Interview Thread

[anthrax]

GQ article...

https://www.gq.com/story/four-days-with-phish

[mbw]

Dang.  Three really great article/interviews.

Gordon throwing shade on rail riders was pretty epic.

And Trey thinking Let Me Lie would be the great Phish song was hilarious.

[mopper_smurf]

And Trey thinking Let Me Lie would be the great Phish song was hilarious.

Big Red is a funny guy, right?

[PIE-GUY]

And Trey thinking Let Me Lie would be the great Phish song was hilarious.

Big Red is a funny guy, right?

He really did try. 

[rowjimmy]

And Trey thinking Let Me Lie would be the great Phish song was hilarious.

Big Red is a funny guy, right?

He really did try.

At least he figured it out.

Finally.

[Caravan2001]

The Atrium Music from The Sphere run will be getting a release!!

&mc_cid=671a6380d6&mc_eid=b079e01932&fbclid=IwY2xjawFD5Y5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRCN5Lx6mTGhKQF6e1dpOHDFP-BIRyxERKFLXZ-iRzzVVT1b2mDJQfr1aw_aem_XvGNrSJ-bjW5FhP5fHD9KA]Trey Relix Interview

I spent some time with Kevin at Dover and he said that was what he was working on currently and that it was awesome. He also told me he had a ton of other things coming down the pipe so we should be in for some more good surprises over the next year. It was great to see him.

[anthrax]

Trey Anastasio Talks Phish's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nomination (and Why He's Not Voting for His Own Band)
Anastasio, a first-time nominee in Phish's 41st year as a band, discusses what the honor means to him, Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show, and how MJ Lenderman has ruined his life.

By Grayson Haver Currin
February 13, 2025
Trey Anastasio in 2024
Taylor Hill/Getty Images

This morning, long before dawn, Trey Anastasio sent me an urgent text message about his hypothetical ballot for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. "I love Soundgarden. Take off Phish. Put back Soundgarden," he wrote, ending the message, as he so often does, with an emoji: 😂.

I had called Anastasio on Wednesday afternoon, a few minutes after he finished a block of rehearsals for an upcoming solo acoustic tour and a few hours after it was announced, somewhat surprisingly, that Phish had finally been nominated for the Rock Hall. During the last four decades, Phish has set a new standard for jam bands in the United States, not only in its dogged pursuit of newness but also in its cultivation of a community that has grown and matured alongside it. But industry accolades have mostly eluded Phish. They've been nominated for a Grammy only once, their albums rarely chart, and they've been out of the major-label system for the better part of two decades. This was a rare show of external validation.



At the end of our call, I asked Anastasio—one of the most avid and attentive listeners I've ever known—who would be on his own ballot. He worked his way through the nominees, laughing as he picked. And immediately after he hung up, he sent his first text of regrets: "I want to vote for Cyndi Lauper. Take someone off!!! Is Soundgarden on my list?" And then, of course, there was another emoji: 🤔.




That was the move that ultimately led to Anastasio—at least as of this morning—deciding not to vote for his own band. Still, as he took a taxi between appointments in Manhattan, Anastasio talked about why he thinks Phish and the scene they have built do matter, and how honored he is to know that others might feel the same way.

GQ: How did you find out Phish had been nominated?
Trey Anastasio: Patrick Jordan, our manager, called Page [McConnell, Phish keyboardist] and I yesterday, and the four of us have been talking this morning. It's an honor and a thrill, a recognition of our whole scene, of our community. That was the first thing we all talked about—that it's a celebration of this community. You know I'm not making that up, because you're in it, in the community. I sent the guys 14 seconds of the Munchkins: "You will be a bust. You will be a bust. In the hall of fame." It's the greatest line ever written about a Hall of Fame, I think?

You and I talked about this possibility last year, and the fact that Phish has never been nominated. Still, was it a surprise?
That's why I'm saying I think it's such a celebration of a community, because we've always stood left of center, always, from the beginning. But what we've always had going for us is this incredibly strong connection with our fans, our community. We've grown at an organic pace, which has probably been the best gift we ever could have received as a band. The roots are strong now. It's been 40 years.

Not counting nominations for packaging, Phish has only been nominated for one Grammy award in 41 years, and has never won. This is the band's first time on a Rock Hall ballot. Why has it taken some people so long, especially in the music industry, to take Phish seriously?
We didn't make it easy. It's not a very surface band. It's been hard for the Grammys, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fames, and even magazines in the beginning to understand why people were so excited about this thing. There's a lot in there, but we don't lead with it. I don't blame anybody. I fully understand and always have, so there's no hard feelings. I am not making the Oasis statement that it's bollocks or whatever. It's really meaningful.

The March issue is here. Secure the issue and get one year of GQ. CTA: SUBSCRIBE NOW
This is going to be weird. I am going to make this comparison without even a drop of quality comparison. But when I saw Kendrick the other night, I was losing my mind. I thought, "This is the deepest thing I've ever seen at a Super Bowl." I watched it three times, and I still couldn't pick up on all the messages he was conveying. I just assumed everyone thought that, until I talked to Patrick the next day. I don't really look at the Internet, but he said, "A lot of people didn't really like it." How could you not like that? It was a piece of art. But it wasn't all on the surface. It wasn't McHalfTime Show. You had to dig in a little bit, and anyone who did dig in was rewarded. I love things like that. If it were me voting, Joy Division is in. But it's not me that's voting. That's another band that's like that. It's not a surface-level artistic statement.

You said it was meaningful, not bollocks or "for wankers." Why is this meaningful?
It's a lifetime of ... I was going to say work, but I'm going to change that to a lifetime of care and love that went into this thing. Every single day of my life for 41 years, I have been wanting to create an experience that touched people. The thing that I have tattooed on the inside of my forehead is "This is so good it should be even better." I try to say that about everything: This lyric is so good it should be even better. This setlist is so good it should be even better. How can we improve this so that people can continue to have their minds blown?

As you know, I saw my first New Year's Eve Phish show this year, and that's what was so moving about the techno encore—that you guys were trying to blow minds, not just sending a banner year for Phish off with a hit.
We're 41 years in, and we played two brand new songs, which are now deeply folded into this thing. "What's Going Through Your Mind" is arguably the biggest song in the Phish repertoire right now. It was written in March. It came out after our last album, in our 41st year. That just doesn't happen. But the amount of work that goes into something like that, the hidden work? Like, I definitely also believe "Never let 'em see you sweat," and there's a lot of sweat. You gotta debut 20 new songs to get a song like that. You have to work on all of them and write all of them and wait for the muse to tell you this is the one.


And then you've got to develop it and nurture it and play it and improve it and change the key, and then we have that whole thing on New Year's. If you were a fan for 40 years and saw that, it's meaningful. Like, this band still cares. That goes back to what I was trying to say: The reason that this acknowledgement is so touching and moving is that 41 years of care and love went into this nod.

What you're saying gets to a central rock 'n' roll question, especially when it comes to the coronation of something like the Rock Hall: burn out or fade away?
I have never been interested in becoming a nostalgia act that's playing songs from 30 years ago over and over and over again. I've got a shining light in my view, who I watched because I was the right age. We used to cover "Life on Mars?," the greatest song ever written by the greatest artist of all time. And two days before he died, he released the best album he ever made, Blackstar, in my humble opinion. And that was his 26th album. It kills me, it's so good. This guy sits in front of us as the master of the form, David Bowie, telling me that you can continue to evolve and be creative until the day you die. He did it, and I watched him. We all did.

You can only be 28 when you're 28. The only tragic mistake is trying to be young. You automatically fail. You have to be where you are. I read an interview with Bruce Springsteen once where he said every time they made an album, they wanted it to sound like "Be My Baby." They checked what kind of microphone they used and what kind of soundboard they used, and they went to the same studio. And one day, he was sitting there, and he goes, "Oh my god, it's the sound of youth. I'm never allowed to sound that way." I had the same thought when I heard this mind-blowingly good MJ Lenderman album. I thought, "I hope he's enjoying it, because you can only be 26 once. He sounds like he's 26 on that album." It's so good, but I can't be that anymore. That razor's edge that he's living on with that album? It's so good.

You should know that, yesterday morning, I turned in a very long profile of Jake Lenderman for GQ. And yes, he's 26 now, not when he made Manning Fireworks.
Tell him I love him, if you're texting him. That won't mean anything. That's why I love him—because he probably hates my band. That and the song he did with Waxahatchee? [Katie Crutchfield, Waxahatchee's founder] talks about that a lot, in a healthy way—when Tigers Blood came out, she's like, "I'm not in my 20s anymore. I can't be. I have to find a new mojo." And she did. But tell MJ: Thank you for ruining my living room. It's all I listen to. My poor wife, Sue, is like "Are you putting Manning Fireworks on again?" Yes, because it's so good. I had that snide thing for a minute: "Wilson, can you still have fun?"

You're allowing yourselves to be someone different. You're not the band that wrote "Wilson" or "Carini."
Or Rift! I really like Evolve, and I really like Sigma Oasis. They don't sound like Rift. I'm writing something right now that is so not anything like anything I've done before, and I'm really excited. I don't know if it's good, and we'll see where it goes. But I set a rule: It doesn't sound like that other song, and half the people are going to loathe it.

Tell me about the song.
I bought a new piano as a gift for my 60th birthday. I started getting up at 5 in the morning and writing on this thing. It was like a new toy. The stuff that came out is very melodically and harmonically intense, but beautiful. Because I was at the piano, it was easier to access the confused language of deeper harmonics. You know how guitar music all sounds the same? It's because that's where your hands land. It is much harder to play than I thought it was going to be.



But anyway, the bigger point is I don't think you have to burn out or fade away. There's a third choice. The third choice is to not separate any aspect of your life from your "music career," and that's what Phish has done. We tried to have an incredibly wide palette that includes all the aspects of our life, because I started off as a young kid writing and singing music to save my life when my parents were getting divorced. My music friends felt like my family. I wanted everybody in the boat, and writing a song together was saving my life. That's what it felt like, and it still does. It's like playing for your life. That's why this acknowledgement is meaningful.

Who should induct you?
Wow. I would be honored if Ezra [Koenig, of Vampire Weekend] wanted to do it. He is so articulate and smart and from New York and a lovely guy, and I think he gets it. It would be nice if someone could do it who wasn't a star that was just assigned, someone who doesn't understand Phish. With an enormous amount of respect for Anthony Kiedis, I don't think he really liked the Talking Heads that much, not as much as I do. He inducted them, I guess, because someone asked him to. There was so much to say about them.

And who would you vote for? You get seven.
Chubby Checker, No. 1. 1958? He invented rock 'n' roll. He's who this building was built for. Joy Division. Joe Cocker. That's three. Soundgarden, probably. I'm just picking my favorites, not assigning meaning. The White Stripes. Am I supposed to vote for myself?

What do you think happens in the presidential voting booth, Trey?
If I got one more, I'd pick Maná and Phish. How'd I do?

Fine, but as a Southerner, I'll always resent that you didn't vote for Outkast.
Oh, no! Outkast was supposed to be the first one. Fuckin' A. No, that's No. 1. Take somebody off. Take Maná off. Sorry. Outkast, Chubby Checker, Joy Division. Outkast is No. 1.

[Caravan2001]

that's a great interview. The best part is "It's a lifetime of ... I was going to say work, but I'm going to change that to a lifetime of care and love that went into this thing. Every single day of my life for 41 years, I have been wanting to create an experience that touched people. The thing that I have tattooed on the inside of my forehead is "This is so good it should be even better." I try to say that about everything: This lyric is so good it should be even better. This setlist is so good it should be even better. How can we improve this so that people can continue to have their minds blown?"

[WhatstheUse?]

that's a great interview. The best part is "It's a lifetime of ... I was going to say work, but I'm going to change that to a lifetime of care and love that went into this thing. Every single day of my life for 41 years, I have been wanting to create an experience that touched people. The thing that I have tattooed on the inside of my forehead is "This is so good it should be even better." I try to say that about everything: This lyric is so good it should be even better. This setlist is so good it should be even better. How can we improve this so that people can continue to have their minds blown?"

I love that.

[PIE-GUY]

Brad Sands telling stories... 

[mattstick]

Brad Sands telling stories...

Dude, don't hold a desk/table microphone.

[Buffalo Budd]

How many 'you know's can a guy throw into one conversation?

[anthrax]

i really enjoyed that.  love listening to brad talk even though i'm pretty sure i wouldn't like the dude in person.  he's a great guest and should be on more podcasts, but he only really answers 1 question in a hour!  so many stories!

[Buffalo Budd]

i really enjoyed that.  love listening to brad talk even though i'm pretty sure i wouldn't like the dude in person.  he's a great guest and should be on more podcasts, but he only really answers 1 question in a hour!  so many stories!

Well, you know, he's got a lot of, you know, stories, you know.

[anthrax]

i really enjoyed that.  love listening to brad talk even though i'm pretty sure i wouldn't like the dude in person.  he's a great guest and should be on more podcasts, but he only really answers 1 question in a hour!  so many stories!

Well, you know, he's got a lot of, you know, stories, you know.

I know