an awesome fun album this year, instead of trying to pick one of the best-of-all-time/most-inspiring-to-band-members-as-young-men.

then that leaves Zeppelin.

or mgmt    ;)

http://www.relix.com/news/2010/08/05/trey-anastasio-shares-thoughts-on-phish-summer-tour-covers (http://www.relix.com/news/2010/08/05/trey-anastasio-shares-thoughts-on-phish-summer-tour-covers)

trey on phish played covers

QuoteDuring Phish's fall and early summer dates, the band covered songs by Neutral Milk Hotel, TV on the Radio and Rage Against the Machine. In the September issue of Relix Trey Anastasio talks about the decision to interpret these compositions as well as other aspects of the group's June and July shows. With the next leg of the tour beginning tonight in Berkeley at the Greek, we 'vedecided to share some of Trey's insight into the process by which these songs made it to the stage. Anastasio acknowledges that the suggestion to cover these groups was his idea, adding, "Sometimes I will just walk in after listening to something on the bus and say "Fish have you heard this tune? have you listened to TV on the Radio? They're great." Next thing you know I'm at the computer looking up the lyrics and I will read them and go "this is a great song – oh man, I'd love to sing this song" and then there's a set up backstage, drums and stuff and the four of us will go over there and we'll start playing it and if it sounds good, we'll play it that night. It's almost like a skill that you learn."

http://www.jambands.com/news/2010/08/05/trey-anastasio-talks-about-new-phish-material/ (http://www.jambands.com/news/2010/08/05/trey-anastasio-talks-about-new-phish-material/)

QuoteIn the next issue of Relix, Trey Anastasio takes some time to look at the music that the band performed on the first leg of its summer tour. The guitarist's comments certainly have some bearing on what the group might well do when it kicks off the second leg of its tour this evening. In terms of new, original songs, Anastasio says in part, "I wrote a couple with Tom Marshall and I also have a friend in New York City now, Amanda Green, who's a Broadway songwriter. She and I have written three songs in the past couple of weeks. We actually just got an email from a band that wants to cover one of them. She and I wrote 'Burn that Bridge' and there's a song called 'Julie' that I think we're going to do on the next leg of the Phish tour. Phish already learned it, but just haven't done it yet."

So perhaps "Julie" will makes it debut tonight at the Greek. In the interim, for a bit more on what may follow, check out this additional account on Relix.com.

Julie = Jennifer Dances

Can't wait to dance to Broadway show tunes.  :evil:

http://www.thesoundla.com/?nid=27&sid=2004 (http://www.thesoundla.com/?nid=27&sid=2004)

audio of interview with mike

edit:

wow, he says trey had the idea of inviting derek trucks to play slide for the costume set.

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 08:57:25 PM
wow, he says trey had the idea of inviting derek trucks to play slide for the costume set.

:-o

That would have been nuts

damn that would have been awesome!

Cool interview though. 

Doesn't sound like the west coast will be getting any extended love anytime soon...

Quote from: JPhishman on November 11, 2010, 09:23:59 PM
damn that would have been awesome!

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on November 11, 2010, 09:09:35 PM

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 08:57:25 PM
wow, he says trey had the idea of inviting derek trucks to play slide for the costume set.

:-o

That would have been nuts

we're not as "savvy" as we think we are tho cuz we should have known what album they were doing by how they were playing the month leading up to the show.  :roll:

good one mike.  :clap:

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 09:55:25 PM
we're not as "savvy" as we think we are tho cuz we should have known what album they were doing by how they were playing the month leading up to the show.  :roll:

good one mike.  :clap:

just heard that and lol'd
not really.

you think you're so savvy.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on November 11, 2010, 09:09:35 PM

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 08:57:25 PM
wow, he says trey had the idea of inviting derek trucks to play slide for the costume set.

:-o

That would have been nuts

:lol: I wondered about this possibility out loud shortly before the set started--I think I said it to Pie-Guy. And it would have been  :crazy:.

Seemed to me that WFC was heavily rumored (along with Led Zep and King Crimson) before halloween.

I certainly wasn't surprised when the news became official.

mike takes a couple of subtle pokes at phish in there, calling them his 'second' band and what not....and i have heard him do that a lot in the last few years.

it seems like he has done a 360; going from the last hold-out and most vocal opposition to the breakup in '04, to kinda the most...arrogant, i guess, about them being back together...like he is doing the band some kinda of favor.

what a prick.

he sucks.

fucking douche nozel.

mike, lol.

I surely wouldn't mind some new stuff from Mike and Leo coming up.

but


Phish doesn't like the west coast.

:evil:

Quote from: JustJezmund on November 11, 2010, 10:17:58 PM
Phish doesn't like the west coast.

dude, you think we can't decode that?
that obviously means

Mike doesn't like The Phish.

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:20:48 PM

Quote from: JustJezmund on November 11, 2010, 10:17:58 PM
Phish doesn't like the west coast.

dude, you think we can't decode that?
that obviously means

Mike doesn't like The Phish.

it's true.

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:20:48 PM
Mike doesn't like The Phish.

Word is.... Mike wants the band to break up.



..... and Page has Parkinson's.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on November 11, 2010, 10:24:15 PM

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:20:48 PM
Mike doesn't like The Phish.

Word is.... Mike wants the band to break up.

don't be surprised.

Quote from: mirthbeatenworker on November 11, 2010, 10:25:47 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on November 11, 2010, 10:24:15 PM

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:20:48 PM
Mike doesn't like The Phish.

Word is.... Mike wants the band to break up.

don't be surprised.

MGB4LYFE!!!
(west coast style)

---

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on November 11, 2010, 10:24:15 PM

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:20:48 PM
Mike doesn't like The Phish.

Word is.... Mike wants the band to break up.

reminds me of a conversation i was having the other day:
which 2 members of phish do you think get along the least?

you guys are way to savvy for me. :-P

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:27:07 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on November 11, 2010, 10:24:15 PM

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:20:48 PM
Mike doesn't like The Phish.

Word is.... Mike wants the band to break up.

reminds me of a conversation i was having the other day:
which 2 members of phish do you think get along the least?

trey and page.

really??

think about it some more...

said bassist and Big Red?

hmmmmmm

I don't much like thinking about that......

Quote from: mirthbeatenworker on November 11, 2010, 10:23:42 PM

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:20:48 PM

Quote from: JustJezmund on November 11, 2010, 10:17:58 PM
Phish doesn't like the west coast.

dude, you think we can't decode that?
that obviously means

Mike doesn't like The Phish.

it's true.

You know what he does like though. .  .     cupcakes.

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:31:09 PM
really??

think about it some more...

well, mike has trey on his 'hero's' section of his blog.
i have video evidence of my theory coming soon....

Quote from: JPhishman on November 11, 2010, 10:33:30 PM
I don't much like thinking about that......

it is kinda weird to think about & i hesitated even mentioning it but there's gotta be a correct answer, right?

I already can't wait for Phish 4.0

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on November 11, 2010, 10:35:11 PM
I already can't wait for Phish 4.0 Mike Gordon Band 2.0

I don't see Page and Fish having much in common, and obviously they don't like being next to each other on stage.   :wink:

Quote from: mirthbeatenworker on November 11, 2010, 10:35:03 PM
i have video evidence of my theory coming soon....

:::popcorn:::

This is now off the current topic of who hates who more in the band ... but i'd like to interject that I, too, think it would have been very neat if Derek Trucks had played with the boys on 10/31.

That is all.

(I'm a huge Derek Trucks fan)

Quote from: Hicks on November 11, 2010, 10:36:24 PM
I don't see Page and Fish having much in common, and obviously they don't like being next to each other on stage.   :wink:

That was my initial thought cuz Page sees Fish as all "left of center"

but I bet they are all good and appreciate each other.

Quote from: McGrupp on November 11, 2010, 10:39:02 PM
This is now off the current topic of who hates who more in the band ... but i'd like to interject that I, too, think it would have been very neat if Derek Trucks had played with the boys on 10/31.

That is all.

(I'm a huge Derek Trucks fan)

Shut up and decide who hates who the most.

I say everyone hates Trey the most because all the fans like him most.

Quote from: JPhishman on November 11, 2010, 10:40:50 PM
but I bet they are all good and appreciate each other.

mike DEF says NO.

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:41:32 PM

Quote from: JPhishman on November 11, 2010, 10:40:50 PM
but I bet they are all good and appreciate each other.

mike DEF says NO.

Is the answer, "Mike hates everyone"?

wow.
this engaging debate might have some serious potential.

is it thread worthy?

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:44:24 PM
wow.
this engaging debate might have some serious potential.

is it thread worthy?

Either way, we need more cupcake content.

i think i know why he loves cupcakes so much.
but that's all i'm sayin.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on November 11, 2010, 10:41:07 PM

Quote from: McGrupp on November 11, 2010, 10:39:02 PM
This is now off the current topic of who hates who more in the band ... but i'd like to interject that I, too, think it would have been very neat if Derek Trucks had played with the boys on 10/31.

That is all.

(I'm a huge Derek Trucks fan)

Shut up and decide who hates who the most.

I say everyone hates Trey the most because all the fans like him most.

fans like trey most? :-o

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:44:24 PM
wow.
this engaging debate might have some serious potential.

is it thread worthy?

def poll worthy.

Quote from: mirthbeatenworker on November 11, 2010, 10:47:25 PM

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:44:24 PM
wow.
this engaging debate might have some serious potential.

is it thread worthy?

def poll worthy.

i voted

Quote from: JustJezmund on November 11, 2010, 10:47:02 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on November 11, 2010, 10:41:07 PM

Quote from: McGrupp on November 11, 2010, 10:39:02 PM
This is now off the current topic of who hates who more in the band ... but i'd like to interject that I, too, think it would have been very neat if Derek Trucks had played with the boys on 10/31.

That is all.

(I'm a huge Derek Trucks fan)

Shut up and decide who hates who the most.

I say everyone hates Trey the most because all the fans like him most.

fans like trey most? :-o

yes.

I smell a segway

Quote from: JPhishman on November 11, 2010, 10:50:19 PM
I smell a segway

:clap:

Quote from: JPhishman on November 11, 2010, 10:50:19 PM
I smell a segway

And a boathouse

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 10:37:38 PM

Quote from: mirthbeatenworker on November 11, 2010, 10:35:03 PM
i have video evidence of my theory coming soon....

:::popcorn:::

7:25 of this vid (brutal), though i swear there is another example from the greek where page looks over at trey and just shakes his head  :samurai:

Phish - 8/6/10 "Simple" (http://vimeo.com/14069822)

Quote from: Hicks on November 11, 2010, 10:54:13 PM

Quote from: JPhishman on November 11, 2010, 10:50:19 PM
I smell a segway

And a boathouse

both of these.
__________

interview thread > wtu lost in ny* > who hates who?

*see 12/31 roll call thread

i never noticed how sloppy that mikes was till now.  thanks

Quote from: JustJezmund on November 11, 2010, 11:01:36 PM
i never noticed how sloppy that mikes was till now.  thanks

i'm here to help.  phish hates phish!!!!!!!!!!!   :crazy:

Quote from: mirthbeatenworker on November 11, 2010, 11:05:35 PM

Quote from: JustJezmund on November 11, 2010, 11:01:36 PM
i never noticed how sloppy that mikes was till now.  thanks

i'm here to help.  phish hates phish!!!!!!!!!!!   :crazy:

i'd vote for that.


Where's that poll by the way?

Quote from: JustJezmund on November 11, 2010, 11:07:47 PM
Where's that poll by the way?

hang on..

*serial add multitask goin on over here..

Quote from: redrum on November 11, 2010, 11:13:34 PM

Quote from: JustJezmund on November 11, 2010, 11:07:47 PM
Where's that poll by the way?

hang on..

*serial add multitask goin on over here..

is that some new code for lighting pipes :wink:

yes.

& here ya go >>

http://week4paug.net/on-phish-tour/who-hates-who/new/#new (http://week4paug.net/on-phish-tour/who-hates-who/new/#new)

why have I never seen this until now!? (there's 4 parts)

Phish 10.20.1998 - David Byrne Interview (Part 1) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acE_S_byNqk#)

This interview is awesome!  I've never really heard anything about Scott Herman, Tom Marshal's writing partner?

Also really cool to hear about the recording and songwriting process of Story of the Ghost

this is the most uncomfortable interview ever.

4 akward dudes being interviewed by king akward himself.

Not a true "phish" interview, but I can't think of a better place to post this... Great interview!

http://www.jambands.com/features/2010/11/19/stuart-bogie-phish-fela-and-antibalas-overgrown-garden/ (http://www.jambands.com/features/2010/11/19/stuart-bogie-phish-fela-and-antibalas-overgrown-garden/)

Quote from: mirthbeatenworker on November 18, 2010, 01:29:39 PM
this is the most uncomfortable interview ever.

4 akward dudes being interviewed by king akward himself.

I remember seeing that on TV when it first aired and thougth the same thing.

Could have renamed it Awkward City Limits.

Quote from: Mr Minor on November 22, 2010, 01:46:06 PM

Quote from: mirthbeatenworker on November 18, 2010, 01:29:39 PM
this is the most uncomfortable interview ever.

4 akward dudes being interviewed by king akward himself.

I remember seeing that on TV when it first aired and thougth the same thing.

Could have renamed it Awkward City Limits.

:hereitisyousentimentalbastard

Quote from: PIE-GUY on November 22, 2010, 12:27:43 PM
Not a true "phish" interview, but I can't think of a better place to post this... Great interview!

http://www.jambands.com/features/2010/11/19/stuart-bogie-phish-fela-and-antibalas-overgrown-garden/ (http://www.jambands.com/features/2010/11/19/stuart-bogie-phish-fela-and-antibalas-overgrown-garden/)

Interesting read.  Very interesting they asked him to play on the Stones last year.  Glad he didn't.  I thought he was terrible (just my opinion) on WfC this year and would have ruined the Stones set last year.  The Dap Kings lineup last year was great.  Should have brought them back this year...

Quote from: Mr Minor on November 22, 2010, 01:49:38 PM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on November 22, 2010, 12:27:43 PM
Not a true "phish" interview, but I can't think of a better place to post this... Great interview!

http://www.jambands.com/features/2010/11/19/stuart-bogie-phish-fela-and-antibalas-overgrown-garden/ (http://www.jambands.com/features/2010/11/19/stuart-bogie-phish-fela-and-antibalas-overgrown-garden/)

Interesting read.  Very interesting they asked him to play on the Stones last year.  Glad he didn't.  I thought he was terrible (just my opinion) on WfC this year and would have ruined the Stones set last year.  The Dap Kings lineup last year was great.  Should have brought them back this year...

a) there was only one maybe two dap kings last year (in the horn section)
b) the dap kings and antibalas were basically the same overlapping bands at one point many years ago
c) you're fucking wrong about them being bad this year

Quote from: rowjimmy on November 22, 2010, 02:56:21 PM

Quote from: Mr Minor on November 22, 2010, 01:49:38 PM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on November 22, 2010, 12:27:43 PM
Not a true "phish" interview, but I can't think of a better place to post this... Great interview!

http://www.jambands.com/features/2010/11/19/stuart-bogie-phish-fela-and-antibalas-overgrown-garden/ (http://www.jambands.com/features/2010/11/19/stuart-bogie-phish-fela-and-antibalas-overgrown-garden/)

Interesting read.  Very interesting they asked him to play on the Stones last year.  Glad he didn't.  I thought he was terrible (just my opinion) on WfC this year and would have ruined the Stones set last year.  The Dap Kings lineup last year was great.  Should have brought them back this year...

a) there was only one maybe two dap kings last year (in the horn section)
b) the dap kings and antibalas were basically the same overlapping bands at one point many years ago
c) you're fucking wrong about them being bad this year

Yup - the trumpet player for Exile also played for WfC... he is a "Dap King" member. The others are all part of the Daptone extended family... and I agree with RJ when it comes to right and wrong (in this case, and, seemingly, in the majority of other cases, but certainly not always).

I do find it difficult to see how anyone could have thought that 2010's costume horn section was "terrible" - they sounded great. 

The horns have a rather loose feel to them on that record, perhaps that was mistaken for horrible.

We can agree to disagree on the sax player.  I enjoyed the WfC set, but he was just not good on his solos, imo.  I didn't have a problem with "horn section" as a whole, just the sax player.  Everyone else was good sounding to me.
If you reread my post, I do not mention anything about anyone else.

Quote from: Mr Minor on November 22, 2010, 03:13:57 PM
We can agree to disagree on the sax player.  I enjoyed the WfC set, but he was just not good on his solos, imo.  I didn't have a problem with "horn section" as a whole, just the sax player.  Everyone else was good sounding to me.
If you reread my post, I do not mention anything about anyone else.

Upon re-reading your post I still thing that you are fucking wrong.

Enjoy.


Pie-Guy, thanks for the link. That was a great read.

Good read, thanks for posting Pieguy!

As far as his solos during WfC, i dont know since i havent heard the set or heard WfC as a record.

But as someone who has seen Antibalas and The DapKings for many years now, and have had chatted with and partied with Stuart, he is an amazing musician, very knowledgeable about music, and an all around good dude.

Well if nothing else, at least we can present our own opinions without curt judgment from others.


Oh, wait..


:shakehead:

Seriously, though. Minor says that dudes solos were no good but they were good. They were exactly what they should have been and well within the spirit of the original record.

He furthur asserts that opinion as a basis for saying that stuart and co. would have sucked on Exile but knowing his work, I can confidently say that they would have played exactly what the gig required... This sort of rock horn stuff is not exactly a challenge for guys like that.

http://www.fretboardjournal.com/podcast/fretboard-journal-podcast-33-mike-gordon-phish?ref=nf (http://www.fretboardjournal.com/podcast/fretboard-journal-podcast-33-mike-gordon-phish?ref=nf)


A little something for those of you who enjoy the phish..... this Gordon interview is straight awesome.

Quote from: rowjimmy on November 22, 2010, 04:51:51 PM
Seriously, though. Minor says that dudes solos were no good but they were good. They were exactly what they should have been and well within the spirit of the original record.

He furthur asserts that opinion as a basis for saying that stuart and co. would have sucked on Exile but knowing his work, I can confidently say that they would have played exactly what the gig required... This sort of rock horn stuff is not exactly a challenge for guys like that.

You're being pretty harsh here.  It's not like he called your wife a cunt. 
::rereads thread::
Yeah, it's not like that.  It comes across like you're taking his disdain for the costume personally, and I can only ask why?  If he thinks it sucks, then he thinks it sucks.  There's a good reason we all go flocking to different types of music, and I'd say this exemplifies it.  Personally, I think it's pretty fucking laughable that you guys are defending the Dap Kings/Antibalas players this way.  Yes, they have talent, but they're no world class, league of their own musicians.  They're solid session players that have made a name for themselves.  It's not like Minor is shitting on Coltrane, Miles, or Monk.  Players that clearly shifted the scope of music.  Calm down, and get over it.  Some people think the costume/people performing it sucks.  Big fucking deal. 

Move on>>>>>>>>>>

Quote from: sophist on November 23, 2010, 06:47:44 AM

Quote from: rowjimmy on November 22, 2010, 04:51:51 PM
Seriously, though. Minor says that dudes solos were no good but they were good. They were exactly what they should have been and well within the spirit of the original record.

He furthur asserts that opinion as a basis for saying that stuart and co. would have sucked on Exile but knowing his work, I can confidently say that they would have played exactly what the gig required... This sort of rock horn stuff is not exactly a challenge for guys like that.

You're being pretty harsh here.  It's not like he called your wife a cunt. 
::rereads thread::
Yeah, it's not like that.  It comes across like you're taking his disdain for the costume personally, and I can only ask why?  If he thinks it sucks, then he thinks it sucks.  There's a good reason we all go flocking to different types of music, and I'd say this exemplifies it.  Personally, I think it's pretty fucking laughable that you guys are defending the Dap Kings/Antibalas players this way.  Yes, they have talent, but they're no world class, league of their own musicians.  They're solid session players that have made a name for themselves.  It's not like Minor is shitting on Coltrane, Miles, or Monk.  Players that clearly shifted the scope of music.  Calm down, and get over it.  Some people think the costume/people performing it sucks.  Big fucking deal. 

Move on>>>>>>>>>>

I don't take it personally, I just think it's a wildly inaccurate position.

The guys are great players and worthy of respect. I think it's more likely that Minor is expecting some Coltrane shit on a rock stage cos he's clearly not expecting the rock solid straight ahead shit they're putting out.

Your perception of them doesn't warrant any respect, nor does mine.  That's beauty and tragedy of subjectivity. 

Quote from: sophist on November 23, 2010, 08:55:48 AM
Your perception of them doesn't warrant any respect, nor does mine.  That's beauty and tragedy of subjectivity.

My perception?

I'm referring to their body of work.

Quote from: rowjimmy on November 23, 2010, 09:00:30 AM

Quote from: sophist on November 23, 2010, 08:55:48 AM
Your perception of them doesn't warrant any respect, nor does mine.  That's beauty and tragedy of subjectivity.

My perception?

I'm referring to their body of work.

Yes, perception.  There's no objective way to judge music, so it boils down to perception, opinion, view point, whatever you want to call it.  You perceive their body of work as good, awesome, face melting, etc.  That's a perception.   

Your entry into this discussion has done nothing but drag it out.

I stand by my position that Mr. Minor needs to re-listen to the performance so that he can revise his judgement.

You stand by your position as an interjecting third party.

Quote from: rowjimmy on November 23, 2010, 09:51:51 AM
Your entry into this discussion has done nothing but drag it out.

I stand by my position that Mr. Minor needs to re-listen to the performance so that he can revise his judgement.

You stand by your position as an interjecting third party.

You're averting the fact that I'm in the right here.  The attention doesn't need to be on me and what I've contributed, it should remain on the fact that it's perfectly valid to think the horn section or sax player did suck with regard to the Waiting For Columbus set.   

Quote from: sophist on November 23, 2010, 10:01:33 AM

Quote from: rowjimmy on November 23, 2010, 09:51:51 AM
Your entry into this discussion has done nothing but drag it out.

I stand by my position that Mr. Minor needs to re-listen to the performance so that he can revise his judgement.

You stand by your position as an interjecting third party.

You're averting the fact that I'm in the right here.  The attention doesn't need to be on me and what I've contributed, it should remain on the fact that it's perfectly valid to think the horn section or sax player did suck with regard to the Waiting For Columbus set.   

No.

It might be valid to say you didn't like his performance. Crazy but valid. But to say that he sucked and that the entire section would have sucked up the Exile set had they been available to play is not valid. It's an egregious extension of an opinion that indicates the person really doesn't know the artists about whom he's speaking.

In my opinion he played well on WFC and anyone who knows what he and they do would not be able to make the assumption that Minor made about Exile.

So again, keep drawing it out. The other guy sure doesn't seem interested in it (nor am I, really as I've explained my point repeatedly now,) not sure why you are.

Now children!

Quote from: qop24 on November 23, 2010, 10:30:53 AM
Now children!

Anybody wants to pick on someone, pick on this kid, cause I ain't watchin' 
(http://i.ytimg.com/vi/BPKUhXkP7tY/0.jpg)

Quote from: qop24 on November 23, 2010, 10:30:53 AM
Now children!

Pipe down, junior!

The grownups are talking.

Quote from: rowjimmy on November 23, 2010, 10:34:58 AM

Quote from: qop24 on November 23, 2010, 10:30:53 AM
Now children!

Pipe down, junior!

The grownups are talking.

HMPH!  - stomps back up to my room -

Quote from: qop24 on November 23, 2010, 10:41:45 AM

Quote from: rowjimmy on November 23, 2010, 10:34:58 AM

Quote from: qop24 on November 23, 2010, 10:30:53 AM
Now children!

Pipe down, junior!

The grownups are talking.

HMPH!  - stomps back up to my room -

You'd better not slam that door again!

Quote from: rowjimmy on November 23, 2010, 10:42:54 AM

Quote from: qop24 on November 23, 2010, 10:41:45 AM

Quote from: rowjimmy on November 23, 2010, 10:34:58 AM

Quote from: qop24 on November 23, 2010, 10:30:53 AM
Now children!

Pipe down, junior!

The grownups are talking.

HMPH!  - stomps back up to my room -

You'd better not slam that door again!

- slams door -

No not the belt again!

'sup.  What's been happening since I left this thread yesterday?

:evil:

Everyone behaving themselves around here?

Quote from: Mr Minor on November 23, 2010, 10:45:57 AM
'sup.  What's been happening since I left this thread yesterday?

:evil:

Everyone behaving themselves around here?

YOU'RE NOT MY DAD AND I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU!  I HATE YOU!

Quote from: kellerb on November 23, 2010, 12:01:48 PM

Quote from: Mr Minor on November 23, 2010, 10:45:57 AM
'sup.  What's been happening since I left this thread yesterday?

:evil:

Everyone behaving themselves around here?

YOU'RE NOT MY DAD AND I DON'T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU!  I HATE YOU!

Wait.  Let me do the math...how old are you again?

Carry the one, and...


Sorry I missed your birthday again this year, son.

Nice little Mike interview in Hidden Track today...

http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/interview-mike-gordon%E2%80%99s-balancing-act/ (http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/interview-mike-gordon%E2%80%99s-balancing-act/)

favorite quote from this one:

QuoteMaybe that's why I'm sort of growing a beard, but not really

Thanks for posting  :beers:

Quote from: PIE-GUY on November 30, 2010, 01:17:03 PM
Nice little Mike interview in Hidden Track today...

http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/interview-mike-gordon%E2%80%99s-balancing-act/ (http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/interview-mike-gordon%E2%80%99s-balancing-act/)

So, Mike Gordon solo tours are now officially longer than Phish tours, eh?  :|

just came across this, had to share.
u may have to blockout the overdub if u dont know french..
(eventho i think most of us are pretty good at "listening to jerry")

Jerry Garcia - French Interview - June 21, 1971 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs0KQUF2zrg#)

great interview of Sco, talking about his blues and rock influences

http://jazzamatazz.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/1664/#more-1664

Listening to some random radio interview before 11-24-98..

Mike says the original plans for the Millennium show was HAWAII!

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on April 07, 2011, 05:16:12 PM
Listening to some random radio interview before 11-24-98..

Mike says the original plans for the Millennium show was HAWAII!

I'll take "How You Know I Wasn't Seeing Shows in '98" for $100, Alex.
:wink:

Quote from: G. Augusto on April 07, 2011, 05:20:02 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on April 07, 2011, 05:16:12 PM
Listening to some random radio interview before 11-24-98..

Mike says the original plans for the Millennium show was HAWAII!

I'll take "How You Know I Wasn't Seeing Shows in '98" for $100, Alex.
:wink:

98 was a busy year for me.

The epic Lego castle wasn't going to build itself.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on April 07, 2011, 05:25:27 PM

Quote from: G. Augusto on April 07, 2011, 05:20:02 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on April 07, 2011, 05:16:12 PM
Listening to some random radio interview before 11-24-98..

Mike says the original plans for the Millennium show was HAWAII!

I'll take "How You Know I Wasn't Seeing Shows in '98" for $100, Alex.
:wink:

98 was a busy year for me.

The epic Lego castle wasn't going to build itself.

Brah!
Backstage that night and saw my first lot fight that involved a gun before the show.

(http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/mudtheotter/1998-11-24Aftershow-2.png)

Quote from: G. Augusto on April 07, 2011, 05:31:02 PM
Brah!
Backstage that night and saw my first lot fight that involved a gun before the show.

Nice, sounds bad ass.

Just listened to this show yesterday and today.  Real groovy.

I stumbled upon this interview between Robert Fripp and John McLaughlin. It's ridiculous. Conversation about music between two absolute geniuses.

http://www.elephant-talk.com/wiki/Interview_with_John_McLaughlin_by_Robert_Fripp_in_Musician

Quote from: danje on October 30, 2012, 09:07:03 PM
I stumbled upon this interview between Robert Fripp and John McLaughlin. It's ridiculous. Conversation about music between two absolute geniuses.

http://www.elephant-talk.com/wiki/Interview_with_John_McLaughlin_by_Robert_Fripp_in_Musician

Thanks for the link.  That's pretty nuts.  The two of them are a little bit off their rocker.

Quote from: khalpin on October 31, 2012, 08:52:07 AM

Quote from: danje on October 30, 2012, 09:07:03 PM
I stumbled upon this interview between Robert Fripp and John McLaughlin. It's ridiculous. Conversation about music between two absolute geniuses.

http://www.elephant-talk.com/wiki/Interview_with_John_McLaughlin_by_Robert_Fripp_in_Musician

Thanks for the link.  That's pretty nuts.  The two of them are a little bit off their rocker.

I thought that was pretty interesting, +K for the link.

probably the best interview of Derek that I've read

http://www.americanbluesscene.com/2012/11/derek-trucks-difference-between-discipline-obsession/

^ good read.

saw this today, another interesting interview with James Murphy

http://www.exberliner.com/articles/rock-star-retirement/

New interview with Mike:

http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html (http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html)

Quote from: PG on November 06, 2013, 01:13:42 PM
New interview with Mike:

http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html (http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html)

Thanks.  I loved reading that.

Quote from: mbw on November 06, 2013, 07:16:34 PM

Quote from: PG on November 06, 2013, 01:13:42 PM
New interview with Mike:

http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html (http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html)

Thanks.  I loved reading that.

thanks for posting

QuoteIn other words, maybe back in the day it was more important for us to play in odd time signatures — to play in 13 and have lyrics about strange monsters from other galaxies or whatever, and have epic songs that segue from one to the next. For me, I really enjoy a simple — I wouldn't say pop song because pop, I don't know what pop means now, but I guess that term works from over the decades. You know, just that really simple rock song or pop song with really simple chords and simple lyrics. And if that can be made fresh and unique and true to my personality, then it's going to be more Mike than the crazy stuff. So anyway, that's what I think.

Quote from: mbw on November 06, 2013, 07:16:34 PM

Quote from: PG on November 06, 2013, 01:13:42 PM
New interview with Mike:

http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html (http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html)

Thanks.  I loved reading that.

Quote from: Lifeboy on November 07, 2013, 02:29:06 AM

Quote from: mbw on November 06, 2013, 07:16:34 PM

Quote from: PG on November 06, 2013, 01:13:42 PM
New interview with Mike:

http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html (http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html)

Thanks.  I loved reading that.

Quote from: mbw on November 06, 2013, 07:16:34 PM

Quote from: PG on November 06, 2013, 01:13:42 PM
New interview with Mike:

http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html (http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html)

Thanks.  I loved reading that.

Quote from: mbw on November 06, 2013, 07:16:34 PM

Quote from: PG on November 06, 2013, 01:13:42 PM
New interview with Mike:

http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html (http://7d.blogs.com/liveculture/2013/11/an-interview-with-phishs-mike-gordon.html)

Thanks.  I loved reading that.

new Mike interview...

http://gothamist.com/2014/02/07/phish_mike_gordon_cactus.php (http://gothamist.com/2014/02/07/phish_mike_gordon_cactus.php)

Quote
gothamist.com
Phish Bassist Mike Gordon Reveals Where All Points Lead

    by John Del Signore
    Feb. 7, 2014
 

Mike Gordon, the unflappable and adorably idiosyncratic bassist for the unstoppable rock band Phish, may be pushing fifty, but like the group that made him (sort of) famous, he's still determined to break new ground. Your average middle age millionaire rocker might be content to coast along as a nostalgia act, but this month Gordon releases his fourth solo album and hits the road with his band and an arsenal of compelling new material. Overstep, which drops February 25th, is a slightly reggae-dusted sunburst of uptempo tunes packed with eclectic instruments, very danceable grooves, and vivid lyrics that sometimes sound surprisingly personal, at least by Gordon's standards. (This is still the man who wants to come to your house and weigh all the prickly hairs stuck to your razor.)

The inimitable Gordon and his excellent four-piece band will be in NYC on March 1st for a gig at Webster Hall—if you're curious, check out the opening track off the new album for free here. This week he spoke with us via telephone from his home in Vermont, where he says he's happily spending as much time with his five-year-old daughter as possible before getting back out on the road again.

I actually left you an awkward voice mail message on your hotline a couple weeks ago. I hadn't called in a long time, and just for some reason called on a whim and was able to leave a message, which is rare and always disarming, because you're like "Oh no, now I have to try to say something that isn't totally awkward." I failed. What's the ratio of awkward to actually illuminating messages on the hotline? There's all kinds, and 'awkward' isn't the only way things go bad. Some of the people are the meanderers; it's definitely a journal for them and they probably don't care whether I'm listening or not—although I am, I usually listen to everything. And yeah, there's definitely some awkward on there.

But you know what, here's the interesting thing: there are regular callers, the interesting people, the boring people, but what I've found if that when someone gets on and says, "Um, I'm a first-time caller, I don't really know what to say," my first inclination is "Oh, I'll just hang up, this is going to go nowhere." And I've found that those are the situations, ironically, where people stumble upon some nugget of wisdom that changes my day. I think because they didn't know, that sometimes their openness from not knowing what they're going to say lands them on something more genuine than if they've had it all planned out.

Maybe that's a good way to segue into your creative process! On this album, in the first song, "Ether," there's the lyric, "I found a good way to get my head unwound." Is that a reference to your approach to songwriting? That's interesting, I hadn't actually made that direct connection, but yeah! In a way yes, because I'm such a first-born, making millions of lists and having file cabinets since I was five years old and typed documents from when I was five years old and I'm an archivist and a perfectionist and all those horrible things. It's amazing that I ever get anything done, especially with music—or maybe it's the arts in general—where you want to follow your muse, there's a "letting go" that's hard to do for such an organization-person.

You know, having a mom who's an artist, a painter, and a dad who's a businessman—maybe that's where my split personality comes from, where I want to let go, I want to get my head unwound, and I really enjoy that as maybe my favorite stuff in life. But I feel like I get as much or even more enjoyment from the organizing and the file cabinets or all the musical ideas I've ever head, putting them on a tape and playing them for Scott [Murawski, guitarist and longtime collaborator].

Years ago [Phish drummer] Jon Fishman said something to me that meant a lot, that was inspiring for me. He said, "You know, when Trey's writing songs, even if it's a fugue that he's spending three years composing, he's jumping up and down and dancing. He's throwing it into his body, he's throwing it into his soul." And you know really, I have a lot of respect for that. It was years ago that that comment was made, but I've thought a lot about that. There have been times when I've been backstage warming up by myself and I turn off the lights and it's almost a mini-jam session with myself, whisper-quest, just the bass, maybe a metronome. And I thought, this is where some of the best stuff comes up—by myself so there's no pressure, lights are off so no one can look at me, and there's a stream of consciousness that happens. So probably in '07, I started creating these exercises where I forced myself to let go of my mind and see what happens.

And Scott and I have done some of those together and actually, I'm having a little bit of enlightenment here because "Ether" is the perfect song to make that point. Because when we were writing that song, we came up with the lick and the groove and we were going through and cycling—not the beat or anything, just the main lick—and we taped 20 minutes of it and we took two microphones, and we just went back and forth, back and forth making stuff up, around the concept of floating in the ether for 20 minutes.

Most of it was completely unusable and plenty laughable but some was usable, and the way the song is...it's pretty unusual, it's pretty whacked. But that's the point, this guy's getting more and more unhinged. But that was kind of happening in the songwriting because that's what we were doing. We said, 'we're gonna throw out the lists of ideas at this point,' and we were gonna force ourselves—when you have a microphone and the tape is rolling and you're supposed to come up with something fresh every couple of bars, there's no time to think. It's just whatever comes out comes out.


And on "Long Black Line," there's that lyric, "I'm trying to kick these spinning thoughts I've known." Do you meditate, or is there something else that inspired lyrics like that? There's probably a long string of inspirations for that one line that aren't necessarily recent. I've done meditation on and off over the years, and I haven't been doing it lately, but I've been very inclined to get back into it lately. I used to be, in my hardest part of life, a very obsessive person, so the spinning thoughts of life is a feeling I know, as does anyone who knows the feeling of not being able to stop thoughts.

And actually, at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, Mass. there's this beginners session on Tuesdays that's always packed. I've gone a couple times and what she says—she guides you through and explains the reasons for meditation, and she says that they don't want you to stop thinking, because thoughts are tools that you use. You don't want your thoughts to get a grasp, to strangle you. You should be able to see them as clouds passing over in the sky. You can latch on to some if you want, and take them, but they're not getting the best of you. "Long Black Line," which originally started with an entirely different theme, got more personal in that way, in that maybe it's someone just contemplating their life and maybe having regrets.

Were there any regrets in particular you were thinking about? That's interesting because I don't think it's autobiographical, except it is in many, many little ways. Every song that feels worth pursuing has personal resonances. I do feel like the person in the song, overall, has some regrets, and this person, Mike, overall does not. I've been extremely thankful, I've been in Vermont getting ready for the album release and the tour, feeling so excited, and spending tons of time with my 5-year-old daughter skiing and playing chess, and spending time with my wife, and I've just been feeling so happy!

So, the "Long Black Line" person somehow screwed up, and they're so far away. The Long Black Line is a place in Columbia. It's this triangle of mountain ridges by the ocean, so this person walking is really far away from civilization, so whatever life that they're imagining that they didn't follow through with is really long gone. It's important to explore some dark themes whether you're having a dark phase or not, and it's probably the other way around, too. It's probably good to explore some bright things when you're in a dark phase; life is more balanced when you have both.


Maybe it's some version of you in a different part of the multiverse, who made different choices. It could be in a sense. A portion of my personality is imagining being alone and distant from the other portions. It's an archetype, a Jungian archetype. But Scott was involved too; in fact, that song might have started from Scott. There was this guy Pat Pattison, who was Gillain Welch's teacher at Berklee, and he recommends this exercise called Object Writing; it's a stream-of-consciousness thing. Really, it's just one piece of the puzzle where you bring your ideas, musical ideas, lyrical ideas, whatever they are, and Object Writing has been really helpful to me to connect things I'm doing now to things in the past; it's really pretty cool. I suggested it for Phish, and they've been doing it too.

When you were in preparation for the new Phish album? A little bit, yeah. It's kind of a way of going deep inside. It's stream-of-consciousness with a method; with a few rules that help you to get at stuff that resonates. It's interesting too, thinking about "Long Black Line" or "Ether" because who knows why they're floating; it seems like probably drugs. And I mean, I'm not doing too many drugs these days, I'll get a cocktail when I have a date night with my wife and I'll have three sips, that's my drug. And yet, I really am into the idea of people playing with their consciousness, whether it's meditation or safely using drugs or dreams or jam sessions or whatever it is, just trying to explore what's in there. So in "Ether," the idea of someone floating and floating and floating, I feel like that's not me either, but I love the song and feel like I relate to it so much. Maybe that's what it is: we have our archetypes and we write songs to allow the dormant parts to play themselves out.

"Peel" is the song that really stood out for me; the vocals reminded me of Radiohead a bit, like you could hear Thom Yorke covering this in a different dimension. I love that one. It all came from Scott, originally, and the bridge came from me, but the inclinations, both musical and lyrical originally started from Scott. Although, there are early demos of me singing it and I loved singing it, so it was a little bit hard to let go of singing lead on it, but then I just so much love Scott's voice and how tragic-sounding it is. And the idea of using no reverb on it; it's how it was on the demo but it's intentional, and even more so when it gets to the chorus; it's just basked in reverb and it feels like the microphone was on the other side of the room, and suddenly the chorus ends and we're back to the verse. I see it as like a movie scene almost, and I keep picturing this vast warehouse and we're all in the middle singing together. It's completely dark, and it's 10,000 feet of warehouse and it's empty...you know, there are two such warehouses that actually come to mind.

One, I don't know if anyone's seen Inland Empire, the David Lynch movie. I've seen some weird movies, but that's probably the single weirdest movie I've ever seen. I actually saw it twice in the theater, and I was with Jared Slomoff, and we share so much in common, but he walked out. And then I saw it a second time with Jon Fishman, and he loved it. But anyway, when Laura Dern is sitting in the studio and they're just looking at the script and time has warped in on itself, and Harry Dean Stanton panhandling in the background with nothing going on... Actually, we were doing overdubs for the album in Hopkinton, Mass. in a barn, and I realized that my dad had this building that he owned with a lot of different investors, along with myself and my brother. It was this huge warehouse 45 minutes away from where we were recording and I remember thinking 'shoot, should we just go there?' We didn't actually end up going and we didn't need to, because that was the vibe. "The vastness is around you, but it's so distant with echoes and then I'm so close; unable to climb into the world."

Scott and I, often when we were having these Skype sessions, we would turn it into a therapy session. It's not that we wanted the song to sound too personal, it's that we wanted the song to resonate for both of us. We were kind of looking for what related to the issues of the song we were working on in a deep way for each of us. And for "Peel," we had a lot of sessions.

It was an interesting code to kind of crack into, because we didn't want to spell it out either. We got very specific with stories from our lives and then wanted to take away being so specific in the end. But, what does it mean to peel layers? All I know is in the demos it sounded so tragic, in a great way. I really loved the yearning quality of the song, and we knew we had to keep that feeling, so we were kind of looking back over our lives, the tragic yearning passages, and relating that back to everything you could peel from an orange to your soul and whatever that means. It was just really interesting trying to philosophize about that together to see what would come out. Anyway.

What's that whooshing sound in the background of the song, is it synthesized? It's hard for me to describe. There are a lot of sound-effects on the demo, and we have no idea how the hell they got there because we have drum machines, pots and pans, whatever, but they were all on the other side of the room. We were recording with three or four instruments at once and then going on to the next track, and so we just decided that we needed to recreate the same kinds of feelings and sounds that wound up on the demo.

And one of them, the one you're referring to—and actually we're working on a behind-the-scenes video of the process of making the album that I think people will enjoy a lot—I used this instrument the microKorg a lot, which is a Korg synth that's more for portability. They make two; one of them is analog and one's digital and the analog one is more like the real deal. I've been using the digital one a lot; it's sample-based and it's not as organic because it's just fake sounds. I had this idea where we were adding all sorts of sound effects, there was a penny whistle, frame drums, and then I just started screaming into the vocoder, but it doesn't come out as a scream. It comes out as whatever note I was playing as I was screaming. And the idea was to aim the vocoder into the speaker and let it feed back. It doesn't feed back like a guitar feeds back because there's not a complete feedback loop, but that's the air sound that you're talking about I think.


It'll be interesting to hear how this will materialize live. I have to ask you about the New Year's Eve Phish show at the Garden; I just thought it was beautiful how you guys played on the roof of that truck with your old instruments. How did you feel doing that? Were there technical challenges? I had one technical challenge which was really difficult, which was that Trey's guitar amp and my left amp was really loud and there was nothing we could do about it. He didn't realize it because his legs are by his speaker, and I really got hurt in my ear. But otherwise no, it went really smooth. I really liked jamming, and there were two bass amps, the larger of which I didn't even end up using. I used my high school bass amp. It didn't sound bad, and it was more convenient to use the little teeny tiny one, which was only about a foot-and-a-half tall. But I loved the sound up there and having the people so close, and I thought that the jamming was good, and I was playing the Languedoc bass, and it had a nice cutting sound that was maybe a little less full range, but that allowed it to kind of "speak" in the little mix that we had going on stage. Other than blood dripping out of my left ear, it was a really good experience.

Seriously? No, just figuratively.

So there was this rumor going around that the reason why no covers were played during the four night run was because of something Billy Joel said, because he was supposedly upset he couldn't play the Garden on New Year's because Phish keeps booking it. And the rumor was that he said, 'Phish is just a second rate cover band.' The flames of this rumor were fanned by a Tom Marshall tweet. Really? I met Billy Joel once and he was really nice, but I haven't heard anything about that. I know he was playing a lot at the Garden but I didn't know he was looking for those dates.

Was it a conscious decision not to play any covers over the four nights? Yeah, I think so, and not only that but to play stuff that we could really jam out on. When you're in a new or different situation like that, there's a tendency to go for the novelty and just stick with the silly stuff and make it a nostalgic thing, making it like some little things that used to be when we were on stages that small. But rather than doing that, we said we're going to go for the real deal. We're going to do originals that can jam, that can be long, that it's not going to be a second-rate novel experience, it's going to be a moving experience, and so I think the whole thing was pretty cool.

Do you think that your solo work has informed the dynamic of the band? You've got two of your own songs on the new Phish album. Has your solo work made you more assertive? It probably gives me confidence, and gives me more to bring to the table, as a personality, because I'm more used to bringing in my ideas. Although, I've had two songs on a Phish album on occasion. It's not that it's three songs. Actually what's pretty exciting is that we all wrote together so intimately, the Phish guys, so it's not just those two songs that I played a role in.

What I'm especially happy for is how my Phish career informs my other career; having musical experiences that after 30 years run pretty deep and that I can remember as I get on my own stage. I mean, I want to have a different experience from Phish or it's pointless, but at the same time there are so many musical inspirations that I get from Phish, that often I'll just call Scott and I'll share them, these inspirations, and say, "Oh, we did this Phish thing." Because I want to be inspired. For me, all points lead to my stage with my band; the rest of my life just feeds that and my time with my family.

Last question, because I know we're out of time. What was the inspiration for the title of the album, Overstep? I will say that it was going to be called Jet Pack, and we had a lot of other ideas too. When we couldn't decide about Jet Pack, Scott and I got on Skype, and we interviewed each other. I said, "Okay, Scott, it's 12 years from now and you've become a filmmaker, you're at Cannes with your film, and you bump into Martin Scorsese who reflects on how you used to be a musician and you had an album called Jet Pack! Does that feel good?" That wasn't getting anywhere, and he was doing the same thing for me, and we were just talking ourselves in circles. So then, we just stayed on Skype and played the whole album, and basically what happened was the album told us. We didn't have to say anything, we just knew. The album told us that it wanted to be called Overstep. We had several other titles, but ultimately the thing you're making tells you what it wants, I think.

looooong radio interview fish.  dear god he can talk.
radio guy doesnt know how to work the radio too.

they take callers.  one guy asks him if he things song placement is stale, to which he is mostly oblivious.
another guy asks what happened to the second jam in mikes song and he is very oblivious to that.

http://www.jambase.com/Articles/121999/Audio-Jon-Fishman-Talks-Phish-With-Radio-Free-Rockland

Someone needs to start a petition to bring back the 2nd jam in Mike's..

Prolly get A LOT of signatures..

Quote from: GBL on June 20, 2014, 10:38:46 PM
Someone needs to start a petition to bring back the 2nd jam in Mike's..

Prolly get A LOT of signatures..

Do it. I'll sign that.

That'd be awesome if they did that again. It's kinda what made Mike's song awesome as shit.

Trey and Page on NPR.

http://www.npr.org/2014/06/22/323211995/how-does-a-jam-band-write-songs-we-asked-phish (http://www.npr.org/2014/06/22/323211995/how-does-a-jam-band-write-songs-we-asked-phish)

Quote from: PG on June 22, 2014, 10:34:17 PM
Trey and Page on NPR.

http://www.npr.org/2014/06/22/323211995/how-does-a-jam-band-write-songs-we-asked-phish (http://www.npr.org/2014/06/22/323211995/how-does-a-jam-band-write-songs-we-asked-phish)

I'm no fan of musicians talking about their new album when it's the playing in the background at the same time.

Not sure this was posted anywhere. I saw it for the first time tonight.

http://youtu.be/XgXfPhlu9P8 (http://youtu.be/XgXfPhlu9P8)

Cool stuff.
Thanks

Quote from: rowjimmy on July 16, 2014, 08:36:12 AM
Cool stuff.
Thanks

WTF. I am allowed to see the boys doing their 3.0 stuff, but I can't watch the interview ...

Quote
The uploader has not made this video available in your country.
Sorry about that.

Quote from: rowjimmy on July 16, 2014, 08:36:12 AM
Cool stuff.
Thanks

good stuff

im glad trey wanted to state "for the record" he knows ppl were pissed as shit they had to sit through 12 new songs instead of zeppelin album  :hereitisyousentimentalbastard

and I love the CO talk at the end. "magic in the air"  :roll:

Quote from: mopper_smurf on July 16, 2014, 02:19:21 PM

Quote from: rowjimmy on July 16, 2014, 08:36:12 AM
Cool stuff.
Thanks

WTF. I am allowed to see the boys doing their 3.0 stuff, but I can't watch the interview ...

Quote
The uploader has not made this video available in your country.
Sorry about that.

Pfft.  Talk to us when you win the World Cup.  then maybe we'll reconsider.  Too Soon?  :Ducks: 

Quote from: antelope19 on July 18, 2014, 11:23:33 AM

Quote from: mopper_smurf on July 16, 2014, 02:19:21 PM

Quote from: rowjimmy on July 16, 2014, 08:36:12 AM
Cool stuff.
Thanks

WTF. I am allowed to see the boys doing their 3.0 stuff, but I can't watch the interview ...

Quote
The uploader has not made this video available in your country.
Sorry about that.

Pfft.  Talk to us when you win the World Cup.  then maybe we'll reconsider.  Too Soon?  :Ducks:

Why did the fuck did we support your declaration of independence?

Washington Post interview w/ Mike

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/going-out-guide/wp/2014/07/24/balancing-act-keeps-phish-jamming/

Quote"Just making something super-long is cliché for a jam band," he says. "We're looking for little musical motifs with melodies and chord progressions that we've never heard before, ideally fresh to the moment. The idea is not just going and going, but
actually exploring."

Gordo takes his bike out, rides it slowly, rides it just how he likes.

Quote from: gah on July 24, 2014, 05:31:51 PM
Gordo takes his bike out, rides it slowly, rides it just how he likes.

Please tell me he keeps his shirt on.

Quote from: PG on July 24, 2014, 05:55:10 PM

Quote from: gah on July 24, 2014, 05:31:51 PM
Gordo takes his bike out, rides it slowly, rides it just how he likes.

Please tell me he keeps his shirt on.

probably. he's riding with his daughter.

Definitely not an interview - but also not worth its own thread, so I put it here...

http://www.jambase.com/Articles/122476/Mike-Gordon-Answers-Fan-Questions-On-Twitter (http://www.jambase.com/Articles/122476/Mike-Gordon-Answers-Fan-Questions-On-Twitter)

Thanks for posting, Dave.

I forgot about this thread, and I was just wanting to see the one--I think it's from Trey's sit down w/ Charlie Rose in 2004, or maybe the interviews in the IT fest movie?--where he talks about music as a direct, pre-verbal connection to the divine. A bunch of you must have seen this; he says something like "We're insignificant, but part of something larger, and music is a way of speaking right to that larger spirit." I spent an hour scanning youtube and came up w/ 12 minutes of the Charlie Rose thing, but no dice.

Anyone got a clue?

Pretty sure that's on the IT DVD.

Yeah, me too. But it looks like that film was scrubbed off of youtube. Ah, well. I'll dig up my copy of the DVD and watch it when cold weather sets in.

Quote from: sunrisevt on August 18, 2014, 09:26:33 AM
Yeah, me too. But it looks like that film was scrubbed off of youtube. Ah, well. I'll dig up my copy of the DVD and watch it when cold weather sets in.

It's a bit startling how rough Trey looks in those interviews. He's in a sad looking place.

Bump.

Mike in the Cleve Scene.

QuoteI had heard that Prince practices with his band, I don't know, seven hours a day, six days a week — even for years, every week. Even if there's no tour for two years he'll do that," Gordon says. "I was thinking, oh, that's cool.

http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2015/06/12/your-trip-is-short-mike-gordon-on-the-importance-of-doing-things-differently

Not much but some more from the Relix interview with Trey...

http://www.relix.com/news/detail/trey_anastasio_on_phish_were_playing_better_now_than_we_have_a_really_long_time (http://www.relix.com/news/detail/trey_anastasio_on_phish_were_playing_better_now_than_we_have_a_really_long_time)

Quote from: Buffalo Budd on June 24, 2015, 03:09:10 PM
Not much but some more from the Relix interview with Trey...

http://www.relix.com/news/detail/trey_anastasio_on_phish_were_playing_better_now_than_we_have_a_really_long_time (http://www.relix.com/news/detail/trey_anastasio_on_phish_were_playing_better_now_than_we_have_a_really_long_time)

Full (or less edited) interview here: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/trey-anastasio-on-phishs-bond-his-man-cave-and-the-deads-big-gigs-20150624

Quote from: jam> on June 24, 2015, 03:38:43 PM

Quote from: Buffalo Budd on June 24, 2015, 03:09:10 PM
Not much but some more from the Relix interview with Trey...

http://www.relix.com/news/detail/trey_anastasio_on_phish_were_playing_better_now_than_we_have_a_really_long_time (http://www.relix.com/news/detail/trey_anastasio_on_phish_were_playing_better_now_than_we_have_a_really_long_time)

Full (or less edited) interview here: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/trey-anastasio-on-phishs-bond-his-man-cave-and-the-deads-big-gigs-20150624

thanks for that, psyched to hear some  :syf: and  :phish: this Summer. 

Quote from: susep on June 24, 2015, 04:08:48 PM

Quote from: jam> on June 24, 2015, 03:38:43 PM

Quote from: Buffalo Budd on June 24, 2015, 03:09:10 PM
Not much but some more from the Relix interview with Trey...

http://www.relix.com/news/detail/trey_anastasio_on_phish_were_playing_better_now_than_we_have_a_really_long_time (http://www.relix.com/news/detail/trey_anastasio_on_phish_were_playing_better_now_than_we_have_a_really_long_time)

Full (or less edited) interview here: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/trey-anastasio-on-phishs-bond-his-man-cave-and-the-deads-big-gigs-20150624

thanks for that, psyched to hear some  :syf: and  :phish: this Summer.

Gotta love that PNC Chalkdust!

Gotta love the part about practicing five hours a day. I do believe ol' Red is gonna step up to the plate for these FTW shows.

Really curious about how his tone has changed with the rig work he's been doing.

Quote
But there's been a lot of those moments in soundchecks – so many that I sent an e-mail around recently to the three other guys saying we should put [them] out, you know like, "Let people hear some of these soundchecks." Because a lot of times we get to soundcheck, we just get onstage and we start jamming. Nobody's there, nobody's watching, everybody just woke up and kind of came stumbling off the bus. It's kind of a half-dream state.

I do recall hearing an interview w/ Brad Sands from 24Nov.98 New Haven w/ Phish soundchecking in the background, sounded pretty trippy.  definitely wouldn't mind hearing more Phish unhinged.   

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 24, 2015, 06:37:25 PM
Gotta love that PNC Chalkdust!

Which year?

Quote from: jam> on June 25, 2015, 09:21:52 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 24, 2015, 06:37:25 PM
Gotta love that PNC Chalkdust!

Which year?

'Twas a joke. Trey said PNC in the interview but he surely was referring to the Camden 99 version

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 25, 2015, 11:42:04 AM

Quote from: jam> on June 25, 2015, 09:21:52 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 24, 2015, 06:37:25 PM
Gotta love that PNC Chalkdust!

Which year?

'Twas a joke. Trey said PNC in the interview but he surely was referring to the Camden 99 version

exactly.  when they played there in '99 it was the E Centre.  too many corporate name changes at venues these days.  he's mentioned that version in another interview as well back in the day.  love the '99 sonicism before they went Tab heavy in the Fall. 

Quote from: susep on June 25, 2015, 12:03:33 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 25, 2015, 11:42:04 AM

Quote from: jam> on June 25, 2015, 09:21:52 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 24, 2015, 06:37:25 PM
Gotta love that PNC Chalkdust!

Which year?

'Twas a joke. Trey said PNC in the interview but he surely was referring to the Camden 99 version

exactly.  when they played there in '99 it was the E Centre.  too many corporate name changes at venues these days.  he's mentioned that version in another interview as well back in the day.  love the '99 sonicism before they went Tab heavy in the Fall.

Well put.

RJ disses that CDT p hard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grQ8f5oOcY4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grQ8f5oOcY4)

Quote from: susep on June 25, 2015, 12:03:33 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 25, 2015, 11:42:04 AM

Quote from: jam> on June 25, 2015, 09:21:52 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 24, 2015, 06:37:25 PM
Gotta love that PNC Chalkdust!

Which year?

'Twas a joke. Trey said PNC in the interview but he surely was referring to the Camden 99 version

exactly.  when they played there in '99 it was the E Centre.  too many corporate name changes at venues these days.  he's mentioned that version in another interview as well back in the day.  love the '99 sonicism before they went Tab heavy in the Fall.

Different venue.  One's Camden, one's Holmdel.  Not that either venue is anything to write home about.

Graham Nash's book is coming out and here is an excerpt about the eccentricity that is Neil Young.

http://www.thatericalper.com/2013/10/19/awesome-story-how-neil-young-introduced-his-classic-1972-album-harvest-to-graham-nash/ (http://www.thatericalper.com/2013/10/19/awesome-story-how-neil-young-introduced-his-classic-1972-album-harvest-to-graham-nash/)

LOL

thanks for posting

Neil's book left no question to the fact that he is a bizarre individual

Gordo talks onstage fashion (http://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a31212/style-profile-phish-mike-gordon/)

Quote from: VDB on February 10, 2016, 06:49:05 PM
Gordo talks onstage fashion (http://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a31212/style-profile-phish-mike-gordon/)

QuoteThe dress is still around. Yeah, that never went away. That was a ritual too. If he [Jon Fishman, drummer] didn't wear the dress it would be a bad gig. He had a three-piece suit he was wearing at one point too for a while, and those were bad gigs, and so back came the dress.

This was summer '97, and these weren't bad gigs!

Quote from: VDB on February 10, 2016, 06:49:05 PM
Gordo talks onstage fashion (http://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a31212/style-profile-phish-mike-gordon/)

That article is a couple years old at this point. Pretty sure there's a Mike's Gong Twitter account inspired by it.

Quote from: anthrax on February 10, 2016, 09:03:27 PM

Quote from: VDB on February 10, 2016, 06:49:05 PM

QuoteThe dress is still around. Yeah, that never went away. That was a ritual too. If he [Jon Fishman, drummer] didn't wear the dress it would be a bad gig. He had a three-piece suit he was wearing at one point too for a while, and those were bad gigs, and so back came the dress.

This was summer '97, and these weren't bad gigs!

Right?! I remember thinking the same thing when I saw this interview awhile back.  Summer 97 crushed!

He needs to bring back the black dress shirt from Walnut Creek. Talk about a good luck charm.

Cool interview with Trey in Rolling Stone about upcoming tour/album/GD members

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/trey-anastasio-on-new-phish-lp-whether-hell-play-with-the-dead-again-20160526

QuoteTrey Anastasio checks in with Rolling Stone as he's walking down New York's Amsterdam Avenue toward Avatar Studios, where he's deep into work on Phish's next album. It's been just two years since the band's prior full-length, Fuego, and the relatively brief interim reflects the healthy state of the band these days. Expect to hear several of the new songs on Phish's upcoming summer tour, which kicks off June 22nd in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In an unusually long and candid interview, Anastasio talks about the band's current approach to staying creative live, his stint with the Grateful Dead and what exactly happens after Phish step offstage.

SIDEBAR
Phish; Trey Anastasio; night; band; Paisley Park; Obit; Phish Trey Anastasio Recalls Phish's Night Partying With Prince »
How far along is the new Phish record?
It's not as far along as Jon Fishman would like to think! We were laughing really hard. He actually got a little ripping about that. Because he came in and played drums on a few songs and then left to go on Bernie tour. And then we saw this interview: It said, "The Phish record is done!" We were all laughing at his, um, perspective. But it's not done. It sounds really great to me. We're really happy. The band's firing on all cylinders right now, so this is the perfect time to go into the studio. We'll see, but it's been pretty joyous. We're kind of all over the place, flying down to Nashville to work, and then I've been doing a lot of work on overdubs at Avatar, which is in Manhattan, and then we go to Burlington, and worked at the barn, and we're even working at Page's house and Mike's house a little bit.

How has it been to record in Nashville?
Bob Ezrin is producing. He has a little studio down there. He's got a pretty good collection of amps and engineers that he likes working with, so it's advantageous for us to go down there. There's also a studio that we track in called Ronnie's Place. It's got a great-sounding piano and a really good live room, so we tracked Fuego there and we liked it so much that we wanted to go back, so we did basic tracks there.

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Do you think you'll be playing some of those new songs on the road this summer?
I do think we'll be playing them this summer! Actually, contrary to what Fish was saying, a couple of the songs we busted out last year have been tracked for the album. I'm not entirely sure what'll be on there, but I think in the interview he said there weren't any. That's not true. Another reason why we were laughing.

It sounds like everything he says is wrong!
He's focused on Bernie right now. He's doing a lot of concerts with him, having a lot of fun.

I wanted to ask about the tour. How did you feel about the band's playing last summer, and where do you see Phish going this summer?
Well, somewhere around 2014, we really started getting loose again. And I know it's always tricky, because when you read these [tour] previews, and every band that's ever lived is going to say, "The band's never sounded better!" That's what you say.

And then they break up.
But I actually believe that. There's a feeling of unity that is pervasive on tour. When I think about last summer and then in Mexico, and the amount of time that we spent together, and where everybody is in their lives right now, it's pretty magical. And I think that's why it was really important for us to go right into the studio. Everybody's bringing songs to the table. Page brought some great songs, Mike brought some great songs, Fish brought some great songs. I've got a lot of new songs. And everybody's just diving in, in a unified way. And we can't wait to get back on the road. It's going to be a good summer.

A friend who saw Phish last summer said he felt like the jams had a real purpose to them, and were more melodic than in past years.
I'm glad it's not just me. Fish often uses the metaphor where he says, playing up onstage there with the four of us, it feels like you're in a lifeboat, and if somebody falls over the edge into the water, the other three guys stop paddling and pull him back in on a good night. So over a long career, there's always going to be ebbs and flows.

I remember periods where any one of the band members was going through something personal, where you'd be up onstage improvising and you couldn't find him. I'm sure that was me for a while. But it was also the other guys. I remember Mike, when he was going through his divorce and stuff, we'd be jamming and you could almost feel that he couldn't connect in quite the same way. It just feels like everybody's radar is up and their antennae are out onstage. So I think the melodic quality comes from a place of listening. There's a patience and a desire to really hear what the other band members have to say. So you kind of slow down and you reach around with your antenna. "What's Fish thinking? What's Mike thinking? What's Page thinking?" It's a circular thing. And that ties in with place that everybody is in their life, you know?

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we all kind of turned 50. A lot of people say life begins at 50, and I'm feeling it. Everybody's kind of in a good place right now, knock on wood. And there's a lot of concern between the band members for each other. You see it backstage, you see it on the bus, and it kind of spills over into the music, naturally.

You guys seem to be playing more original music than ever in your sets. You're kind of scaling back covers.
Yeah, first of all because we love to. We've always had a lot of fun playing covers, and I'm sure we will continue to. But what was starting to happen was after 2013, 2014, 2015, I would get home and kind of think to myself, "Man, we played, like, 'Guelah Papyrus' once in the last two years." And I like that song. I'm a big "Guelah Papyrus" fan. It's one of my faves. Last year we got home, and and we didn't play "Fluffhead" the whole summer. And that wasn't a conscious thing. We have a lot of good songs, and we have more in the repertoire all the time. But I'm sure this summer we're going to do at least six or seven more [new songs], because we've been making an album. So we're probably going to want to play them. So the original songs have sort of moved to the front burner.

Last summer, you joined the Grateful Dead for their Fare Thee Well shows in California and Chicago. Now that you've had some distance from those shows, what effect did it have on your playing?
It had an effect. It was sort of like doing those Halloween albums. It's really good to be forced out of your box and reevaluate. I had to learn a hundred songs. How could that not be good? You learn melodies; you learn chord progressions that are slightly different than what you would have played.

I played a lot last year, a lot of hours. And you just play better when you play more. We've been off the road now since January. It'll be like seven months of being off the road. I didn't do a TAB tour or anything like that. So I'm really anxious to start playing again. Last year, I did an orchestra tour, a couple of TAB tours, Phish tours and the Fare Thee Well thing. And I love it because by the time we got to New Year's and Mexico, I just felt so loose. And it makes me think back to about 1994, 1995 Phish – if you look at how many shows we played back then, it's a lot. I'd be lying if I didn't say I kinda miss that. I would play more if everybody wanted to.

Phish, Trey Anastasio, Grateful Dead
"I had to learn a hundred songs," Anastasio says of playing with the Grateful Dead. "How could that not be good?" Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty
Is it hard to get Phish together to tour more? It seems like the band has a rhythm of playing certain places at certain times for the last few years.
It feels like a really healthy balance. Fish has five kids that are young right now. Page has three that are young. Mike has one. My daughters are both in college now, so I'm kind of ready to go. But there are usually some conversations that happen when tours are being planned about keeping a healthy balance between family and the band. Going back to the beginning of the conversation, when you say, "Why does it sound more melodic?" or "Why does it sound together?" – I think that's why. Because I think we grew up and we learned how to achieve a little bit of balance. Things got kind of out of balance for a while, for better or for worse. It's all been solved. But it got pretty crazy for a while, and now we've come back to a slightly more mature point of view, and someone usually steps up and says, "Let's not overdo it."

But part of the reasons I often have other projects going on is because I like to play, and you do play better when you play a lot. The last TAB tour was a really good tour, I thought. It felt so loose because I had just spent six months playing four hours a day trying to get ready for Fare Thee Well. That really had an effect.

I did an interview with Bob Weir and he said that the Fare Thee Well lineup has some "unfinished business." He mentioned you guys didn't get to the East Coast. Would you be open to playing with the Dead again?
I'm open all the time. It was definitely a little gigus interruptus [laughs]. There's a lot of practicing for a short run, but I don't know. I had such a good time playing with Bob and hanging out with Bob. I spent a week out at his beach house before the Fare Thee Well tour; the two of us just played. We sat on two little stools in his living room and just played and talked and it was fantastic. He's such a good guy, and really fun. And I got to go to Phil's and spend time with him and his family before the shows. Billy came to New York and played drums with me. So, I mean, I love those guys, and I'm always open. I'm grateful for the opportunity.

How closely have you been watching the election? How do you feel about Bernie Sanders [who called Phish "one of the great bands in America]? What are you thinking watching it play out every night?
I'm a lot quieter than Fish when it comes to that. It's a funny thing. I definitely am watching just as much as everybody else is every night. It's just the way I've always felt. I try really hard to keep my mouth shut when it comes to politics. And I always admired Jimi Hendrix, who would say he didn't really want to go there.

Fish was asking me about it. And I'm from Burlington, so say no more. But if you look closely, I've kind of kept my mouth shut about it. And there's this quote by Jimi Hendrix that I love. I have it in my phone. A Danish journalist invoked the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man" to ask Jimi Hendrix if he was in favor of "the revolution." Hendrix replied, "No, I'm not. At one point you have to choose: the revolution or Frank Sinatra. For me, it was always Frank Sinatra. I want to show people a lot of things. With t-h-i-s." And then, at that point, Jimi Hendrix picked up his guitar and began to play.

I'm watching with curiosity, but I have a very strong resistance to musicians taking a side. Because I feel like music is the one thing in my life that, when the band is playing, it feels so spiritual and so open to inviting everyone into the party that anything where it sounds like I'm being the thought police, or Phish as a band, as an entity, where it's like, "You should think this way," or "You should vote for this guy." Or "If you love Ted Cruz, you should feel bad." I don't feel that way. I feel like what we do for a living is by its nature the antidote to that kind of thing, that this is a place where you come for spirit and not politics. So that's why, if you actually look closely, I haven't publicly supported anyone.

You don't want anything affecting how fans feel when they see you play.
With every passing year, I feel more lucky and blessed and grateful to have the scene that we have. And to be able to do what we do, from a feeling, spirit-and-heart place. You've been to some shows, so you know what I'm talking about. And everybody's welcome. And that's really important to me. And so even though I may have strong feelings, I want that to be sacred. After 30-some-odd years of it, I know that now. I watch people when they're dancing. And I feel what I feel in my heart. I know what Page and I talk about when we walk offstage. And it's bigger than one person. It's bigger than us.

Phish, Trey Anastasio, Grateful Dead
"With every passing year, I feel more lucky and blessed and grateful to have the scene that we have," Anastasio says. Jay Blakesberg/Invision for the Grateful Dead/AP
It sounds like you guys still get excited about touring and spending time together – you're not just going your separate ways after a show.
We're talking a lot. By force of habit, at this point we kind of vacate to get away from the venue. So we move fast. We used to hang out at the venue. We don't anymore. But we usually jump on the bus, and even though we're not on the same bus, we'll start texting and calling and stuff like that. Then we'll get up and go to breakfast or we'll go to the same hotel that night, or wherever it is. But we talk constantly.

What is a conversation like with the band after a show?
Usually there's a lot of texting. I remember getting into long texts with Fish, many with Mike. We don't plan what we're going to play – you know that. And a lot of times I walk off and I feel two funny things. One, it feels like the whole show was like three minutes [laughs]. And I usually can't remember what we played, at all! It's very strange, but very true. I don't remember what we played. But then when it starts coming back to me, like Page will hit you with a text: "How 'bout that staccato thing at the end of 'Twist'?" or something like that. And then I remember. But I definitely have a harder time remembering what we played, and that's a cool thing because we're kind of in the moment. You know what I mean?

The weirdest thing is walking offstage, and we'll be talking when we're walking offstage, and somebody will say something like, "That felt like about 10 minutes." It feels a little bit like if you watch a child at play, they're focused on what's in front of them. And it feels a little bit like that. You're just focused on the next note for the note that's happening in that moment, or the note that the guy next to you is playing, and then all of a sudden it's over.

How frequently do you listen back to Phish shows?
Ever since we got the Live Phish app and the OD [Phish on Demand] app, the show goes up that night, right? And the reason it's important to have both of them is one of them is a soundboard mix with our mixer, Jon Altschiller, who is backstage mixing it, and the other one, the fans put 'em up. A lot of times the next morning – I've been doing this habitually for about two years now – I will put on two minutes of one song in order to make adjustments on my guitar tone. I don't listen to the whole show anymore, but I definitely make my coffee and I'll listen to a little bit from OD, and a little bit from Phish app. I've been kind of adjusting my guitar tone based on reality, not based on ...

Based on memory?
Yeah. One of the things you find with guitar tone is that whatever is louder, you think sounds better. But that actually isn't true. So if you tried two pickups, and one of them was by nature louder, 99 out of 100 people would say, "I like that one!" So you can't really judge your guitar tone onstage. So onstage you just play and forget it. You just fuckin' play. But then I do get up in the morning and I say, "OK, last night I turned the treble knob to seven from six – how did that relate?" And then I'll listen to the OD app, and I usually end up thinking, "Oh, my God, listen to that drum part." And that makes me feel grateful. Everyone else in the band sounds so good I can just enjoy myself up there.

There is a lot of trust on the stage. It's been built over a lot of time too. It's been a lot of long conversations that led to us not having to have the conversation.



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/trey-anastasio-on-new-phish-lp-whether-hell-play-with-the-dead-again-20160526#ixzz49mqVGZfe
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

Some points I took away:
-Band communication is at a high point - sharing lots of new songs
-Trey's views on politics in music is pretty spot on, imo. I could care less who he supports as long as hes up there this summer doing what we all love.
-Cool to see they are aware of songs that feel like they have been shleved like Fluff and Guelah Papyrus
- Trey adjusting his guitar tone after re-listening to previous nights show

sweet interview

Quote from: emayPhishyMD on May 26, 2016, 02:32:35 PM
Some points I took away:
-Band communication is at a high point - sharing lots of new songs
-Trey's views on politics in music is pretty spot on, imo. I could care less who he supports as long as hes up there this summer doing what we all love.
-Cool to see they are aware of songs that feel like they have been shleved like Fluff and Guelah Papyrus
- Trey adjusting his guitar tone after re-listening to previous nights show

sweet interview

agreed.  I like this part also:

Quote
It just feels like everybody's radar is up and their antennae are out onstage. So I think the melodic quality comes from a place of listening. There's a patience and a desire to really hear what the other band members have to say. So you kind of slow down and you reach around with your antenna. "What's Fish thinking? What's Mike thinking? What's Page thinking?" It's a circular thing. And that ties in with place that everybody is in their life, you know?

My favourite part  of that interview was this

Quote"Man, we played, like, 'Guelah Papyrus' once in the last two years." And I like that song. I'm a big "Guelah Papyrus" fan. It's one of my faves.

great read, thanks for posting

Quote from: Buffalo Budd on May 26, 2016, 10:31:50 PM
My favourite part  of that interview was this

Quote"Man, we played, like, 'Guelah Papyrus' once in the last two years." And I like that song. I'm a big "Guelah Papyrus" fan. It's one of my faves.

Absolutely. I loved that.

"Hamilton" percussionist will be playing on new phish album....


Hamilton is a happening. There's the pre-show street show outside The Richard Rogers Theatre, where Hamilton cast and crew members create impromptu performances and offer $10 tickets; Alexander Hamilton is on the $10 bill, hence "Ham4Ham," as they call it. Forero was working the chaotic Ham4Ham crowd when a guy pulled him aside and said he was a big fan of the musical. "He was so sweet," Forero says. "He said, 'My name is Trey, this is my wife and this is the rest of my band Phish.'"
Forero was busy — "Lin was waving at me to get over there" — and it hit him later: Trey Anastasio is the lead singer and guitarist of Phish, whose fans are as passionate about the rock band as Hamilton's fans are about the musical. "I have three of their albums, but I didn't know what they looked like," Forero says. "That night I sent an email and apologized. He sent one back and said, 'I'm glad you didn't know who I was,' and invited me to play on three tunes on their new album. One was a 15-minute piece with classical percussion. Even though I double majored in college in classical and jazz, it's been a while for me. Of course, I agreed to do it."

Out came the cowbells and shakers as well. "We had such a synergy between us, near the end Trey said, 'There's only one song you haven't played on.'"
So Forero's on every song of the next Phish album.

Psyched for TTE Part II.   :banana:

Trey is such a Broadway nerd. It's awesome!

Trey speaks to NY drug court grads (http://www.jambase.com/article/trey-anastasio-speaks-drug-court-graduates-upstate-new-york)

That Trey speech is pretty inspiring, good for him.

Quote from: VDB on June 15, 2016, 11:53:16 PM
Trey speaks to NY drug court grads (http://www.jambase.com/article/trey-anastasio-speaks-drug-court-graduates-upstate-new-york)

awesome, thanks for sharing.

Cactus Interview

Great stuff about the upcoming album

http://www.startribune.com/reeling-in-phish-after-a-16-year-absence-from-the-twin-cities/383687221/

Quote"Bob gave us an interesting assignment to check out inspirational music to get a more raw emotion," Gordon said of the new project. "He wanted us to carve away the fluff and wordplay."

So the band learned a few cover songs — not to record but to inspire them.

"Indirectly, it had a big effect," Gordon pointed out. "This album is particularly heartfelt. Not ballads or sappy. It's meaty, though I probably shouldn't use that word since I'm a vegetarian."

The studio requires a different approach from Phish in concert. The quartet is known for its improvisational jams onstage. The key to making the jams work is paying attention to what the other three musicians are playing.

"If you're in your own head, then it's going to be horrible," Gordon explained. "The only formula to make sure it works is to listen in a deep way. It sounds simple. But it's a lesson I have to teach myself even after 33 years in this band. If you can listen to everyone else, all else will work."

& his word on the upcoming tour
"Expect the unexpected"  :laugh: :banana:

Trey on Charlie Rose back in 2004

https://charlierose.com/videos/15951 - Part One

https://charlierose.com/videos/14959 - Part Two

By the way, there's 25 years worth of interviews available at the Charlie Rose website now.

New interview with CK5 about the video walls...

http://www.jambands.com/features/2016/07/25/chris-kuroda-visual-vocabularies (http://www.jambands.com/features/2016/07/25/chris-kuroda-visual-vocabularies)

Quote

Chris Kuroda: Visual Vocabularies
July 25, 2016  12 min read  original

Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman and their new screens at Great Woods. Photo by Dean Budnick

Chris Kuroda has been Phish's lighting designer since 1989 and, though his rig has evolved and expanded as the Vermont Quartet has grown, he's remained true to his "purist philosophy" throughout his tenure with the band. So more than a few fans were surprised when Phish introduced video screens into their lighting design at the start of their summer tour this past June. As Kuroda explains, the decision to add video screens to their show was the result of months of discussions between the members of Phish and their management—and part of an overall drive to update their stage presentation. During a quick break between Phish's gigs in Syracuse, N.Y. and George, Wash., Kuroda walked us through the band's decision to incorporate video screens for the first time, his new setup and how The 1975 and The Cure helped influence his new look. Kuroda—who has worked with Justin Bieber, Santana, Gov't Mule, The Black Crowes, Ariana Grande and others—also discusses his recent venture into the sports lighting world with the Knicks and Rangers.

So far one of this summer's big stories has been that for the first time in the 30 years you have been with Phish, you have started incorporating video in your lighting design. Can you start by giving us a little background on the decision to add videos to your setup and how those screens work within your usual setup?

CK: Over time, philosophies change. For many years, we referred to our approach in presenting the lighting of Phish as having a "purist philosophy," meaning just having lighting be the visual vocabulary for our shows—without having gimmicks and different visual elements, however at the end of last year, everybody—the band, the management, myself—all got together and at the same time and globally said that it was time for a very, very big change. Everybody had a different opinion on why and how we should change our presentation, but we all agreed that we wanted something that was very different than anything we've done in the past. We felt that we had set a really good example up there for years, but started feeling like we were sharing a similar presentation style to some other acts on our genre. We wanted to take a step or two to try some new unique concept approaches and see where they took us.

The other thing was they wanted to stay current—stay cutting-edge—with technology, and we felt that today's current technologies were becoming based in the video world. The lighting world hasn't changed that much as far as technology goes—they change colors, they pan, they tilt, they have their little tricks, but they haven't changed all that much beyond being better and better at what they do. Granted LED technology has influenced the world of lighting in a huge way, however it is still just lighting at the end of the day. When we decided video was the way we wanted to go, we also knew that we had to be really careful with how we did it, because we didn't want to look like a pop show—we didn't want to have a bunch of screen-saver-looking stuff out there. My mantra was, "If we're going to go down the video road, we should really try to make video that doesn't look like video." We didn't want to do the big IMAG stuff, we didn't want to have anything pictorial in the video. You don't see any pictures of trees and you don't see pictures of cats during "My Pet Cat." We didn't want to look cheesy if we could help it.

Once you decided that video was the way to go, what were your next steps to incorporate those videos into your design?

I sat down and realized that I didn't trust myself to incorporate these new elements by myself. My knowledge of video just wasn't there, and I knew the end result wouldn't be as good as I saw it in my mind. So I started doing a lot of research on other designers that I would ask to collaborate with, who had expertise in video, but who also had an artistic history of using video elements in a creative way, that was different from the norm. After investigating several great and talented folks, I came up with a very short list of three people who I would ask to collaborate on this project with me. The first one I chose to speak to was Abigail Holmes, who had done a lot of work with Talking Heads, The Cure, Roger Waters. I needed to find someone who was very creative in a different way than myself, who could help guide me into a new artistic vision that I couldn't come up with by myself. After speaking with Abigail, I quickly realized that we were on the same page right from the first moment. She didn't know a lot about Phish, but she understood how different it was—she understood what a unique presentation it was. Phish obviously is not "cue 1, cue 2, cue 3." You've got cue 4 to cue 6 to cue 93 to cue 7. It's all on the fly, and video cuing doesn't really work that way inherently. She understood this and was completely on board to take a few risks and try an unorthodox approach to incorporating this element into our show with me.

Ironically, the first few ideas we came up with got shot down because of the fact that they weren't "different" enough—that those initial design concepts still looked too much like Phish of old. We had to really think outside the box. The interesting conundrum presented to me was that we really wanted this to be very, very different like I've said, but at the same time I needed to leave enough room where I could still be me, because the video wasn't going to change the way they, the band, play, and because the powers that be, didn't want to take my style out of the equation. We had to come up with an idea to use all of these new technologies, but still allowed me the freedom to continue to light them in the style that I always have. It was a tough world to figure out, and finally the idea that we presented that the band and management all loved was the "exploding video wall." It's actually a few concepts: One is the exploding video wall, and the second was that instead of the usual black hole that is the stage, we wanted to place the band within their own environment. This concept is why we have the video walls on the stage decking there. It encompasses and puts them in a space that they're very comfortable playing in. The third thing was we wanted to give the show some kind of evolution that we haven't had before. Since the band is not changing the way they want to play, the evolution all has to be visual. Until now, visually it's been the same from the time the band walks onstage for the first set to the time they walk offstage at the end of the second set. It always ebbs and flows of course, but now additionally we have our lighting trusses down at a much lower trim than usual, and we keep the wall closed trying to create a very intimate environment for the first set. Then, it evolves in a way where when we start the second set, the lighting trusses rise much higher in the air, the wall expands, and we've now created a much bigger look for that set. We went through a bunch of iterations of these moves, and finally decided what we wanted to do was just one big move in the second set, where the whole thing grows and changes the way it looks dramatically between set one and set two, thus creating a bit of an evolution during the show.

It took a lot of forward thinking and a lot of experimenting to finally come to a place where we could present this new visual vocabulary that we wanted for Phish, with this new technology, while trying to stay organic. A few folks out there wish we still lived in the past concerning our production, but the main point of this year was that we as an organization wanted something very different, and this is where we ended up. We're pretty into it, and although some people out there have different feelings about it, globally this is where we as a group wanted to be. I respect everyone's opinion of course, however I'm hoping those folks find it in their heart to bear with us as we try something new. This is something that we are all doing together. We all as a team are chipping in with ideas and concepts, and it's still very much a work in progress. Every day is different for me, and I try to use it in different ways. I used it a lot in the first few shows while I was just getting used to it, and now I'm sort of backing off on it and using it here and there—letting the lights express sometimes, getting the video to express sometimes, getting them to express in tandem sometimes. It still takes all of us a while to figure out just how much of each element is used every night, but we're getting there and feeling it through. That's where we are.

Most of this summer's shows so far have been in amphitheaters. Do you have a different setup designed for when Phish returns to bigger indoor arenas?

It's flexible. The wall onstage is in a semicircle, but we can move things depending on what our limits are for the roof height and things like that. In arenas, we have to find a way to get it up high enough so that we're not blocking sight lines, especially when we do the 360 degree sold shows with people behind the stage. It's very important to us that every single seat in the entire house can see the four band members. We don't believe in the obstructed view, and that's always been our mindset for 30 years. So we're working on that, and when that time comes, we'll find a way to use it so it's not blocking anybody's view, or we might have to move things around to find a new way to get it up there. The production is a very, very important part of a Phish concert, but at the same time, people seeing the band is most important. That's just the way Phish operates. They don't believe in a bad seat. If there is such a thing as a bad seat, we don't want to be the ones to create it.

You mentioned earlier that one of the ideas going into this was that you didn't want to have images correspond to specific songs, for instance a cat with "My Pet Cat," and you have definitely avoided that. With that said, are there certain atmospheric video concepts that you trigger when the band moves into certain songs like "Tweezer" or "Run Like an Antelope," or is that still on the fly?

It's organized in two ways. It's broken up into "first set part one," "first set part two," "first set part three," and then the second set has its own pages on content designed in a similar way. We don't use video mapped content for the closed configuration of the wall while its in its open configuration—it just doesn't look good. So like i mentioned before, we try to organize it with the concept of evolution—certain stuff is designed for set one, certain stuff is designed for set two. And then beyond that, there's another sub-organization with the static clips that don't have animation within in that content. We then also have slow moving stuff and then more sprinkly, twinkly stuff, as well as more impactful, punchier things. I just choose what I want when I feel the moment is right more than anything else. To us, it's just another layer of the lighting that can stand alone if it needs to, but we're not trying to say anything with it. We're just trying to create a nice organic layer around those guys and are treating it as another lighting fixture more than video.

Last year, video screens were used at two major events in the Phish world: Fare Thee Well, which incorporated retrospective images and Dead iconography, and Magnaball, where Phish performed behind a video screen as part of a drive-in movie set. Though you were not directly involved in creating video for either, did those events impact your vision when Phish added videos this summer?

It's interesting. In many, ways both those events were examples of approaches we wanted to steer away from. For Fare Thee Well, the video content they created was great and perfect for that event—for that place and purpose. For Magnaball, the company that did that drive-in—and also the hourglass [gag] this past New Year's—is a company called Moment Factory out of Canada. They had free reign to design the video and the content and everything, and there wasn't really much involvement from us in any way. We just presented the concept as they created it. They're a wonderful company, and what they did for those events worked wonderfully—they do great work, but my own opinion is they didn't really get a chance to embrace Phish. The content they created was very pictorial, which worked for that project, but what we are trying to do here is get away from those types of artistic concepts.


Kuroda illuminating Mike Gordon at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. Photo by Stuart Levine.

Phish's video screens almost have the feel of a modern indie-rock show. Did any bands from that world, in particular, inspire your concept?

When we were talking about how we could be different, Trey, in particular, gravitated toward what he saw when we went to The 1975's sold-out show at Terminal 5 earlier this year. He really liked what we saw, but we didn't want to copy them or do the same tricks that they had done. What he liked was that they had a super clean look, and he wanted to try to incorporate that expression of cleanliness into Phish. When he was expressing the ideas he was interested in trying to bring into our production, The 1975 concept of presentation was something that he thought would be a really great starting place. That show definitely had some influence in that regard.

Also there is the fact that all humans inherently have differences of opinion. There are four voices in our band alone—four very different voices—and then there are management voices as well trying to represent the band members as best they can, and it was sort of an interesting de-cyphering process. We work through everyone's ideas and try to come up with one coherent idea that will make everybody happy. Like I said, we went through several previous design concepts that basically didn't make the cut. It was an enormous process to come up with something that met everyone's criteria—different, evolving, environment, clean, organic.

You mentioned that you worked with Abigail on Phish's video presentation. I saw The Cure at Madison Square Garden last month and also felt they did a great job of using their videos in atmospheric way that adds to the shows, instead of feeling like a nostalgic classic-rock show.

The Cure are not a jamband, but they do have a 300-song repertoire so i'm told, and they don't write a setlist. All their songs are like three minutes long. They're the Cure, but they play a different show every night. One of the reasons we really liked Abigail Holmes is that she was used to not knowing what song was coming next from her Cure days, and using that style of forward thinking toward her art that she had developed over there and bringing it over to us was another attraction for wanting her input on ways we would approach our new presentation.

In addition to your work with Phish, are you are lighting the Knicks and the Rangers. How did you end up working in the sports world, and what is your role with those organizations?

I did the same thing for the Dallas Mavericks about eight years ago, but the two jobs are unrelated. Literally, as the story was presented to me, a Madison Square Garden executive was walking through the Garden, during a Phish show on New Year's Eve. Apparently, he looked up at the lighting and said to his colleagues, "Wow, who does that? That looks amazing." That's the story of my life—most of the jobs I get, there's some kind of Phish relevance in the reason I'm reached out to.

I came on board with them last year mid-season. They reached out to me for some lighting—whether it's game introductions or lights to go with video montages of the players. They show the city and there's a lot of lighting that goes along with it. I also worked on lights for the Knick City Dancers—their cheerleaders—and all those dance routines that get the crowd psyched. There are hundreds of lighting moments. They have an amazing lighting system at the Garden, and they felt that they just weren't getting the full potential out of it, so I came in mid-season and began working with the lighting. They really liked what I had given them, and now I'm writing all the Knicks and all the Rangers game lighting, start to finish. I actually start working on that project in August, writing everything from scratch. I love the concept. The people are wonderful. I love both sports, and love Madison Square Garden, so it's pretty cool in a personal way for me. I really dig it.

You have had a chance to light a variety of venues this summer, from intimate spaces in Portland to a rare stadium show for Phish in Chicago. What have been some of your personal highlights this summer and favorite shows?

I really liked Syracuse, and I really liked Hartford. I really liked Portland, ME, because we couldn't get the video element to work the way we wanted it to in such a small space. We couldn't open our video wall because it was such a small space, and I had to rely a lot more on lighting and less video in that particular show. As much as I like the video, I felt very at home just lighting the band and the using the video very sporadically. I had an old school moment, so to speak, and it felt really good.

We did Portland not that long ago, and last time we played there, it felt big. All the things we've done between then and now, we walk in there now and say, "Gosh, my memories of this place are that it was huge." Your perspective changes over time. Go figure

Rare interview with Coltrane - https://soundcloud.com/pacificaradioarchives/bc1266-an-interview-with-john-coltrane-by-frank-kofsky

Old Mike interview from the Onion AVClub, circa '96.

Strange Design was going to be the last track on Billy Breathes?  I didn't know that.

http://www.avclub.com/article/bassistvocalist-mike-gordon-talks-about-his-new-al-240655 

Quote from: kellerb on August 08, 2016, 11:30:41 AM
Old Mike interview from the Onion AVClub, circa '96.

Strange Design was going to be the last track on Billy Breathes?  I didn't know that.

http://www.avclub.com/article/bassistvocalist-mike-gordon-talks-about-his-new-al-240655

Maybe it willl be included as a flexi-disc (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexi_disc) with the Billy vinyl.

I'm hoping it gets restored to the sequence... maybe as a stand alone on side four rather than some etching bullshit.
The studio Strange Design is wonderful.

I'm about halfway through this and it's pretty good. No huge revelations yet, but in depth for sure.

https://youtu.be/fv9t9XGqWDI (https://youtu.be/fv9t9XGqWDI)

ScottyB interviewed Trey...

QuoteThis Friday the Trey Anastasio Band begins one of the group's busiest years of touring since Phish frontman Trey Anastasio first formed the solo project in 1999. Anastasio has settled on a lineup that includes the original members of his 1999 group (drummer Russ Lawton and bassist Tony Markellis), a few musicians who joined shortly thereafter (percussionist Cyro Baptista, trumpeter Jennifer Hartswick and keyboardist Ray Paczkowski) and a pair of additions from the early part of this decade (saxophonist James Casey and trombonist Natalie Cressman). TAB will mix headlining shows in a number of cities the band hasn't played in years along with festival appearances through early July. Included within is Anastasio's return to Red Rocks, a famed Colorado venue he hasn't performed at with any project since a series of Phish shows in 2009.

Yet TAB isn't the only project on Trey's dance card in the coming months. Phish has an unusual Summer Tour planned that includes 13 shows at one venue, Madison Square Garden in New York City. I chatted with Anastasio about the upcoming Trey Anastasio Band tour, his recently completed first set of solo acoustic shows, the 13-concert residency at MSG dubbed the "Baker's Dozen," as well as several additional topics.

Trey Anastasio Band Patrick Jordan Fullsize 2
  Photo by Patrick Jordan
JamBase: TAB is about to set out for several busy months of touring, starting with Friday's opening night. How much rehearsal has gone into preparing for this run? Can you walk us through how a typical day of rehearsal goes?

Trey Anastasio: I'm getting together with Natalie, Jen and James on Monday [yesterday] to work on new vocal and horn parts, and then we have full band rehearsals the rest of the week leading up to the first show at The Cap. I can't wait. I miss those guys.

In 2016 we only played two shows, but we've got a busy year ahead of us, I actually think it might be the fullest TAB year ever, so we're all excited to get going. Before we start rehearsals, I stay in touch with the band via email and texts and whatnot, so there's always new charts or new songs for everyone to learn.

A typical day is probably a bit like this: I wake up and plan on doing a whole lot of songs. Then we walk in and everybody starts talking and hanging out because we haven't seen each other in a long time, and then we count off a song and end up playing one song for 45 minutes because it all feels so good to be going again. Then we eat too much food and talk more. It's the best.

JamBase: Cyro withstanding, this has been the longest you've kept a TAB lineup intact. What is it about the chemistry of this lineup that you like so much?

TA: Wow ... that's a big question. I guess I would start off by saying that I like everything about the chemistry, and Cyro is a huge part of that chemistry, but it's all a complete mystery to me.

The older I get, the more mystified I am about the way that people come into each other's lives. I met Jen when she was maybe 16 years old and I immediately knew we were going to play music together. Immediately. It was weird. It felt like we had known each other in a past life or something. That might sound creepy but it absolutely wasn't. I met her mom and dad, and her mom even ended up recording with me at The Barn. You can hear Jen's mom playing clarinet on "Coming To" on the album Seis de Mayo. I think if I remember correctly, the first actual recording of us playing together is on Story Of The Ghost.

I had a very similar experience when I met Tony. I saw Tony playing at a club called Hunts in 1982. I had flown up to Burlington on People's Express to look at UVM to see if I wanted to go to school there, and The Unknown Blues Band was playing that night. I spent the entire set watching him, mesmerized. I went up to the stage afterward and talked to him. I remember it like it was yesterday. Once again, it just felt destined. Tony played bass at my wedding. Fish was the best man. Tom Marshall, Steve Pollak, Page and Mike were the groomsmen, so people come into your lives and they become part of the fabric. Who knows why?

I could tell a very similar story about Ray. I saw him in a tent playing with his amazing band viperHouse, and I went backstage and talked to him. Natalie, James, Russ. Everyone met in a natural way, everyone has become close, and you can hear it in the music. Russ and Ray met playing in this band, and now they have an incredible duo Soule Monde. James and Jen and Natalie frequently play together now. This makes me happy. Natalie's dad used to be in the band, and during that period of time Natalie's dad and Cyro were absolutely killing it together every night. So you can see that the roots go very deep.

Trey Anastasio Band Soundcheck Patrick Jordan Fullsize
  Photo by Patrick Jordan
JamBase: TAB is playing a number of festivals this summer. What's your mindset when you take the stage at festival as opposed to a non-festival show? Are you still trying to win over new listeners?

TA: Well, there's probably a little bit of a difference at a festival in that it's usually one set and there's a lot of other bands playing, but I don't think I've ever really felt like I was trying to win anyone over, per se. The funny thing with TAB is that it's kind of infrequent that we get to play – like, we don't play all that much, so whenever we do, whether it's at festival of a theater or wherever, I'm really just buzzing with excitement to be playing music with that group of people. It's such a slamming band, and it's really a joy playing together, I'm sure that's tangible if you're in the audience. I mean, I'd travel a long way just to listen to Ray play that organ anytime, and I get to stand right next to him all night. So, I think festival or otherwise, I'm usually just thinking, "I wish this could go on longer."

JamBase: How do you go about constructing a setlist for a TAB show? Is there a lot of pre-show analysis that goes into the planning or is it more extemporaneous as the show unfolds?

TA: For better or worse, it's entirely extemporaneous as the show unfolds. The band doesn't even know what we're going to start with when we walk on stage. Neither do I. If you listen to the tapes closely you can hear me telling them what to play between songs. They all mercilessly make fun of me because every night I stand backstage and say "Hey man, let's start 'Cayman'" and the second I get on stage I change my mind and say, "Wait, let's start with 'Sand!'" or something.

I'm not convinced that this is such a good thing, but what are you gonna do? It's just the way it has gone for so many years now, and the exact same thing is true with Phish. It's gotten to the point where I think to myself, "Man, I should really make a song list, life would be so much easier." And sometimes I sit backstage and try to make one, and then the second I walk on stage I change my mind. It's become completely hopeless at this point.

It's just that I don't know who's in the audience until I walk out. Who's going to be standing there? It might be sunny or it might be dark, or it might be rainy or cold or really hot, or more frequently there might be a really funny, charismatic awesome person standing 10 rows back that's dancing in some amazing way, and then you think, "Oh man we got to slow down! So that person can keep dancing like that!" Or, "wait a minute, we're in Charlotte? We have a song about that!"

I just don't really see how it would be possible to plan for that stuff. Also, sometimes you suddenly want to hear Natalie, or you want to hear James, and so you call some song that features them, like "1977" or "Burlap Sack" or something.

That being said, it's kind of a relief with TAB that there aren't quite so many songs, and that there can be a little bit less of a feeling like we have to play entirely different stuff all the time, because I figure I'm only going to be alive on earth for a finite amount of time, and I'd like to play "First Tube" with that wicked horn line as many possible times as I can before I die, so ...


JamBase: "Plasma" had stayed in the TAB lane for 13 years and in 2014 made its live Phish debut. How does a song like that make the crossover after all that time? Similarly, "Never" came to the Phish stage at the Bridge School benefit concert in 1998 and then 16 years later not only gets arranged for TAB, but also makes it onto Paper Wheels. How do these songs resurface or get reworked after such a long time?

TA: Good question! A lot of songs traditionally begin as a home 4-track or 8-track recording. Both of those two songs you mentioned were written by myself and Tom, and multitracked by the two of us.

From that point on, once a song is "born," for lack of a better term, it tends to hang around until it appears whenever the time is right. Some songs seem to just fit in certain contexts, but there's certainly no rules. There's lots of songs that started with TAB that ended up being Phish staples: "Winterqueen," "Heavy Things," "Sand," "Jibboo," "First Tube" – really would like to see that happen more often.

I love playing "Plasma" with Phish, and I love playing "Ocelot" with TAB. I thought Mike and Fish were just killing it on "Plasma," and Page played with a looseness that I really liked. I thought it fit like a glove, and in terms of "Never," TAB was set up at The Barn recording the songs for Paper Wheels, and I just suggested that we give that song a try. It was really one take, all live, very loose, and I thought it was the best it had ever sounded. I like the version on the album very much. The same thing happened on Big Boat with "Running Out of Time." It's an old song that just hadn't found its moment, and the recording on that album was its moment.

I guess I'll give away a little secret I'm carrying around in my heart here. A big part of the reason that I'm so excited to do something like a 13-night residency in one venue is that staying in one place contributes to a looseness in the atmosphere that we may not have felt since Nectar's, which was for all intents and purposes, a big giant residency.

Staying in one place can lead all kinds of cool things. You get comfortable with the sound of the room, which can lead to a certain freedom in the jamming, and also there are definitely more songs that I would love to try with Phish that TAB plays. A couple in particular that I've always thought would really work.

JamBase: What were some of the more memorable moments of your first ever fully solo acoustic shows?

TA: "Luuuke"! [laughs] So many memorable things: getting to play "Sleeping Monkey" at the Portsmouth Music Hall, 25 years later in New Hampshire, seeing that weird ghost, playing in all three of those incredible rooms. Getting to revisit all those songs alone with an acoustic guitar, which is how virtually all of them were actually written, in my living room, on a chair.

Hearing Tom fail miserably at rescuing me in "Steam." Getting to shout out my friend Scott Herman at long last. Getting to finally tell the Mike Journal Steering wheel story after all these years.

I hope I can do it again.

Trey Anastasio Band Patrick Jordan Fullsize 3
  Photo by Patrick Jordan
JamBase: Those shows were at some lesser known but as you put it "incredible rooms" and you'll be bringing the band to a number of interesting venues this tour. To what extent are you involved in the selection of the venues? Are there ones on this upcoming TAB tour you're particularly excited about?

TA: Yes! Excited for Tulsa, Jazz Fest, Austin, Toronto, Red Rocks ... the Egyptian Room! I'm excited for all of it, honestly. It's just as fun as it ever was, when we were young traveling around in a car. Possibly even more so, because as the years go by I get more perspective. I can see more clearly how fast this is all going, how the years fly by and it makes me want to get out and meet people and see all these beautiful towns and the landscape and play in all of these fantastic venues, and soak up the energy of each one, because each has unique qualities and you can feel it. They're all different. It's sort of like the ocean, it's never the same twice. Every gathering of people in a given time and a given town is unique to that night. You walk on stage and just don't know what it's going to feel like.

It's crazy – you'd think after 35 years there would be some rhyme or reason to it, but there is not. That's the beautiful thing about it.

JamBase: 1999 saw the formation of The Classic TAB Trio and the beginning of so many different versions of your solo band. 2001 saw Oysterhead's debut, 2003 saw you active in Dave Matthews & Friends, in 2005 you experimented further with the lineup for your solo band, in 2006 you toured with Mike & The Duo, and 2015 had your stint with Fare The Well – but you haven't really started a "new band" in over a decade. Do you feel content with Phish, TAB and solo shows as your live creative outlets, or do you still get the itch to start something else completely new?

TA: I feel completely content and grateful for all of it, and starting a band is a time-consuming process. That's one of the things I've learned. Starting a new project ends up being lots of phone calls and emails, discussions and logistics. So I've kind of learned as I've gone along that I much prefer playing music and watching people dance and stuff than answering cc'd group emails.

That being said, there might be one tiny itch that I could identify somewhere deep down in my soul. When I was in high school I always liked playing in bands with two guitars. Like, two guitars, bass and drums. Four-piece. I have fond memories of playing songs off Machine Head by Deep Purple, Sticky Fingers songs and whatnot. Songs like "Sway," which are the sound of two guitars, together, slogging. So, sometimes I kind of imagine doing that one more time in this lifetime. You know, making some noise.

Derek? You interested? James Hetfield? Want to check out my barn? Flea? You busy? Joe Dart? You free for a weekend?

JamBase: Are you more open to analyzing performances with your TAB band mates than with Phish?

TA: [pauses] Kind of.

We definitely talk a lot about the music, but it's before the show, you know? I think the general rule is everything gets left at the edge of the stage. Period, end of sentence. You can talk right up to the edge of the stage but when you walk on it's got to be abandoned. The analytical mind gets left in the dressing room. Once you get used to that it's not a very hard thing to do, it becomes second nature.

I have this funny exchange sometimes with Ray, who is a musician who really truly lives in the moment. Every once in a while he'll play something so astounding that I can't help myself, and I say to him, "Man I love that thing you played in 'Last Tube!'" And then he'll always say, "Well, I can never play it again now, because now I know you like it." You see what I mean? It's that.

Trey Anastasio Black & White Patrick Jordan Fullsize
  Photo by Patrick Jordan
JamBase: Have you already started the planning process of what Phish will play during the Baker's Dozen run at MSG? Do you foresee the format being any different than typical shows?

TA: I don't really know, in the best way possible.

I'm just so pumped for that run. I was talking to Fish about it a couple days ago, he's locked in his studio up at his farm playing the drums, but he's not doing anything specifically for The Baker's Dozen, though he's focused on it. He told me he's just playing these amazing calypso tunes that he found online. He sent me a couple of them, one called "Voices In The Ghetto" by Singing Sandra, which has this great groove.

So, I think everybody's just really excited but it's wide-open right now, like, there's no specific plans.

Which might be the very thing that everybody is so excited about. Meaning that it will be open to whatever the experience turns out to be. I think that openness might be the very thing that I'm most excited for, so we are trying not to think too much about it. I think we don't want to nail it down.

I told some of you about this in NYC... my friend Luke (Dopapod LD) interviewed Kuroda last week! I haven't listened yet myself but can't wait to hear his...

https://soundcloud.com/thelightsidepodcast/the-light-side-ep005-phish-part-1

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on August 09, 2017, 09:24:28 PM
I told some of you about this in NYC... my friend Luke (Dopapod LD) interviewed Kuroda last week! I haven't listened yet myself but can't wait to hear his...

https://soundcloud.com/thelightsidepodcast/the-light-side-ep005-phish-part-1

I enjoyed this quite a bit.
It's quite technical tho.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on August 09, 2017, 09:24:28 PM
I told some of you about this in NYC... my friend Luke (Dopapod LD) interviewed Kuroda last week! I haven't listened yet myself but can't wait to hear his...

https://soundcloud.com/thelightsidepodcast/the-light-side-ep005-phish-part-1

I plan on giving this a listen today. Nice get by Luke.

just read that 4/11/17 interview...good stuff in there too.

Quote from: rowjimmy on August 10, 2017, 11:19:53 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on August 09, 2017, 09:24:28 PM
I told some of you about this in NYC... my friend Luke (Dopapod LD) interviewed Kuroda last week! I haven't listened yet myself but can't wait to hear his...

https://soundcloud.com/thelightsidepodcast/the-light-side-ep005-phish-part-1

I enjoyed this quite a bit.
It's quite technical tho.

...and it sounds like part 2 will get even deeper in the weeds.

That was indeed a great interview. Kuroda is very well spoken.

A lot of it was over my head, but there was also some awesome insight.

It is funny to think.... what other band out there has fans who know the name of their LD?!

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on August 13, 2017, 04:51:28 PM

It is funny to think.... what other band out there has fans who know the name of their LD?!

Not many.
Phish, UM, we knew Candace Brightman's name back in the day, too.
Maybe Dopapod fans know Luke?

DMB/Fenton Williams

(http://www.celebrityaccess.com/news/grafix/fentonwilliamsmain.jpg)

Quote from: rowjimmy on August 14, 2017, 07:51:11 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on August 13, 2017, 04:51:28 PM

It is funny to think.... what other band out there has fans who know the name of their LD?!

Not many.
Phish, UM, we knew Candace Brightman's name back in the day, too.
Maybe Dopapod fans know Luke?

Yup, he's a well known commodity in that scene.

Mike interview about his new album

https://www.jambase.com/article/going-ogogo-mike-gordon-talks-new-album-upcoming-tour-phish

Short interview with Sue Drew, the Elektra A&R rep who signed Phish.
https://phishbase.tumblr.com/post/168733787010/thats-how-it-was-with-phish-we-just-put-them

I had a chuckle reading this part

QuoteThey would show up just like, stinking to high heaven, and we would take them aside and go "Look guys you have got to put on deodorant and take a shower. You can't just show up at 75 Rock and then 'just be'."

Quote from: Buffalo Budd on December 20, 2017, 01:03:55 PM
I had a chuckle reading this part

QuoteThey would show up just like, stinking to high heaven, and we would take them aside and go "Look guys you have got to put on deodorant and take a shower. You can't just show up at 75 Rock and then 'just be'."

(https://mrminer.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/phish-1.jpg)

Stupid executives are funny:

Quote"look, we're playing the Garden next week if you'd like to come to the show." And she goes "well who are you opening up for?"

great read!  but, what about the story of Paluska showing up to the Elektra offices with pages and pages full of mailing list addresses in an attempt to get them signed?

Quote from: PIE-GUY on December 20, 2017, 02:03:39 PM
Stupid executives are funny:

Quote"look, we're playing the Garden next week if you'd like to come to the show." And she goes "well who are you opening up for?"

Which one's Pink?

Quote from: PIE-GUY on August 10, 2017, 12:51:05 PM

Quote from: rowjimmy on August 10, 2017, 11:19:53 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on August 09, 2017, 09:24:28 PM
I told some of you about this in NYC... my friend Luke (Dopapod LD) interviewed Kuroda last week! I haven't listened yet myself but can't wait to hear his...

https://soundcloud.com/thelightsidepodcast/the-light-side-ep005-phish-part-1

I enjoyed this quite a bit.
It's quite technical tho.

...and it sounds like part 2 will get even deeper in the weeds.

Part 2 is up!

https://soundcloud.com/thelightsidepodcast/the-light-side-ep006-phish-part-2 (https://soundcloud.com/thelightsidepodcast/the-light-side-ep006-phish-part-2)

Mike talks NYE, Phish tours, MGB, etc. with the Tampa Bay Times. (http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/soundcheck/2018/01/09/phishs-mike-gordon-talks-new-years-run-allman-brothers-band-tom-petty-covers-and-more/)

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF (https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF)

So... not exactly an interview.... but Fishman just posted some great answers on the addicted to Phish FB thread...

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 07, 2018, 12:41:10 AM
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF (https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF)

So... not exactly an interview.... but Fishman just posted some great answers on the addicted to Phish FB thread...

I love how normal he is in real life.

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 07, 2018, 01:52:22 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 07, 2018, 12:41:10 AM
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF (https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF)

So... not exactly an interview.... but Fishman just posted some great answers on the addicted to Phish FB thread...

I love how normal he is in real life.

Right? He really just seems like some dude.

Some dude who's wife wanted the Camden Chalkdust playing while their child was being born. Incredible.

How about 2 hours of Fishman?

http://www.drummersresource.com/jon-fishman-interview/ (http://www.drummersresource.com/jon-fishman-interview/)

awesome! thanks

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 11, 2018, 05:29:19 PM
How about 2 hours of Fishman?

http://www.drummersresource.com/jon-fishman-interview/ (http://www.drummersresource.com/jon-fishman-interview/)

oh this is good!

Quote from: slslbs on March 12, 2018, 11:01:28 AM
awesome! thanks

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 07, 2018, 01:52:22 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 07, 2018, 12:41:10 AM
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF (https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF)

So... not exactly an interview.... but Fishman just posted some great answers on the addicted to Phish FB thread...

I love how normal he is in real life.

That and how this just solidifies that his wife is a tour rat.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 12, 2018, 11:47:28 AM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 11, 2018, 05:29:19 PM
How about 2 hours of Fishman?

http://www.drummersresource.com/jon-fishman-interview/ (http://www.drummersresource.com/jon-fishman-interview/)

oh this is good!

Gonna queue this up at work

Quote from: ph92 on March 12, 2018, 02:27:56 PM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 07, 2018, 01:52:22 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 07, 2018, 12:41:10 AM
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF (https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF)

So... not exactly an interview.... but Fishman just posted some great answers on the addicted to Phish FB thread...

I love how normal he is in real life.

That and how this just solidifies that his wife is a tour rat.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 12, 2018, 11:47:28 AM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 11, 2018, 05:29:19 PM
How about 2 hours of Fishman?

http://www.drummersresource.com/jon-fishman-interview/ (http://www.drummersresource.com/jon-fishman-interview/)

oh this is good!

Gonna queue this up at work

that was great. Can't wait to hear part 2.
He is hitting on so many points that I'm thinking of as I'm re-discovering myself as a drummer - maintining the groove, polyrhyhthms, space.

Part 2 is up...

http://www.drummersresource.com/john-fishman-phish-interview-part-2/ (http://www.drummersresource.com/john-fishman-phish-interview-part-2/)

Quote from: slslbs on March 15, 2018, 08:48:31 AM

Quote from: ph92 on March 12, 2018, 02:27:56 PM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 07, 2018, 01:52:22 AM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 07, 2018, 12:41:10 AM
https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF (https://m.imgur.com/gallery/T9tCF)

So... not exactly an interview.... but Fishman just posted some great answers on the addicted to Phish FB thread...

I love how normal he is in real life.

That and how this just solidifies that his wife is a tour rat.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 12, 2018, 11:47:28 AM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on March 11, 2018, 05:29:19 PM
How about 2 hours of Fishman?

http://www.drummersresource.com/jon-fishman-interview/ (http://www.drummersresource.com/jon-fishman-interview/)

oh this is good!

Gonna queue this up at work

that was great. Can't wait to hear part 2.
He is hitting on so many points that I'm thinking of as I'm re-discovering myself as a drummer - maintining the groove, polyrhyhthms, space.

Do it!

He really did hit on a lot of interesting points, in a completely scatterbrain way, but that made it all the more endearing.  I love that he called himself a 'closet guitar player' - his playing really is incredibly melodic.  I love that they used to refer to Page as 'Dad". It was also pretty cool that he mentioned that 3/4 thing he does on the ride cymbal in Chalkdust jams these days, I've noticed that's been his go to rhythm lately and I'd never heard him do it before 2015 or so

his Stash groove was my personal introduction to playing polyrhythms. I was so psyched when I figured it out.
I'll work on the 3/4 over 4/4 ride thing next

paying a lot of attention to the shuffle now. Haven't thought about it that much before, not in that way.
will have to dig up the Julius he was talking about.

It's kinda weird reading an interview with Trey's daughter, but it's pretty cool none the less.

https://gratefulmommabear.com/2018/04/26/an-evening-with-bella-anastasio-an-inside-look-at-phish-and-her-life/ (https://gratefulmommabear.com/2018/04/26/an-evening-with-bella-anastasio-an-inside-look-at-phish-and-her-life/)

Quote from: PIE-GUY on April 26, 2018, 05:23:11 PM
It's kinda weird reading an interview with Trey's daughter, but it's pretty cool none the less.

https://gratefulmommabear.com/2018/04/26/an-evening-with-bella-anastasio-an-inside-look-at-phish-and-her-life/ (https://gratefulmommabear.com/2018/04/26/an-evening-with-bella-anastasio-an-inside-look-at-phish-and-her-life/)

Pretty down to earth for the daughter of a rock star.

Cool 94 interview with Trey.

https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-trey-anastasio-interview-fall-1994-steve-silberman

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 15, 2018, 12:08:16 PM

It was also pretty cool that he mentioned that 3/4 thing he does on the ride cymbal in Chalkdust jams these days, I've noticed that's been his go to rhythm lately and I'd never heard him do it before 2015 or so

Yo what?  I don't know what you're talking about here, can you give me a timestamp on some version?  I'm super curious so I can show our drummer. 

Quote from: Gumbo72203 on October 01, 2018, 11:44:59 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 15, 2018, 12:08:16 PM

It was also pretty cool that he mentioned that 3/4 thing he does on the ride cymbal in Chalkdust jams these days, I've noticed that's been his go to rhythm lately and I'd never heard him do it before 2015 or so

Yo what?  I don't know what you're talking about here, can you give me a timestamp on some version?  I'm super curious so I can show our drummer.

I kid you not..... I pulled up a completely random 3.0 CDT, scrolled half way into the jam.... and he was doing the exact beat he describes... first try lol.

http://www.phishtracks.com/shows/2014-07-29/chalk-dust-torture (http://www.phishtracks.com/shows/2014-07-29/chalk-dust-torture)

check around the 7:50 mark.... he plays this exact beat without variation for a pretty long time.

The snare stays on 2 and 4.....but the ride cymbal does a repeating 3 pattern over it.  Meaning.... the full pattern lines up every 3 bars.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on October 02, 2018, 12:17:54 AM

Quote from: Gumbo72203 on October 01, 2018, 11:44:59 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on March 15, 2018, 12:08:16 PM

It was also pretty cool that he mentioned that 3/4 thing he does on the ride cymbal in Chalkdust jams these days, I've noticed that's been his go to rhythm lately and I'd never heard him do it before 2015 or so

Yo what?  I don't know what you're talking about here, can you give me a timestamp on some version?  I'm super curious so I can show our drummer.

I kid you not..... I pulled up a completely random 3.0 CDT, scrolled half way into the jam.... and he was doing the exact beat he describes... first try lol.

http://www.phishtracks.com/shows/2014-07-29/chalk-dust-torture (http://www.phishtracks.com/shows/2014-07-29/chalk-dust-torture)

check around the 7:50 mark.... he plays this exact beat without variation for a pretty long time.

The snare stays on 2 and 4.....but the ride cymbal does a repeating 3 pattern over it.  Meaning.... the fully pattern lines up every 3 bars.

I get what he's doing here... I just am fairly certain my limbs could never pull it off. I mean, even without having to physically keep the 4/4 pattern going I can't make my hands drum in three against the 4/4 I'm hearing.

It's almost like he's using the ride in the way Trey used to use the loops in Ghost and others. The loops were never in time, but that made it interesting because they would line up with the beat every few measures.

Quote from: PIE-GUY on October 02, 2018, 10:46:07 AM
It's almost like he's using the ride in the way Trey used to use the loops in Ghost and others. The loops were never in time, but that made it interesting because they would line up with the beat every few measures.

Bingo! The loops were random and less precisely timed but, it definitely creates the same feel.

With this Fish beat, it repeats every 3 bars... but the rest of the band is playing in even phrases (bars of 4) ...... so..... everyone links up after 12 bars...... buuuuuut most likely, the strongest resolutions will come every 16 bars..... which means you have to do that entire cycle 3 times before everyone ALL lands on the 1 together...in the same phrase. Math and stuff.


Here's a crude example of how 3 bars of the beat would look.

Cymbal:       1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a |1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a |1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a |
  Snare:        1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a |1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a | 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a |


eta: and to bring things full circle, check out 3:38 in this jauntee track, "For the Birds" (https://archive.org/details/jauntee2018-08-10.flac16/jauntee2018-08-10d1t01.flac) to see how I completely ripped off this idea and applied it to songwriting :wtu:

Hell yeah - Do you know why we're still friends?

Quote from: PIE-GUY on October 02, 2018, 12:00:15 PM
Hell yeah - Do you know why we're still friends?

I always figured it was my boyish good looks and dreamy curls.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on October 02, 2018, 12:07:43 PM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on October 02, 2018, 12:00:15 PM
Hell yeah - Do you know why we're still friends?

I always figured it was my boyish good looks and dreamy curls.

Nah - always been about your math skills. Now, please explain how JRAD can seamlessly shift between 4/4, 7/4, 12/8, and 11/8 without me even noticing the difference? I've seen 'em do it!

Not a Phish interview, but wanted to share this one with Dave Kemper, who drummed with JGB from 83-93. Some unique insight into that band.
https://people.well.com/user/shmo/kemper.html

Quote from: jam> on October 09, 2018, 12:46:29 PM
Not a Phish interview, but wanted to share this one with Dave Kemper, who drummed with JGB from 83-93. Some unique insight into that band.
https://people.well.com/user/shmo/kemper.html

great read!  thanks for posting!

ISO links to any of the xm radio band interviews that are taking place this month.

Quote from: anthrax on December 15, 2018, 09:50:14 AM
ISO links to any of the xm radio band interviews that are taking place this month.

Kicks off Monday when Jam On becomes Phish radio for the rest of 2018.

Quote from: PIE-GUY on December 15, 2018, 10:47:11 AM

Quote from: anthrax on December 15, 2018, 09:50:14 AM
ISO links to any of the xm radio band interviews that are taking place this month.

Kicks off Monday when Jam On becomes Phish radio for the rest of 2018.

https://jambands.com/news/2018/12/14/mike-gordon-and-page-mcconnell-appearing-on-siriusxms-jam-on/

relative material! (https://www.jambase.com/article/mike-gordon-phish-kasvot-vaxt-halloween-set-siriusxm)

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on December 16, 2018, 05:03:11 PM

relative material! (https://www.jambase.com/article/mike-gordon-phish-kasvot-vaxt-halloween-set-siriusxm)

I think you mean "relevant" material.

Quote from: PIE-GUY on December 16, 2018, 05:27:27 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on December 16, 2018, 05:03:11 PM

relative material! (https://www.jambase.com/article/mike-gordon-phish-kasvot-vaxt-halloween-set-siriusxm)

I think you mean "relevant" material.

YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD!!!!

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on December 16, 2018, 05:38:13 PM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on December 16, 2018, 05:27:27 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on December 16, 2018, 05:03:11 PM

relative material! (https://www.jambase.com/article/mike-gordon-phish-kasvot-vaxt-halloween-set-siriusxm)

I think you mean "relevant" material.

YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD!!!!

trey looking really old in that pic....i also like that it's 6 weeks later, and people are still wanting to know more about how that set came about...that just shows how great it was. Even elsewhere on here, another thread, people talking about burning a cd or buying a cd....cd's!?!?! we're talking about fucking with cd's just to listen to this set in our motorized vehicles that take us from place to place...crazy. Phish....you're funny. Thanks for being.

Quote from: gah on December 17, 2018, 03:40:53 PM

trey looking really old in that pic....

Not for nothin' - Here's Jerry at 53 - just before he passed:

(https://i.imgur.com/XvafvT5.jpg)

Here's Terry at 54 now:

(https://i.imgur.com/TU32vDU.png)

Quote from: PIE-GUY on December 17, 2018, 05:04:32 PM

Quote from: gah on December 17, 2018, 03:40:53 PM

trey looking really old in that pic....

Not for nothin' - Here's Jerry at 53 - just before he passed:

(https://i.imgur.com/XvafvT5.jpg)

Here's Terry at 54 now:

(https://i.imgur.com/TU32vDU.png)

A mess of cherry gacia and a more casual approach to grooming and... Trey could be right there.

Don't know if this was posted up elsewhere but....Ask Trey!!! (vol 2)

https://soundcloud.com/user-970720966/sets/ask-trey-volume-2

Quote from: gah on December 18, 2018, 09:26:51 AM
Don't know if this was posted up elsewhere but....Ask Trey!!! (vol 2)

https://soundcloud.com/user-970720966/sets/ask-trey-volume-2

Trey doesn't know what 3.0 means. What a noob.

Thought the parts about his sobriety were pretty heavy stuff. Good insights.

""I meditate and then I do my vocal warm-up and then I go in the bathroom and I always kind of kneel down in front of the toilet. And there's a reason that I do that. Because I used to drink too much and it put me in front of that toilet and I like to remind myself how grateful I am that today I haven't had to do that, in 12 years. That's a powerful thing to me."
"I also have to admit that I often think about whether there's somebody in the audience who's trying to get sober. I kind of try to tell myself that's enough for me – to be in unity with that person in the back row. It doesn't have to be a good show or a bad show, just standing there not behaving the way I used to 13 years ago is enough of a gift for me. And that usually gets me up to the middle of the stage in the right headspace."

Quote from: emay on December 18, 2018, 12:28:35 PM

Thought the parts about his sobriety were pretty heavy stuff. Good insights.

""I meditate and then I do my vocal warm-up and then I go in the bathroom and I always kind of kneel down in front of the toilet. And there's a reason that I do that. Because I used to drink too much and it put me in front of that toilet and I like to remind myself how grateful I am that today I haven't had to do that, in 12 years. That's a powerful thing to me."
"I also have to admit that I often think about whether there's somebody in the audience who's trying to get sober. I kind of try to tell myself that's enough for me – to be in unity with that person in the back row. It doesn't have to be a good show or a bad show, just standing there not behaving the way I used to 13 years ago is enough of a gift for me. And that usually gets me up to the middle of the stage in the right headspace."

Yeah, that was pretty, pretty great. He doesn't talk about that much. But he nailed it, spot on, about how him just being up there, doing what he does, and doing it sober, is absolutely inspiring to any one in that room that is doing that show sober. You feel that connection, and know it's ok to be there like that, even if everyone around you might be spun out of their minds. I actually talked to George Porter Jr about that once after a show, when it was just him and me hanging by the merch table, and he started tearing up. That was pretty cool too.

Anyhow, I dig this series and Phish Radio, they need to just make that a permanent thing!

Quote from: gah on December 18, 2018, 12:54:07 PM
Anyhow, I dig this series and Phish Radio, they need to just make that a permanent thing!

I've been listening to more JEMP radio lately. I'm not renewing my SXM subscription when it comes up in a few months. Tired of that shit.

Quote from: PIE-GUY on December 18, 2018, 03:46:49 PM

Quote from: gah on December 18, 2018, 12:54:07 PM
Anyhow, I dig this series and Phish Radio, they need to just make that a permanent thing!

I've been listening to more JEMP radio lately. I'm not renewing my SXM subscription when it comes up in a few months. Tired of that shit.

What is this JEMP radio you speak of???

::immediately seeks thru the google machine::

:crazy:

Quote from: gah on December 18, 2018, 03:50:40 PM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on December 18, 2018, 03:46:49 PM

Quote from: gah on December 18, 2018, 12:54:07 PM
Anyhow, I dig this series and Phish Radio, they need to just make that a permanent thing!

I've been listening to more JEMP radio lately. I'm not renewing my SXM subscription when it comes up in a few months. Tired of that shit.

What is this JEMP radio you speak of???

::immediately seeks thru the google machine::

:crazy:

https://jempradio.com/ (https://jempradio.com/)

also on tune-in or whatever for streaming on whatever app or device you do radio stuff. I have an alexa thing that I use when I'm cooking and stuff - just tell her "listen to J.E.M.P. radio" and it works like a champ. Gotta spell it out, though.

Quote from: PIE-GUY on December 18, 2018, 04:07:43 PM

Quote from: gah on December 18, 2018, 03:50:40 PM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on December 18, 2018, 03:46:49 PM

Quote from: gah on December 18, 2018, 12:54:07 PM
Anyhow, I dig this series and Phish Radio, they need to just make that a permanent thing!

I've been listening to more JEMP radio lately. I'm not renewing my SXM subscription when it comes up in a few months. Tired of that shit.

What is this JEMP radio you speak of???

::immediately seeks thru the google machine::

:crazy:

https://jempradio.com/ (https://jempradio.com/)

also on tune-in or whatever for streaming on whatever app or device you do radio stuff. I have an alexa thing that I use when I'm cooking and stuff - just tell her "listen to J.E.M.P. radio" and it works like a champ. Gotta spell it out, though.

they got an app for iphone....dl'ing now...and will be able to stream in the car....thanks man!

Quote from: gah on December 18, 2018, 09:26:51 AM
Don't know if this was posted up elsewhere but....Ask Trey!!! (vol 2)

https://soundcloud.com/user-970720966/sets/ask-trey-volume-2

THANK YOU!

Trey was featured in a GQ article on sobriety.

https://www.gq.com/story/clean-musicians (https://www.gq.com/story/clean-musicians)

Quote from: Buffalo Budd on January 15, 2019, 09:47:54 AM
Trey was featured in a GQ article on sobriety.

https://www.gq.com/story/clean-musicians (https://www.gq.com/story/clean-musicians)

Damn Trey's inputs are great.
Love Isbell's and Walsh's too.
Thanks for the read!

Quote from: Buffalo Budd on January 15, 2019, 09:47:54 AM
Trey was featured in a GQ article on sobriety.

https://www.gq.com/story/clean-musicians (https://www.gq.com/story/clean-musicians)

+k for that one...really resonate with what Trey had to share.

enjoyed it.

I was especially interested on what they said about creativity.

thanks

I really find Trey talking about his sobriety inspirational in general sense.

Also, anyone know what songs he wrote the morning after tripping on the beach all night in Greece?

Quote from: jam> on January 15, 2019, 01:46:08 PM
I really find Trey talking about his sobriety inspirational in general sense.

Also, anyone know what songs he wrote the morning after tripping on the beach all night in Greece?

Phish.net says parts of YEM, Dog Log, music of Harry Hood were written in the Europe 85 trip with Fishman.

QuoteWhen Trey and Fish traveled to Greece in the summer of '85, they experienced a tumultuous series of events involving a sea storm, a capsized raft, and lots of super-clean "chemists' reserve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley)" LSD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD). Following their return to safety, Trey wrote several chunks of new music inspired by the adventure. Back at the King Street house, a former tenant apparently named Mr. A. Minor was still receiving mail. One piece caught the band's collective eye, a form letter bursting at the seams with Minor's name, telling him, "Thank You, Mr. Minor." It is from these relatively nondescript circumstances that one of Phish's most beloved songs was born.

Also from an acoustic show in 2018 before Hood.

QuoteWe played street music in Paris, and Munich, and Italy, and eventually we ended up in Greece and we slept on the beach for three weeks, and that's where I wrote that song ["Harry Hood"], on the beach on an acoustic guitar.

Hood for sure - I've read him describe how he wrote it

yeah, pretty sure he was referring to hood and yem.

I wonder to whom he is referring...

QuoteAnastasio: I know one guy right now who's in trouble, who's going to come crashing down soon, and everyone's talking about it. I think sobriety had given me the lens to able to see that person—I can see the actual person in there. I don't do anything—there's nothing you can do. But I feel for them. I don't demonize people, I sympathize. [laughs] But I also don't want to work with them.

Quote from: pcr3 on January 15, 2019, 02:24:43 PM
I wonder to whom he is referring...

QuoteAnastasio: I know one guy right now who's in trouble, who's going to come crashing down soon, and everyone's talking about it. I think sobriety had given me the lens to able to see that person—I can see the actual person in there. I don't do anything—there's nothing you can do. But I feel for them. I don't demonize people, I sympathize. [laughs] But I also don't want to work with them.

I don't like to speculate on things like this, but I'm going to say my immediate thought was Russ only because this whole Ghosts of the Forest thing is really just TAB but with Fish instead of Russ. But then the other night Trey sat in with Soul Monde for the whole evening, so I guess not. I dunno. No clue. I respect his approach to it though, whoever it is.

Quote from: gah on January 15, 2019, 02:28:56 PM

Quote from: pcr3 on January 15, 2019, 02:24:43 PM
I wonder to whom he is referring...

QuoteAnastasio: I know one guy right now who's in trouble, who's going to come crashing down soon, and everyone's talking about it. I think sobriety had given me the lens to able to see that person—I can see the actual person in there. I don't do anything—there's nothing you can do. But I feel for them. I don't demonize people, I sympathize. [laughs] But I also don't want to work with them.

I don't like to speculate on things like this, but I'm going to say my immediate thought was Russ only because this whole Ghosts of the Forest thing is really just TAB but with Fish instead of Russ. But then the other night Trey sat in with Soul Monde for the whole evening, so I guess not. I dunno. No clue. I respect his approach to it though, whoever it is.

Seems probably to be someone with a higher profile than that but... perhaps not.
I think that, if Trey isn't going to call the person out, It's probably not our place to throw people's names around.

Quote from: rowjimmy on January 15, 2019, 02:32:49 PM

Quote from: gah on January 15, 2019, 02:28:56 PM

Quote from: pcr3 on January 15, 2019, 02:24:43 PM
I wonder to whom he is referring...

QuoteAnastasio: I know one guy right now who's in trouble, who's going to come crashing down soon, and everyone's talking about it. I think sobriety had given me the lens to able to see that person—I can see the actual person in there. I don't do anything—there's nothing you can do. But I feel for them. I don't demonize people, I sympathize. [laughs] But I also don't want to work with them.

I don't like to speculate on things like this, but I'm going to say my immediate thought was Russ only because this whole Ghosts of the Forest thing is really just TAB but with Fish instead of Russ. But then the other night Trey sat in with Soul Monde for the whole evening, so I guess not. I dunno. No clue. I respect his approach to it though, whoever it is.

Seems probably to be someone with a higher profile than that but... perhaps not.
I think that, if Trey isn't going to call the person out, It's probably not our place to throw people's names around.

This...










but also, I like to speculate however inappropriate. Who would it be that he may actually have a chance to work with but is choosing not to. I mean, he doesn't work that many people. Bobby?? Would not surprise me. Phil? Would really surprise me. Dave Matthews? Would NOT surprise me at all. Dude of Life? Tom? No way.

wait a minute, this is the internet - aren't we supposed to do things like that??





j/k, agree with you 100%

Talking about musicians with drug or alcohol problems is silly anyway.

Obviously he's talking about Barber. 

Which sucks because now we'll never get Phishco.   8-)

I totally didn't want to turn this into speculation. Just genuinely curious and hope that person can follow the path the people in the article have been able to follow. The curiosity probably comes from the fact that I have spent a majority of my life walking along the edge of that line.

"I thought my mojo was gone, but you find a new kind of mojo."


Many of us find our selves fixating on old mojo, but honestly, new mojo is better mojo.

Quote from: Hicks on January 15, 2019, 06:37:31 PM
Obviously he's talking about Barber. 

Which sucks because now we'll never get Phishco.   8)

:hereitisyousentimentalbastard
Was really waiting on those phishco dates

Quote from: pcr3 on January 15, 2019, 11:08:36 PM
I totally didn't want to turn this into speculation. Just genuinely curious and hope that person can follow the path the people in the article have been able to follow. The curiosity probably comes from the fact that I have spent a majority of my life walking along the edge of that line.

:hereitisyousentimentalbastard
My sentiments to a tee.

thats good stuff.  i love it.

nothing new information wise, just cool footage of page and trey I stumbled across last night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ORGM3HExAs

Headsup that Mike is on Under The Scales next week.

Quote from: rowjimmy on February 08, 2019, 10:56:57 AM
Headsup that Mike is on Under The Scales next week.

sweet!

Quote from: rowjimmy on February 08, 2019, 10:56:57 AM
Headsup that Mike is on Under The Scales next week.

mike who?

Quote from: gah on February 08, 2019, 11:05:46 AM

Quote from: rowjimmy on February 08, 2019, 10:56:57 AM
Headsup that Mike is on Under The Scales next week.

mike who?

I think he's the guy from this Barika band...

https://youtu.be/yERDzYJrHmY (https://youtu.be/yERDzYJrHmY)

Quote from: PIE-GUY on February 08, 2019, 11:11:12 AM

Quote from: gah on February 08, 2019, 11:05:46 AM

Quote from: rowjimmy on February 08, 2019, 10:56:57 AM
Headsup that Mike is on Under The Scales next week.

mike who?

I think he's the guy from this Barika band...

https://youtu.be/yERDzYJrHmY (https://youtu.be/yERDzYJrHmY)

Meh. I've heard of him, but he's kinda over-rated. He used to play in this band called Phish that was decent, but last I heard he was wasting his talent away in some group called MGB he formed to honor a car from back in the day. I'll pass.

Apparently he was also turned down to join The Who even though they really needed a bass player.

Bob Weir interview with GQ:

https://www.gq.com/story/bob-weir-grateful-dead-profile?fbclid=IwAR0vIvdjD0xbKQqfnh-8O-wbWxYaWdHu-dI5CLQQ82q5Mm9Ib6PnJFQ1jBo (https://www.gq.com/story/bob-weir-grateful-dead-profile?fbclid=IwAR0vIvdjD0xbKQqfnh-8O-wbWxYaWdHu-dI5CLQQ82q5Mm9Ib6PnJFQ1jBo)

Quote from: Buffalo Budd on May 28, 2019, 01:29:43 PM
Bob Weir interview with GQ:

https://www.gq.com/story/bob-weir-grateful-dead-profile?fbclid=IwAR0vIvdjD0xbKQqfnh-8O-wbWxYaWdHu-dI5CLQQ82q5Mm9Ib6PnJFQ1jBo (https://www.gq.com/story/bob-weir-grateful-dead-profile?fbclid=IwAR0vIvdjD0xbKQqfnh-8O-wbWxYaWdHu-dI5CLQQ82q5Mm9Ib6PnJFQ1jBo)

great article...thanks for sharing!

Here's the Neal Casal interview that I helped with last week.

https://youtu.be/M9RfRBTMIWc

My interview with Billy Strings is on this week's episode of The Drop.

Also, rj interviews Jefferson Waful about his departure from Umphrey's McGee and there's a clip our his and my talk with Kyle Hollingsworth at DelFest.

(https://osirispod.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/TheDropBlue.jpg)
https://thedrop.simplecast.com/episodes/episode-9-jefferson-waful-billy-strings

Here's the video from my interview with Billy Strings
https://youtu.be/wgdbriSfJnU

The rest will be coming out in due course.

RJ interview trifecta. Dude is on a roll. Will listen/watch.

more on the way

Media mogul.

Del McCoury & his grandson, Heaven

https://youtu.be/MLdXsos_B4k

What a gentleman.
Love the Oswego mention, my only time I was fortunate enough to see him in action.

Ronnie McCoury telling some guy in a funny hat about meeting Jerry Garcia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlBxUwNchpo

Full interview is on that guy's podcast: https://brokedownpodcast.blogspot.com/2019/06/delfest-2019.html

---

Adan Aijala from YMSB talks to the guy in the hat and his friend who is also called RJ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juZfMlVl778

NYT interview with Trey:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/24/magazine/trey-anastasio-phish.html

As far as I can tell, the fan consensus is that it even though the band got back together in 2009, it wasn't until 2012 or 2013 that it found its mojo. Is that how you see it?

I agree. There was a seriousness to the music starting in 2009 that was based not on fear but on the acknowledgment of the finite nature of things. We'd had a youthful exuberance for so long, and naïve youthful exuberance is what makes rock 'n' roll great. We were flying high on the wave. Nothing was ever going to stop. Then you wake up in the jail cell. It was a shock to realize how tenuous the whole thing was. And it took until 2013 to find out how to play with risk. Before then I'd been thinking, How do I play music in a risky way when the experience that I went through made me a cautious person?

What's the answer?

A new and better and deeper and richer point of view: Every concert is the most important. Every song is the most important song. So is every note, and every note is also perfectly imperfect. I'm trying to learn to accept the two sides of the coin. What I thought was the worst thing that was happening to me — when flashing police lights were around me and I was yanked out of my life — turned out to be the single best thing in many ways. Hopefully these lessons and maturity have taken me to a place of staying even more in the moment, and that has resulted in a more breathing, organic kind of improvisation. To my ear it has.

I love the whole interview.  I also love that I am potentially controlling the band...

Can somebody paste the whole thing in this thread?

Trey Anastasio on
the endurance of
jam bands and
the life of Phish.

By David Marchese

Formed in 1983, Phish is inarguably among the biggest American rock groups of its time, still capable of drawing tens of thousands of fans to its far-flung festivals and selling out residencies at Madison Square Garden. Not unlike the Grateful Dead and its Deadheads, they've also spawned a subculture of obsessives eager to pore over endless live recordings and follow the band on tour. And yet the need to lay out proof of Phish's place in the rock firmament is to suggest the oddly hidden-in-plain-sight nature of the jam band's success and also to wonder about its eventual legacy — well, for some of us, anyway. "What the legacy is going to be is irrelevant," said the band's frontman, the singer-guitarist Trey Anastasio, shortly before embarking on the band's summer tour. He seemed to be speaking for himself and the legion of Phishheads out there when he said: "Phish is like food for me. It's like breathing."

I think it's fair to say that there probably won't be another jam band that reaches Phish's level of success. Does that mean there's something fundamentally anachronistic about that style of music? Or to put it another way: Is Phish the last of its breed? I'm going to tread lightly around this. Will there continue to be jam bands? If people look backward, there won't. If people start writing new music using the language of improvisation, sure. But if you're just celebrating something that happened in 1970, it's got to die.

Why did you need to tread lightly on that? I can see the onslaught of, "What the hell were you playing?" Yes, Phish played "Ziggy Stardust,"1 but then we consciously went forward.2 I've got to be careful talking about other bands. But can I say one other thing that pops into my mind? I had dinner with a young band. I'm not going to say their name. We had this big dinner, and I said, "Who's your favorite band?" They were naming these '70s bands. This nostalgia thing going on in the whole music scene, it's killing me. Anderson .Paak and Kendrick Lamar and people like that are moving forward. I also like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard a lot. They're not a jam band, but they love the act of creation, and you can feel it. But, God, of all the people to be talking about nostalgia: Trey from the hippie band. Maybe that's why I'm grappling with this. I'm feeling the needle pointing a little bit backward.

Thirty-five years in, isn't nostalgia a part of Phish's relationship with its fans? Good question. The last show that we played was in Mexico. In the encore, we played a song called "Martian Monster," which is from a Halloween album3 that we did. Then we were playing this other song called "Big Black Furry Creature From Mars," which is from when we were 18 years old. The two songs connected. That's nostalgia for me. Nostalgia can be valid and good. I think it's a baby-boomer thing. A lot of the tours that are out now — I mean, I like Queen. I didn't get to see the original Queen. I like Adam Lambert.4 He's a great guy, a great singer. But I have this twinge of, Hey, man, make another album. I'm not picking on anyone. I love those guys, but you know, Phish came up in '83, '84, '85. I think about all this good music that happened then — Minutemen, Bad Brains — which was a reaction against that baby-boomer thing. Even Bowie was writing "All the Young Dudes": "And my brother's back at home/With his Beatles and his Stones." It's a fascination with, like, a window of time, 1966 to 1973. It's got to give at some point. If you took the musicians that were great in 1970 and said "We want you to play music from 50 years ago," they'd be playing John Philip Sousa or something. It's crazy.

Last year there was a new wave of appreciation — nostalgic or not — for Dave Matthews Band. This year, another band that had its moment in the '90s, Sublime, is undergoing a similar renaissance. Is the culture primed for a Phish reappraisal? That's a road that I can't go down. I kind of think we'll be forgotten.

You mentioned the shows the band played at a resort in Mexico for Phish: Riviera Maya,5 which is the kind of thing it's hard to imagine you would've or could've dreamed about doing back in the early '80s when the four of you6 were oddball college kids. Has it been at all hard to come to terms with the bigness of the business of Phish? Look, people came from the beginning, but the bigness existed outside of my personal sphere. I still don't believe that it's big. My life isn't big. I've been married for 25 years.7 I have my kids. I've gotten comfortable with the bigness now because we have a healthy understanding of what's real, but it was tricky for a while.

Tricky how? Success probably triggered feelings of being a fraud. All through the '90s, we used to walk offstage with a great sense of pride that we had kicked ass. We put on a show: It was pow, wham — energy. Then somewhere for a while I lost that feeling. I remember walking off stage in 2003 or 2000, something like that, and turning to Jon Fishman and our manager backstage, and I was like: "Was that good? What was that?" That's when it got a little strange.

Because of a contradiction you were sensing between the quality of the music and scale of the success? Yes, and I took it out on myself.

How? Fish has a nickname for it: the invisible whip. The invisible whip is when I walk off stage saying: "Why did that suck? I need to analyze this and make it better." There's a tension between that impulse and the surrender and acceptance that creates a good jam. And when the response, in my mind, outweighed what we deserved, that contributed to a lot of turbulence. I was trying to make sense of it all: "What are people seeing?" I would beat myself up about the whole thing. I'd try to make sense of the scale, and I would drink tequila — because I was like, "I can't stop thinking about this!"

How do you feel about things now? I don't say, "Was that good?" anymore. It's irrelevant. I do as much preparation as I can, but once everybody gets in the room, I let go.

Is there a dream concept for a Phish concert? I know there used to be. When we were younger, our dream-concert idea was ridiculous. Part of the idea involved not wanting it to be taped because we wanted everyone to be in the moment. So we were going to dangle cassette tapes with fishing poles just out of the audience's reach. Now the dream is that you'd walk in and there'd be 10,000 massage tables and people walking around with herbal tea and bowls of fruit salad. The sound would be perfect. Everyone would have their own private bathroom. There'd be enough room to dance and no one squishing into your space. Endless supplies of really good coffee.

The middle-aged man's dreams are the young man's nightmare. I guess that's just stuff that I like. I carry a pillow on tour. I want my pillow, you know?

In the documentary about you8 that came out this year, you're seen having these conversations where you take stock of your life with your kids, your wife, your parents. You're dealing with the death of a close friend. It feels like the stuff of a midlife crisis. But I'm curious about what a midlife crisis might mean for someone who's spent the better part of 35 years in the extended adolescence of a rock band. This is a good door you've opened. I'll step in. It is true: Being in Phish is a bit of an extended adolescence. When the documentary came out, and when I toured,9 I was like, What am I lamenting here? Yes, my friend died. But everybody's friend dies. Does that warrant this? Now that it's over, I think it was more about realizing that it's my job to continue things. At 28, we were staying up all night, doing multiple nights in Vegas, having huge parties, and that was great. The first time that I tried to stop that, because it had gotten out of control, people were furious — I took their party away. But now, by continuing, we have proved that there's a way to have both the joy and unbridled release of the concert and some emotional maturity along with it.

When you said things had gotten out of control — you're talking about drugs? Yeah. I had a funny conversation with a prominent guy on our crew. Other than pot or whatever, I never really saw drugs until probably 13 years into our career. We're dorks. We'd been playing word games for fun, and then suddenly there was cocaine around. Recording "Billy Breathes" was the first time I ever saw anything like that. And I did it. I joined in. So the conversation I had with the crew guy, after everything had completely gone to hell so fast — kids, don't do drugs! — I said: "What happened? All of a sudden this stuff was everywhere." And he said, "No, it was always everywhere, except you didn't do it. The second you did it, it was fair game for us to bring it out into the open." The party was on, and when the party's on it's on.

Did drugs ever help the music? Mistakenly, I thought it was making me work harder: Now I can stay up three more hours and do more work! I can have five bands instead of three! These are the lies you tell yourself. So was it useful? Nah. I hate all that stuff.


The "Phishbill" for Phish's Halloween show in October 2018. From Phish
Were you using psychedelics, too? That was fun, yeah. Acid — none of that was a problem. The problem was when hard things came around. Now I don't do anything except coffee.

As someone who has had problems with drugs, do you ever experience any cognitive dissonance from being at a Phish show and knowing there's tons of people selling balloons of nitrous oxide outside the venue or seeing the plumes of smoke wafting up from the crowd? No. It's just hard drugs that are a problem. Look, I went too far.10 Everybody's got their own thing. I got to do everything I wanted to do. It's all part of a long continuum for me. I love playing music sober, and I also love people out there having a good time. I don't have any judgment. It's none of my business.

This is random, but I was at a Phish show in Toronto in 1999, and you guys were jamming on "Also sprach Zarathustra"11 — I should add that I was high on about four different things — and I'm pretty sure I was controlling the band. Does that make sense? You may have been!

I'm pretty sure I was. I mean, I think so. I think that way. That was the year of the flooding?

I don't remember a flood. Oh, you weren't on those drugs.

I guess not. From the beginning of the band's career there were comparisons made between you guys and the Grateful Dead. It clearly used to bother you,12 but you seem to have made peace with that idea — to the point that you took the Jerry Garcia role for those big Fare Thee Well13 shows a few years back. What changed? The comparison was too easy. At 14, 15, 16, I worshiped at the idol of Peter Gabriel — the first couple of Genesis albums and then his solo albums. He was like a god. Prog rock was our thing. Then, through Peter Gabriel and "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway," I was introduced to Brian Eno's14 music, and I had the '70s Eno albums on perma-loop. I didn't get into the Grateful Dead until 1980, '81. That was when my parents got divorced and I went to boarding school and people there liked the Dead. So we would go to shows. We took acid. It was great. But at the same time I was going to see Frank Zappa and Sun Ra. King Crimson's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" was one of my favorite records. I also worshiped at the idol of early Talking Heads. So if you listen to the first couple of Phish albums, they don't sound anything like the Grateful Dead. I was more interested in Yes.

What's the best Yes album? "Fragile" or "Close to the Edge."

It's "Close to the Edge."15 I like "The Yes Album," too. But what was cool about seeing those Dead shows was knowing that I was witnessing something important in Jerry Garcia. There was no doubt that something about this guy was going to live on. Then in 1983 we started Phish, and I didn't see the Grateful Dead again until 1994, when they were playing in San Francisco. It was heartbreaking. It had gone to complete [expletive]. But like I said, it was too easy to draw that connection. "Divided Sky"16 had more to do with "West Side Story" than the Grateful Dead. Also what happened was when Jerry died, there were Grateful Dead fans that came over to Phish and were disappointed. That was hard. Everything had been going so well.

Ah, so the negativity from Deadheads colored your feelings? That was a lot of it. Their party didn't want to end, so they came over to Phish, and we were like, "Hey, we've been having fun here for 15 years while you guys were having your thing." But that doesn't mean that I'm not a fan of the Dead, and Fare Thee Well was presented as a chance to have a celebration. When we did it, everybody kept talking about how nice it was to be back without the darkness from the end of the Dead. I had experienced that from people coming over from their scene to Phish in '96, '97. The Dead's kind of hard-drugs scene ended up interconnecting with Phish's world.

You've talked in the past about the importance of seeing Bruce Springsteen live in 1978 and how he resonated for you. And like Jerry Garcia, Springsteen resonates with people for reasons beyond the music, which is probably the case for any musician who inspires intense devotion, which you do. So my question is whether you have any inkling of what your fans see in you? Because there's something there beyond the songs or guitar playing. I don't know what that would be. But here's the thing about Bruce. I met him for the first time on one of his solo acoustic tours. Jon Landau17 took me into his band room. Bruce was sitting on the floor, and he brought up something that Phish had done and said, "If you're going to do that kind of thing, you also might want to think about X, Y and Z." Afterward, Jon Landau walked me down the hall and said, "Did you notice anything about that?" "What?" "Bruce knew you were coming, and he rehearsed for your arrival." Then Jon said that after every show, Bruce asks for a CD of that concert so he can listen and improve. The point that he was trying to make is that Bruce is a guy who cares. Bruce is giving it his all and honors the fans in that way. That's what I want in my career: I want people to walk away and feel respected. The more times people come to see me, the more I owe them. They've given me my whole life. Not just on a financial level, but on a soul level. I owe them. But I don't know what they see in me.

Is the joy or emotional release you get from music available in other areas of your life? It's possible that's been the struggle that I've had to deal with. I've got three bands,18 and I do solo acoustic tours. I do orchestra shows. When I'm on the road, I go to soundcheck and there's a jam at soundcheck. Then after the show I run to the bus and slam the door and start counting the minutes till next time. I don't want it to end. I just keep doing it.

Is that compulsion ever a problem? It's been a problem. When we stopped,19 things were going completely out of control. Then I had a period of time when I was forced to sit still for a year and a half: I was arrested.20 I look back at that time, it was lovely. I stopped touring, but I wrote a lot of music. I was pretty happy.

Did you have music in your head even when you were in jail? I was in jail, and I don't want to go back. It wasn't good. But there was a guy who came to my cell and gave me a little transistor radio and some headphones. I put it on, and I was searching for a signal, and "Higher Ground" by Stevie Wonder came on. I've never really talked about this before. I was literally sobbing in this jail cell, thinking, How did this happen? We were playing in front of 80,000 people, and then all of the sudden I was sitting in jail. And that was the music that came through the headphones when I was in that jail cell? It was too perfect.

How closely do fan narratives about the band's career jibe with your sense of things? They break things down into such hyperspecific eras, or talk about how, say, the band improvised on "Reba"21 in 2010 versus now, and they treat all that opinion like it's Bible verse. They probably know better than I do. I can't occupy one-tenth of my mind with that or it would screw up what I'm supposed to do, which is stay present. So I can't read that stuff. If someone said something mean, I would go fetal, which I've done before. I remember reading one of our first pieces of major press when we were a young band. It said that I wore unfashionably large glasses. Then it was like, "and plays really great music," or whatever, but for me it was always the unfashionably large glasses. I went into a tailspin: Should I get new glasses? Should I keep wearing them to pretend that I don't care even though it killed me? So now if I read, "In '97 they used to play more notes in 'Reba,'" I'd be like: "You want more notes? O.K.! How many more?" So I can't pay attention to that.

As far as I can tell, the fan consensus is that it even though the band got back together in 2009, it wasn't until 2012 or 2013 that it found its mojo. Is that how you see it? I agree. There was a seriousness to the music starting in 2009 that was based not on fear but on the acknowledgment of the finite nature of things. We'd had a youthful exuberance for so long, and naïve youthful exuberance is what makes rock 'n' roll great. We were flying high on the wave. Nothing was ever going to stop. Then you wake up in the jail cell. It was a shock to realize how tenuous the whole thing was. And it took until 2013 to find out how to play with risk. Before then I'd been thinking, How do I play music in a risky way when the experience that I went through made me a cautious person?

What's the answer? A new and better and deeper and richer point of view: Every concert is the most important. Every song is the most important song. So is every note, and every note is also perfectly imperfect. I'm trying to learn to accept the two sides of the coin. What I thought was the worst thing that was happening to me — when flashing police lights were around me and I was yanked out of my life — turned out to be the single best thing in many ways. Hopefully these lessons and maturity have taken me to a place of staying even more in the moment, and that has resulted in a more breathing, organic kind of improvisation. To my ear it has.

Can Phish still consciously improve? Even improvisation can have its own clichés. So how can you avoid musical ennui? Someone always has something new to offer. It's just life stuff: Page McConnell's father gets Alzheimer's and passes away. Then Page and I will have dinner and talk about things that used to intimidate him about his father. Then we'll walk onstage, and if I've had that conversation with Page and he plays something sort of sad, he'll hear me accompanying him. That's a loving gesture. It's the most loving gesture. And the loving gesture is, I'm listening to you. That oftentimes leads into an emotional moment. You feel the whole room explode, and it came from a place of completely accepting that moment, being in that moment and not judging it, not resisting it.

Is there any reason to think the band will ever stop again? None. I'll tell you a story. We just had band practice up in Burlington in anticipation of the summer tour.22 We were talking about having gone to see the Modern Jazz Quartet23 in 1983, in Burlington, when we had just started the band. We remembered looking up at the stage and thinking, That is the model for the band we want to be. We're going to be the Modern Jazz Quartet of rock 'n' roll! Then at the practice we just had, we were all like: "Oh, my God. That's what happened!" Which is really weird. Careful what you wish for.

QuoteTrey Anastasio on Phish, Jam Bands and Staying Together Forever
By David Marchese|Jun. 24th, 2019


'The more times people come to see me, the more I owe them. They've given me my whole life.'


Formed in 1983, Phish is inarguably among the biggest American rock groups of its time, still capable of drawing tens of thousands of fans to its far-flung festivals and selling out residencies at Madison Square Garden. Not unlike the Grateful Dead and its Deadheads, they've also spawned a subculture of obsessives eager to pore over endless live recordings and follow the band on tour. And yet the need to lay out proof of Phish's place in the rock firmament is to suggest the oddly hidden-in-plain-sight nature of the jam band's success and also to wonder about its eventual legacy — well, for some of us, anyway. "What the legacy is going to be is irrelevant," said the band's frontman, the singer-guitarist Trey Anastasio, shortly before embarking on the band's summer tour. He seemed to be speaking for himself and the legion of Phishheads out there when he said: "Phish is like food for me. It's like breathing."

I think it's fair to say that there probably won't be another jam band that reaches Phish's level of success. Does that mean there's something fundamentally anachronistic about that style of music? Or to put it another way: Is Phish the last of its breed? I'm going to tread lightly around this. Will there continue to be jam bands? If people look backward, there won't. If people start writing new music using the language of improvisation, sure. But if you're just celebrating something that happened in 1970, it's got to die.

Why did you need to tread lightly on that? I can see the onslaught of, "What the hell were you playing?" Yes, Phish played

but then we consciously I've got to be careful talking about other bands. But can I say one other thing that pops into my mind? I had dinner with a young band. I'm not going to say their name. We had this big dinner, and I said, "Who's your favorite band?" They were naming these '70s bands. This nostalgia thing going on in the whole music scene, it's killing me. Anderson .Paak and Kendrick Lamar and people like that are moving forward. I also like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard a lot. They're not a jam band, but they love the act of creation, and you can feel it. But, God, of all the people to be talking about nostalgia: Trey from the hippie band. Maybe that's why I'm grappling with this. I'm feeling the needle pointing a little bit backward.
Thirty-five years in, isn't nostalgia a part of Phish's relationship with its fans? Good question. The last show that we played was in Mexico. In the encore, we played a song called "Martian Monster," which is from a

that we did. Then we were playing this other song called "Big Black Furry Creature From Mars," which is from when we were 18 years old. The two songs connected. That's nostalgia for me. Nostalgia can be valid and good. I think it's a baby-boomer thing. A lot of the tours that are out now — I mean, I like Queen. I didn't get to see the original Queen. I like He's a great guy, a great singer. But I have this twinge of, Hey, man, make another album. I'm not picking on anyone. I love those guys, but you know, Phish came up in '83, '84, '85. I think about all this good music that happened then — Minutemen, Bad Brains — which was a reaction against that baby-boomer thing. Even Bowie was writing "All the Young Dudes": "And my brother's back at home/With his Beatles and his Stones." It's a fascination with, like, a window of time, 1966 to 1973. It's got to give at some point. If you took the musicians that were great in 1970 and said "We want you to play music from 50 years ago," they'd be playing John Philip Sousa or something. It's crazy.
Last year there was a new wave of appreciation — nostalgic or not — for Dave Matthews Band. This year, another band that had its moment in the '90s, Sublime, is undergoing a similar renaissance. Is the culture primed for a Phish reappraisal? That's a road that I can't go down. I kind of think we'll be forgotten.

You mentioned the shows the band played at a resort in Mexico for Phish:

which is the kind of thing it's hard to imagine you would've or could've dreamed about doing back in the early '80s when the were oddball college kids. Has it been at all hard to come to terms with the bigness of the business of Phish? Look, people came from the beginning, but the bigness existed outside of my personal sphere. I still don't believe that it's big. My life isn't big. I've been married for I have my kids. I've gotten comfortable with the bigness now because we have a healthy understanding of what's real, but it was tricky for a while.
Tricky how? Success probably triggered feelings of being a fraud. All through the '90s, we used to walk offstage with a great sense of pride that we had kicked ass. We put on a show: It was pow, wham — energy. Then somewhere for a while I lost that feeling. I remember walking off stage in 2003 or 2000, something like that, and turning to Jon Fishman and our manager backstage, and I was like: "Was that good? What was that?" That's when it got a little strange.

Because of a contradiction you were sensing between the quality of the music and scale of the success? Yes, and I took it out on myself.

How? Fish has a nickname for it: the invisible whip. The invisible whip is when I walk off stage saying: "Why did that suck? I need to analyze this and make it better." There's a tension between that impulse and the surrender and acceptance that creates a good jam. And when the response, in my mind, outweighed what we deserved, that contributed to a lot of turbulence. I was trying to make sense of it all: "What are people seeing?" I would beat myself up about the whole thing. I'd try to make sense of the scale, and I would drink tequila — because I was like, "I can't stop thinking about this!"

How do you feel about things now? I don't say, "Was that good?" anymore. It's irrelevant. I do as much preparation as I can, but once everybody gets in the room, I let go.

Is there a dream concept for a Phish concert? I know there used to be. When we were younger, our dream-concert idea was ridiculous. Part of the idea involved not wanting it to be taped because we wanted everyone to be in the moment. So we were going to dangle cassette tapes with fishing poles just out of the audience's reach. Now the dream is that you'd walk in and there'd be 10,000 massage tables and people walking around with herbal tea and bowls of fruit salad. The sound would be perfect. Everyone would have their own private bathroom. There'd be enough room to dance and no one squishing into your space. Endless supplies of really good coffee.

The middle-aged man's dreams are the young man's nightmare. I guess that's just stuff that I like. I carry a pillow on tour. I want my pillow, you know?

In the documentary about

that came out this year, you're seen having these conversations where you take stock of your life with your kids, your wife, your parents. You're dealing with the death of a close friend. It feels like the stuff of a midlife crisis. But I'm curious about what a midlife crisis might mean for someone who's spent the better part of 35 years in the extended adolescence of a rock band. This is a good door you've opened. I'll step in. It is true: Being in Phish is a bit of an extended adolescence. When the documentary came out, and when I was like, What am I lamenting here? Yes, my friend died. But everybody's friend dies. Does that warrant this? Now that it's over, I think it was more about realizing that it's my job to continue things. At 28, we were staying up all night, doing multiple nights in Vegas, having huge parties, and that was great. The first time that I tried to stop that, because it had gotten out of control, people were furious — I took their party away. But now, by continuing, we have proved that there's a way to have both the joy and unbridled release of the concert and some emotional maturity along with it.
When you said things had gotten out of control — you're talking about drugs? Yeah. I had a funny conversation with a prominent guy on our crew. Other than pot or whatever, I never really saw drugs until probably 13 years into our career. We're dorks. We'd been playing word games for fun, and then suddenly there was cocaine around. Recording "Billy Breathes" was the first time I ever saw anything like that. And I did it. I joined in. So the conversation I had with the crew guy, after everything had completely gone to hell so fast — kids, don't do drugs! — I said: "What happened? All of a sudden this stuff was everywhere." And he said, "No, it was always everywhere, except you didn't do it. The second you did it, it was fair game for us to bring it out into the open." The party was on, and when the party's on it's on.

Did drugs ever help the music? Mistakenly, I thought it was making me work harder: Now I can stay up three more hours and do more work! I can have five bands instead of three! These are the lies you tell yourself. So was it useful? Nah. I hate all that stuff.

Were you using psychedelics, too? That was fun, yeah. Acid — none of that was a problem. The problem was when hard things came around. Now I don't do anything except coffee.

As someone who has had problems with drugs, do you ever experience any cognitive dissonance from being at a Phish show and knowing there's tons of people selling balloons of nitrous oxide outside the venue or seeing the plumes of smoke wafting up from the crowd? No. It's just hard drugs that are a problem. Look, I went

Everybody's got their own thing. I got to do everything I wanted to do. It's all part of a long continuum for me. I love playing music sober, and I also love people out there having a good time. I don't have any judgment. It's none of my business.
This is random, but I was at a Phish show in Toronto in 1999, and you guys were jamming on "Also

— I should add that I was high on about four different things — and I'm pretty sure I was controlling the band. Does that make sense? You may have been!
I'm pretty sure I was. I mean, I think so. I think that way. That was the year of the flooding?

I don't remember a flood. Oh, you weren't on those drugs.

I guess not. From the beginning of the band's career there were comparisons made between you guys and the Grateful Dead. It clearly used to

but you seem to have made peace with that idea — to the point that you took the Jerry Garcia role for those big shows a few years back. What changed? The comparison was too easy. At 14, 15, 16, I worshiped at the idol of Peter Gabriel — the first couple of Genesis albums and then his solo albums. He was like a god. Prog rock was our thing. Then, through Peter Gabriel and "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway," I was introduced to music, and I had the '70s Eno albums on perma-loop. I didn't get into the Grateful Dead until 1980, '81. That was when my parents got divorced and I went to boarding school and people there liked the Dead. So we would go to shows. We took acid. It was great. But at the same time I was going to see Frank Zappa and Sun Ra. King Crimson's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" was one of my favorite records. I also worshiped at the idol of early Talking Heads. So if you listen to the first couple of Phish albums, they don't sound anything like the Grateful Dead. I was more interested in Yes.
What's the best Yes album? "Fragile" or "Close to the Edge."

It's

I like "The Yes Album," too. But what was cool about seeing those Dead shows was knowing that I was witnessing something important in Jerry Garcia. There was no doubt that something about this guy was going to live on. Then in 1983 we started Phish, and I didn't see the Grateful Dead again until 1994, when they were playing in San Francisco. It was heartbreaking. It had gone to complete [expletive]. But like I said, it was too easy to draw that connection. had more to do with "West Side Story" than the Grateful Dead. Also what happened was when Jerry died, there were Grateful Dead fans that came over to Phish and were disappointed. That was hard. Everything had been going so well.
Ah, so the negativity from Deadheads colored your feelings? That was a lot of it. Their party didn't want to end, so they came over to Phish, and we were like, "Hey, we've been having fun here for 15 years while you guys were having your thing." But that doesn't mean that I'm not a fan of the Dead, and Fare Thee Well was presented as a chance to have a celebration. When we did it, everybody kept talking about how nice it was to be back without the darkness from the end of the Dead. I had experienced that from people coming over from their scene to Phish in '96, '97. The Dead's kind of hard-drugs scene ended up interconnecting with Phish's world.

You've talked in the past about the importance of seeing Bruce Springsteen live in 1978 and how he resonated for you. And like Jerry Garcia, Springsteen resonates with people for reasons beyond the music, which is probably the case for any musician who inspires intense devotion, which you do. So my question is whether you have any inkling of what your fans see in you? Because there's something there beyond the songs or guitar playing. I don't know what that would be. But here's the thing about Bruce. I met him for the first time on one of his solo acoustic tours.

took me into his band room. Bruce was sitting on the floor, and he brought up something that Phish had done and said, "If you're going to do that kind of thing, you also might want to think about X, Y and Z." Afterward, Jon Landau walked me down the hall and said, "Did you notice anything about that?" "What?" "Bruce knew you were coming, and he rehearsed for your arrival." Then Jon said that after every show, Bruce asks for a CD of that concert so he can listen and improve. The point that he was trying to make is that Bruce is a guy who cares. Bruce is giving it his all and honors the fans in that way. That's what I want in my career: I want people to walk away and feel respected. The more times people come to see me, the more I owe them. They've given me my whole life. Not just on a financial level, but on a soul level. I owe them. But I don't know what they see in me.
Is the joy or emotional release you get from music available in other areas of your life? It's possible that's been the struggle that I've had to deal with. I've got

and I do solo acoustic tours. I do orchestra shows. When I'm on the road, I go to soundcheck and there's a jam at soundcheck. Then after the show I run to the bus and slam the door and start counting the minutes till next time. I don't want it to end. I just keep doing it.
Is that compulsion ever a problem? It's been a problem. When

things were going completely out of control. Then I had a period of time when I was forced to sit still for a year and a half: I look back at that time, it was lovely. I stopped touring, but I wrote a lot of music. I was pretty happy.
Did you have music in your head even when you were in jail? I was in jail, and I don't want to go back. It wasn't good. But there was a guy who came to my cell and gave me a little transistor radio and some headphones. I put it on, and I was searching for a signal, and "Higher Ground" by Stevie Wonder came on. I've never really talked about this before. I was literally sobbing in this jail cell, thinking, How did this happen? We were playing in front of 80,000 people, and then all of the sudden I was sitting in jail. And that was the music that came through the headphones when I was in that jail cell? It was too perfect.

How closely do fan narratives about the band's career jibe with your sense of things? They break things down into such hyperspecific eras, or talk about how, say, the band improvised on

in 2010 versus now, and they treat all that opinion like it's Bible verse. They probably know better than I do. I can't occupy one-tenth of my mind with that or it would screw up what I'm supposed to do, which is stay present. So I can't read that stuff. If someone said something mean, I would go fetal, which I've done before. I remember reading one of our first pieces of major press when we were a young band. It said that I wore unfashionably large glasses. Then it was like, "and plays really great music," or whatever, but for me it was always the unfashionably large glasses. I went into a tailspin: Should I get new glasses? Should I keep wearing them to pretend that I don't care even though it killed me? So now if I read, "In '97 they used to play more notes in 'Reba,'" I'd be like: "You want more notes? O.K.! How many more?" So I can't pay attention to that.
As far as I can tell, the fan consensus is that it even though the band got back together in 2009, it wasn't until 2012 or 2013 that it found its mojo. Is that how you see it? I agree. There was a seriousness to the music starting in 2009 that was based not on fear but on the acknowledgment of the finite nature of things. We'd had a youthful exuberance for so long, and naïve youthful exuberance is what makes rock 'n' roll great. We were flying high on the wave. Nothing was ever going to stop. Then you wake up in the jail cell. It was a shock to realize how tenuous the whole thing was. And it took until 2013 to find out how to play with risk. Before then I'd been thinking, How do I play music in a risky way when the experience that I went through made me a cautious person?

What's the answer? A new and better and deeper and richer point of view: Every concert is the most important. Every song is the most important song. So is every note, and every note is also perfectly imperfect. I'm trying to learn to accept the two sides of the coin. What I thought was the worst thing that was happening to me — when flashing police lights were around me and I was yanked out of my life — turned out to be the single best thing in many ways. Hopefully these lessons and maturity have taken me to a place of staying even more in the moment, and that has resulted in a more breathing, organic kind of improvisation. To my ear it has.

Can Phish still consciously improve? Even improvisation can have its own clichés. So how can you avoid musical ennui? Someone always has something new to offer. It's just life stuff: Page McConnell's father gets Alzheimer's and passes away. Then Page and I will have dinner and talk about things that used to intimidate him about his father. Then we'll walk onstage, and if I've had that conversation with Page and he plays something sort of sad, he'll hear me accompanying him. That's a loving gesture. It's the most loving gesture. And the loving gesture is, I'm listening to you. That oftentimes leads into an emotional moment. You feel the whole room explode, and it came from a place of completely accepting that moment, being in that moment and not judging it, not resisting it.

Is there any reason to think the band will ever stop again? None. I'll tell you a story. We just had band practice up in Burlington in anticipation of the

We were talking about having gone to see the in 1983, in Burlington, when we had just started the band. We remembered looking up at the stage and thinking, That is the model for the band we want to be. We're going to be the Modern Jazz Quartet of rock 'n' roll! Then at the practice we just had, we were all like: "Oh, my God. That's what happened!" Which is really weird. Careful what you wish for.
David Marchese is the magazine's Talk columnist.

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

beat to the punch!

Quote from: PIE-GUY on June 25, 2019, 11:54:14 AM
beat to the punch!

Thanks Jam > PG. Great read!

Super solid read.

Did the king of Dad Rock really just give a shout out to Anderson pakk and Kendrick Lamar?

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 25, 2019, 12:48:05 PM
Super solid read.

Did the king of Dad Rock really just give a shout out to Anderson pakk and Kendrick Lamar?

Is Trey really the king of dad rock? It's hard to believe. But it might just be true. What's happened to him (us)?  :shakehead:

Quote from: gah on June 27, 2019, 05:32:09 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 25, 2019, 12:48:05 PM
Super solid read.

Did the king of Dad Rock really just give a shout out to Anderson pakk and Kendrick Lamar?

Is Trey really the king of dad rock? It's hard to believe. But it might just be true. What's happened to him (us)?  :shakehead:

No. Jeff Tweedy did not give any such shout-outs.

Quote from: rowjimmy on June 28, 2019, 07:06:47 AM

Quote from: gah on June 27, 2019, 05:32:09 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 25, 2019, 12:48:05 PM
Super solid read.

Did the king of Dad Rock really just give a shout out to Anderson pakk and Kendrick Lamar?

Is Trey really the king of dad rock? It's hard to believe. But it might just be true. What's happened to him (us)?  :shakehead:

No. Jeff Tweedy did not give any such shout-outs.

Ah yes, Tweedy. How could I forget.

Quote from: gah on June 28, 2019, 03:07:59 PM

Quote from: rowjimmy on June 28, 2019, 07:06:47 AM

Quote from: gah on June 27, 2019, 05:32:09 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 25, 2019, 12:48:05 PM
Super solid read.

Did the king of Dad Rock really just give a shout out to Anderson pakk and Kendrick Lamar?

Is Trey really the king of dad rock? It's hard to believe. But it might just be true. What's happened to him (us)?  :shakehead:

No. Jeff Tweedy did not give any such shout-outs.

Ah yes, Tweedy. How could I forget.

TWEEDY's NOT MY REAL DAD!!!

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on July 01, 2019, 09:15:44 PM

Quote from: gah on June 28, 2019, 03:07:59 PM

Quote from: rowjimmy on June 28, 2019, 07:06:47 AM

Quote from: gah on June 27, 2019, 05:32:09 PM

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on June 25, 2019, 12:48:05 PM
Super solid read.

Did the king of Dad Rock really just give a shout out to Anderson pakk and Kendrick Lamar?

Is Trey really the king of dad rock? It's hard to believe. But it might just be true. What's happened to him (us)?  :shakehead:

No. Jeff Tweedy did not give any such shout-outs.

Ah yes, Tweedy. How could I forget.

TWEEDY's NOT MY REAL DAD!!!

Check with your mum. Just saying.

This one's new to me...

https://vimeo.com/288613934 (https://vimeo.com/288613934)

QuoteIn Early 1993 I interviewed Mike Gordon in my parents' house in Lexington, MA for his first article in Bass Player magazine. While I can't find the other tape, this one is a herky-jerky discussion of his practice techniques and equipment, with a fairly embarrassing bass-on-bass jam in the middle in which I am severely outclassed (surprise... plus this was 25 years ago, I've gotten better).

It's just fun to hear him talk and play so casually in such a low-key context, with some basic wisdom on practicing that still holds solid.

cool!

Quote from: mbw on July 02, 2019, 10:27:49 AM
cool!

Watching Mike chow on those dried peas is really something.

What an interesting guy, I wonder if he still puts that many hours into practicing these days.
That vid also made me contemplate the amount of songs that he would need to know on any given night and what he should practice or leave to memory.
Thanks for sharing PG.

It's also really interesting to hear him talk about how his favorite bass sound comes from bassists who use a pick - it's really not long after this that he starts using a pick himself. I think it starts in 96 or so. Someone know for sure??

Quote from: PIE-GUY on July 02, 2019, 07:03:10 PM
It's also really interesting to hear him talk about how his favorite bass sound comes from bassists who use a pick - it's really not long after this that he starts using a pick himself. I think it starts in 96 or so. Someone know for sure??

I wondered the same thing watching this.
Then I just assumed he probably used the pick for shows and was just fiddling around for the interview.

Quote from: Buffalo Budd on July 02, 2019, 07:16:33 PM

Quote from: PIE-GUY on July 02, 2019, 07:03:10 PM
It's also really interesting to hear him talk about how his favorite bass sound comes from bassists who use a pick - it's really not long after this that he starts using a pick himself. I think it starts in 96 or so. Someone know for sure??

I wondered the same thing watching this.
Then I just assumed he probably used the pick for shows and was just fiddling around for the interview.

Nope. He definitely did not use a pick at the time. At least not regularly.

I remember after the Waterloo 95 show, my friend who rode the rail at the show said to me, "By the way, Mike Gordon plays with a pick."

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/trey-anastasio-phish-drummer-documentary-clip-858390/amp/

Quote from: GBL on July 15, 2019, 09:34:52 PM
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/trey-anastasio-phish-drummer-documentary-clip-858390/amp/ (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/trey-anastasio-phish-drummer-documentary-clip-858390/amp/)

Stoked to see this Wednesday!

Quote from: emay on July 15, 2019, 10:36:44 PM

Quote from: GBL on July 15, 2019, 09:34:52 PM
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/trey-anastasio-phish-drummer-documentary-clip-858390/amp/ (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/trey-anastasio-phish-drummer-documentary-clip-858390/amp/)

Stoked to see this Wednesday!

ditto

Got my tickets for the Doc tonight. I am really excited. My theater sold out of tickets.

Beyond psyched for tonight as well

seeing the later showing tonight at 945 with KOP and some more of the Denver crew.
It's playing at an independent theater like 3 blocks from my house with full bar  :beers:

Seeing the thing tonight with my wife...

Quote from: rowjimmy on July 17, 2019, 11:27:51 AM
Seeing the thing tonight with my wife...

Same here. Kinda shocked she wanted to go.

looking forward to trying out the popcorn trick on jeff tonight.

Quote from: mbw on July 17, 2019, 11:41:25 AM
looking forward to trying out the popcorn trick on jeff tonight.

Roll Call - MBW Popcorn Trick

Anthrax - in!!!!

Is that where you cut a hole in the bottom of the popcorn bag and put it on your lap, then you ask him if he wants some popcorn?

Quote from: GBL on July 17, 2019, 02:47:55 PM
Is that where you cut a hole in the bottom of the popcorn bag and put it on your lap, then you ask him if he wants some popcorn?

yes, yes it is.

Quote from: mbw on July 17, 2019, 03:00:48 PM

Quote from: GBL on July 17, 2019, 02:47:55 PM
Is that where you cut a hole in the bottom of the popcorn bag and put it on your lap, then you ask him if he wants some popcorn?

yes, yes it is.

Sounds like you and Jeff are gonna have a fun night!  🍻

I might actually make it to the Omaha, NE showing tonight....

So that's not weird or anything.

Apparently never before released Trey interview from 1993 by the guy who wrote "Phish could urinate in their fans ears" review.


https://www.thetapesarchive.com/2019/08/28/trey-anastasio-1993/ (https://www.thetapesarchive.com/2019/08/28/trey-anastasio-1993/)

Quote from: emay on August 28, 2019, 11:27:49 AM
Apparently never before released Trey interview from 1993 by the guy who wrote "Phish could urinate in their fans ears" review.


https://www.thetapesarchive.com/2019/08/28/trey-anastasio-1993/ (https://www.thetapesarchive.com/2019/08/28/trey-anastasio-1993/)

Cool! Thanks for sharing.

Oh, btw...

I listened to this interview last week.
It's pretty cool.

Be sure to go back to ep1 for George Carlin. Good shit ahead includes Frank Zappa.

Quote from: rowjimmy on August 28, 2019, 12:26:02 PM
Oh, btw...

I listened to this interview last week.
It's pretty cool.

Be sure to go back to ep1 for George Carlin. Good shit ahead includes Frank Zappa.

Wow! Cool!

Not exactly an interview, but pretty cool...


https://youtu.be/iLrRzsoKBew (https://youtu.be/iLrRzsoKBew)

A long one...

https://youtu.be/JOyUiPHVQnM

Great Trey interview from Rolling Stone. Talks a lot on Sigma Oasis and some on what the future holds for shows this year. Pretty long but Trey is hopeful.


What about Phish's New Year's Eve show?
It's funny that you say that, because that was one of the conversations. Right now, we would be thinking about New Year's. Do we still plan it? And our feeling is, yes. Hopefully someone will come up with some kind of vaccine and we can tour. That would be my favorite outcome.


https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/trey-anastasio-phish-sigma-oasis-touring-interview-988958/ (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/trey-anastasio-phish-sigma-oasis-touring-interview-988958/)

Quote from: emay on April 24, 2020, 03:14:50 PM
Great Trey interview from Rolling Stone. Talks a lot on Sigma Oasis and some on what the future holds for shows this year. Pretty long but Trey is hopeful.


What about Phish's New Year's Eve show?
It's funny that you say that, because that was one of the conversations. Right now, we would be thinking about New Year's. Do we still plan it? And our feeling is, yes. Hopefully someone will come up with some kind of vaccine and we can tour. That would be my favorite outcome.


https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/trey-anastasio-phish-sigma-oasis-touring-interview-988958/ (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/trey-anastasio-phish-sigma-oasis-touring-interview-988958/)

:cry:

Now a Page Rolling Stone interview on pretty much the same stuff
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/phish-page-mcconnell-new-album-phish-food-ice-cream-991613/ (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/phish-page-mcconnell-new-album-phish-food-ice-cream-991613/)

new trey interview in relix...

QuoteTrey Anastasio on the Power of Live
Dean Budnick on June 29, 2020
Trey Anastasio on the Power of Live


Play Phish
on Amazon Music Unlimited (ad)
In this moment of social distancing and turmoil, many of us are yearning for the collective inspiration and joy that is unique to the concert experience. In a special Power of Live section that appears in our new issue, a number of singular voices chime in with their thoughts on the importance of in-person gatherings.

***

Before Trey Anastasio turns his thoughts to music, he acknowledges a stark reality— we're in a deep moment of crisis.


"I'm here in New York and, for weeks now, there have been ambulances going by all day long," he says. "I saw a documentary yesterday about the people in New York City tending to those who have lost their lives—the people who work in the morgues and the cemeteries and who get the bodies out of the buildings. There's a whole infrastructure of people who do that every day. They're doing it right now, every day.

"So it almost feels silly for me to be talking about how much I miss live music. I've experienced moments of confusion and even grief. But before those thoughts get to my mouth, my rational mind steps in and stops them because of all the profound problems that people are having. But live music is like spiritual food for me too, so I can relate to the people who miss it."

Is there a particular moment that jumps to mind when you characterize live music as spiritual food?

The other day, someone click-baited me toward the Dec. 30 "Tweezer" from Madison Square Garden last year, and I watched it. I don't watch a lot of live Phish, but I watched this. There was a very long jam and, somewhere around 13 or 14 minutes, it went into this quiet segment and, as I was watching this thing, I thought I physically saw the band members vanish. Phish has played in that room so many times. It was the night before New Year's and it was just so comfortable and unified.

The thought that went through my mind, as I was watching it, was that whoever just went to the bathroom had as much of an effect on this jam as any of the musicians. It goes into this moment where Page [McConnell] is on the synthesizer and I'm strumming these chords and, almost in my mind's eye, the band vanishes. The initial thought that went through my head was this: They say that if you went back to prehistoric times and stepped on a leaf and then went forward in time, then the whole universe would change. Well it occurred to me that the conscious thinking minds of everybody in this room, as individuals, had momentarily vanished. And whoever was in line for the bathroom or getting a beer was equally affecting the vibration of this jam.

No one's leading or following—it's this unified moment. Then, I thought of the backstage area where Ron Delsener always has this little party in his room. My dad will go there and friends of ours will stop by, and I was like, "Everyone is affecting the twists and turns of this jam." And I mean everybody: Chris [Kuroda] running the lights, Garry [Brown] running the sound, the ushers, the guy at the beer stand, the people who like to stand in the back, the people who like to stand up at the top. In that sense, it's the physical embodiment of what I consider to be spirituality, which is that we're all connected. We are absolutely intertwined. I'm not a molecule floating freely around the universe. I'm part of a collective consciousness, like a ray of light from the sun.

Carlos Santana describes that moment onstage as collective intentionality, which draws in the bus drivers, the cooks, the security, everybody.

He hit the nail on the head. I was looking at that moment and I thought, "Everyone is part of it." I was imagining, "Wow, Garry, just tuned a frequency in the kick drum and the whole room changed." Then, I went further out and thought, "I know all these guys back there—all the security guards." And I thought one of them just turned and talked to a friend and that everything was unified and it included everybody.

In my assessment, what's so glorious about live concerts is that each of them is a unifying event that's mysterious. You don't know which way it's going to turn. It's improvisatory but everyone is also listening and reaching out and connecting. When you think about isolation as a concept— which has been the solution to fighting this disease—it really is contrary to the direction that we're used to pointing the needle, which is togetherness. The analogy that we've talked about backstage so many times is that the venue is like a big, giant lifeboat and we want to pull everybody in.

That's the magic of music. There was a period where one of my daughters was going through some hard moments in her life when she was a teenager, and one of the healing solutions presented to her was to join a drumming group of all teenage girls. I remember talking to some of these girls and they said, "When we start drumming, we can immediately tell which of the girls is having a bad day. We can feel it through the rhythm in the drumming more acutely than we can through talking." I remember thinking, "Oh, my God. I can relate to that." I can tell if Mike [Gordon] didn't get a good night's sleep when we start playing; I can tell if he didn't drink enough water.

It's all so open. You're open to other people—breathing together and all that stuff. So this has been an interesting, unique moment where that valve has had to be turned off. That tube of connection with other people has been closed. Even with my family—and I know everyone is feeling this— we're all separated. I go see my mom, but it's masks and six feet apart, and everybody's going through that. Grandparents can't hug their grandkids. So it's been an adjustment.

Looking back, can you recall a show you attended growing up that really opened your eyes to the connection between a musician and an audience?

I was just thinking of this. I recently liberated my car from the garage and went for a drive for the first time since March 13. I just filled the car with gas and put it back in my garage but that was enough. And when I got in the car, the windows were open and the original version of "Rosalita" came on. I suddenly remembered my first concert in 1978—Bruce Springsteen at Princeton University's Jadwin Gym with about 3,000 people. I had to go with my sister because I was 14; I wasn't allowed to go to a concert alone and she was a couple years older. He closed the show with "Rosalita," and it all came back to me when I was driving in the car.

What a profound effect that concert had on me. I had a visceral memory of standing with my sister and looking up at the stage and it was just explosive. When they go, "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!" I remember, at one point, Bruce slid across the stage on his knees. And at the end of "Thunder Road," he threw his guitar offstage and a roadie caught it. The whole thing was unbelievable.

I've met Bruce a number of times and, if I ever see him again, I have to remind him how much I owe him because that was my first concert and what I took away from it was that concerts are supposed to be explosive. This is how you do concerts: You blow the roof off the place every night. It was kind of the first thing I learned.

How has the quarantine impacted your creativity?

Before I can answer this, I'm reminded of those ambulances that keep driving past. I also think of the people who are out of work, which includes almost everyone I know—in almost every profession. I can't ignore the fact that people are hurting; they're feeling real pain.

Having said that, the world is unfolding and, because of the way it's unfolding, I've been told that the way that I can help other people in my city is to stay home. So if I'm going to stay at home because I've been told to stay at home, then I'm going to do music at home. Luckily, I've been doing music at home my entire life.

That's kind of the way I'm looking at it—"I've got to stay home so I'm gonna write music at home." I've been writing music at home since I was in sixth grade; I've been jamming on glasses in the kitchen since middle school. So if kitchen jams are the way to go, then let's have kitchen jams.

I'm trying to do what feels natural to me right now—not doing a livestream or a Zoom call, but doing what I've done since high school. I get up, go in and write. I did that before there was a Phish. I'd be in the basement with a keyboard and an amp writing "Run Like an Antelope" and "Slave to the Traffic Light." All that stuff was done before there even was a Phish. Sometimes friends like Tom [Marshall] would stop by, but 90 percent of it was done alone. I'd spend hours every day with a four-track machine and I was in heaven. "The Wedge," "Bouncing Around the Room"—all those songs were written that way. Every single one of them started off as a four-track demo that I did mostly alone.

So far, there's 14 new songs. Tom has sometimes been writing lyrics, but I've been writing them as well. I'm doing this the same way that I always have. I'm sleeping in my own bed and hanging out with [my wife] Sue and not racing out of a hotel. I can't wait for live music to come back, but this is where we are today. This is reality and I'm not going to swim upstream.

Ever since I was a very young child, I have felt music flowing out of me. So if people honor me with their attention, then I feel like that's the function that I was put on Earth to do. And I feel like having found that function, I'm blessed. So whatever situation life gives me, I will wake up in the morning, hear music and try to translate it.

When I look at music history, I see musicians who have lived that. One example is Sun Ra. His group lived together in that place in Philadelphia. We were lucky to see him many times. I remember Fish and I went to a show in Boston at this little club where there were more people onstage than there were in the audience. And Sun Ra had this thing where he'd say, "I'm like a bird. I get up in the morning and I just make sounds." He made hundreds of records. He had a lathe and he pressed his own records from his house. That, to me, is sort of the highest level, which is—however the world turns politically and socially—you get up in the morning and thank God that you can make music that day, wherever you are.

Another example would be Stravinsky, possibly my favorite composer. One of my favorite pieces is his "L'Histoire du soldat (The Soldier's Tale)." It premiered in September of 1918 which, by the way, happened to be during the Spanish flu pandemic. According to my mentor [Ernie Stires]—who taught me composition—it was right after World War I and all the musicians from the orchestras had been drafted and there was a pandemic. Here's this guy, who's the greatest composer on Earth at the time, and there's no orchestras. So Stravinsky had to write that piece for a septet because those were the limits that were forced on him, and he wrote one of the most incredible pieces of music ever.

This goes back to the fact that I don't control the universe—all I can do is adjust my perspective. So as a musician, if life gives you a pandemic and all you've got is a synthesizer, a guitar and one microphone, then make music with that.

There are moments when I watch something like the video montage of the funerals in New York City and start thinking, "What am I doing? I should do something." What's going on is just so messed up and the one thing I have to offer is music. I don't have anything else to offer. Then again, the one thing I can offer is music. So I'll write some songs, put them out and hopefully people will get some joy out of it—some comfort or a little distraction.

You mentioned that you're not doing livestreams or performing via Zoom. Jason Isbell recently appeared at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, with fans tuning in and having their own feeds projected over the bowling lanes. Have you considered doing something like that?

I've been asked numerous times to do similar things to what Jason did. I love Jason and I'm friends with him. It was a great thing. But for me, so far, I've said no.

So much of what I do is informed by the close proximity of the people in the front row—in the front 10 rows—and even by the person in the back row. We don't have a song list because that connection is a big part of who we are as a band and who I am.

I think the Phish experience is very much about the "group think." It's the same with TAB or the trio. I do a prayer before I go onstage. I don't decide what the first song's going to be. I think about it a little, but I can't decide until people are standing in front of me. I've tried. The guys in TAB make fun of me. They'll ask, "What are we going to open with?" and I'll tell them, "We're opening with 'Sand.'" But then after I walk on the stage and I see everyone, I turn around and say, "We're not opening with 'Sand.'"

I don't know if I want to play without our community with me. It's a bridge I haven't been able to cross.

I have been asked by many people: "Let's do this Zoom concert" or "Let's do it Brady Bunch style." Maybe it's my spiritual belief system, but I feel like this is where we are today and this is where I am— "I'm home. The concert isn't happening right now."

I almost don't want to go halfway. If it's possible, I want to celebrate that resurgence of live music with our family, which is our audience. And it doesn't even feel like an audience—it feels to me, like a community.

I'd like to connect with that community, but I've found a way to do it because I've put out those 14 songs from my bedroom. I like being in contact but I might just wait [for a show]. I'm trying to follow my heart through this.

I'll tell you another thing: We had to stop Phish once before. We went many years and then we paused and the pause was from 2004 through 2008, while I was a getting my health together. Then, we did end up making an album and maybe that's something we'll do. I don't know. But we didn't do any shows and we didn't do any kind of half-shows. We waited.

Then, we came back to Hampton Coliseum in 2009 and our community was there. Not everyone was there but it was a large group of people. I'll never forget that moment as long as I live, which was the opening song in Hampton when everybody was back. When I think of that moment, it can make me cry.

So that was five years. I really hope we don't have to wait another five years. But I would prefer to gather with everyone. I want to gather with Page and Mike and Fish and everyone, if it's possible.

I'll admit, I have thought it might be fun to do a drive-in show with the trio, but I'm not even going to do that. I want to see people's faces. Again, I adore Jason. But this is what feels right for me. I need to listen to people in the room. It's what I do.

The virus is going to have its way. So again that goes back around to: "Yes, I want live concerts to come back, but I'm not going to race into something half-baked just out of my desire for things to change."

What's going on is complicated and tricky. I'm just speaking for myself, but what I try to do is wake up with gratitude—"I've got music, I've got rhythm. Who could ask for anything more?" And then get to work writing songs and putting them out.

I can't think about all the stuff that's gone because it's too much to even think about. So the way I'm trying to respond to the moment is by writing songs until they let me play again. But when I do play live, I'd really like our community to be there with me, if there's any possible way.

I think this Saharan Dust Cloud is getting in my eyes.

If their first show back isnt Eugene 21 then it better be in a field with unlimited capacity!

some good stuff here from trey...talks about facing backwards at the beacon and a cool tidbit about '94 tweezers towards the end...

https://relix.com/articles/detail/trey-anastasio-homing-beacon/?utm_source=Relix+Daily&utm_campaign=0feb3f5402-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_11_05_08_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_486e6e4b54-0feb3f5402-27164935&mc_cid=0feb3f5402&mc_eid=8a3ff53652

Quote"So much of my work is about getting out of my own way, rather than fighting toward something," Trey Anastasio reflects. "The work is to not mess up what already exists. There's a tsunami of energy happening, and my mind is the impediment." Anastasio is referencing his decision to launch The Beacon Jams on Oct. 9. The weekly Friday performance series, currently slated to extend through Nov. 27, is filmed at New York's Beacon Theatre and streamed via Twitch.

When Relix spoke with Anastasio earlier this year for our "Power of Live" issue, the guitarist expressed his reluctance to participate in any livestreams. At the time, he indicated, "I don't know if I want to play without our community with me. It's a bridge I haven't been able to cross."

Yet, even as he began quarantining at his Manhattan apartment in March, Anastasio was far from a recluse. He shared a series of new original compositions via Instagram, which he later collected and released in late July on his Lonely Trip record. On August 11, he joined The Roots to perform "I Never Needed You Like This Before," becoming The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon's first in-studio musical guest since March.

In September, Anastasio also participated in a SummerStage Jubilee benefit, however his appearance was prerecorded. He had yet to perform live.

That finally changed with the debut of The Beacon Jams.

The first installment found him teaming with four Trey Anastasio Band mainstays—bassist Tony Markellis, drummer Russ Lawton, keyboard player Ray Paczkowski and percussionist Cyro Baptista— along with Broadway veteran and steady collaborator Jeff Tanski (Hands on a Hardbody, Ghosts of the Forest), who guested on piano for a few tunes.

The show opened with what felt like the inevitable "Corona" and included a mix of Phish and TAB staples such as "Blaze On," "Dark and Down," "Soul Planet," "Everything's Right," "Sand" and "46 Days." Anastasio also performed some of his latest solo material and he reveals "my favorite song of the night was probably '...And Flew Away,' which was just slamming from where I was standing. I also really liked, 'I Never Left Home,' both of which are new songs. Those two were just killing me."

Another highlight was a trio version of "Stash," featuring Anastasio on electric guitar and Tanski on piano, with Baptista clapping his hands at an otherworldly pace, prompting the guitarist to later quip, "Sometimes when Cyro's moving his hands like that, I think he might lift off."

The arrangement of this song also accentuates the intertwined nature of the material at the Beacon. As Anastasio observes, "'Stash' has gone through so many incarnations. I first wrote it as a stand-alone guitar piece. So the entire form—exactly as it sits when Phish plays it—grew from the original form that I could play on an acoustic guitar or electric guitar. Later, Don Hart wrote a beautiful orchestral arrangement, and Jeff Tanski used that as a guide. We ended up doing the piano and guitar version and it fit hand and glove. Cyro joined in, as that groove is right up his alley."

The Twitch platform included an interactive component, with the chat flying by at a hasty clip, despite the fact that it had been throttled down to "slow mode." Over the course of the evening, Anastasio paused to offer his own heartfelt comments at various moments in response to some of these posts.

While The Beacon Jams are free, viewers are encouraged to make donations to the new Divided Sky Fund that has been launched as part of Phish's WaterWheel Foundation. Proceeds will assist those affected by addiction and facilitate the creation of a treatment center in Vermont.

Looking back on the initial night from a distance of three days, Anastasio is buoyant: "I'm just so grateful that this event emerged because it really does feel like a way to connect."

As for the decision to move forward with The Beacon Jams, despite his initial qualms, he adds, "I finally had to accept that this is where we are. I'm swimming—I've got a board under my arm and a huge wave is coming. I can either fight the wave or surf on it. That path of nonresistance has consistently served me better than the path of resistance in my life."

Can you walk through the process that ultimately led you to reassess your earlier decision not to perform a livestream without a full venue of audience members?

When we spoke last time, I had been touring consistently for possibly the busiest two years of my entire career. Phish had just played Mexico and I had done TAB tours and solo acoustic shows— Carnegie Hall and all this stuff. I was just so enmeshed in the live world and I loved it so much that I just wasn't ready to accept a reality where that didn't exist.

Then I started thinking, "Well, here we are; this is the way the universe is turning at this point in time." What is is. I've learned this lesson before, but I had momentarily forgotten it. So instead of trying to push against the reality, I began trying to accept the moment and adjust my perspective.

Over the years, when I've done that, I've found that sometimes gifts come wrapped in very strange packages. I didn't want to get arrested, be put in a felony drug treatment court, move to upstate New York for 14 months and go to jail. At the time, it seemed like a bad thing. And I was completely wrong. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I couldn't have been more wrong about that event.

So the first step was to acknowledge, "Here I am, and I have a Spire [8-track recorder] and I have an amp and I have a bass"— actually, I bought one online and they delivered it to my apartment. So I decided to make some songs, and that was pretty positive because I ended up with a lot of new ones.

Something else that has happened more recently is that I kind of rediscovered my guitar. I really missed playing it. I think that touring is so hard and tiring that it had been eating into my guitar practice time. So I got into this thing not too long ago, where I put on music and play the guitar to it. It's been really fun finding some cool music and putting it on the stereo. Then, I walk around and play the guitar. That's been an unexpected outcome of quarantine.

What sort of music have you been playing along to?

I have loved playing to West African musicians, like Ebo Taylor— listen to the song "African Woman." Then there is William Onyeabor, The Funkees, King Sunny Adé, Fela [Kuti]. I've also been playing along with Toots and the Maytals and a little Ry Cooder. I've seen some cool videos by his son Joachim that are floating around and it made me go back to Ry.  Also, lots of Tom Waits— I've been playing his classic albums in sequence—Heartattack and Vine, Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs.

It sounds like the guitar may have supplied some amount of catalyst but what else changed?

Throughout this time, I had been doing a lot of meditating and a lot of reading. That's important for me as a musician, especially as an improvising and composing musician. What we aspire to do is point toward something deeper, a timeless kind of space.

My daily work has been trying to accept the moment, instead of trying to push against the reality.

So as I went through the whole summer, my perspective began to change. I missed connecting with people. Back in the spring, I couldn't have imagined that it would be October and that we'd be sitting here thinking, "Are we about to go back inside again for the whole winter?"

All of this led me to revisit my earlier decision to not perform live. I realized that maybe I'd been wrong. It's important to be open to that—after all, I've been wrong so many times before.

That's when I started calling around and talking to all the great people that we work with and asking them, "What can we do?" It didn't do me any good to resist.

Sure, I'd love to be playing three nights in Atlantic City, outside on the beach. But we're not playing Atlantic City outside on the beach right now. That isn't happening, so what can we do? The answer ended up being these Beacon Jams.

I took inspiration from so many people that I admire, who had responded to the moment. I've mentioned Stravinsky, who wrote "L'Histoire du soldat (The Soldier's Tale)" during the Spanish Flu, accepting the limits that were placed on him and creating something incredible. There's also The Beatles, who were touring with a crappy sound system—they were playing Shea Stadium with like one little speaker. Then they said, "Screw this," went home and invented the concept album.

There are a lot of events that have prompted shifts. Prior to World War II, dance bands were very popular—people would fill Roseland to see Tommy Dorsey. But then there was a war, which led to a draft, along with fuel and rubber rationing [which limited travel and ended production of shoes with rubber soles]. So people stopped dancing. But the next thing you know, jazz musicians invented bebop, where everybody sat down in smaller clubs.

The rise of country music is tied into the invention of the radio because all these rural stations started popping up and began looking for performers to broadcast.

So I started thinking that maybe there was a way, within the confines of COVID, that I could walk to a space to play. At first, we were looking at some black-box theaters—just square rooms. Then, the people at Madison Square Garden heard about it and were just so cool. They were like, "We know a place that's 10 blocks from your house. You could walk there every day." I said, "yes" and shortly afterward Twitch stepped up to the plate. And everybody in the band—although this may change—was from either upstate New York, Vermont or New Jersey. That meant that no one needed to get on a flight or stay in a hotel; they could just drive back and forth.

Pausing for a moment, you mentioned that you've been doing a lot of reading. What have you turned to during these times?

Right now, I'm halfway through Dreamland by Sam Quinones, an incredibly well researched history of opiate addiction in America. It's fascinating and highly recommended. I thought I knew the story, and there is so much more.  Before that, I read How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, which was incredible. This book should be required reading in every high school. There's so much that I didn't know, which hurts my heart to be honest. I'm grateful to be learning. My before-bed book is a few pages of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, which Sue [Statesir, Trey's wife] gave me for my birthday. I'd never read it before and it is beautiful.  My favorite reading moments are in the morning during coffee. I read spiritual books exclusively in the morning. Right now, I'm in the middle of Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Bhagavad Gita. I've read it so many times. I used to carry a dog-eared copy in my bag on tour. It's my desert-island book—if I could only bring one book, then that would be it. It's a thing of beauty and I love this translation.


Back to the Beacon, at what point in the process did you decide to configure the stage as you did, so that you weren't facing the seats?

One thing that I verbalized from the start was: "I can't play to an empty room; it's just too depressing. We have to do something else." I hadn't responded to the performances that I'd seen filmed from the perspective where the audience normally stands. You'd just see this vast, vacant room. So there was no way we were going to stand the same way we normally do at the Beacon, since we wouldn't have people in front of us.

That's when the ideas started to fly. The person I first started riffing with was Marc Janowitz, our lighting director. He runs lights for TAB and my solo acoustic shows. He also has done some things for Netflix and for musicians like Pat Metheny, who always likes to document the end of every tour in a black-box theater.

In the beginning, Marc and I were talking about setting up in the lobby or maybe in the balcony. Then he walked around and said, "The back of the stage is really cool—it's got these ropes and stuff." And somehow that morphed into: "Wow, look at this point of view from here." So he decided to put lights in the seats and it ended up being the world's greatest backdrop. It's like a stadium light show in a theater because the lights are 300 feet above the stage.

One question that a few people posed during the chat after you finished a big jam was: "Is it weird not hearing a crowd response?"

Strangely, it was not weird because I was feeling a crowd.

I didn't know what Twitch was until they offered to help support this concert series. But then I started watching because I felt that I should check it out if I was gonna be on it. So while I was making my coffee, there was this woman in Iceland singing songs from her bedroom. I really liked what she was doing. Then, I found this other guy from England, who was playing an acoustic guitar and talking to the fans at home. He had a hundred people or something on there, and then he was like, "I've got to go to the bathroom," and he left the room. There was something cool about it—the honesty was kind of endearing. So by the time I got to the Beacon, I had dropped all that into my mind.

Another thing that's important is that it just felt so good to be playing the guitar with everybody. It also was nice to be playing through an amp. I live in an apartment building, so I normally don't play plugged in—I'm pretty quiet. But, all of a sudden, tubes were heating up, speakers were vibrating and drums were banging in the my back of my head. I loved it.

I had also been in touch with some friends and I knew what they were doing, so I was picturing them. I had friends who told me that they were going out into a field so that they could crank it through a stereo. There was also a bar that I knew was playing it. So I knew where people were and I was envisioning them.

The other great thing that happened is my daughter [Eliza] was funneling the chat to me on a screen. She had a very unique skill set for this because she's been a theater stage manager and, in the last year or two, even worked as a PA and ASM on a couple of Broadway shows. So she had headphones on and a screen—she was pulling stuff out, along with a couple other people.

This was very special for me because it's the first time I've ever worked with a family member. It just warmed my heart the whole time I was playing. There was my daughter right in front of me. Then, we drove home afterward. It was just great.

So, because of the way that we were standing onstage, I was actually still looking at some people, one of whom happens to be my daughter. The other ones were my longtime collaborators, Marc and Trey Kerr, who does TV directing. It felt like a team effort and I was definitely not looking at a vast space.


There were a couple of times early on where you seemed winded after a song. Were you still getting your sea legs, were you overwhelmed by the moment or is this something that normally happens to you and we just don't notice?

I would describe it more as losing my bearings on reality. When I'm jamming like that, and really listening, my perspective starts to change. My eyes blur over. I'm way up in the stratosphere, there's motion and it's pretty weird. A lot of times, I'm not conscious of the space that I'm occupying, in terms of where the mic stand is. There are times when I'll end the jam and be unaware of which direction I'm facing. I have to get my bearings. But, normally, there's so much cheering going on that people don't notice. So that was probably pretty normal.

One thing I thought was unique was that people could hear us talk to each other in between songs. We'll often make jokes but usually people can't hear it because it's off-mic. But we are always shooting the shit with each other like we were at the Beacon. I'll lean over and make a joke with Page [McConnell] or something. So I was smiling to myself, just so happy that people were invited into that intimate space.

Over the years, a lot of people have asked me: "What's your favorite thing about being in bands?" And I always find myself saying, "Band practice." I really like concerts, I really like touring, but I've always really loved band practice.

Something about that event felt like, for the first time ever, people were allowed to come to band practice with us. At band practice, you do a big jam like that and then you stop and everybody talks. You can see it in the movie [Between Me and My Mind] when the four of us are sitting around the table and joking about Kasvot Växt. That's band practice.

I thought there was a bit of that at the Beacon. People could hear that Tony's a funny guy. Right before the thing went on, we were already talking about the spatchcock thing. Then he was like, "Yeah, you actually can spatchcock an entire cow," and he was telling me about some barbecue place somewhere.

Something else I noticed toward the end of the night is that you appeared to turn your head up and look off into the distance—the way you've described that you sometimes respond to the silhouette of someone dancing at the very rear of the venue. In this case though, I assume you were just looking at a wall and maybe some ropes as you mentioned.

The "up" thing goes way back.

I meditate before I play. That state of mind helps me reach the truer self inside that, in its essence, is connected to everyone and every living thing. It takes me away from the daily chatter and distraction, where I'm walking down the street debating with myself about some small thing that happened that day. As it says in "Brief Time," "What was I so worried about? What a waste of time, I can't even remember now..."

One of the things that music does for me, just like meditation, is that it turns off that separate place that's about worrying about the past, the future and all that stuff. It gets me closer to the unified place that we all have.

This might sound like a lot, but it isn't. It's very simple. And one of the things that I've found over the years—going all the way back to the UIC Pavilion in the early '90s, where I had these moments— is that this manifests itself in an upward and open gesture.

So when good things are happening and I don't feel weighed down, I find myself looking in that direction. On occasion, I'll also try to look at people when I'm doing that.

There have been times in my career when I was down and kind of out, where I put a piece of tape down by my foot pedal that said, "Look up." I had that for a while in 2002. I was getting hunched over and miserable. I had a lot of problems at the time, so I remember putting down a piece of tape that said, "Look up"— nothing to see down here.

It's also one of the reasons why you have to be really rehearsed with your foot pedal. You can't be thinking about it. It's got to be invisible or you'll be looking down at it all night long, which kind of screws with the music. You're pushing buttons and not playing music. I've had conversations with guitar techs, explaining that they can't move my button positions because then I'll have to look down and the whole flow of the jam goes away.

I didn't know I was doing the "up" thing at the Beacon, but I sure was enjoying myself. I think it's a natural thing that starts to happen as a result of the joy I can feel from Ray and the organ, Cyro's energy behind me—all that stuff is just so uplifting. I mean, even that term "uplifting"—I think the body position is a natural outgrowth of that.

How are you approaching the setlists for this run? You've explained that you generally feel the vibe of the room before you make your song choices on the fly. Is that different this time without an audience? I also noticed, in your video interview with [SiriusXM Phish radio host] Ari Fink, that you had your poster board and markers, which were part of the process in constructing the Baker's Dozen setlists.

Yes, I showed him a glimpse of all eight weeks and it was just "Lawn Boy" [Laughs.] That was a joke, but I do have the pad and I'm looking at it right now. There's nothing on it because, while I thought I was going to do the Baker's Dozen thing—where I spent six months writing the lists—this has been different.

What I've always tried to do is remain open. I deeply, honestly and truly believe that the deeper intelligence of the universe informs me more than my own stupid mind. That's true of every aspect of what I do, including what songs I'm going to play.

For The Beacon Jams, I get up, make my coffee, go for a walk and I think, "Oh, it'd be really fun to play 'Corona' because when am I going to get to do that?" Then I think, "The stripped-down version would be good with this." So I jot it down on my phone. As I continue through the day, my perspective changes. It's like, "Man, I love this slow thing," and I'll add another song.

Then we go into the band room, and the temperature changes when everyone's in there. For instance, I didn't know Cyro was going to be there until the last minute and his presence altered what the song list was going to be. Then, another song will jump out after we start playing in the rehearsal space. But I try not to think about it too much. Right up to the last minute, I try to remain open.

And even though I gave a lot of thought to the Baker's Dozen list, I always maintained that openness. During those six months, I kept changing the list. I would write it and change it, write it and change it. In the process, I learned that the more I let go, the better it gets.

I'm also not a free-floating individual, so when I walk into the Beacon, part of the way that the song list comes about is through the little conversations I have with everyone who works there. I get in the elevator and start talking to a guy about his family, and he says something that slightly plays into how the course of the night unfolds.

On the morning of the first Beacon show, there was an announcement that Broadway was going to be closed until June 2021. This impacts 97,000 employees of Broadway outside of the actors and musicians. But when I got to the Beacon, the marquee was lit and all these staff members were back to work. I was talking to them all day long. It was very moving and felt much bigger than the music. So I think that it informed the emotions of the music to see these men and women, who I had seen for years backstage, coming back to work.

Then, I had the Twitch chat. I totally got "Sunset Days" from the fans. I read something that Eliza put up on the screen about these people who were getting married. Later on, when I picked up the acoustic, I asked Eliza to put that back up again, so she went through her files and popped it up on the screen so that I could read it. I had also received a text from my daughter Bella earlier in the day that I had registered and then forgotten about, also asking me to play "Sunset Days" for her friends. As it turned out, she was talking about the same people.

The reason improvisational music works is that you listen. All you've got to do is listen to one other person. That's all it takes. Just pick one person that's not you. Just pick one—the bass that Tony's playing right now. Let your radar go outward. Boom.

The other part is that, as best as you possibly can, don't think about the results. It's going to be good or it's going to be bad. But what does that even mean? I've been wrong on that so many times but it's irrelevant. I'm not in the results business. I'm standing here, Ray's over there. My job is to just get out of the way and listen.

In my experience, thinking about results and not about the joy of the actual connection, doesn't go anywhere good. I think you can tell what kind of music was written to make money and what kind of music is an expression of a human emotion—a cry for help, joy or whatever.

In the Phish world and my world, there are a lot of songs. But because we don't really have a hit, I've never felt trapped into feeling that I had to play a specific song. It's much more like, "Where are we today? What am I hearing?" Just let it fly.

So, you turn off the machine in your brain and live completely in the moment. And every step of the way, you're reaching out to the audience and the other musicians to find the place where you connect. That's how music works. That's how song lists work. That's how all of it works.

Something else I picked up from the chat was a real sense of gratitude and relief—"We've never needed you like this before!" or "This is what the world needed!" I imagine these responses were prompted both by feelings about the coronavirus and the escalating clatter and dissent in our culture. As someone who responds to the moment through his performance, has it been a challenge to prevent all of that from becoming overwhelming?

Everything I like about music is that it brings people together— everything. Every musician I've ever liked—Ella Fitzgerald, Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley—their songs were about unity. That's what I care about.

Live music teaches you that there is a place where we're all one and connected. Bob Marley was up there singing, "One love, one heart, let's get together" because music opened up a path where that underlying truth was revealed to him.

So I spend my days trying to bring people together: "The ocean is only a lot of drops of water/ And the land is only a lot of grains of sand... From high above we're all the same down here/ Without a map the lines all disappear... rise up and come together..." That's where I'm going to stand.

As a musician, that's what I've learned. Think about what you're doing as a musician. You walk into a room with a variety of people, everyone counts something off and then you start searching for the place where you connect. Is it the beat? Is it the vocal harmonies? Where are we together? Everyone is searching with their radar and their antenna. Where are we the same? And when everybody discovers it, then that's the groove. That's what James Brown found. Those musicians all found that pattern—"Oh, my God, we're all one." They became one sound.

What you're doing is searching for the place where you're the same and trying to ignore the places where you're different.

So as a musician, and in particular an improvisational musician, I try to look for places where I connect. I think we all recognize that there is just so much noise going on right now. I've never experienced anything like it. At times, I look around and wish we could all take a breath and listen for a minute.

Music is about listening. That's how you play music; you listen to the another person. The whole skill set of improvisational music is listening. But these days, with all the chatter, it often sounds like a lot of screaming people who aren't listening to each other. It sounds like bad improvisational music. Personally, I'd rather hear Kind of Blue.

The situation reminds me of something that every band experiences, which is the tempo war. The guitar player counts off the song. The drummer, who isn't in the guitar player's body, gets going at a different rate. Then the bass player thinks it's going too fast while the drummer thinks it's going too slow. So there's a battle where the various musicians are either speeding up or slowing down, trying to pull the rest of the band along with them.

This happened to Phish early in our career, around '94. We experienced various versions of this over and over and over again—until, one day, we went into the band room and said, "We're never going to do this again." So we decided to do an exercise and we went around in a circle and each person had a turn to speed up or slow down. It was Page's turn. He sped up, slowed down. Everyone had to follow Page. The idea was that Page is correct and you're wrong. And then it was Mike's turn. And Mike sped up and slowed down and Fish sped up and slowed down. Then I sped up and slowed down. And what we did was train ourselves not to fight and to accept the other person's opinion. It was a full-on, "I love you. I believe in you as a human and a musician. So I'm not going to sit onstage and start thinking that I'm right and you're wrong."

Then, all of a sudden a whole new world opened up to us in the jams by just accepting and listening. That was when those "Tweezers" started happening that were like 40 minutes long. We were speeding up and slowing down. It was unbelievable. We had been fighting for four straight years. And, just by sitting down and saying, "We are now going to listen to each other. I'm not right and you're wrong; each of us is right," it was revelatory. That was when Phish became a good band, right before the Bangor "Tweezer." It hasn't been a problem since then. You'll notice that in Phish jams, if they want to speed up, then they speed up. And if they want to slow down, they slow down.

I've played with orchestras all over America and it's an amazing experience. You walk onstage with 90 people, there are no amps and everybody has to find one place to connect. So everybody starts getting together and, when it comes together, it's 90 people in harmony.

I've had that same experience in Atlanta, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Seattle, LA and with the New York Philharmonic. And when I came together with all those people, it was so powerful that my knees got weak. There were times when I thought I was going to fall over. I cried. I'm crying right now remembering it.

But in this moment of isolation, it's so much more profound. That's what we were trying to do at the Beacon. We had all been separated and sent back home. Would we still be able to find a place to connect?

Speaking for myself, the answer is an unequivocal, "Yes." I'm still feeling it three days later.

When we find that place—when we make that connection—it's the most beautiful experience. The groove comes together and it's incredible.

Wasn't really sure where to post this nonsense I just ran across on google. Old news, but a pretty funny read, if you find the ramblings of crazy folk interesting.

The crazy's sweet blog:
https://bakingbradblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/02/me-and-the-pedophile-piper-of-phish/

And you mean....someone would just .... go on the internet? And tell lies?
The followup:
https://wgme.com/news/local/phish-drummer-obtains-protection-order-against-belfast-chimney-sweep

Quote from: ph92 on January 05, 2021, 01:47:08 AM
Wasn't really sure where to post this nonsense I just ran across on google. Old news, but a pretty funny read, if you find the ramblings of crazy folk interesting.

The crazy's sweet blog:
https://bakingbradblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/02/me-and-the-pedophile-piper-of-phish/

And you mean....someone would just .... go on the internet? And tell lies?
The followup:
https://wgme.com/news/local/phish-drummer-obtains-protection-order-against-belfast-chimney-sweep

My cousin's wife was the court stenographer for that and was telling me about it when it happened.  Said the dude was a total nutjob, which is pretty obvious reading that article.

Since you bumped this thread - a couple of interviews worth checking out:

1. RESCUE SQUAD VIOLINIST KATIE KRESEK
https://phish.net/blog/1609704171/interview-of-rescue-squad-violinist-katie-kresek.html (https://phish.net/blog/1609704171/interview-of-rescue-squad-violinist-katie-kresek.html)

2. J-Ha on Comes A Time Podcast
https://youtu.be/MTWoQXGr5Qs (https://youtu.be/MTWoQXGr5Qs)

A bit of a throwback, my first read on Phish from back in the day via Guitar World:

https://phishbytheyears.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/guitar-world-1994.pdf

Quote from: susep on January 05, 2021, 09:39:29 AM
A bit of a throwback, my first read on Phish from back in the day via Guitar World:

https://phishbytheyears.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/guitar-world-1994.pdf

Thanks!

Quote"...I mean, I love playing with Phish, it's like breathing air, but I wasn't going to go home and watch a video of Phish. But now I did, and it was kind of like, "Oh, wow, OK. In 1996, we were accurate. I'm going to be accurate from now on."

(https://media.giphy.com/media/KDVswimTNahWzcd7sV/giphy.gif)

https://www.pollstar.com/article/trey-anastasio-talks-beacon-jams-music-history-phishs-future-147111

Eric, who did the interview, was on BrokedownPod last year. He's long liked Phish but never spent much time listening until this year. It's been his quarantine project. To think that he capped it with an interview with Trey... Damn.

Good interview, too.

https://www.moderndrummer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/md190cs.pdf

Here is a fun interview w/ Fishman from the Sept ?95 issue of Modern Drummer.  His piece begins on pg 58. 

Quote from: susep on January 28, 2021, 05:51:19 AM
https://www.moderndrummer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/md190cs.pdf

Here is a fun interview w/ Fishman from the Sept ?95 issue of Modern Drummer.  His piece begins on pg 58.

Nice find, can?t wait to check this out.

Quote from: WhatstheUse? on January 28, 2021, 08:54:28 AM

Quote from: susep on January 28, 2021, 05:51:19 AM
https://www.moderndrummer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/md190cs.pdf

Here is a fun interview w/ Fishman from the Sept ?95 issue of Modern Drummer.  His piece begins on pg 58.

Nice find, can?t wait to check this out.

I distinctly remember buying this issue. Boy, how time flies.

great read, thanks

Quote from: sls.stormyrider on January 28, 2021, 05:46:49 PM
great read, thanks

yep

x2

Is the page as the new guy thing an inside joke?
Seems weird that fish would refer to him as "the newest member of the band" in 1995.

edit... lord have mercy the amount of coke being snorted in this tape. (5 min on). Still, a great glimpse inside 77 jerry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj48pFBUuqo&t=432s

Some Mike content here:

https://www.innerviews.org/inner/leo-kottke-3

QuoteNow, Mike is a great musician and fully fluent. He?s done all his homework and he?s knowledgeable. He can play what he thinks. That?s part of the experience. But at the heart of it is the friendship and the feel. When we?re playing together, our hearts are on our sleeves. We?re very vulnerable. It?s rare for musicians to be total assholes. They?re not people you want to play with, no matter what you think of their music.

So, it?s the ordinary stuff that we all live with and go by. Proprioception is the sense of how close you are physically to another person. It?s what allows you to walk through a crowd without bumping into everyone. Proprioception extends to something we could also call our crap detector. If your crap detector goes off, you?re not going to play with that person. There?s also something else in you that goes ?Oh, this is cool.? And if you happen to be musicians, songwriters or composers, you may do something together. That?s where Mike and I are at. Sometimes we?re doing something and it rises up. We don?t sit down and agree to do something. Whatever is going to happen is there before we have that sort of agreement. You don?t know when it?s coming.

Page on Comes A Time Podcast!!

https://youtu.be/aLkxf0LhFGk (https://youtu.be/aLkxf0LhFGk)

Quote from: PIE-GUY on April 30, 2021, 11:48:05 AM
Page on Comes A Time Podcast!!

https://youtu.be/aLkxf0LhFGk (https://youtu.be/aLkxf0LhFGk)

When he said he was following along with a thread when they streamed Sigma Oasis, I was like fuck, I shat on it and now Page hates me.

Quote from: mbw on April 30, 2021, 09:24:41 PM
When he said he was following along with a thread when they streamed Sigma Oasis, I was like fuck, I shat on it and now Page hates me.

:hereitisyousentimentalbastard :hereitisyousentimentalbastard

New Trey interview in Relix.

https://relix.com/articles/detail/finding-mercy-trey-anastasio-on-songwriting/ (https://relix.com/articles/detail/finding-mercy-trey-anastasio-on-songwriting/)

https://youtu.be/V-BWZ5SFfyg

Here's an interesting one...

This is pretty cool. James Casey on the Today Show yesterday:

https://www.today.com/video/how-this-music-star-is-raising-awareness-about-colorectal-cancer-164407365514 (https://www.today.com/video/how-this-music-star-is-raising-awareness-about-colorectal-cancer-164407365514)

Excellent!!!

Cactus in Cory Wongs podcast...


https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wong-notes/id1513405224 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wong-notes/id1513405224)

This is honestly one of the best interviews I've ever seen. It took me all week to get through the whole thing. It's 3 hours long and it's clearly edited down from probably 5 hours spent together. Incredible. 

Daniel Lanois is an almost mystical presence. Just pure heart and soul in everything he does. I've only seen him play live twice in my life. Both were festival sets with lots of distractions, yet both were profound to me. 

Anyway, check this out. I promise you will love it. 

https://youtu.be/EUbUn9FnrME

OK - This has EPIC Phish content. Keven Russell tells the story of the Gourds' Gin and Juice cover. Fucking hilarious!





ETA: Here's the "Phish version" for reference. Mislabeled on YT with 1.5M views. HAHA! 

that was good   :clap:

speaking of a shitton of views on youtube. watched this other day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7Xse0E_SzA

Lol oh man. 
Me and my homies walk up on the conspiracy theory guy at 15 min mark. 
And homie cookie that did most of tour with is at the 11 min mark with da baby stickers lol. 

Get weird with the bass player...