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{{short description|American rock band}} | |||
{{about|the musical group|deceptive e-mail practices|]}} | |||
{{Hatnote group|{{About-distinguish|the jam band|Fish (singer)}}{{For|deceptive internet practices|Phishing}}}} | |||
{{Infobox_band | | |||
{{Infobox musical artist | |||
band_name = Phish | | |||
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| name = Phish | ||
| background = group_or_band | |||
years_active = ]-], ]-] | | |||
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| image = Phish Hartford 06.18.10 (4840368445).jpg | ||
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| landscape = yes | ||
| alt = Phish performing onstage | |||
music_genre = ], ], ] | | |||
| caption = Phish performing in 2009. Left to right: ], ], ], ]. | |||
record_label = ] | | |||
| origin = ], U.S. | |||
current_members = ] (1983-2004)<br />] (1983-2004)<br />] (1983-2004)<br />] (1985-2004)<br />| | |||
| genre = {{flatlist| | |||
past_members = ] (1983-1986)</br>] (1984-1985)}} | |||
* ] | |||
* ]<ref>{{cite news|author=Rick Foster|title=Phish fans donate to area arts collaborative |url=http://www.thesunchronicle.com/news/local_news/phish-fans-donate-to-area-arts-collaborative/article_200e19c8-8d30-543d-9fe2-651a515b27fb.html |newspaper=] |access-date=1 October 2018 }}</ref> | |||
* ]<ref name="allmusic">{{cite web |last=Erlewine |first=Stephen Thomas |url=https://www.allmusic.com/artist/phish-mn0000333464 |title=Phish |website=] |access-date=2011-01-28}}</ref> | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ]<!-- All genres should be sourced. Allmusic sidebar isn't a notable source. --> | |||
}} | |||
| discography = ] | |||
| years_active = {{hlist|1983–2000|2002–2004|2008–present}} | |||
| label = {{flatlist| | |||
* ] | |||
* Rhino/WMG | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
}} | |||
| spinoffs = {{flatlist| | |||
*] | |||
*] | |||
*] | |||
*] | |||
*] | |||
*] | |||
}} | |||
| current_members = * ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
| past_members = * ] | |||
| website = {{URL|phish.com}} | |||
}} | |||
'''Phish''' is an American rock band formed in ], in 1983. The band consists of guitarist ], bassist ], drummer ], and keyboardist ], all of whom perform vocals, with Anastasio being the lead vocalist. The band is known for their ] and ] during their concert performances and for their devoted fan following. | |||
'''Phish''' was a ] rock band most noted for ] and ]. Except for a hiatus from January 2001 to December 2002, the band's four members performed together for 21 years until their breakup in August ]. Although the group received little ] play or ] exposure, Phish developed a large following by ]. Phish's music had elements of many genres, including ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and ]. The band performed 226 originals (of ]) and ] ], a total of 620 songs. Each Phish concert was different in terms of the songs included and the order in which they appeared, and (for many songs) in the way in which they were performed. Most of their songs were never played the same way twice. Along with ], ] and ], Phish were one of the first bands to have an ] newsgroup - ''Phish.net'' - launched in ]. | |||
The band was formed by Anastasio, Gordon, Fishman and guitarist ], who were joined by McConnell in 1985. Holdsworth departed the band in 1986, and the lineup has remained stable since. Most of the band's songs are co-written by Anastasio and lyricist ]. Phish began to perform outside of ] in the late 1980s and experienced a rise in popularity in the mid 1990s. In October 2000, the band began a two-year hiatus that ended in December 2002, but they disbanded again in August 2004. Phish reunited officially in October 2008 for subsequent reunion shows in March 2009 and since then have resumed performing regularly. All four members pursued solo careers or performed with side-projects and these projects have continued even after the band has reunited.<ref>{{cite book |last=Puterbaugh |first=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2009 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=978-0-306-81947-6 |pages=208 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9zyoeq86UV0C&q=phish%20break%20%22Solo%20careers%22%20mcconnell%20gordon%20anastasio&pg=PA208 }}</ref> | |||
==History of the band== | |||
===The beginning (1983-1992)=== | |||
Phish was formed in ] at the ] by guitarists ] and ], bassist ], and drummer ]. Before they were known as Phish, they were first billed as "Blackwood Convention" and played an ] ] Dance, Sunday, October 30, 1983, in the basement of the ROTC dormitory. They performed "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress," and other notable ]. Their second gig, and their first billed as Phish, was November 3, in the basement of Slade Hall at ]. In the fall of 1984, the band was joined by a full-time percussionist, ]{{ref_num|almanac|11}}, who left the band in early ]{{ref_num|college|1}}. In September of that year, ] joined on keyboards. One year later, in ], Holdsworth left the group after graduation, thus solidifying the band's classic lineup of Anastasio/McConnell/Gordon/Fishman, which remained unchanged for the rest of their career. {{ref_num|college|1}} | |||
Phish's music blends elements of a wide variety of genres<ref>{{cite web |url=http://phish.net/faq/whatisphish|title= What Is Phish? |access-date=2011-02-09 |work=FAQ Files|publisher=Phish.net}}</ref> including ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and ].<ref name="allmusic"/><ref>{{cite magazine | url=http://www.popmatters.com/review/183259-phish-fuego/ | title=Phish - Fuego | magazine=] | date=July 1, 2014 | access-date=September 3, 2015 | author=Conaton, Chris}}</ref> The band is part of a movement of improvisational rock groups, inspired by the format of the ]'s live performances and colloquially known as "]s", that gained considerable popularity as touring concert acts in the 1990s.<ref>{{cite web |title=8 Bands Carrying on Jerry Garcia's Legacy |url=http://www.legacy.com/news/culture-and-trends/article/8-bands-carrying-on-jerry-garcias-legacy |website=] |date=8 August 2015 |access-date=14 December 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Hyden |first=Steven |title=Is Phish a Great Band? |url=http://grantland.com/features/after-30-years-consider-phish-great-band/ |website=Grantland |access-date=14 December 2018 |date=6 June 2013}}</ref> Phish has developed a large and dedicated following by word of mouth, the exchange of live recordings, and selling over 8 million albums and DVDs in the United States.<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish FAQ |url=https://phish.com/faq |website=Phish.com |access-date=12 May 2020}}</ref> | |||
In mid-1986, Anastasio and Fishman transferred to a smaller school named ], located in the hills of ], ]. Anastasio had pulled a stunt at UVM with his friend and former bandmate Steve Pollak, also known as the ] — and decided to leave the college. Under the persuasion of McConnell, Anastasio and Fishman transferred, with McConnell receiving $50 cash for each transferee.{{ref_num|college|1}} Gordon remained at UVM. Around that time, Phish distributed at least six different experimental self-titled cassettes, including '']'' (Anastasio's senior thesis), '']'' (a project featuring Anastasio, Daubert, and ]), and '']''.{{ref_num|demos|4}} ''The White Tape'' at this time was known in two variations; the first was a four-track done in a dorm room circulated prior to 1985, the second prior to 1987 was a remixed/studio version of the four-track demo. The first version was the most circulated version of the compilation, which travelled in tape-trading circles for over a decade before being officially released in 1998.{{ref_num|whitealbum|5}} | |||
Phish were signed to major label ] from 1991 to 2005, when the band formed their own independent label, ], to release archival CD and DVD sets.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2009 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=978-0-306-81947-6 |pages=248 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9zyoeq86UV0C&dq=jemp%20records%202005&pg=PA248 }}</ref> | |||
On October 15, 1986 at Hunt's Bar in ], the group began working with ] ], who built custom guitars and basses. He would become their sound man and build two guitars for Anastasio and two basses for Gordon, as well as monitors and risers. Since then, he has built only for Anastasio and Gordon, and his designs and Old World approach to craftsmanship have given Phish its own unique instrumental identity.{{ref_num|languedo|6}} | |||
==History== | |||
The band's second studio experiment was a concept album written by Trey Anastasio entitled '']''. The recording was Trey's senior project statement at Goddard College in the July of ], though the majority of it was recorded in 1987. Elements of the story, known as "]", have comprised no less than 17 songs, only 9 of which were featured on the actual recording. The band performed the entire suite in concert on five occasions (in 1988, ], ], and twice in ]). Each song list has been slightly different from one another.{{ref_num|tmwsiy|7}} | |||
===Formation, ''The White Tape'' and ''The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday'': 1983–1988=== | |||
Phish was formed at the ] (UVM) in 1983 by guitarists ] and ], bassist ], and drummer ]. Anastasio and Fishman had met that October, after Anastasio overheard Fishman playing drums in his dormitory room, and asked if he and Holdsworth could jam with him.<ref>{{cite book |last=Puterbaugh |first=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819209 |pages=19–20, 23 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=phish&pg=PA19 }}</ref> Gordon met the trio shortly thereafter, having answered a want-ad for a bass guitarist that Anastasio had posted around the university.<ref>{{cite book |last=Puterbaugh |first=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819209 |pages=23 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=phish&pg=PA19 }}</ref> | |||
The new group performed their first concert at Harris Millis Cafeteria at the ] on December 2, 1983, where they played a set of classic rock covers, including two songs by the ].<ref>{{cite web |title=Dec 02, 1983 Setlist - Phish.net |url=http://phish.net/setlists/phish-december-02-1983-harris-millis-cafeteria-university-of-vermont-burlington-vt-usa.html |website=phish.net |access-date=5 December 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=9780306819209 |page=24 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=%22blackwood%20convention%22%20phish&pg=PA24 }}</ref> The band performed one more concert in 1983, and then did not perform again for nearly a year, stemming from Anastasio's suspension from the university following a prank he had pulled with a friend.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819209 |pages=25–26 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=phish&pg=PA25 }}</ref> | |||
] | |||
Anastasio returned to his hometown of ] following the prank, and reconnected with his childhood friend ]; The duo began a songwriting collaboration and recorded material that would appear on the '']'' demo tape.<ref name="marshmeet">{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819209 |pages=26–27 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=phish&pg=PA26 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=FAQ - Phish.net |url=http://www.phish.net/faq/band-history |website=Phish.net |access-date=17 February 2019}}</ref> Marshall and Anastasio have subsequently composed the majority of Phish's original songs throughout their career.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Jarnow |first1=Jesse |title=Tom Marshall: Biography & History |url=https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tom-marshall-mn0000612910/biography |website=] |access-date=19 July 2020 }}</ref> Anastasio returned to Burlington in late 1984, and resumed performing with Gordon, Holdsworth and Fishman.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=26 October 2010 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=978-0-306-81920-9 |page=40 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&dq=phish%20name%201984&pg=PA40 |language=en}}</ref> The quartet named themselves Phish in October 1984, shortly before they performed their first concert together following Anastasio's return to UVM.<ref name="namelogo">{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819209 |pages=41–42 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=phish%20name&pg=PA41 }}</ref> Anastasio designed the band's logo, which featured the group's name inside a stylized fish.<ref name="namelogo"/> The band's members have given several different origins for the name Phish. In Parke Puterbaugh's 2009 book ''Phish: The Biography'', the origin is given as a variation on ''phshhhh'', an onomatopoeia of the sound of a brush on a snare drum.<ref name="namelogo"/> In the 2004 official documentary ''Specimens of Beauty'', Anastasio said the band was also named after Fishman, whose nickname is "Fish."<ref name="namelogo"/> In a 1996 interview, Fishman denied that the band was named after him, and said the onomatopoeic inspiration behind the name was the sound of an airplane taking off.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Rossi |first1=Christophe |title=Jon Fishman: The Retracted Colorado Interview |url=https://relix.com/articles/detail/jon-fishman-the-retracted-colorado-interview/ |website=Relix Media |access-date=3 August 2020 |date=6 September 2011}}</ref> | |||
Starting in spring ], the band began practicing as a band for several hours each day. There were two major sessions -- dubbed by the band as the "Okipa (also Oh Kee Pa) Ceremonies" -- at Anastasio's apartment, with a second taking place in August of 1989 at Paul Languadoc's house. During these stretches of time, the band would lock themselves in a room and jam for hours on end.{{ref_num|ohkee|2}} The band attributes the sessions to Anastasio, who found the idea through the movies '']'' and ''Modern Primitives.''{{ref_num|phishbook|3}} Also in 1988, Phish recorded a double studio album entitled '']''. | |||
In late 1984, Phish began to play regularly at Nectar's bar and restaurant in downtown Burlington, and performed dozens of concerts across multiple residencies through March 1989.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Kahn |first1=Andy |title=Phish Plays Nectar's For 1st Time On This Date In 1984 |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-nectars-1st-time-1984 |website=JamBase |access-date=2 December 2023}}</ref><ref name="brain">{{cite web |last1=O'Brien |first1=Andrew |title=Hear Jon Fishman's Comical Debut Of "If I Only Had A Brain" At Phish's Final Nectar's Run, This Day In '89 |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/cool-shit/phish-nectars-brain-1989/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=12 March 2018}}</ref> The band's 1992 album ''A Picture of Nectar'' was named in honor of the bar's owner, Nector Rorris, and its cover features his face superimposed onto an orange.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hallenbeck |first1=Brent |title=Life begins at 40 for Nectar's in Burlington |url=https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/entertainment/2015/01/21/life-begins-nectars-burlington/22122303/ |website=The Burlington Free Press |access-date=19 July 2020}}</ref> | |||
On January 26, ], Phish played the ] in ]. The owners of the club had never heard of Phish and refused to book them, so Phish rented the place out themselves. The owners were stunned to see a huge line of people wrapped around the street trying to get in. The show had sold out due mostly to the caravan of Phish fans that had traveled to see the band.{{fact}} | |||
The band would collaborate with ]ist ], a friend of Anastasio's, in the fall of 1984.<ref>{{cite web |title=Hidden Track interview: Marc Daubert Has No Regrets |url=https://glidemagazine.com/141735/hidden-track-interview-former-phish-percussionist-marc-daubert-has-no-regrets/ |website=Glide Magazine |date=13 January 2009 |access-date=19 July 2020}}</ref> Daubert ceased performing with the band in early 1985.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Kahn |first1=Andy |title=Page McConnell Makes Phish Debut In 1985 |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/page-mcconnell-makes-phish-debut-1985 |website=JamBase |access-date=22 April 2020 |date=3 May 2016}}</ref> Keyboardist ] met Phish in early 1985, when he arranged for them to play a spring concert at ], the small university he attended in ].<ref>{{cite book |last=Puterbaugh |first=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819209 |url=https://archive.org/details/phishbiography00pute |url-access=registration |page= |quote=phish mcconnell joined. }}</ref> He began performing with the band as a guest shortly thereafter, and made his live debut during the third set of their May 3, 1985 concert at UVM's Redstone Campus.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://phish.net/setlists/1985.html#1985-01-01|title=Phish setlists|publisher=Phish.net|access-date=2011-05-28}}</ref> In the summer of 1985, Phish went on a short hiatus while Anastasio and Fishman vacationed in Europe; during this time, McConnell offered to join the band permanently, and moved to Burlington to learn their repertoire from Gordon.<ref name="mc46">{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819209 |pages=46 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=phish%20%22two%20guitar%20band%22&pg=PA46 }}</ref> McConnell officially joined Phish as a full-time band member in September 1985.<ref name="mc46" /><ref>{{cite web |title=Sep 26, 1985 Setlist - Phish.net |url=http://phish.net/setlists/phish-september-26-1985-wruv-radio-burlington-vt-usa.html |website=phish.net |access-date=15 October 2018 }}</ref> | |||
By late ], Phish concerts were becoming more and more involved. The band made a consistent effort to involve the audience in their performances. The group developed a special "" where the audience would react in a certain manner based on a musical cue from the band (for instance, if Anastasio played a bar of '']'' theme song, the audience would yell, "D'oh!," imitating lead character ]; another favorite was "All Fall Down," where the band would play a descending group of notes and the audience would fall on their backs to the floor). In ], Phish introduced the "Big Ball Jam," which began with each band member throwing a large beach ball into the audience. Each time a particular ball was hit, the corresponding band member played a note, so in essence, the audience was performing and creating a composition on the spot. | |||
Phish performed with a five-piece lineup for about six months after McConnell joined, a period which ended when Holdsworth quit the group in March 1986 following a religious conversion.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819209 |pages=49 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=phish%20mcconnell%20joined&pg=PA49 }}</ref> Anastasio and Fishman relocated in mid-1986 to Goddard College after a recommendation from McConnell.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Ward |first1=Justin |title=Watch a Young Trey Anastasio Give His Goddard College Graduation Speech |url=https://livemusicblog.com/news/trey-anastasio-phish-goddard-college-graduation-speech/ |website=Live Music Blog |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=30 August 2019}}</ref> Phish distributed at least six experimental self-titled cassettes during this era, including '']''.<ref name="whitetape">{{cite web |title=The White Tape - Phish.net |url=https://phish.net/album/the-white-tape |website=phish.net |access-date=19 July 2020}}</ref> | |||
Fishman would often play an Electrolux ] like a woodwind instrument, and the group would switch instruments to the left one member at a time in an experiment called the "Rotation Jam." Another of Phish's performance antics involved Gordon and Anastasio performing synchronized maneuvers jumping on mini-trampolines while playing their instruments during "]". | |||
While based at Goddard College, Phish began to collaborate with fellow students Richard "Nancy" Wright and Jim Pollock.<ref name="heads">{{cite book|last1=Jarnow|first1=Jesse|title=Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America|date=2016|publisher=Da Capo Press|pages=199–220}}</ref> Pollock and Wright were musical collaborators who made experimental recordings on multi-track cassettes, and had been introduced to Phish through McConnell, who co-hosted a radio program on ] with Pollock.<ref name="nancy">{{cite web |last1=Jarnow |first1=Jesse |title=Everyone Knew Him as Nancy: Richard Wright and the Old, Weird Phish |url=https://relix.com/articles/detail/everyone-knew-him-as-nancy-richard-wright-and-the-old-weird-phish/ |website=Relix Media |access-date=28 March 2019 |date=15 August 2012}}</ref> Phish adopted a number of Nancy's songs into their own set, including "Halley's Comet", "I Didn't Know", and "Dear Mrs. Reagan", the latter song being written by Nancy and Pollock. In his book ''Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America'', music journalist Jesse Jarnow observed that Wright and his music were highly influential to Phish's early style and experimental sound.<ref name="heads"/> Wright amicably ended his association with Phish in 1989, but Pollock has continued to collaborate with Phish over the years, designing some of their album covers and concert posters.<ref name="heads"/><ref name="nancy"/> | |||
In 1991, ], aware of the band's growing popularity, signed them after attending a show. In 1992, their major label debut, '']'', was released, with far more extensive production than '']'' from 1988 and '']'' from 1990, which were re-released on Elektra as well. | |||
By 1985, the group had encountered Burlington ] ], who would eventually design custom instruments for Anastasio and Gordon.<ref name="faqhist">{{cite web |title=FAQ: Band history |url=https://phish.net/faq/band-history |website=phish.net |access-date=19 July 2020}}</ref> In October 1986, he began working as their sound engineer.<ref>{{cite web |title=Wed, 1986-10-15 Hunt's |url=https://phish.com/tours/dates/wed-1986-10-15-hunts/ |website=Phish.com |access-date=19 July 2020}}</ref> Since then, Languedoc has built exclusively for the two, and his designs and traditional wood choices have given Phish a unique instrumental identity.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://phish.net/faq/languedoc |title=Paul Languedoc |work=FAQ Files |publisher=Phish.net |access-date=2011-02-09 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110724005501/http://phish.net/faq/languedoc |archive-date=2011-07-24 }}</ref> | |||
] | |||
As his senior project for Goddard College, Anastasio penned '']'', a nine-song ] concept album that would become Phish's second studio experiment.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Frye |first1=Cory |title=Floating with the flock: Three days among the faithful at the first Phish Studies Conference |url=https://www.gazettetimes.com/news/floating-with-the-flock-three-days-among-the-faithful-at/article_44d07050-925a-591d-8923-7a9c288f645b.html |website=Corvallis Gazette Times |date=2 June 2019 |access-date=1 March 2020 }}</ref> Recorded between 1987 and 1988, it was submitted in July of that year, accompanied by a written thesis. The song cycle that developed from the project – known as ] – grew to include an additional eight songs. The band performed the suite in concert on six occasions: in 1988, 1991, 1993, twice in 1994, and in 2023, without replicating the song list.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://phish.net/faq/tmwsiy |title=What is ''The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday''? |work=FAQ Files |publisher=Phish.net |access-date=2011-02-09 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101017210913/http://phish.net/faq/tmwsiy |archive-date=2010-10-17 }}</ref> ''The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday'' has never received an official release, but a bootleg tape has circulated for decades, and songs such as "Wilson" and "The Lizards" remain concert staples for the band.<ref>{{cite web |title=On The Download: The Phish Studio Albums, Part 1 |url=https://www.nbcwashington.com/entertainment/celebrity/On_The_Download__The_Phish_Studio_Albums__Part_1.html |website=NBC4 Washington |date=31 January 2009 |access-date=1 October 2018 }}</ref><ref name="jbhendge"/> | |||
In 1992, ] of ] organized the first annual ] festival (Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere). The lineup included Phish, ], Blues Traveler, ], ] and the ], and ], providing Phish with their first national tour of major amphitheaters. That summer, the band toured ] with the ] and later toured both Europe and the ] with guitarist ]. | |||
Beginning in the spring of 1988, members of the band began practicing in earnest, sometimes locking themselves in a room and jamming for hours on end. One such jam took place at Anastasio's apartment, with a second at Paul Languedoc's house in August 1989.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://phish.net/songs/the-oh-kee-pa-ceremony | title= The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony |work=Discography |publisher=Phish.net|access-date=2011-02-09}}</ref> They called these jam sessions "Oh Kee Pa Ceremonies", a reference to the film '']''.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Silberman |first1=Steve |title=Happy Birthday Trey Anastasio: Fall 1994 Interview With Steve Silberman |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-trey-anastasio-interview-fall-1994-steve-silberman |website=JamBase |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=30 September 2018}}</ref> In July 1988, the band performed their first concerts outside of the northeastern United States, when they embarked on a seven-date tour in Colorado.<ref name="relcolo">{{cite web |last1=Greenhaus |first1=Mike |title=Rocky Mountain High: The Untold Story of Phish's Archival Release, _Colorado '88_ (Relix Revisited) |url=https://relix.com/articles/detail/rocky-mountain-high-the-untold-story-of-phish-s-archival-release-colorado-8/ |website=Relix |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=21 June 2011}}</ref> These shows are excerpted on their 2006 live compilation '']''.<ref name="relcolo"/> | |||
===Climb to the top (1993-1998)=== | |||
Phish began headlining major amphitheaters in the summer of ]. That year, the group released another studio album, entitled '']'', which continued the band's streak of challenging, complex music, packaged into a ] as part of heavy promotion from ]. | |||
===''Junta'', ''Lawn Boy'', and ''A Picture of Nectar'': 1989–1992=== | |||
The group changed their songwriting approach again for their ] release '']''. The album featured simpler songs with emotionally introspective lyrics, an evolution that became part of the group's overall sound. This shift to a more traditional song structure was met with criticism from some fans. In addition, the band made their first and only video for MTV, "Down With Disease". The group had become so popular that they sold out ] in ], ], on ], 1994. Earlier that day, they made their national television debut on '']'', where they appeared a total of seven times over the next decade. On ], the band headlined the ]. Before midnight, the band wanted to make a special effort to get close to every fan in the house, so they flew in a giant mechanical hot dog over the crowd and performed music while throwing candy to the audience. | |||
On January 26, 1989, Phish played the ] in ]; the owners of the club had never heard of Phish and refused to book them, so the band rented the club for the night.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Morse |first1=Steve |title=Twenty years later, Phish still moves against the current |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2003/11/30/twenty_years_later_phish_still_moves_against_the_current |website=Boston.com Archive |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=30 November 2003}}</ref> The show sold out due to the caravan of fans that had traveled to see the band.<ref name="brain"/> The concert was Phish's breakthrough on the northeastern regional music circuit, and the band began to book concerts at other large rock clubs, theaters, and small auditoriums throughout the area, such as the ], ] and ].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=9780306819209 |pages=82–86 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=phish++1989+paradise&pg=PA82 }}</ref> That spring, the band self-released their debut full-length studio album, '']'', and sold copies on cassette tape at their concerts.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2009 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819476 |pages= |url=https://archive.org/details/phishbiography00pute |url-access=registration |quote=phish junta. }}</ref> The album includes a studio recording of the epic "]", which is considered to be the band's ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Rolez |first1=Chez |title=Morning After Phish: Halfway Between Erie And Pittsburgh |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/reviews/morning-after-phish-halfway-between-erie-and-pittsburgh/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=24 June 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Pharewell My Friend: Phish Says Farewell At Coventry |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/pharewell-my-friend-phish-says-farewell-at-coventry |website=JamBase |access-date=1 October 2018 |date=24 August 2004}}</ref> Later in 1989, the band hired Chris Kuroda as their lighting director. Kuroda subsequently became well known for his artistic ] at the group's concerts.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Greenhaus |first1=Mike |title=Chris Kuroda: Visual Vocabularies |url=https://jambands.com/features/2016/07/25/chris-kuroda-visual-vocabularies/ |website=Jambands.com |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=25 July 2016}}</ref> A profile on Phish appeared in the October 1989 issue of the ] magazine '']'', which marked the first time the band had been covered in a major national music periodical.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Skidmore |first1=Mick |title=Too New To Be Known: Phish (Relix Revisited Oct. '89) |url=https://relix.com/articles/detail/too-new-to-be-known-phish-relix-revisited-oct-89/ |website=Relix Media |access-date=5 August 2020 |date=October 1989}}</ref> | |||
By late 1990, Phish's concerts were becoming more and more intricate, often making a consistent effort to involve the audience in the performance. In a special "secret language",<ref name="secret">{{cite web |url=http://phish.net/songs/secret-language-instructions |title=Secret Language Instructions|access-date=2011-02-09 |work=FAQ Files |publisher=Phish.net}}</ref> the audience would react in a certain manner based on a particular musical cue from the band. For instance, if Anastasio "]" a motif from '']'' theme song, the audience would yell, "]" in imitation of {{Audio|PhishSimpsonsCue002.ogg|Homer Simpson}}.<ref name="secret"/> In 1992, Phish introduced a collaboration between audience and band called the "Big Ball Jam" in which each band member would throw a large beach ball into the audience and play a note each time his ball was hit. In so doing, the audience was helping to create an original composition.<ref>{{cite web |title=This Video Of Bill Clinton Synchronized To Phish's 'Big Ball Jam' Is Amazing |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/this-video-of-bill-clinton-synchronized-to-phishs-big-ball-jam-is-amazing/ |website=Live for Live Music|access-date=18 April 2020 |date=29 July 2016}}</ref> On occasion, performances of "]" and "]" involved Gordon and Anastasio performing synchronized maneuvers and jumping on mini-]s while simultaneously playing their instruments.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://phish.net/faq/onstage-antics| title= Phish On-stage Antics|work=FAQ Files |publisher=Phish.net| access-date=2011-02-09}}</ref> Fishman would also regularly step out from behind his drum kit during concerts to sing cover songs, which were often punctuated by him playing an ] vacuum cleaner like an instrument.<ref>{{cite web |title=Vacuum Solo History - Phish.net |url=http://phish.net/song/vacuum-solo/history |website=phish.net |access-date=6 October 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Rossi |first1=Christophe |title=Phish Stories: An Interview with Jon Fishman (Relix Revisited) |url=https://relix.com/articles/detail/phish-stories-an-interview-with-jon-fishman-relix-revisited |website=Relix Media |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=24 February 2011}}</ref> The band released their second album, '']'', in September 1990 on Absolute A Go Go, a small independent label that had a distribution deal with the larger ].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2009 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819476 |pages= |url=https://archive.org/details/phishbiography00pute |url-access=registration |quote=phish junta. }}</ref> The album had been recorded the previous year, after the band had won studio time at engineer Dan Archer's Archer Studios when they came in first place at an April 1989 ] competition in Burlington.<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish 'Lawn Boy' Deluxe 2-LP Vinyl Available For Record Store Day |url=http://phish.com/news/phish-lawn-boy-deluxe-2-lp-vinyl-available-for-record-store-day/ |website=Phish |date=4 March 2013 |access-date=23 September 2018}}</ref> | |||
On ] night that year, the group promised to don a "musical costume" by playing an entire album from another band. Fan votes on their website led to the performance of the 30-song, self-titled ] classic known as '']'', sandwiched between two complete sets of Phish's own music. | |||
Phish, along with ], the ], and ], was one of the first bands to have a ] newsgroup, rec.music.phish, which launched in 1992.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Arnum |first1=Eric |title=Digital Flashback: Phishing For Tapes On Web |url=https://www.mtv.com/news/k9ad1u/digital-flashback-phishing-for-tapes-on-web |website=MTV News |access-date=24 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230731154854/https://www.mtv.com/news/k9ad1u/digital-flashback-phishing-for-tapes-on-web |archive-date=31 July 2023 |date=30 March 2000 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Aware of the band's growing popularity, ] signed them that year after they were recommended to the record label by A&R representative Sue Drew.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Sue Drew Who Brought Phish To Elektra Chats With Phishbase |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/sue-drew-brought-phish-elektra-chats-phishbase |website=JamBase |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=20 December 2017}}</ref> In the summer of 1991, the band embarked on a 14-date tour of the eastern United States accompanied by a three-piece horn section dubbed the ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Giant Country Horns Talk Formation, Phish & Twiddle New Year's Eve In Albany |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/giant-country-horns-talk-formation-phish-twiddle-new-years-eve-albany |website=JamBase |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=28 December 2017}}</ref> In August of that year, Phish played an outdoor concert at their friend Amy Skelton's horse farm in ] that acted as a prototype for their later all-day festival events.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819209 |pages=5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=phish&pg=PA5 }}</ref> | |||
In ], the band experienced a continued growth of their fan base, partially due to decreased ] touring following leader ]'s death and increasing awareness of the band in popular culture, including the appearance "Down With Disease" on '']''. | |||
In 1992, the band released their third studio album, '']'', their first release for the major label Elektra. Subsequently, the label also reissued the band's first two albums. Later in 1992, Phish participated in the first annual ] festival, which provided them with their first national tour of major amphitheaters. The lineup, among others, included Phish, ], the ], and ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Budnick |first1=Dean |title=H.O.R.D.E. Core (25 Years Later) |url=https://relix.com/articles/detail/horde_core_25_years_later7181/ |website=Relix Media |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=2 May 2017}}</ref> That summer, the band toured Europe with the ] and later toured Europe and the U.S. with ].<ref name="1992ph">{{cite web |title=August 1992 |url=https://phish.com/band/august-1992/ |website=Phish |access-date=30 August 2019}}</ref> Throughout the latter tour, ] regularly invited some or all of the members of Phish to jam with his band during their headlining performances.<ref name="1992ph"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2009 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=9780306819476 |page=107 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9zyoeq86UV0C&q=phish%20santana%20hose&pg=PA107 }}</ref> The band ended 1992 with a New Year's Eve performance at the ] in ], a performance that was simulcast throughout the Boston area by radio station ].<ref name="pranks1"/> The concert was filled with several new "secret language" cues they had taught their audience in order to deliberately confuse radio listeners.<ref name="pranks1">{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Phish Pranks Throughout The Years |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-pranks-throughout-years |website=JamBase |access-date=14 October 2018 |date=1 April 2018}}</ref> | |||
The impact of Garcia's death on the Phish scene is somewhat uncertain. Although Phish's music was very different than the Dead's, the fan culture that had grown up around both bands was similar. Each concert was the centerpiece of an event that included a sort of temporary village in the parking lot. Before, during, and after concerts, people socialized and did business (buying, selling, trading of various goods) outside the venue. Many fans who toured with the ] began to follow Phish, and there was a certain shift of parking lot vendors, artisans, and drug dealers from the Dead to Phish - many of whom made the shift in ], prior to Garcia's death. | |||
===''Rift'', ''Hoist'', and ''A Live One'': 1993–1995=== | |||
] | |||
Phish began headlining major amphitheaters in the summer of 1993.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Mervis |first1=Scott |title=A tale of 2 bands from the H.O.R.D.E.: Phish and the Dave Matthews Band |url=https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/music/2009/06/18/A-tale-of-2-bands-from-the-H-O-R-D-E-Phish-and-the-Dave-Matthews-Band/stories/200906180462 |website=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |access-date=19 July 2020 }}</ref> That year, the group released their fourth album, '']'', a concept album which featured a cover painted by ] that referenced almost all of the songs on the record.<ref>{{cite web |title=Fast Enough For You? Looking Back on 25 Years of Phish's _Rift_ - Relix Media |url=https://relix.com/blogs/detail/fast_enough_for_you_looking_back_on_25_years_of_phishs_rift/ |website=Relix Media |access-date=23 October 2018 |date=2 February 2018}}</ref> The album was the band's first to appear on the '']'' album chart, debuting at #51 in February 1993.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Phish Chart History: Billboard 200 |url=https://www.billboard.com/artist/phish/chart-history/tlp/ |magazine=Billboard |date=22 January 2015 |access-date=13 October 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |title=Top 200 Albums {{!}} Billboard 200 chart |url=https://www.billboard.com/charts/billboard-200/1993-02-20 |magazine=Billboard |access-date=13 October 2018}}</ref> | |||
In March 1994, the band released their fifth studio album ''].'' The album featured an array of guest performers, including country singer ], banjoist ], former ] member ], actor and trombonist ], and the horn section of R&B group ].<ref>{{cite web |title=Hoist Vinyl Announced For Record Store Day |url=https://phish.com/news/hoist-vinyl-announced-for-record-store-day/ |website=Phish.com |date=9 March 2016 |access-date=19 July 2020}}</ref> To promote the album, Gordon directed the band's only official music video, for its first single "]".<ref name="gordvid">{{cite web |last1=Rothman |first1=Robin A. |title=Phish flicks to debut at SXSW |url=http://www.mtv.com/news/1433168/phish-flicks-to-debut-at-sxsw/ |website=MTV News |access-date=24 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220520040522/http://www.mtv.com/news/1433168/phish-flicks-to-debut-at-sxsw/ |archive-date=20 May 2022 |pages=dead |date=3 March 2000}}</ref> "Down with Disease" became a minor hit on rock radio in the United States, and was the band's first song to appear on a '']'' music chart when it peaked at #33 on the magazine's ] chart that summer.<ref name="phishmain">{{cite magazine |title=Phish Chart History |url=https://www.billboard.com/artist/phish/chart-history/rtt/ |magazine=Billboard |access-date=22 September 2018}}</ref> To further promote ''Hoist'', the band released an experimental short-subject documentary called '']'', also directed by Gordon, which depicted the recording sessions for the album.<ref name="gordvid"/> | |||
That fall, Phish challenged the audience to a ] game. A huge chessboard was lowered down on stage before each show and between sets. The band made one move before the show, and between sets a representative from the audience made one move, based on votes tallied in the lobby. At the end of the tour, the band and audience were tied 1-1. Phish performed '']'' by ] with an entire ] for Halloween 1995. Their first live album, '']'', featured songs from 1994 concerts, and was Phish's first ]. | |||
Foreshadowing their future tradition of ], Phish coupled camping with their 1994 summer tour finale at ] in ], that show eventually being released as '']''.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Barthel |first1=Mike |title=Flying Through The Canyon: Live Phish 01-05 |url=https://jambands.com/features/2001/10/25/flying-through-the-canyon-live-phish-01-05/ |website=Jambands |access-date=19 July 2020 |date=25 October 2001}}</ref> On ] of that year, the group promised to don a fan-selected "]" by playing an entire album from another band. After an extensive mail-based poll, Phish performed ]' ] as the second of their three sets at the ] in upstate New York.<ref name="livecostume">{{cite web |last1=Plotnicki |first1=Gideon|title=Looking Back At Phish's Musical Costumes From Halloweens Past |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/phish-halloween-musical-costumes-2019/ |website=L4LM |access-date=11 December 2019 |date=31 October 2019}}</ref> The "musical costume" concept subsequently became a recurring part of Phish's fall tours, with the band playing a different album whenever they had a concert scheduled for Halloween night.<ref name="livecostume"/> | |||
In fall ], Phish released '']'', which featured a mostly acoustic second side of the band. That summer, they put on ], a two-day festival, which took place at an empty air force base in ], New York. 65,000 people showed up.{{fact}} MTV was on-hand to make a documentary of the experience. Phish set up their own makeshift city, complete with an amusement park, restaurants, a post office, playgrounds, arcades, and movie theaters. For two days, a Phish concert was the ninth largest city in ].{{fact}} Aside from six sets of Phish, the band hopped on a flatbed truck at 3:00 AM and drove through the campground, serenading the audience. The concert's production company, Great Northeast Productions, went on to host six more Phish festivals. | |||
In October 1994, '']'', the debut album by Anastasio's friend and collaborator ], was released by Elektra Records; The album, which had been recorded in 1991, was billed to "The Dude of Life and Phish" and features all four members of Phish acting as Pollak's backing band.<ref>{{cite web |title=Crimes Of The Mind (The Dude of Life and Phish) |url=http://phish.com/release/crimes-of-the-mind-the-dude-of-life-and-phish/ |website=Phish |access-date=12 October 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2009 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819476 |pages= |url=https://archive.org/details/phishbiography00pute |url-access=registration |quote=phish junta. }}</ref> | |||
In ], a new jamming style emerged from Phish's improvisational ventures, which came to be known as "cow funk".{{fact}} The previous ] saw Phish perform the ] album '']''. Jams were becoming so long that several sets that year only contained four songs. That same year, ] ice cream launched '']'', which remains one of the company's most popular flavors. The band's royalties from '']'' are donated to their non-profit foundation, the WaterWheel Foundation. Also created in 1997, the foundation consisted of three seperate branches - The Lake Champlain Initiative, The Touring Branch and the Vermont Giving Program. | |||
] in ]]] | |||
That summer, the band drew 65,000 people to its second festival, The Great Went, held in ], ], just miles from the Canadian border. That weekend, the festival became the largest city in Maine.<sup></sup> Throughout the weekend, the band had the audience paint their own individual piece of art. Each piece of fan artwork was attached to make a huge tower that was several stories high by the end of the weekend. Backstage, Phish was also creating their own piece of art. During a jam on the final day of the weekend, the band passed their artwork through the audience. The audience attached the band artwork to the fan artwork, thus connecting band and audience in true fashion. The tower was then burned to the ground.{{fact}} | |||
On December 30, 1994, the band made their first appearance on national network television when they performed "]" on '']''.<ref name="letterman">{{cite web |title=Letterman Music Files {{!}} Phish Through The Years |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/letterman-music-files-phish-through-the-years |website=JamBase |access-date=20 September 2018 |date=20 May 2015}}</ref> The band would go on to appear on the program seven more times before ]'s retirement as host in 2015.<ref name="letterman"/> For their 1994 New Years Run, Phish played the Civic Centers in ] and ] as well as sold-out shows at ] and ], which marked their debut performances at both venues.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Boivin |first1=Ben |title=Unwrapping the Old Testament of Phish: New Year's Eve 1995, Live from Madison Square Garden - NYS Music |url=https://nysmusic.com/2020/06/15/unwrapping-the-old-testament-of-phish-new-years-eve-1995-live-from-madison-square-garden/ |website=NYSMusic |date=15 June 2020 |access-date=19 July 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Sat, 1994-12-31 Boston Garden |url=https://phish.com/tours/dates/sat-1994-12-31-boston-garden |website=Phish.com |access-date=19 July 2020}}</ref> For the December 31 show at the Boston Garden, the band rode around the arena in a float shaped like a hot dog. The stunt was reprised at their 1999 New Year's Eve concert before the hot dog was donated to the ].<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish Revives Hot Dog Stunt on New Year's Eve - Jambands |url=https://jambands.com/news/2011/01/01/phish-revives-hot-dog-stunt-on-new-year-s-eve/ |website=Jambands |access-date=1 October 2018 |date=1 January 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Phish float donated to Rock Hall |url=http://www.mtv.com/news/620287/phish-float-donated-to-rock-hall/ |website=MTV News |access-date=24 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220524004628/http://www.mtv.com/news/620287/phish-float-donated-to-rock-hall/ |archive-date=24 May 2022 |date=7 January 2000 |url-status=dead}}</ref> At the end of 1994, Phish appeared on '']'''s list of the highest grossing concert tours in the United States for the first time, as the 32nd highest grossing act, with $10.3 million in ticket sales.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Harrington |first1=Richard |title=The Road Warriors |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1995/01/04/the-road-warriors/20eda2b3-653b-4653-9397-c3cc5bdebe4a/ |newspaper=Washington Post |access-date=21 February 2022 |date=4 January 1995}}</ref> | |||
In ], the band tried a new approach to recording. They recorded hours and hours of improvisational jams over a period of several days, and then took the highlights of those jams and wrote songs around them. The result was '']'' album (followed by the all-instrumental '']'' in ]). Phish headlined ] in the summer of 1998, sharing the stage with ], ], and ]. The group also returned to ] for The Lemonwheel festival, which drew another 70,000 fans. Once again, the gathering was the largest city in Maine during the concert. This time around, the band had the audience make candles throughout the weekend. At the end of the show, the band lined the stage with candles, turned out all the lights, and played one long, quiet, ambient jam. | |||
Following the death of Grateful Dead guitarist ] in the summer of 1995 and the appearance of "Down with Disease" on '']'', the band experienced a surge in the growth of their fan base and an increased awareness in popular culture.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Ehrbar |first1=Joe |title=What's A Deadhead To Do? Many Are Turning To Phish {{!}} The Spokesman-Review |url=https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/oct/06/whats-a-deadhead-to-do-many-are-turning-to-phish/ |website=The Spokesman |access-date=18 April 2020}}</ref><ref name="fricke"/> In their tradition of playing a well-known album by another band for Halloween, Phish contracted a full ] for ] of ]'s '']'' in 1995.<ref>{{cite web |last1=McKeough |first1=Kevin |title=Phish does the Who |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-11-01-9511010282-story.html |website=Chicago Tribune |access-date=18 April 2020 |date=1 November 1995}}</ref> | |||
For their 1998 Halloween show in ], ], the group performed '']'' by ] as their musical costume. Playing two nights later at a show in the middle of ] to a small audience of only 4,000 people, Phish performed ] '']'' in its entirety towards the middle of the second set. | |||
Phish's first live album, '']'', was released during the summer of 1995 and featured selections from various concerts from their 1994 winter tour. The album charted at number 18 on the ''Billboard'' 200 album chart, and was reported to have sold around 50,000 copies in its first week on sale.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Sutherland |first1=Scott |title=POP MUSIC; A 12-Year Climb to the Heights |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/30/arts/pop-music-a-12year-climb-to-the-heights.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=21 February 2022 |date=30 July 1995}}</ref> ''A Live One'' became Phish's first ]-certified gold album in November 1995.<ref name="RIAA Certifications">{{cite web|url=https://www.riaa.com/gp/database/search_results.asp | title= List of Phish albums certified as gold or platinum|publisher=Riaa.com | access-date= 2007-06-14 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070608063940/http://www.riaa.com/gp/database/search_results.asp <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archive-date = 2007-06-08}}</ref> In 1997, ''A Live One'' became the band's first Platinum album, certified for sales of 1 million copies in the United States, and remains their best selling album to date.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Smith |first1=A.P. |title=Putting Music To Words: Author Walter Holland Talks Phish's 'A Live One' |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/walter-holland-a-live-one-phish |website=JamBase |access-date=30 September 2018 |date=8 March 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Gold & Platinum - RIAA: Phish |url=https://www.riaa.com/gold-platinum/?tab_active=default-award&se=phish#search_section |website=RIAA |access-date=30 September 2018}}</ref> | |||
===Cultural icons (1999-2000)=== | |||
In ] the band decided to skip the annual summer festival in order to prepare for the ] millennium celebration. However, at the last minute, they decided to hold a summer festival anyway. 65,000 people came to an abandoned airport in upstate New York for Camp Oswego held in July. The following weekend just a few towns away, ] was making new headlines as 200,000 people rioted and burned the concert grounds. However, New York Governor ] did make mention of the peacefulness of the Phish show as compared to the debacle at ].{{fact}} | |||
Phish ended 1995 with their first New Year's Eve concert at Madison Square Garden.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Greene |first1=Andy |title=Flashback: Phish Play a Funky 'Punch You in the Eye' at 1995 New Year's Show |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/phish-new-years-eve-punch-you-in-the-eye-1995-1276670/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=1 September 2023 |date=28 December 2021}}</ref> The concert was released in its entirety on the live album '']'' in 2005.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Phish Commits New Year's 1995 To Disc |url=https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/phish-commits-new-years-1995-to-disc-60999/ |magazine=Billboard |access-date=1 September 2023 |date=20 October 2005}}</ref> | |||
For the Millennium Celebration, Phish went to the southern-most tip of the US - the ] ] - at the ]. There were huge ] concerts all over the world that night besides the one Phish was holding - ], ], ]. ] reported on the huge audience in an episode of '']''. 85,000 people showed up for two nights of music, culminating with a seven-and-a-half hour second set that began at midnight and ended at sunrise. The band's performance of "Heavy Things" was ] during ]'s millennium coverage. At the beginning of the set, ] mentioned that the band had portable toilets onstage so they could use the restroom during the marathon set, and a team of security guards lined the stage to prevent band members from "wimping out" and trying to leave the stage.{{fact}} When the band left the stage in tears at sunrise after the extremely emotional performance, ] said to ], "we should stop."{{fact}} | |||
===''Billy Breathes'', ''The Story of the Ghost'', and ''The Siket Disc'': 1996–1999=== | |||
Phish kept going. They glided through the year 2000 with no Halloween show, no summer festival and no new songs. May ] '']'' contained recycled material from their live repertoire dating back as far as 1997. That summer, the band announced that they would be going their separate ways following their upcoming fall tour. On ], 2000 at the Shoreline Amphitheater in ], they played what was to be their final concert before their then indefinite hiatus. The final song before the concert was ]' "The Last Time,". The band had played a regular show and left without saying a word as The Beatles' '']'' played over the sound system while the audience gave the crew a standing ovation. | |||
In early 1996, Anastasio and Fishman formed a ] side-project called ], inspired by the music of ], which also featured ], ], ], ], ], and ], among other musicians.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Jon |title=Twenty Years Later: Trey Anastasio Presents Surrender To The Air |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/twenty-years-later-trey-anastasio-presents-surrender-air |website=JamBase |access-date=1 September 2023}}</ref> The group's only album, '']'', was released in March.<ref>{{cite web |title=Pop Music: Small Faces |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-02-04-ca-32059-story.html |website=Los Angeles Times |access-date=1 September 2023 |date=4 February 1996}}</ref> | |||
The members of Phish always had musical projects outside of Phish, but the breakup allowed them to explore them more deeply. Trey continued the solo career he'd begun two years earlier and formed the supergroup ] with ] bassist ] and drummer ] of ]. He also did orchestral work and conducting with the Vermont Youth Orchestra. ] made two films - ''Outside Out'' and ''Rising Low'' - as well as an album with acoustic guitar legend ] before launching his own solo career. ] alternated gigs with The Jazz Mandolin Project and his rowdy bar band Pork Tornado. ] formed an electronic trio, ], with ] drummer Russell Batiste and Aquarium Rescue Unit bassist ]. | |||
Following an appearance at the ] in April 1996,<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish Releases Jazzfest '96 and Tipitina's '91 For New Orleans Relief - Glide Magazine |url=https://glidemagazine.com/7232/phish-releases-jazzfest-96-and-tipitinas-91-for-new-orleans-relief/ |website=Glide Magazine |access-date=16 September 2018 |date=6 October 2005}}</ref> Phish spent the summer of that year opening for ] on their European tour.<ref>{{cite web |title=Two sets of Phish opening for Santana, summers '92 and '96 |url=http://kdrt.org/audio/two-sets-phish-opening-santana-summers-92-and-96 |website=KDRT 95.7FM Davis |date=3 June 2012 |access-date=16 September 2018 }}</ref> In August 1996, the band held their first festival, ], at the decommissioned ] on the New York side of ]. The festival attracted 70,000 attendees, making it both Phish's biggest concert crowd to that point and the largest single concert by attendance in the United States in 1996.<ref>{{cite news | title = Small Adirondack Town Is Host of a Giant Concert | newspaper = ] | date = August 18, 1996 | url = https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D03E1D61630F93BA2575BC0A960958260 | access-date = 2007-11-26 }}</ref> Phish recorded their sixth album '']'' in the winter and spring of 1996, and the album was issued in October of that year.<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish history timeline: February 1996 |url=https://phish.com/band/february-1996/ |website=Phish}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Phish history timeline: October 1996 |url=https://phish.com/band/october-1996/ |website=Phish |access-date=25 July 2023}}</ref> The album's first single, "Free", peaked at No. 24 on the ] chart and No. 11 on the ] chart, and was their most successful song on both charts.<ref name="phishmain"/><ref name="phishalt">{{cite magazine |title=Phish Chart History |url=https://www.billboard.com/artist/phish/chart-history/mrt/ |magazine=Billboard |access-date=22 September 2018}}</ref> | |||
Many existing ] such as ], ], ], ] and ] seemed to experience a swell in their audiences as a result of the hiatus. The annual ] festival opened the doors for several groups inside and outside of the ] world. | |||
By 1997, Phish's concert improvisational ventures were developing into a new ]-inspired long form jamming style.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Cohen |first1=Jake |title=Album Review: Phish - Hampton/Winston-Salem '97 |url=https://consequence.net/2011/12/album-review-phish-hamptonwinston-salem-97/ |website=Consequence of Sound |access-date=5 December 2019 |date=16 December 2011}}</ref> Vermont-based ] conglomerate ] launched "Phish Food" that year. The band officially licensed their name for use with the product, the only time they have ever allowed a third-party company to do so, and were directly involved with the creation of the flavor.<ref>{{cite web |title=Ben & Jerry's: Phish Food Ice Cream |url=https://www.benjerry.com/flavors/phish-food-ice-cream |website=Ben & Jerry's |access-date=25 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180822054600/https://www.benjerry.com/flavors/phish-food-ice-cream |archive-date=22 August 2018 |language=en}}</ref> Proceeds from the flavor are donated to the band's non-profit charity ], which raises funds for the preservation of Vermont's ].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://phish.net/faq/phish-food|title=What's the story behind Phish Food?|work=Phish.net FAQ|publisher=Phish.net|access-date=2011-02-09|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110724005615/http://phish.net/faq/phish-food|archive-date=2011-07-24}}</ref> On August 8, 1997, Phish ] one of their concerts live over the internet for the first time.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gershuny |first1=Jason |last2=Smith |first2=Andy |title=100 Things Phish Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die |date=2018 |publisher=Triumph Books |isbn=9781641250191 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zOwwDwAAQBAJ&q=phish%201997%20webcast%20tinley&pg=PT211 |language=ar}}</ref> | |||
===One more time (2002-2004)=== | |||
Over two years after the hiatus began, Phish announced that they were getting back on the road, returning to the stage on New Year's Eve ] at Madison Square Garden. To capture the very first moments of the reunion, the band recorded a new album, '']'', in only three days. When the band's much-hyped return to the stage took place on New Year's Eve, they pulled a prank on the audience that fooled the entire United States media. McConnell's brother was introduced as actor ], and came onstage to sing a line from the Phish song "Wilson" making a connection for many to Hanks' onscreen island companion in '']''. Because of the uncanny resemblance, many media reports noted that ] had "jammed with Phish" at their reunion show. The prank was revealed days later. | |||
On August 16 and 17, 1997, Phish held their second festival, The Great Went, over two days at the ] in ], near the ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=O'Brien |first1=Andrew |title=The "Went Gin" Turns 20 Today, And It's Still One Of The Definitive Phish Jams |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/20-years-later-went-gin-phish/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=9 September 2018 |date=17 August 2017}}</ref> In October 1997, the band released their second live album '']'', which featured selections from their March 1997 concert at the ] in ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Phish 'Slip Stitch & Pass' Vinyl Release Due On Black Friday |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-slip-stitch-and-pass-vinyl |website=JamBase |access-date=26 May 2020 |date=9 October 2018}}</ref> | |||
], in July 2003]] | |||
Following the Great Went, the band embarked on a fall tour that was dubbed by fans as the "Phish Destroys America" tour after a ]-inspired poster for the opening date in Las Vegas.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=10 Years Later: Phish Destroys America |url=https://glidemagazine.com/140037/10-years-later-phish-destroys-america/ |website=Glide Magazine |date=13 November 2007 |access-date=9 April 2019}}</ref> The 21-date tour is considered one of the group's most popular and acclaimed tours, and several concerts were later officially released on live album sets such as '']'' in 2002.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Siegel |first1=Scott |title=Phish Fall 97: Remembering November 17th In Denver |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-fall-97-remembering-november-17th-denver |website=JamBase |access-date=9 April 2019 |date=17 November 2017}}</ref> Phish ended 1997 as one of the ten highest grossing concert acts in the United States that year.<ref>{{cite web |title=Stones rule as 1997 top concert tour |url=https://www.mtv.com/news/1433754/stones-rule-as-1997-top-concert-tour/ |website=MTV News |access-date=24 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210114124922/https://www.mtv.com/news/1433754/stones-rule-as-1997-top-concert-tour/ |archive-date=14 January 2021 |date=15 December 1997 |url-status=dead}}</ref> | |||
At the end of the ] summer tour, Phish held their first summer festival in four years, returning to Limestone for the ] at ] . The festival drew in crowds of over 60,000 fans, once again making Limestone the most populated city in Maine according to . At 2:30 a.m. following the first night's show, the band performed an hour-long, ambient jam on top of the air traffic control tower overlooking the base. Anyone still awake was treated to the sight of an intricate light and laser show with acrobats performing suspended from the tower by bungee cords. In December, the band celebrated its 20th anniversary with a four-night run of shows: one in Albany, one @ The Nassau Coliseum, one at the Philadelphia Spectrum and the 20th Anniversary show at the FleetCenter in Boston. The band shocked the Phish world by inviting founding Phish member Jeff Holdsworth to jam onstage for the first time since 1986 during the Albany show. Phish placed Holdsworth front and center, and allowed him to lead the band for the rest of the concert, just as he had done two decades earlier.(davinified) | |||
In April 1998, the band embarked on the ] - a four night tour with two shows at the ] in ] on ] and another two at the ] in ].<ref name="island20">{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Remembering Phish's Island Tour 20 Years Later |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/remembering-phishs-island-tour-20-years-later |website=JamBase |date=2 April 2018}}</ref> The four concerts are highly regarded by fans due to the band's exploration of a ] musical style they had been playing for the previous year, which Anastasio dubbed "cowfunk".<ref name="island20"/><ref>{{cite web |last1=Collette|first1=Doug |title=Phish: Live Phish: Island Tour |url=https://www.allaboutjazz.com/live-phish-island-tour-by-doug-collette.php |website=All About Jazz |date=8 October 2005 |access-date=30 September 2018 }}</ref> The band performed the tour in the middle of studio sessions for their seventh album, and were inspired by the quality of their performances to further incorporate the cowfunk style into subsequent sessions.<ref>{{cite web |title=10 Little Known Facts About Phish's Island Tour |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/10-little-known-facts-phishs-island-tour |website=JamBase |access-date=30 September 2018 |date=5 April 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Phish Releases Four Show 1998 Island Tour - Glide Magazine |url=https://glidemagazine.com/6971/phish-releases-four-show-1998-island-tour/ |website=Glide Magazine |access-date=30 September 2018 |date=29 June 2005}}</ref> The resulting album, '']'', was released in October 1998.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Phish Provides Soundtrack For Part Of A 'Dawson's Creek' Episode In 1998 |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-provides-soundtrack-for-part-of-a-dawsons-creek-episode-in-1998 |website=JamBase |access-date=27 July 2020 |date=9 October 2016}}</ref> The album's first single "]", which had been premiered on the Island Tour, became a #14 hit on Billboard's ] chart.<ref name="triplea">{{cite magazine |title=Phish Chart History |url=https://www.billboard.com/artist/phish/chart-history/aaa/ |magazine=Billboard |access-date=30 September 2018}}</ref> To promote ''The Story of the Ghost'', Phish performed several songs from the album on the public television music show '']'' in October 1998, and were interviewed for the program by its host ] of ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=O'Brien |first1=Andrew |title=12 Days Of Phishmas 2018: David Byrne Conducts Wide-Ranging Interview With Phish In 1998 |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/phishmas-2018-day2-david-byrne/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=4 March 2019 |date=17 December 2018}}</ref> | |||
In order to avoid the exhaustion and pitfalls of previous years of non-stop touring, Phish played only sporadically after the reunion. Tours were only about two weeks long. After an April ] run of shows in Las Vegas, ] announced on the Phish website that the band was breaking up for good after a small summer tour. Their final album, '']'', was released in the late spring. | |||
] | |||
During the summer of 2004, the band jammed with rapper ] at their second Brooklyn, NY show, and performed a seven-song set atop the marquee of the ] during an appearance on '']'', delighting fans who had gathered on the street outside the theater. The final show was to be the last Phish summer festival - ], named for the town that hosted the event which was held in the group's home state, Vermont. 100,000 people were expected to attend.{{fact}} It was simulcast to thousands more in movie theaters across ]. | |||
In the summer of 1998, the band held Lemonwheel, their second festival at Loring Air Force Base in Maine. The two-day event attracted 60,000 attendees.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Fisher |first1=Frank |title=Phish Fans Attend Lemonwheel |url=https://apnews.com/20aa03825987457a068bf5b26da8f599 |website=Associated Press |access-date=27 July 2020 |date=15 August 1998}}</ref> The band played another summer festival in 1999, called Camp Oswego and held at the Oswego County Airport in ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Phish Concludes Camp Oswego Festival On This Date In 1999 |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-camp-oswego-1999 |website=JamBase |access-date=27 July 2020 |date=18 July 2019}}</ref> Unlike other Phish festivals, Camp Oswego featured a prominent second stage of additional performers aside from Phish, including ], ] and ].<ref>{{cite web |title=A Guide Through The First 10 Phish Festivals Ahead Of Curveball |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/curveball-phish-festivals-guide/ |website=Live for Live Music |date=14 August 2018 |access-date=30 September 2018}}</ref> | |||
In July 1999, the band released an album of improvisational instrumentals titled '']''.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Kahn |first1=Andy |title=Vinyl Edition Of Phish 'The Siket Disc' LP Available For Pre-Order |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/vinyl-edition-of-phish-the-siket-disc-lp-available-for-pre-order |access-date=30 September 2018 |work=JamBase |date=25 October 2015}}</ref> The band followed that release with '']'', a six-disc box set released in November 1999, which contained the entirety of their performances on November 20 and 21, 1998 at the ] in ]. The set marked the first time that complete recordings of Phish concerts were officially released by Elektra Records.<ref>{{cite web |last1=O'Connor |first1=Christopher |title=Phish to issue six CD live set: Hampton Comes Alive |url=http://www.mtv.com/news/518983/phish-to-issue-six-cd-live-set-hampton-comes-alive/ |website=MTV News |access-date=25 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220524010521/http://www.mtv.com/news/518983/phish-to-issue-six-cd-live-set-hampton-comes-alive/ |archive-date=24 May 2022 |date=11 October 1999 |url-status=dead}}</ref> | |||
] | |||
] | |||
Unfortunately, a week of rain had flooded the concert field to the point where people were turned away, causing gridlock on the highway and roads leading to the site. Rumors circulated that the stage was sinking.{{fact}} ] got on the radio and told everyone who wasn't already in to turn away and that no more cars would be allowed in. At that point, only about 20,000 people were in the concert area. | |||
To celebrate the new millennium, Phish hosted a two-day outdoor festival at the ] in ] in December 1999. The festival's climactic New Year's Eve concert, referred to by fans as simply "The Show", started at 11:35 p.m. on December 31, 1999, and continued through to sunrise on January 1, 2000, approximately eight hours later.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://phish.net/setlists/?d=1999-12-31 |title=December 31, 1999 Setlist |publisher=Phish.net |access-date=2014-04-11}}</ref><ref name="mostof">{{cite web |title=Most Of Phish's Big Cypress Seven-Plus-Hour-Long Millennium Set Is On YouTube |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/all-of-phishs-big-cypress-is-on-youtube/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=27 July 2020 |date=22 September 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Most Of Phish's Big Cypress Seven-Plus-Hour-Long Millennium Set Is On YouTube |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/all-of-phishs-big-cypress-is-on-youtube/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=4 October 2018 |date=21 September 2014}}</ref> The band's performance of the song "Heavy Things" at the festival was broadcast live as part of ]'s '']'' millennium coverage, giving the band their biggest television audience up to that point.<ref name="mostof"/> 75,000 people attended the sold-out two-day festival.<ref>{{cite web |title=Highway gridlock halts Phish concert traffic; pedestrian killed |url=http://archives.cnn.com/1999/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/30/phish.concert.01/ |website=CNN Archives |access-date=27 July 2020 |date=31 December 1999 |archive-date=3 May 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080503210224/http://archives.cnn.com/1999/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/30/phish.concert.01/ |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Pareles |first1=Jon |title=MUSIC; Happily Reunited to Go Against the Grain |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/08/arts/music-happily-reunited-to-go-against-the-grain.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=13 November 2019 |date=8 December 2002}}</ref> In 2017, ''Rolling Stone'' named the Big Cypress festival one of the "50 Greatest Concerts of the Last 50 Years".<ref name="greatshows">{{cite magazine |title=The 50 Greatest Concerts of the Last 50 Years |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/the-50-greatest-concerts-of-the-last-50-years-127062/phish-at-big-cypress-194414/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=18 October 2018 |date=12 June 2017}}</ref> | |||
===''Farmhouse'' and hiatus: 2000–2002=== | |||
Instead of turning away, tens of thousands parked their cars on highway medians, in breakdown lanes, and on the sides of roads. Then they hiked in to the concert venue, some walking as far as 30 miles to the venue. Local residents stepped in and began shuttling fans in and out of the site and to their vehicles. It was an extremely emotional showing and a perfect example of the incredible bond Phish had with their audience. The band broke down crying onstage several times, most notably when McConnell choked up during the ballad "Wading in the Velvet Sea." Unable to continue singing, he turned the microphone to the audience, who took over in chorus. Adding tragedy to the festival, 25-year-old Ian Niles Gardiner, of ], ], was found dead in a tent at 2:18 a.m. Monday following the final show. | |||
Following the Big Cypress festival, the band issued their ninth studio album '']'' in May 2000.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Waful |first1=Jefferson |title=Talking 'Farmhouse' with Trey Anastasio in 2000 |url=https://jambands.com/features/2020/05/16/talking-farmhouse-with-trey-anastasio-in-2000/ |website=Jambands |access-date=27 July 2020 |date=16 May 2020}}</ref> "Heavy Things", which was released as the album's first single, became the band's only song to appear on a mainstream pop radio format, reaching #29 on ''Billboard'''s ] chart that July.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Phish Chart History |url=https://www.billboard.com/artist/phish/chart-history/atf/ |magazine=Billboard |access-date=5 September 2018}}</ref> The song also became the band's biggest hit to date on the Adult Alternative Songs chart, reaching #2 there.<ref name="triplea"/> In June 2000, the band embarked on a seven-date headlining tour of Japan.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Brasor |first1=Philip |title=All in the Phish Phamily |url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2000/06/18/music/all-in-the-phish-phamily/#.XHw1lYhKiM8 |website=The Japan Times |access-date=3 March 2019 |date=18 June 2000}}</ref> In July, they taped an appearance on the PBS music show '']'', which was aired in October.<ref>{{cite web |title=Flashback {{!}} Phish On Austin City Limits 2000 |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/flashback-phish-on-austin-city-limits-2000 |website=JamBase |access-date=3 March 2019 |date=16 September 2013}}</ref> | |||
In the summer of 2000, the band announced that they would take their first "extended time-out" following their upcoming fall tour.<ref>{{cite web |title=Seven Significant Musical Hiatuses |url=https://relix.com/articles/detail/seven-significant-musical-hiatuses/ |website=Relix Media |access-date=23 May 2020 |date=14 November 2011}}</ref> Anastasio officially announced the impending hiatus to the band's fans during their September 30 concert at the ] in ].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=9780306819209 |page=203 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=phish%20hiatus%202000%20%22las%20vegas%22&pg=PA203 }}</ref> During the tour's last concert on October 7, at the ] in ], the band made no reference to the hiatus, and left the stage without saying a word following their encore performance of "You Enjoy Myself", as ]' "]" played over the venue's sound system.<ref>{{cite web |title=October 2000 |url=http://phish.com/band/october-2000/ |website=Phish |access-date=3 March 2019}}</ref> | |||
Coventry was an emotional goodbye for Phish and its audience, an end to Phish's story in rock music. Without any help from radio, music television channels or album sales, Phish became one of the biggest live band in America. As Rolling Stone magazine put it: | |||
'']'', a documentary film about the band directed by ], was released in August 2000, shortly before the hiatus began.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Holden |first1=Stephen |title='Bittersweet Motel:' Love Phlows Between Phish and Phans |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/film/082500motel-film-review.html |website=New York Times Archive |access-date=28 July 2020 |date=25 August 2000}}</ref> The documentary captures the band's 1997 and 1998 tours, the Great Went festival and the recording of ''The Story of the Ghost''.<ref>{{cite web |title=The B List: 10 Notable Changes Since The Release of Phish Documentary Bittersweet Motel - Glide Magazine |url=https://glidemagazine.com/71072/the-b-list-10-notable-changes-since-the-release-of-phish-documentary-bittersweet-motel/ |website=Glide Magazine |access-date=21 September 2018 |date=17 November 2011}}</ref> Phish were nominated in two categories at the ] in 2001: ] for ''Hampton Comes Alive'' and ] for "First Tube" from ''Farmhouse''.<ref>{{cite web |title=Grammy Nominations |url=https://phish.com/news/grammy-nominations/ |website=Phish |date=3 January 2001 |access-date=5 October 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=43rd Annual Grammy Nomination List |url=https://variety.com/2001/music/news/43rd-annual-grammy-nomination-list-1117791238/ |website=Variety |date=3 January 2001}}</ref> | |||
* ''Given their sense of community, their ambition and their challenging, generous performances, Phish have become the most important band of the Nineties.''{{ref_num|stone|15}} | |||
During Phish's hiatus, Elektra Records continued to issue archival releases of the band's concerts on compact disc. Between September 2001 and May 2003, the label released 20 entries in the ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Rare Phish videos from '91-'00 surface on Youtube |url=http://glidemagazine.com/96433/rare-phish-videos-from-91-98-surface-on-youtube |website=Glide Magazine |date=28 November 2012 |access-date=28 July 2020}}</ref> These multi-disc sets featured complete ]s of concerts that were particularly popular with the band and their fanbase, similar to the ]'s ] archival series.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Parrish |first1=Michael |title=More bands are 'bootlegging' own concerts |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2003-05-18-0305180395-story.html |website=Chicago Tribune |access-date=28 July 2020 |date=18 May 2003}}</ref> In November 2002, the label released the band's first concert DVD, '']'', which featured the entirety of the September 2000 concert at which Anastasio announced the hiatus.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Sussman |first1=Gary |title=Phish reunite for tour |url=https://ew.com/article/2002/08/15/phish-reunite-tour/ |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |access-date=28 July 2020 |date=15 August 2002}}</ref> | |||
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|+ <big>'''Phish''' Band Members (By Year)</big> | |||
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In April 2002, Phish guest starred on the episode "]" of the animated series '']''.<ref name="simpsons1">{{cite web |last1=D'Angelo |first1=Joe |title=Phish regroup for Springfield gig - on 'Simpsons" |url=http://www.mtv.com/news/1451877/phish-regroup-for-springfield-gig-on-simpsons/ |website=MTV News |access-date=25 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200814182739/http://www.mtv.com/news/1451877/phish-regroup-for-springfield-gig-on-simpsons/ |archive-date=14 August 2020 |date=22 January 2002 |url-status=dead}}</ref> The episode marked the band's first appearance together, albeit as animated characters, since the hiatus began. Phish provided their own voices for the episode and performed a snippet of "Run Like an Antelope".<ref name="simpsons1"/> | |||
==Their music== | |||
Phish's musical ethos is a playful mix of skilled improvisation, ], ], bluegrass, ], ], ], ], reggae, ], and intricate compositions. Some of their original compositions (such as "Theme from the Bottom") tend towards a ] and bluegrass fusion, with more rock, jazz and funk elements than the Grateful Dead and other earlier so-called jam bands. Their more ambitious, epic compositions (such as "Reba" and "Guyute") are often said to resemble classical music in a rock setting, much like the music of one of their heroes, ]. | |||
{{see details|Phish and their music}} | |||
=== Return, ''Round Room'', ''Undermind'', and disbandment: 2002–2004 === | |||
===Notable guests=== | |||
Phish truly transcended genres, as evidenced by the sheer number and varying backgrounds of guests who took the stage with them over the years. In addition to Nelson, Santana and Jay-Z, Phish shared venues with, among many others, ], ] and ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and ]. | |||
In August 2002, Phish's manager John Paluska announced the band planned to end their hiatus that December with a New Year's Eve concert at Madison Square Garden.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=The Hiatus Is Over: Phish Returns |url=https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/74573/the-hiatus-is-over-phish-returns |magazine=Billboard |date=14 August 2002 |access-date=6 January 2020}}</ref> They also recorded '']'' over the course of four days in October and released it on December 10.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Phish Come Back 'Round' For New Studio Set |url=https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/73667/phish-come-back-round-for-new-studio-set |magazine=Billboard |date=29 October 2002 |access-date=5 November 2018}}</ref> The band had initially planned to record the new album live at the Madison Square Garden concert, but instead felt that demos they had recorded of the material were strong enough to merit release as a studio album.<ref name="fricke">{{cite magazine |last1=Fricke |first1=David |title=Phish: America's Great Jam Band Returns |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/phish-americas-great-jam-band-returns-177400/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=1 October 2018 |date=6 March 2003}}</ref> Four days after the release of ''Round Room'', the band appeared as a musical guest on the December 14 episode of '']'', hosted by former ] ].<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish Plays Saturday Night Live On December 14 |url=http://phish.com/news/phish-plays-saturday-night-live-on-december-14/ |website=Phish |date=14 November 2002 |access-date=22 September 2018}}</ref> During the episode, the band debuted the song "46 Days", appeared in a comedy sketch, and their song "You Enjoy Myself" was featured in a '']'' cartoon segment.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Mason |first1=Pete |title=20 Years Later: Phish perform on Saturday Night Live |url=https://nysmusic.com/2022/12/14/20-years-later-phish-perform-on-saturday-night-live/ |website=NYS Music |access-date=20 April 2024 |language=en-us |date=14 December 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Sunday Cinema {{!}} Animated Phish |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/sunday-cinema-animated-phish |website=JamBase |access-date=22 September 2018 |date=4 May 2014}}</ref> During their return concert on December 31, McConnell's brother was introduced as actor ]. The impostor sang a line of the song "Wilson", prompting some media outlets to report that the actor had appeared at the concert.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Mnookin |first1=Seth |title=Phish's wacky New Year's Eve antics. |url=https://slate.com/culture/2003/01/phish-s-wacky-new-year-s-eve-antics.html |website=Slate Magazine |access-date=3 October 2019 |date=3 January 2003 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191003045721/https://slate.com/culture/2003/01/phish-s-wacky-new-year-s-eve-antics.html |archive-date=3 October 2019 |url-status=dead }}</ref> | |||
=== Bootleg circulation === | |||
] in ], in July 2003, accompanied by a ] created by Chris Kuroda]] | |||
Because Phish's abilities were so grounded in their live shows, concert recordings are commonly-traded commodities. Official soundboard recordings can be purchased through the Website, while recordings produced by fans taping with boom microphones from the audience are frequently traded on any number of music ]. Phish fandom is generally considered to be very welcoming and approachable for outsiders. | |||
At the end of the 2003 summer tour, Phish returned to ] for ], their first festival since Big Cypress.<ref name="bangor">{{cite web |last1=Burnham |first1=Emily |title=A brief history of Phish's 30-year relationship with Maine |url=https://bangordailynews.com/2019/06/24/news/bangor/a-brief-history-of-phishs-30-year-relationship-with-maine/ |website=Bangor Daily News |access-date=28 July 2020 |date=24 June 2019}}</ref> The event drew crowds of over 60,000 fans, and was the band's final festival to be held at Loring Air Force Base.<ref name="bangor"/> Highlights from the festival were released on a DVD set, also called ''It'', in October 2004.<ref>{{cite web |title=It |url=http://phish.com/release/it/ |website=Phish |access-date=9 January 2019}}</ref> In November and December 2003, the band celebrated its 20th anniversary with a four-show mini-tour of shows in New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. The December 1 show at ] featured a guest appearance by former member Jeff Holdsworth, who sat in with the band on five songs, including his compositions "Possum" and "Camel Walk".<ref>{{cite web |title=Flashback: Phish Welcomes Former Guitarist Jeff Holdsworth During 20th Anniversary Run |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/flashback-phish-welcomes-former-guitarist-jeff-holdsworth-during-20th-anniversary-run-full-show/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=4 February 2019 |date=1 December 2015}}</ref> | |||
Fans have been noted for their near obsessive collections of fan-taped concert recordings. There are still projects today that work to make entire tours available to everyone, free of charge. Taping was crucial to Phish's success, and tapes are still traded among fans today, sometimes in the traditional B&P (Blanks and Postage) fashion, sometimes as downloads on websites (). | |||
On May 25, 2004, Anastasio announced on the Phish website that the band would disband at the end of their 2004 summer tour.<ref name="breakup1">{{cite web |last1=Anastasio |first1=Trey |title=An Announcement from Trey |url=http://phish.com/news/an-announcement-from-trey/ |website=Phish.com |access-date=28 July 2020 |date=25 May 2004}}</ref> He wrote that he had met with the other members earlier that month to discuss the "Strong feelings I've been having that Phish has run its course, and that we should end it now while it's still on a high note."<ref name="breakup1"/> By the end of the meeting, he said, "We realized that after almost twenty-one years together, we were faced with the opportunity to graciously step away in unison, as a group, united in our friendship and our feelings of gratitude."<ref name="breakup1"/> The band's eleventh – and at the time final – studio album '']'' was released in June 2004.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Udovitch |first1=Mim |title=MUSIC; The Final Word on Phish |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/arts/music-the-final-word-on-phish.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=28 July 2020 |date=13 June 2004}}</ref> The band's summer 2004 began with two concerts at ] in ]. The first concert was recorded for the live album and concert documentary '']'', while the second featured a guest appearance by rapper ], who performed two songs with the band.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Greene |first1=Andy |title=Flashback: Phish and Jay Z Join Forces For '99 Problems' |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/flashback-phish-and-jay-z-join-forces-for-99-problems-119997/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=27 April 2020 |date=2 March 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Heaton |first1=Dave |title=Phish: Live in Brooklyn |url=https://www.popmatters.com/phish-live-in-brooklyn-2495683926.html |website=PopMatters |access-date=27 April 2020 |date=21 July 2006}}</ref> Later that summer, the band appeared on the '']'' and performed a seven-song set from atop the marquee of the ] for fans who had gathered on the street.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Phish Plays Surprise Show For Letterman Atop NYC's Ed Sullivan Theater In 2004 |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-plays-surprise-show-for-letterman-atop-nycs-ed-sullivan-theater-in-2004 |website=JamBase |access-date=27 April 2019 |date=21 June 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Jun 21, 2004 Setlist - Phish.net |url=http://phish.net/setlists/phish-june-21-2004-ed-sullivan-theater-new-york-ny-usa.html |website=phish.net |access-date=27 April 2019}}</ref> | |||
] | |||
The 2004 tour finished with the band's seventh summer festival on August 14 and 15, which were billed as their final performances.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Rothman |first1=Robin A. |title='A major part of my soul died today' - Phish fans react to split |url=http://www.mtv.com/news/1487987/a-major-part-of-my-soul-died-today-phish-fans-react-to-split/ |website=MTV News |access-date=25 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191115174615/http://www.mtv.com/news/1487987/a-major-part-of-my-soul-died-today-phish-fans-react-to-split/ |archive-date=15 November 2019 |date=27 May 2004 |url-status=dead}}</ref> ] was named for ] that hosted the event, which was held at the nearby ].<ref>{{cite web |title=Pharewell My Friend: Phish Says Farewell At Coventry |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/pharewell-my-friend-phish-says-farewell-at-coventry |website=JamBase |access-date=27 April 2020 |date=15 August 2019}}</ref> | |||
===Celebrity fans=== | |||
The concerts were simulcast in movie theaters and on ].<ref name="curtain1">{{cite magazine |title='Curtain' Falls On Phish's Career |url=https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/curtain-falls-on-phishs-career-66899/ |magazine=Billboard |access-date=19 August 2023 |date=16 August 2004}}</ref> "The Curtain With" was the final song the band performed at their then-final concert on August 15.<ref name="curtain1"/> After Coventry, the members of the band admitted they were disappointed with their performance at the festival; In the official book ''Phish: The Biography'', Anastasio expressed that "Coventry itself was a nightmare. It was emotional, but it was not like we were at our finest. I certainly wasn't".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=9780306819209 |pages=243 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA243 |language=en}}</ref> The festival weekend was beset by logistical issues, including heavy rain, muddy conditions in the festival area and a traffic jam on ].<ref name="curtain1"/> | |||
There are many celebrities and musicians who have expressed admiration for Phish, including ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ]{{ref_num|savage|12}}, ], ] of ], ], ], ]{{ref_num|savage|12}}, ], ], ], ], ], ], ]{{ref_num|vonnegut|13}}, ], ], ], ], ]{{ref_num|wright|14}}, ] and ]. | |||
===Post-disbandment and interim: 2004–2008=== | |||
===Fan activities=== | |||
Phish fans (a.k.a. phans or Phishheads) are widely ranging individuals. Most often reported in media, and apparent at shows, are the many vendors (of food, t-shirts, art, etc.) reminiscent of "shakedown street" at a ] concert. Less apparent are the dozen or more fan organizations - formal and informal, for-profit and nonprofit - which fans have created and maintained, often for the benefit of other fans and, indirectly, to the benefit of the band. These include a variety of groups with some presence at shows, including the Phellowship (celebrating seeing shows sober together), Clifford Care Bears (a one-tour effort regarding awareness about "hard" drugs), People for a Louder Mike (an informal effort to increase Gordon's bass in the house mix), the Green Crew (controlling trash and refuse), and the . Additionally, fans have organized online in various ways, including , , through ] newsgroups rec.music.phish, in various ] channels and in the original . Fans have also produced a number of books, including ''The Phishing Manual'', '']'', and two versions of '']''. | |||
Following the break-up, the band's members remained in amicable communication with one another.<ref name="toughtime">{{cite news |last1=Pareles |first1=Jon |title=Phish's Breakup? That Was Then. But Tough Times Demand a Reunion. |newspaper=The New York Times |date=4 March 2009 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/arts/music/05phish.html |access-date=1 October 2018 }}</ref> The members also occasionally appeared on each other's solo albums and collaborated on side-projects.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bavosa |first1=Brian |title=Page McConnell: On his own two feet |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/page-mcconnell-on-his-own-two-feet |website=JamBase |access-date=21 December 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Fortin |first1=Aaron |title=VIDEO: G.R.A.B (Gordon, Russo, Anastasio, Benevento) from All Good 2006 |url=https://livemusicblog.com/videos/video-g-r-a-b-gordon-russo-anastasio-benevento-from-all-good-2006/ |website=LIVE music blog |access-date=21 December 2020 |date=8 October 2012}}</ref> | |||
==Discography== | |||
Phish have released a large number of live and studio albums, as well as a handful of videos.{{see details|Phish discography}} | |||
In 2005, Phish formed their own record label, ], to release archival CD and DVD sets.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2009 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=978-0-306-81947-6 |pages=248 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9zyoeq86UV0C&dq=jemp%20records%202005&pg=PA248 |language=en}}</ref> The label's first release was '']'', which was released in conjunction with ] in December 2005.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Collette |first1=Doug |title=Phish: Phish: New Year's Eve 1995--Live at Madison Square Garden |url=https://www.allaboutjazz.com/phish-new-years-eve-1995-live-at-madison-square-garden-by-doug-collette.php |website=All About Jazz |date=21 January 2006 |access-date=1 October 2018 |language=en}}</ref> The album was named the 42nd greatest live album of all time by '']'' in April 2015.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=50 Greatest Live Albums of All Time |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/50-greatest-live-albums-of-all-time-173246/phish-new-years-eve-1995-live-at-madison-square-garden-2005-153107/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=1 October 2018 |date=29 April 2015}}</ref> The label subsequently released several other archival live box sets, including '']'' (2006), '']'' (2007), '']'' (2008) and '']'' (2009). | |||
==See Also== | |||
*] | |||
*] | |||
*] | |||
*] | |||
In December 2006, Anastasio was arrested in ] for drug possession and driving while intoxicated, and was sentenced to 14 months in a ] program.<ref>{{cite magazine|title=Anastasio Arrested For DWI In Upstate N.Y.|url=http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/56432/anastasio-arrested-for-dwi-in-upstate-ny|magazine=Billboard|access-date=November 8, 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|title=Anastasio Avoids Jail On Drug Charges|url=http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1052782/anastasio-avoids-jail-on-drug-charges|magazine=Billboard|access-date=November 8, 2013}}</ref> In 2007, while Anastasio was undergoing rehabilitation, the other members of Phish surprised him on his birthday with an instrumental recording they had made for him to play along with on guitar.<ref name="doylers"/> During his rehabilitation, Anastasio said he "spent 24 hours a day thinking about nothing but Phish" and began discussing a reunion with the other members of the band.<ref name="doylers"/><ref>{{cite magazine |title=Trey Anastasio Opens Up About Past Drug Addiction |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/trey-anastasio-opens-up-about-past-drug-addiction-180149/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=10 October 2018 |date=15 November 2012}}</ref> | |||
==External links== | |||
* | |||
Phish received the ] Lifetime Achievement Award on May 7, 2008, at ]. All four members attended the ceremony and gave a speech, and both McConnell and Anastasio performed, although not together.<ref>{{cite web |title=10 Years Ago Today: Phish Reunited at The Jammys (and Chevy Chase Impersonated Keller Williams) - Relix Media |url=https://relix.com/blogs/detail/10_years_ago_today_phish_reunited_at_the_jammys_and_chevy_chase_impersonated_keller_williams/ |website=Relix Media |access-date=5 October 2018 |date=7 May 2018}}</ref> | |||
* | |||
* | |||
In response to a June 2008 rumor that Phish had reunited to record a new album, McConnell wrote a letter on the band's website updating fans on the current relations between the band's members.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Webster |first1=Rachael |title=Update: Phish's Page McConnell writes letter to fans |url=https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2008/06/lillywhite-rumored-to-produce-phish-reunion-disc.html |website=Paste Magazine |access-date=1 October 2018}}</ref> McConnell wrote that while the members remained friends, they were currently busy with other projects and the reunion rumors were premature.<ref name="page08">{{cite web |last1=McConnell |first1=Page |title=A LETTER FROM PAGE |url=http://phish.com/news/a-letter-from-page-2/ |website=Phish |date=26 June 2008 |access-date=1 October 2018}}</ref> He added, "Later this year we hope to spend some time together and take a look at what possible futures we might enjoy."<ref name="page08"/> That September, the band played three songs at the wedding of their former tour manager Brad Sands.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |url=http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/breaking-phish-reunites-for-sandsios-wedding/ |title=Breaking: Phish Reunites for Sandsio's Wedding | Hidden Track |date=7 September 2008 |publisher=Glide Magazine |access-date=2014-04-11}}</ref> Later in 2008, the band reconvened at ], Anastasio's farmhouse studio in ], for jamming sessions and rehearsals.<ref name="toughtime"/> | |||
* | |||
* | |||
===Reunion and ''Joy'': 2008–2011=== | |||
* | |||
On October 1, 2008, the band announced on their website that they had officially reunited, and would play their first shows in five years in March 2009 at the ] in ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Curran |first1=John |title=Phish No Longer "Gone Fishing" |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/phish-no-longer-gone-fishing/ |website=CBS News |date=October 2008 |access-date=1 October 2018 }}</ref> The three ] were held on March 6, 7, and 8, 2009, with "Fluffhead" being the first song the band played onstage at the first show.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Schiesel |first1=Seth |title=Phish Returns to Hampton, Va., to Feed Its Hungry Fans |newspaper=The New York Times |date=9 March 2009 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/arts/music/10phish.html |access-date=1 October 2018 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=PHISH TO PLAY THREE CONCERTS |url=http://phish.com/news/phish-to-play-three-concerts/ |website=Phish |date=October 2008 |access-date=1 October 2018}}</ref> Approximately 14,000 people attended the concerts over the course of three days, and the band made the shows available for free download on their LivePhish website for a limited time, in order to accommodate fans who were unable to attend.<ref>{{cite web |title=On The Download: Phish Live! |url=https://www.nbcwashington.com/entertainment/celebrity/On_The_Download__Phish_Live_.html |website=NBC4 Washington |date=10 March 2009 |access-date=1 October 2018 }}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Kreps |first1=Daniel |title=Free Phish: Band Giving Away Downloads of Virginia Reunion Shows |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/free-phish-band-giving-away-downloads-of-virginia-reunion-shows-108588/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=1 October 2018 |date=4 March 2009}}</ref> | |||
* | |||
When the band decided to reunite, the members agreed to limit their touring schedule, and they have typically performed about 50 concerts a year since.<ref name="doylers">{{cite magazine |last1=Doyle |first1=Patrick |title=Phish's New Harmony: How America's Best Jam Band Learned to Get Along |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/phishs-new-harmony-how-americas-greatest-jam-band-learned-to-get-along-107239/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=30 September 2018 |date=21 October 2016}}</ref> Following the reunion weekend, Phish embarked on a summer tour which began in May with a concert at ] in ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bavosa |first1=Brian |title=Phish: 5.31.09 Boston |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-5-31-09-boston |website=JamBase |access-date=12 May 2020 |date=1 June 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Rodman |first1=Sarah |title=Phish and fans come back together for a pledge of mutual allegiance |url=http://archive.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2009/06/01/phish_back_in_the_swim_at_fenway/ |website=Boston.com |access-date=12 May 2020 |date=1 June 2009}}</ref> The Fenway show was followed by a 25-date tour which included performances at the ] of the ] in Tennessee and a four date stand at ] in Colorado.<ref>{{cite web |title=Summer 2009 Dates Added |url=https://phish.com/news/summer-2009-dates-added/ |website=Phish |date=17 March 2009 |access-date=12 May 2020}}</ref> At Bonnaroo, Phish was joined by ] on guitar for three songs.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Vadukul |first1=Alex |title=Springsteen Joins Phish to Close Out Electric Bonnaroo 2009 |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/springsteen-joins-phish-to-close-out-electric-bonnaroo-2009-78281/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=12 May 2020 |date=15 June 2009}}</ref> | |||
] | |||
Phish's fourteenth studio album, '']'', produced by ], was released September 8, 2009.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Kreps |first1=Daniel |title=Phish's "Joy" Out September 8th, Band Announces Deluxe "Joy Box" |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/phishs-joy-out-september-8th-band-announces-deluxe-joy-box-252578/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=31 July 2020 |date=11 August 2009}}</ref> "Backwards Down the Number Line", a single from the ''Joy'' album, reached number 9 on the ''Billboard'' Adult Alternative Songs chart in October.<ref name="triplea"/> In October, the band held Festival 8, their first multi-day festival event since Coventry in 2004, at the ] in ].<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish Festival 8 (aka "Save The Date") Festival Location Announced: Indio, Oct 30 – Nov 1: Tickets On Sale Now |url=https://www.nbclosangeles.com/local/angea-phish-festival-8-aka-save-the-date-festival-location-announced-indio-oct-30-nov-1-tickets-on-sale-now/1858023/ |website=NBC Los Angeles |date=28 July 2009 |access-date=12 May 2020}}</ref> | |||
In March 2010, Anastasio inducted ], one of his favorite bands, into the ] at the museum's annual ceremony in New York City.<ref name="treygen">{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Phish Honors Genesis At 2010 Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-genesis-rock-roll-hall-of-fame-video |website=JamBase |access-date=31 July 2020 |date=20 July 2020}}</ref> In addition to Anastasio's speech, Phish performed the Genesis songs "]" and "]" at the event.<ref name="treygen" /> Phish toured in the summer and fall of 2010, and their concerts at ] in ] and the ] in ] were issued as CD/DVD sets in 2010 and 2011 respectively.<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish: Alpine Valley 2010 2 CD/2 DVD Box Details |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-alpine-valley-2010-2-cd2-dvd-box-details |website=JamBase |access-date=5 August 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Phish: Live in Utica Live CD/DVD Box Set |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-live-in-utica-live-cddvd-box-set |website=JamBase |access-date=13 March 2019 |date=6 April 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Phish 2010 Summer Tour Announced |url=http://phish.com/news/phish-2010-summer-tour-announced/ |website=Phish |date=16 March 2010 |access-date=13 March 2019}}</ref> | |||
=== ''Fuego'' and ''Big Boat'': 2011–2016 === | |||
Phish's ninth festival, Super Ball IX, took place at the ] race track in Watkins Glen, New York on July 1–3, 2011. It was the first concert to take place at Watkins Glen International since ] in 1973.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Waddell |first1=Ray |title=Phish to Stage Super Ball IX in Upstate NY |url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/phish-stage-super-ball-ix-173656 |website=The Hollywood Reporter |date=31 March 2011 |access-date=13 March 2019 }}</ref> In September, the band played a benefit concert in ] which raised $1.2 million for Vermont flood victim relief in the aftermath of ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Gallman |first1=Stephanie |title=Phish jams to raise $1.2 million for flood victims in native Vermont |url=https://www.cnn.com/2011/09/16/showbiz/vermont-phish-fundraiser/index.html |website=CNN |date=16 September 2011 |access-date=12 May 2020}}</ref> | |||
In June 2012, Phish headlined ] with the ] and ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Pareles |first1=Jon |title=Favorites Return to Bonnaroo |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/arts/music/bonnaroo-festival-with-radiohead-phish-and-dangelo.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=23 May 2020 |date=11 June 2012}}</ref> During their 2013 Halloween concert at ] in ], the band played twelve new songs from their upcoming album, which at the time had the working title ''Wingsuit'' and would later be renamed ''Fuego''.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Coulehan |first1=Erin |title=Phish Working on New Album, Trey Anastasio Says |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/trey-anastasio-phish-working-on-new-album-92802/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=31 July 2020 |date=4 June 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Doyle |first1=Patrick |title=Trey Anastasio Celebrates 30 Years of Phish, Reveals Album Details |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/q-a-trey-anastasio-celebrates-30-years-of-phish-reveals-album-details-20130722 |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=31 July 2020 |date=22 July 2013}}</ref> During the concert, the band was joined onstage by actor ], who is mentioned by name in the song "Wombat", dressed in a wombat costume.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Atkinson |first1=Katie |title=Watch Abe Vigoda Join Phish Onstage Dressed as a Wombat in 2013 |url=https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/abe-vigoda-phish-wombat-video-6858186/ |magazine=Billboard |access-date=17 October 2023 |date=26 January 2016}}</ref> | |||
Phish ended 2013 with a New Year's Eve concert at Madison Square Garden that also celebrated their 30th anniversary, as they had played their first concert in December 1983.<ref name="phishmas">{{cite web |last1=Melamed |first1=Dave |title=12 Days Of Phishmas: The Famed JEMP Truck Set Celebrating Phish's 30th |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/12-days-phishmas-famed-jemp-truck-set-celebrating-phishs-30th/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=31 July 2020 |date=18 December 2016}}</ref> The concert featured a nine-minute montage film celebrating the band's career, and the band performed an entire set in the middle of the arena from atop an equipment truck.<ref name="phishmas"/> | |||
Phish released '']'', their first studio album in five years, on June 24, 2014.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Katzif |first1=Mike |title=First Listen: Phish, 'Fuego' |url=https://www.npr.org/2014/06/15/320981203/first-listen-phish-fuego |newspaper=NPR |date=15 June 2014 |access-date=31 July 2020 }}</ref> The album peaked at number 7 on the ''Billboard 200'' album chart, and became their highest charting album since ''Billy Breathes'' reached the same position in 1996.<ref>{{cite web |first=Scott |last=Bernstein |title=Phish Fuego Earns Number Seven Slot On Billboard Charts |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-fuego-earns-number-seven-slot-on-billboard-charts |website=JamBase |access-date=13 March 2019 |date=2 July 2014}}</ref> During their Halloween 2014 concert at ], the band performed a set consisting of ten original songs inspired by the 1964 ] sound effects album ''].''<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Herbert |first1=Kiran |title=By the Numbers: Phish's 'Chilling, Thrilling' Halloween Show |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-live-reviews/phishs-chilling-thrilling-halloween-show-by-the-numbers-72544/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=31 July 2020 |date=1 November 2014}}</ref> | |||
] in ].]] | |||
In 2015, Phish performed both a summer tour and their tenth multi-day festival event, ], was held at the Watkins International Speedway in New York in August.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Jarnow |first1=Jesse |title=Jams Reign Supreme at Phish's Utopian Three-Day Magnaball |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-live-reviews/jams-reign-supreme-at-phishs-utopian-three-day-magnaball-fest-34488/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=26 May 2020 |date=24 August 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title = 2015 Summer Tour and Magnaball | date = 18 March 2015 | url = http://phish.com/news/2015-summer-magnaball-phishs-tenth-festival/ | access-date = 2016-04-05}}</ref> Phish's fourteenth studio album, '']'', was released on October 7, 2016.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Kinane |first1=Ruth |title=Phish Announce New Album 'Big Boat' |url=http://www.ew.com/article/2016/09/13/phish-big-boat-new-album |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |access-date=13 September 2016}}</ref> | |||
=== The Baker's Dozen and Kasvot Växt: 2017–2019 === | |||
Phish played a 13-night ] at New York City's Madison Square Garden from July 21 to August 6, 2017, dubbed "]".<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Jarnow |first1=Jesse |title=Phish's 'Baker's Dozen' Residency: Breaking Down All 13 Blissful Nights |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/live-reviews/phishs-bakers-dozen-residency-our-recap-w496328 |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=31 July 2020 |date=7 August 2017 |archive-date=8 August 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170808170305/http://www.rollingstone.com/music/live-reviews/phishs-bakers-dozen-residency-our-recap-w496328 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Each concert featured a loose theme with performances of unique cover songs and a special ] served each night to the audience by Federal Donuts of ].<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Jarnow |first1=Jesse |title=Phish's 'Baker's Dozen' Residency: Breaking Down All 13 Blissful Nights |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-live-reviews/phishs-bakers-dozen-residency-breaking-down-all-13-blissful-nights-197436/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=1 October 2018 |date=7 August 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Phish To Play Baker's Dozen At Madison Square Garden In New York City This Summer |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-play-bakers-dozen-madison-square-garden-new-york-city-summer |website=JamBase |access-date=31 July 2020 |date=16 February 2017}}</ref> No songs were repeated during the Baker's Dozen run, with a total of 237 individual songs performed across the 13 concerts.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Jarnow |first1=Jesse |title=13 Shows. No Repeats. Trey Anastasio on How Phish Pulled Off the 'Baker's Dozen.' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/arts/music/phish-trey-anastasio-bakers-dozen-interview.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=31 July 2020 |date=8 August 2017}}</ref> The complete Baker's Dozen residency was released as a ] in November 2018.<ref name="bakercd">{{cite magazine |last1=Reed |first1=Ryan |title=Phish Prep Expansive 'Complete Baker's Dozen' Live Box Set |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/phish-prep-expansive-complete-bakers-dozen-live-box-set-629468/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=31 July 2020 |date=6 June 2018}}</ref> A scaled-down triple CD set featuring 13 song performances, titled '']'', was issued simultaneously with the box set.<ref name="bakercd"/> | |||
Phish planned to hold an eleventh summer festival, Curveball, in ] in 2018, but the festival was canceled by New York Department of Health officials, one day before it was scheduled to begin, due to water quality issues from flooding in the area.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Cleveland |first1=Will |last2=Campbell |first2=Jon |title=Phish festival Curveball at Watkins Glen canceled over health concerns |url=https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2018/08/16/phish-festival-curveball-watkins-glen-canceled-over-health-concerns/1013358002/ |website=Rochester Democrat and Chronicle |access-date=31 July 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Orr |first1=Steve |title=Watkins Glen official: 'This whole valley kind of cleaned itself and went into Seneca Lake' |url=https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2018/08/17/phish-curveball-festival-watkins-glen-canceled-water-advisory/1018849002/ |website=Rochester Democrat and Chronicle |access-date=31 July 2020}}</ref> At their Halloween concert that October at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, the band performed a set of all-new original material that they promoted as a "cover" of ''í rokk'' by Kasvot Växt, a fictional 1980s Scandinavian progressive rock band they had created.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Sodomsky |first1=Sam |title=Phish Invent Fake Scandinavian Prog Band, "Cover" Their Album Live |url=https://pitchfork.com/news/phish-invent-fake-scandinavian-prog-band-cover-their-album-live/ |website=Pitchfork |date=November 2018 |access-date=31 July 2020 }}</ref> The Kasvot Växt set was released as a ] on Spotify on November 10, 2018.<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish Offer Full Kasvot Växt Halloween Set on Spotify - Relix Media |url=https://relix.com/news/detail/phish-offer-full-kasvot-vaxt-halloween-set-on-spotify/ |website=Relix |access-date=10 November 2018 |date=10 November 2018}}</ref> All four concerts in the 2018 Halloween run were livestreamed in ], which marked the first time that a major musical act had ever offered a 4K livestreaming option.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Schumacher-Rasmussen |first1=Eric |title=Phish: 4 Nights in 4K |url=https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Phish-4-Nights-in-4K-130732.aspx |website=Streaming Media Magazine |access-date=31 July 2020 |date=22 March 2019}}</ref> | |||
] | |||
''Between Me and My Mind'', a documentary film directed by ] about Anastasio's life, his ] side-project and Phish's 2017 New Year's Eve concert, was screened at the ] in April 2019.<ref>{{cite web |title=A New Trey Anastasio Documentary, 'Between Me and My Mind,' Will Debut at the Tribeca Film Festival |url=https://relix.com/news/detail/a-new-trey-anastasio-documentary-between-me-and-my-mind-will-debut-at-the-tribeca-film-festival/ |website=Relix |access-date=31 March 2019 |date=14 March 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Doyle |first1=Patrick |title=Trey Anastasio Opens Up About His New Mystery Band, Ghosts of the Forest |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/trey-anastasio-interview-ghosts-of-the-forest-phish-tour-816211 |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=2 April 2019 |date=2 April 2019}}</ref> In June 2019, ] launched Phish Radio, a satellite radio station dedicated to the band's music.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Doyle |first1=Patrick |title=Phish Launching Their Own SiriusXM Channel |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/phish-launching-their-own-siriusxm-channel-847998/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=26 June 2019 |date=13 June 2019}}</ref> | |||
===''Sigma Oasis'' and ''Evolve'': 2020–present=== | |||
Due to the ], Phish postponed their 2020 summer tour until 2021.<ref>{{cite web |title=Summer Tour Rescheduled For 2021 |url=https://phish.com/news/summer-tour-rescheduled-for-2021 |website=Phish |date=May 2020 |access-date=1 May 2020}}</ref> Before 2020, Phish had embarked on a summer tour every year since their 2009 reunion.<ref>{{cite web |last1=O'Brien |first1=Andrew |title=Looking Back At Every Phish Summer Tour Opener In The 3.0 Era |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/looking-back-phish-summer-tour-opener/ |website=L4LM |access-date=26 May 2020 |date=11 June 2019}}</ref> During the COVID-19 pandemic, Phish hosted free weekly "Dinner and a Movie" webcasts of archival performances on Tuesday evenings until Labor Day weekend, after which they were hosted monthly.<ref>{{cite web |title=Announcing Dinner And A Movie Tuesday Evenings |url=https://phish.com/news/announcing-dinner-and-a-movie-tuesday-evenings |website=Phish.com |date=23 March 2020 |access-date=2 August 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=O'Brien |first1=Andrew |title=Phish Moves Next 'Dinner And A Movie' Back A Day For Presidential Debate |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/phish-moves-dinner-movie-presidential-debate/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=29 September 2020 |date=9 September 2020}}</ref> | |||
Phish released their fifteenth studio album '']'' on April 2, 2020.<ref>{{cite web |last1=DeVille |first1=Chris |title=Phish Are Debuting Their New Album 'Sigma Oasis' Via Livestream Tonight |url=https://www.stereogum.com/2078838/phish-sigma-oasis-listening-party/music/album-stream/ |website=Stereogum |access-date=2 April 2020 |date=1 April 2020}}</ref> The album was premiered through a listening party on their LivePhish app, SiriusXM radio station and Facebook page.<ref name="sigma1">{{cite news |last1=Ward |first1=Justin |title=Phish Announces New Album 'Sigma Oasis' on Dinner And A Movie Livestream Setbreak |url=https://livemusicblog.com/news/phish-announces-new-album-sigma-oasis/ |website=LIVE music blog |access-date=1 April 2020 |date=1 April 2020}}</ref> The album consists entirely of material the band had been performing in concert over the course of the previous decade, but had yet to appear on a studio release.<ref name="jbsig">{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title= Phish Releases 'Sigma Oasis' Album |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-sigma-oasis-album |website=JamBase |access-date=2 April 2020 |date=2 April 2020}}</ref> | |||
In January 2021, Anastasio told '']'' that the band was unable to perform or rehearse together due to COVID-19 restrictions and quarantine rules currently in place in the ] states, but said "As soon as it's feasible, we'll be back."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Renner Brown |first1=Eric |title=Trey Anastasio Talks Beacon Jams, Music History, Phish's Future |url=https://www.pollstar.com/article/trey-anastasio-talks-beacon-jams-music-history-phishs-future-147111 |website=Pollstar.com |date=11 January 2021 |access-date=25 January 2021}}</ref> | |||
Phish performed their first concert since the start of the pandemic on July 28, 2021, at the ] in ], having not performed since February 23, 2020.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Beal |first1=Wesley |title=Heat and pandemic be damned, Phish offered a 'temporary reprieve from gravity' at the Walmart AMP last night |url=https://arktimes.com/entertainment/2021/07/29/heat-and-pandemic-be-damned-phish-offered-a-brief-reprieve-at-the-walmart-amp-last-night |website=Arkansas Times |access-date=2 August 2021 |date=29 July 2021}}</ref> Beginning with their concerts at ] in late August, the band began requiring attendees to show proof of vaccination or a negative test for COVID-19.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Sgueglia |first1=Kristina |title=Phish and Dead & Company will require proof of vaccination or negative Covid tests for upcoming shows |url=https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/12/entertainment/phish-concerts/index.html |website=CNN |date=12 August 2021 |access-date=12 August 2021}}</ref> During their 2021 Halloween concert, Phish debuted a set of new original ]-themed material under the guise of the fictional band Sci-Fi Soldier.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Phish Performs Sci-Fi Soldier Halloween Concert In Las Vegas: Setlist, Recap & The Skinny |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-tour-setlist-halloween-las-vegas-sci-fi-soldier |website=JamBase |access-date=1 November 2021}}</ref> According to ''Pollstar'', Phish were the ninth highest grossing concert act in the world in 2021, with a $44.4 million gross from 35 concerts.<ref>{{cite web |title=Pollstar 2021 Year End Special Issue: The Great Return |url=https://www.pollstar.com/article/pollstar-2021-year-end-special-issue-the-great-return-149349 |website=Pollstar |access-date=15 December 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Year-End Pollstar Top 100: Worldwide Tours |url=https://www.pollstar.com/Chart/2021/12/Top100WorldwideTours_983.pdf |website=Pollstar |access-date=15 December 2021}}</ref> Phish also had the fifth highest concert ticket sales in the world in 2021, with 572,626 tickets sold.<ref>{{cite web |title=Year-End worldwide ticket sales: Top 100 tours |url=https://www.pollstar.com/Chart/2021/12/WorldwideTicketSalesTop100Tours_986.pdf |website=Pollstar |access-date=15 December 2021}}</ref> | |||
Due to an increase of cases of the ] of COVID-19 in New York City, Phish postponed their 2021 New Year's Eve concerts at Madison Square Garden from December 2021 to April 2022.<ref>{{cite web |title=2021-2022 New Year's Run Update |url=https://phish.com/news/2021-2022-new-years-run-update/ |website=Phish |date=23 December 2021 |access-date=23 December 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Stein |first1=Aaron |title=Phish Concludes April 2022 Run At Madison Square Garden: Setlist, Recap & The Skinny |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-tour-setlist-skinny-madison-square-garden-april-23 |website=JamBase |access-date=8 February 2023}}</ref> In lieu of the traditional New Year's Eve concert, Phish instead performed a three set New Year's Eve concert on December 31, 2021 from a soundstage they dubbed "The Ninth Cube".<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish Announce New Year's 'Dinner And A Movie' Livestream |url=https://relix.com/news/detail/phish-announce-new-years-dinner-and-a-movie-livestream/ |website=Relix Media |access-date=28 December 2021 |date=28 December 2021}}</ref> | |||
Phish released '']'', a studio version of their Sci-Fi Soldier material, on October 31, 2022.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Phish 'Get More Down': It Appears A Sci-Fi Soldier Studio Album Has Arrived |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-sci-fi-soldier-get-more-down-studio-album |website=JamBase |access-date=31 October 2022}}</ref> In August 2023, Phish performed two benefit concerts at the ] in ] for recovery efforts following a ] in Vermont and upstate New York earlier that summer.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Dager |first1=Ashley |title=Phish concert aims to raise $3 million for flood victims in Vermont and upstate New York |url=https://cbs6albany.com/news/local/phish-concert-aims-to-raise-3-million-for-flood-victims-in-vermont-and-upstate-new-york |website=WRGB |access-date=26 August 2023 |language=en |date=26 August 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Phish Announce Shows For Flood Recovery |url=https://phish.com/news/phish-announce-shows-for-flood-recovery/ |website=Phish |access-date=26 August 2023 |date=25 July 2023}}</ref> The band raised $3.5 million for the relief efforts through their two concerts and merchandise sales.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Herbert |first1=Geoff |title=Phish raises $3.5M for flood recovery efforts in Upstate NY and Vermont |url=https://www.syracuse.com/entertainment/2023/08/phish-raises-35m-for-flood-recovery-efforts-in-upstate-ny-and-vermont.html |website=] |access-date=28 August 2023 |language=en |date=28 August 2023}}</ref> The band performed a version of their ] song cycle at their 2023 New Year's Eve concert at Madison Square Garden, which featured actors portraying the story's characters, and an appearance by actress and musician ] during the song "]".<ref name="jbhendge">{{cite web |title=Phish Perform "Gamehendge" for the First Time Since 1994 at MSG |url=https://jambands.com/news/2024/01/01/phish-perform-gamehendge-for-the-first-time-since-1994-at-msg/ |website=Jambands |access-date=1 January 2024 |date=1 January 2024}}</ref> | |||
] during the band's four-date concert series at the venue in 2024]] | |||
Phish performed four concerts at ] in Paradise, Nevada in April 2024, and were the second music act, after ], to perform at the venue.<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish to headline limited engagement at Sphere in Las Vegas |url=https://news3lv.com/news/local/phish-to-headline-limited-engagement-at-sphere-in-las-vegas-rock-music-april-2024-trey-anastasio-jon-fishman-mike-gordon |website=KSNV |access-date=1 December 2023 |language=en |date=30 November 2023}}</ref> The concerts featured visual effects created by the Montreal studio Moment Factory.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Cornfield |first1=Josh |title=Here's how Phish is using the Sphere's technology to give fans something completely different |url=https://apnews.com/article/phish-sphere-technology-behind-scenes-11f85d75b0c34ae89f25b10941df54eb |website=AP News |access-date=20 April 2024 |language=en |date=19 April 2024}}</ref> The four shows grossed $13.4 million from 65,665 tickets sold.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://news.pollstar.com/2024/08/08/boxoffice-insider-ticket-sales-at-las-vegas-residencies-top-235m-so-far-in-2024/|title=Boxoffice Insider: Ticket Sales At Las Vegas Residencies Top $235M So Far In 2024|website=]|first=Bob|last=Allen|date=August 8, 2024|access-date=August 8, 2024}}</ref> | |||
'']'', Phish's sixteenth studio album, was released on July 12, 2024.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Martoccio |first1=Angie |title=Phish Announce First New Album in Over Four Years |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/phish-new-album-evolve-las-vegas-sphere-1235002578/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=11 April 2024 |date=11 April 2024}}</ref> Mondegreen, a four day Phish festival at the Woodlands of ] in ], was held in August 2024.<ref>{{cite web |title=Announcing Mondegreen: A 4-Day Phish Festival |url=https://phish.com/news/announcing-mondegreen-a-4-day-phish-festival/ |website=Phish |access-date=16 January 2024 |date=16 January 2024}}</ref><ref name="edgers">{{cite news |last1=Edgers |first1=Geoff |title=Phish is a jam band run by a control freak. That's perfect for the Sphere. |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2024/04/11/phish-sphere-las-vegas-trey-anastasio/ |newspaper=Washington Post |access-date=11 April 2024 |url-access=subscription |language=en |date=11 April 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=McNaught |first1=Shannon Marvel |title=Major traffic expected in Dover area as Phish festival attendees leave late this afternoon |url=https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/traffic/2024/08/18/major-traffic-expected-in-dover-as-mondegreen-festival-ends/74851105007/ |website=The News Journal |access-date=18 August 2024}}</ref> 45,000 people attended the four-day Mondegreen festival.<ref>{{cite web |last1=McNaught |first1=Shannon Marvel |title=Mondegreen: What went right, what went wrong at Phish's Dover festival |url=https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2024/08/20/what-phish-mondegreen-festival-in-dover-was-like-for-attendees/74858372007/ |website=The News Journal |access-date=26 August 2024}}</ref> | |||
==Reception and legacy== | |||
Phish were part of the ] scene that gained prominence in the mid 1990s. Following the death of ] in 1995, the ''Los Angeles Times'' named Phish as among the scene's most prominent bands, alongside ], the ], ], and ].<ref name="crisa1">{{cite web |last1=Crisafulli |first1=Chuck |title=POP MUSIC : Who'll Wear the Mantle of the Dead? : The scene looks familiar, but those aren't Deadheads--they're Phish Heads and fans of other jam-happy bands proudly embracing the Dead's legacy of musical improvisation and free-spirited community. |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-10-29-ca-62451-story.html |website=Los Angeles Times |access-date=24 May 2024 |date=29 October 1995}}</ref> Phish's popularity grew in the 1990s due to fans sharing concert recordings that had been taped by audience members and distributed online for free.<ref name="shreds">{{cite web |last1=Jarnow |first1=Jesse |title=Phish Shreds America: How the Jam Band Anticipated Modern Festival Culture |url=https://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/9929-phish-shreds-america-how-the-jam-band-anticipated-modern-festival-culture/ |website=Pitchfork |date=15 August 2016 |access-date=12 June 2020 }}</ref> Phish were among the first musical acts to utilize the internet to grow their fanbase, with fans using file-sharing websites such as ] and ] to share concerts.<ref name="mash">{{cite web |last1=Gilmer |first1=Marcus |title=How Phish became the unlikely heroes of digital music streaming |url=https://mashable.com/article/phish-streaming-pioneers-band/ |website=Mashable |date=19 July 2018 |access-date=20 June 2020 }}</ref> | |||
In 1998, '']'' described Phish as "the most important band of the '90s".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Perella |first1=Dominic |title=Anastasio puts Phish behind him with strong solo effort |url=https://azdailysun.com/anastasio-puts-phish-behind-him-with-strong-solo-effort/article_2ef6ced0-1eb1-500c-85c4-35c5433b3c6e.html |website=Arizona Daily Sun |date=22 May 2002 |access-date=25 September 2018 }}</ref> Phish have been named as an influence by other acts in the jam band scene, including ] and the ]<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hutchinson |first1=Nick |title=Umphrey's McGee Doesn't Want to Be Limited by the Jam-Band Label |url=https://www.westword.com/music/umphreys-mcgee-doesnt-want-to-be-limited-by-the-jam-band-label-10458974 |website=Westword |access-date=29 July 2020 |date=4 July 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Marc Brownstein On How He's Been Inspired By Phish |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/marc-brownstein-hes-inspired-phish |website=JamBase |access-date=29 July 2020 |date=7 September 2016}}</ref> Other musicians have also counted Phish as an influence, including ] and ] of ], ] of ], ] of ], and reggae musician ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Greenhaus |first1=Mike |title=TBT: Maroon 5's Thoughts On Phish |url=https://relix.com/blogs/detail/tbt-what-is-the-theme-of-this-everlasting-spoof-thoughts-on-phish/ |website=Relix |access-date=29 July 2020 |date=23 April 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Deflin |first1=Kendall |title=Phishin' With Matisyahu: How LSD "Turned My Entire World Inside Out" |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/phish-matisyahu-nyc/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=29 July 2020 |date=22 June 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Applefeld Olsen |first1=Cathy |title=Radiohead's Ed O'Brien on His Brazil-Inspired Solo Debut 'Earth' |url=https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/9360518/radiohead-ed-obrien-earth |magazine=Billboard |access-date=29 July 2020 |date=17 April 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Bernstein |first1=Scott |title=Incubus' Brandon Boyd To Talk Phish Fandom On SiriusXM's Phish Radio |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/incubus-brandon-boyd-phish-radio-siriusxm |website=JamBase |access-date=8 January 2022}}</ref> | |||
Phish's festival events in the 1990s inspired the foundation of the ] in Tennessee, which was first held in 2002.<ref name="phibon">{{cite web |last1=Paulson |first1=Dave |title=Without Phish, Bonnaroo might not exist: How the jam band created a blueprint for the festival |url=https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/bonnaroo/2019/06/11/bonnaroo-2019-how-phish-paved-way-for-festival/1304196001/ |website=The Tennessean |access-date=26 May 2020 }}</ref> Co-founder Rick Farman, a Phish fan, consulted Phish managers Richard Glasgow and John Paluska about festival infrastructure during the early stages of planning.<ref name="phibon"/> The festivals also inspired other jam band-oriented concert events, such as the Disco Biscuits' Camp Bisco, ], and the ].<ref name="shreds"/> | |||
Phish are well known to their loyal fans, called Phishheads, but the group's music and fan culture are otherwise polarizing to general audiences.<ref name="shreds"/> The ] nature of Phish supporters has encouraged comparisons of Phishheads to the ]s, followers of the hip-hop duo ].<ref name="kirkus1">{{Cite web|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/nathan-rabin/you-dont-know-me-but-you-dont-like-me/|title=YOU DON'T KNOW ME BUT YOU DON'T LIKE ME|access-date=29 July 2023|website=Kirkusreviews.com}}</ref> Phish heavily contributes to music-based ] with their "traveling communities" of fans, and they have been simultaneously hailed and criticized for their ], which bring with them the capital value of tourism and necessitates the increased security and community planning that come with any ].<ref>{{Cite thesis|last=Campbell|first=Richard Bret|title=A Sense of place: Examining music-based tourism and its implications in destination venue placement|type=Professional paper |publisher=University of Nevada, Las Vegas|year=2011|url=https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations/1142/ |doi=10.34917/2523201}}</ref> Jordan Hoffman of ] explains "the solace many find in attending religious services is somewhat mirrored for me in seeing Phish,"<ref>{{Cite web|last=Hoffman|first=Jordan|title=Your Friend's Phish Obsession, Explained|url=https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/phish-tour-popularity-fan-explainer|access-date=2020-06-15|website=Thrillist|date=6 July 2016 }}</ref> and even though Phish fans are generally considered welcoming and friendly, the reception of the group from the outside is often one of unease and confusion.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Iosebashvili|first=Ira|date=2018-08-20|title=Phish Fans Are Friendly—Until the Tarps Come Out to Save Seats |work=]|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/phish-fans-are-friendlyuntil-the-tarps-come-out-to-save-seats-1534777773|access-date=2020-06-15|issn=0099-9660}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite thesis|last=Yeager|first=Elizabeth|title=Understanding 'It': Affective Authenticity, Space, and the Phish Scene|url=https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/7842/Yeager_ku_0099D_11492_DATA_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y|type=PhD dissertation |publisher=University of Kansas |hdl=1808/7842}}</ref> The ] listed Phish as one of "Eight smash US acts that Britain never understood" along with fellow jam bands ] and ].<ref name="Dowling">{{cite web |last1=Dowling |first1=Stephen |title=Eight smash US acts that Britain never understood |url=https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190402-eight-smash-us-acts-that-britain-never-understood |website=Bbc.com |access-date=19 September 2021 |language=en}}</ref> In describing the band to a British audience, BBC journalist Stephen Dowling wrote "Attending a Phish gig has become a rite of summer passage for American teens in the same way that attending ] has for British teenagers."<ref name="Dowling"/> | |||
The band has a number of celebrity fans, including: ],<ref>{{Cite web |title=Ex-NHLer Sean Avery Talks Phish Fandom In New Book |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/ex-nhler-sean-avery-talks-phish-fandom-new-book |access-date=2023-07-09 |website=JamBase |language=en-US}}</ref> ],<ref>{{cite web |last1=Boller |first1=Jay |title=Apparently new Minnesota Twins manager Rocco Baldelli is SUPER into Phish {{!}} City Pages |url=http://www.citypages.com/music/apparently-new-twins-manager-rocco-baldelli-is-super-into-phish/498530522 |website=City Pages |access-date=25 October 2018}}</ref> ],<ref>{{Cite web |last=Breihan |first=Tom |date=April 23, 2024 |title=Drew Carey Reviews Phish At The Sphere, Says He Would Stick His Dick In A Blender To Go Again |url=https://www.stereogum.com/2260593/drew-carey-reviews-phish-at-the-sphere-says-he-would-stick-his-dick-in-a-blender-to-go-again/news/ |access-date=April 24, 2024 |website=Stereogum |language=en}}</ref> ],<ref>{{Cite web |title=Interview with Tucker Carlson |url=https://www.maxraskin.com/interviews/interview-with-tucker-carlson |access-date=2023-07-09 |website=Interviews with Max Raskin |language=en-US}}</ref> ],<ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-08-14 |title=Listen: Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt Chokes Up Describing His Love for Phish on SiriusXM |url=https://relix.com/news/detail/listen-actor-joseph-gordon-levitt-chokes-up-describing-his-love-for-phish-on-siriusxm/ |access-date=2023-07-09 |website=Relix Media |language=en-US}}</ref> ],<ref>{{cite web |last1=Greenhaus |first1=Mike |title=Interview: Abbi Jacobson on Phish, Improv and the Rock-and-Roll Ethos of 'Broad City' |url=https://relix.com/articles/detail/parting_shots_abbi_jacobson/ |website=Relix |access-date=3 December 2024 |date=17 February 2016}}</ref> ],<ref>{{cite web |title=EXCLUSIVE: MSNBC's Katy Tur Talks Her Love Of Phish & Sneaking Lyrics Into The News |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/exclusive-katy-tur-interview/ |website=L4LM |access-date=25 October 2018 |date=23 October 2017}}</ref> ],<ref>{{cite web |title=Interview: Aron Ralston - The Listener |url=https://www.noted.co.nz/archive/listener-nz-2011/interview-aron-ralston/ |website=Noted.co.nz |access-date=25 October 2018 |language=en}}</ref> and ].<ref>{{Cite web |last=admin |date=2015-07-14 |title=Deadhead Bill Walton Is Officially A Phish Phan |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/deadhead-bill-walton-is-now-a-phish-phan/ |access-date=2023-07-09 |website=L4LM |language=en-US}}</ref> ], who was the mayor of Burlington when Phish formed, described them as "One of the great bands in this country" in 2016.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Kreps |first1=Daniel |title=Bernie Sanders on Phish: 'One of the Great Bands' in America |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bernie-sanders-on-phish-one-of-the-great-bands-in-this-country-231597/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |access-date=2 December 2023 |date=2 March 2016}}</ref> | |||
Phish has performed 83 concerts at Madison Square Garden since their debut performance there in 1994.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hart |first1=Ron |title=Phish Wrap Up Epic New Year's Eve Stand at Madison Square Garden |url=https://rockandrollglobe.com/rock/phish-wrap-up-epic-new-years-eve-stand-at-madison-square-garden/ |website=Rock and Roll Globe |access-date=2 January 2024 |date=1 January 2024}}</ref><ref name="nye2022">{{cite web |last1=Stein |first1=Aaron |title=Phish Revisits Past New Year's Eve Gags At Madison Square Garden: Recap, Setlist & The Skinny |url=https://www.jambase.com/article/phish-madison-square-garden-new-years-eve-2022-setlist-skinny |website=JamBase |access-date=3 January 2023}}</ref> In August 2023, Phish surpassed ] as the musical act with the second most concerts performed at Madison Square Garden, behind only record-holder ].<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish Perform Longest "Mike's Song" Equipped with Second Jam for Penultimate Show of MSG Summer Run |url=https://jambands.com/news/2023/08/05/phish-perform-longest-mike-song-equipped-with-second-jam-for-penultimate-show-of-msg-summer-run/ |website=Jambands |access-date=18 August 2023 |date=5 August 2023}}</ref> | |||
In 2019, ''Billboard'' ranked Phish as the 33rd highest-grossing concert touring act of the 2010s.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Top Touring Artists - Decade-End |url=https://www.billboard.com/charts/decade-end/top-touring-artists |magazine=Billboard |date=31 October 2019 |access-date=29 July 2020}}</ref> In 2022, ''Pollstar'' listed Phish as the 33rd highest grossing touring act from 1980 to 2022, with a cumulative gross of $595.8 million.<ref name="pollgross">{{cite web |title=Top Grossing Artists of the Pollstar Era |url=https://data.pollstar.com/Chart/2022/07/072522_top.touring.artists_1020.pdf |website=Pollstar |access-date=28 August 2023}}</ref> ''Pollstar'' also listed Phish as the act with the ninth most tickets sold in that same time frame, with 13.3 million tickets sold.<ref name="pollgross"/><ref>{{cite web |last1=Allen |first1=Bob |title=Four Decades Of Live: Charting The Industry's Rich History - Pollstar News |url=https://news.pollstar.com/2022/07/28/four-decades-of-live-charting-the-industrys-rich-history/ |website=Pollstar |access-date=28 August 2023 |date=28 July 2022}}</ref> | |||
==Musical style and influences== | |||
According to ''The New Rolling Stone Album Guide'', the music of Phish is "oriented around group improvisation and super-extended ]s".<ref name="nrsag1">{{cite web|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/artists/phish/biography|title=Phish|access-date=2008-05-11|work=The New Rolling Stone Album Guide|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090414030730/http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/phish/biography|archive-date=2009-04-14|url-status=dead}}</ref> Their songs draw on a range of rock-oriented influences, including ], ], ], ], and ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Adams |first1=Sean |title=Jam band Phish to perform two shows at Hershey's Giant Center |url=https://www.pennlive.com/entertainment/2020/01/jam-band-phish-to-perform-two-shows-at-hersheys-giant-center.html |website=The Patriot-News |access-date=3 August 2020 |date=23 January 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Plotnicki |first1=Gideon |title=Tracing The Evolution Of Jam: From Grateful Dead, To Phish, To The Disco Biscuits |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/tracing-evolution-jam-grateful-dead-phish-disco-biscuits |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=3 August 2020 |date=4 October 2016}}</ref> Some Phish songs use different vocal approaches, such as ] (unaccompanied) sections of ]-style vocal harmonies.<ref name="csmphish">{{cite web |last1=Knickerbocker |first1=Brad |title=Phish: a Rock Quartet That Dabbles in Barbershop |url=https://www.csmonitor.com/1993/0423/23142.html |website=Christian Science Monitor |access-date=29 April 2020 |date=23 April 1993}}</ref> The band began to include barbershop segments in their concerts in 1993, when the four members began taking lessons from McConnell's landlord, who was a judge at barbershop competitions.<ref name="csmphish"/> In the 1997 official biography, ''The Phish Book'', Anastasio coined the term "cow-funk" to describe the band's late 1990s ] and ]-influenced playing style, observing that "What we're doing now is really more about groove than funk. Good funk, real funk, is not played by four white guys from Vermont."<ref>{{cite web |last1=O'Brien |first1=Andrew |title=Phish Displayed Their "Cow Funk" Mastery In Philadelphia, On This Day In 1997 |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/phish-philadelphia-spectrum-1997/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=8 October 2018 |date=3 December 2017}}</ref> | |||
Phish were often compared to the ] during the 1990s, a comparison that the band members often resisted or distanced themselves from.<ref name="rabin1">{{cite magazine |last1=Rabin |first1=Nathan |title=Phish Has Come To Terms With Its Life After the Dead |url=https://time.com/3857031/grateful-dead-phish-legacy/ |magazine=Time |access-date=26 May 2020 }}</ref><ref name="bsun1"/> The two bands were compared due to their emphasis on live performances, improvisational jamming style, musical similarities, and traveling fanbase.<ref name="rabin1"/><ref>{{cite web |last1=Melamed |first1=Dave |title=Phish, The Grateful Dead, & The Joy Of Being In On The "Joke" |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/features/phish-grateful-dead-insider/ |website=Live for Live Music |access-date=26 May 2020 |date=22 February 2018}}</ref> In November 1995, Anastasio told '']'', "When we first came into the awareness of the media, it would always be the Dead or Zappa they'd compare us to. All of these bands I love, you know? But I got very sensitive about it."<ref name="bsun1">{{cite web |last1=Considine |first1=J. D. |title=Phish likes to be live, not Dead Similarities: The band has loyal followers and likes to improvise on stage, but it is not the next Grateful Dead. |url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1995-11-22-1995326037-story.html |website=baltimoresun.com |date=22 November 1995 |access-date=1 April 2019}}</ref> Early in their career, Phish would occasionally cover Grateful Dead songs in concert, but the band stopped doing so by the late 1980s.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Simon |first1=Leslie |title=Phish's twenty most interesting covers |url=https://www.westword.com/music/phishs-twenty-most-interesting-covers-5690377 |website=Westword |access-date=22 October 2019 |date=26 September 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Russell |first1=Diane |title=Phish Tales: A Rock Legend on the Importance of Being Kind |url=https://www.mainecannabischronicle.com/arts-and-culture/2019/09/01/phish-tales-a-rock-legend-on-the-importance-of-being-kind/ |website=Maine Cannabis Chronicle |access-date=22 October 2019 }}</ref> In ''Phish: The Biography'', Parke Puterbaugh observed "The bottom line is while it's impossible to imagine Phish without the Grateful Dead as forebears, many other musicians figured as influences upon them. Some of them - such as ] and ] - were arguably at least as significant as the Grateful Dead. In reality, the media certainly overplayed the Grateful Dead connection and Phish probably underplayed it, at least in their first decade."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puterbaugh |first1=Parke |title=Phish: The Biography |date=2010 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=9780306819209 |pages=136 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eXD8AgAAQBAJ&q=dead+underplayed&pg=PA136 }}</ref> Anastasio has also cited ] artists such as ] and ] as significant influences on Phish's early material. In a 2019 ''New York Times'' interview, he observed, "If you listen to the first couple of Phish albums, they don't sound anything like the Grateful Dead. I was more interested in ]."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Marchese |first1=David |title=Trey Anastasio on Phish, Jam Bands and Staying Together Forever |url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/24/magazine/trey-anastasio-phish.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=30 June 2019 |date=24 June 2019}}</ref> | |||
In his 2018 book ''Twilight of the Gods'', music critic Steven Hyden wrote that he found the Grateful Dead and Phish to have "significantly different reference points" in terms of influence and style.<ref name="hyden242">{{cite book |last1=Hyden |first1=Steven |title=Twilight of the gods : a journey to the end of classic rock |date=2018 |publisher=HarperCollins |location=New York |isbn=978-0-06-265712-1 |page=242 |edition=First}}</ref> The Grateful Dead, Hyden explained, were "informed by the totality of American music from the first sixty years of the twentieth century: Blues, country, folk, jazz, and early rock 'n' roll," while Phish's music contains elements of "hopped-up bluegrass, jazzy disco, porno-movie funk, Broadway theatricality, and shockingly sincere barbershop harmonies. But it all stems from ]."<ref name="hyden242"/> Hyden observed that "If the Dead encompasses American music from roughly 1900 to 1967, Phish picks up the story right through the ] era, from '68 to around the time '']'' debuted in theaters in the mid-eighties."<ref name="hyden242"/> | |||
==Live performances== | |||
{{main|Phish concert tours and festivals}} | |||
The driving force behind Phish is the popularity of their concerts and the fan culture surrounding the event. Each a production unto itself, the band is known to consistently change set lists and details, as well as the addition of their own antics to ensure that no two shows are ever the same.<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish heads descend on Virginia |url=https://www.telegram.com/article/20090306/NEWS/903060293 |website=Worcester Telegram |access-date=26 May 2020 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Ferguson |first1=Kirsten |title=Phish plays some surprises along with the expected {{!}} The Daily Gazette |url=https://dailygazette.com/article/2019/07/03/phish-plays-some-surprises-along-with-the-expected |website=dailygazette.com |date=3 July 2019 |access-date=26 May 2020}}</ref> With fans flocking to venues hours before they open, the concert is the centerpiece of an event that includes a temporary community in the parking lot similar to the ] bazaar held outside Grateful Dead concerts.<ref>{{Cite book | author=Gibbon, Sean | title=Run Like an Antelope: On the Road with Phish | year=2001 | publisher=Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Griffin | location=New York | isbn=0-312-26330-9 | page= | url=https://archive.org/details/runlikeantelopeo0000gibb/page/95 }}</ref> | |||
Similar to the Grateful Dead, Phish concerts typically feature two sets, with an intermission in between.<ref name="wapogreen">{{cite news |last1=Greenberg |first1=Rudi |title=A jam-packed look at the similarities (and differences) between Dead & Company and Phish |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/2019/06/20/jam-packed-look-similarities-differences-between-dead-company-phish/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=17 March 2022}}</ref> During concerts, songs often ] into one another, or produce improvisational jams that can last 10 minutes or more depending on the song.<ref>{{cite web |title=Segues: FAQ - Phish.net |url=https://phish.net/faq/segues |website=phish.net |access-date=17 March 2022}}</ref> Several regularly performed songs in Phish's repertoire have never appeared on one of their studio albums; these include "Possum", "Mike's Song", "I Am Hydrogen", "Weekapaug Groove", "Harry Hood", "Runaway Jim", "Suzy Greenberg", "AC/DC Bag" and "The Lizards", all of which date to 1990 or earlier and have been played by Phish over 300 times in concert.<ref>{{cite web |title=Song Histories |url=http://phish.net/song |website=phish.net |access-date=11 April 2019}}</ref> | |||
Chris Kuroda, who has been Phish's lighting director since 1989, creates elaborate light displays during the band's concerts that are sometimes improvised in a similar fashion to their music.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Greenhaus |first1=Mike |title=Chris Kuroda: Visual Vocabularies |url=https://jambands.com/features/2016/07/25/chris-kuroda-visual-vocabularies/ |website=Jambands |access-date=10 September 2022 |date=25 July 2016}}</ref><ref name="baffler1">{{cite web |last1=Taylor |first1=Justin |title=Pieces of the Big Thing |url=https://thebaffler.com/latest/pieces-of-the-big-thing-taylor |website=The Baffler |access-date=10 September 2022 |date=5 September 2022}}</ref> Justin Taylor of '']'' wrote, "You could hate this music with every fiber of your being and still be ready to give Chris Kuroda a ] for what he achieves with his light rig."<ref name="baffler1"/> Kuroda is often referred to by fans as the unofficial fifth member of the band, and has been given the nickname "CK5".<ref>{{cite web |last1=O'Brien |first1=Andrew |title=Phish LD Chris Kuroda Explains The Unlikely Origins Of His Lighting Design Career |url=https://liveforlivemusic.com/media/video/phish-chris-kuroda-explains-makeitshine/ |website=L4LM |access-date=10 September 2022 |date=1 February 2018}}</ref> | |||
Since Phish fans began to discuss the band's live performances on the ] in the late 1990s, they have developed a widely used framework for analyzing the varied forms of ] that would regularly occur during a given show. A January 1997 post by Phish fan John Flynn on the rec.music.phish Usenet group first defined the two "types" of jamming that Phish performs in concert. Flynn wrote: "I think Phish jamming falls into two types of jamming: 1) Jamming that is based around a fixed chord progression 2) Jamming that improvises chord progressions, rhythms, and the whole structure of the music." Since then, Phish fans have used the terms "Type 1" and "Type 2" and Flynn's definitions to contextualize the structure of Phish's shows and songs.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Revisiting "Jamming Types" - Phish.net |url=https://phish.net/blog/1311714510/revisiting-jamming-types.html |access-date=2022-03-16 |website=phish.net}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=FAQ - Phish.net |url=https://phish.net/faq/jamming-types |access-date=2022-03-16 |website=phish.net}}</ref><ref name="wapogreen"/> | |||
Because Phish's reputation is so grounded in their live performances, concert recordings are commonly traded commodities. In December 2002, the band launched the LivePhish website, from which official ]s can be purchased.<ref>{{cite web |title=LivePhish Downloads Launches |url=https://phish.com/news/live-phish-downloads-launches/ |website=Phish.com |date=20 December 2002 |access-date=26 May 2020}}</ref> Legal ]s produced by ] with boom microphones from the audience in compliance with Phish's tape trading policy<ref name="taping">{{cite web | title = Frequently Asked Questions – What is the Phish and Band Member Taping Policy? | publisher = Phish.com | url = http://phish.com/faq/#taping-guidelines | access-date = 2018-10-03}}</ref> are frequently traded on any number of music message boards. Although technically not allowed, live videos of Phish shows are also traded by fans and are tolerated as long as they are for non-profit, personal use. Phish fans have been noted for their extensive collections of fan-taped concert recordings; owning recordings of entire tours and years is widespread.<ref name="mash"/> | |||
Fans' recordings are generally sourced from the officially designated tapers' section at each show, by fans with devoted sound recording rigs. Tickets for the tapers' section are acquired separately from regular audience tickets, and directly from the band's website, instead of the venue or a service like ]. However, tapers are also required to purchase a general admission ticket for concerts.<ref>{{cite web |title=Official Phish Tickets Website |url=http://tickets.phish.com/information/ |website=tickets.phish.com |access-date=24 October 2018 |archive-date=24 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181024152531/http://tickets.phish.com/information/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> Recordings patched from Paul Languedoc's soundboard were also made until 1994 and circulated among fans.<ref>{{cite web |title=FAQ: Recording Sources |url=https://phish.net/faq/recording-sources |website=phish.net |access-date=28 October 2023}}</ref> | |||
In 2014, the band launched their own on-demand streaming service, LivePhish+.<ref>{{cite web |last=Geslani |first=Michelle |title=Phish launch streaming subscription service LivePhish+ |url=https://consequence.net/2014/10/phish-launch-streaming-subscription-service-livephish/ |website=Consequence of Sound |access-date=16 September 2018 |date=30 October 2014}}</ref> The platform features hundreds of soundboard recordings of the band's concerts for streaming, including all of their shows from 2002 onwards, as well as all of their studio albums.<ref>{{cite web |last=Gilmer |first=Marcus |title=How Phish became the unlikely heroes of digital music streaming |url=https://mashable.com/article/phish-streaming-pioneers-band/#qPurm2UQ4PqL |website=Mashable |date=19 July 2018 |access-date=16 September 2018 }}</ref> Phish continues to allow fans to tape and distribute audience recordings of their concerts after the launch of the LivePhish storefront and streaming services.<ref name="mash"/> | |||
==Books and podcasts== | |||
Several books on Phish have been published, including two official publications: ''The Phish Book'', a 1998 ] credited to the band members and journalist Richard Gehr which focused on the band's activities during 1996 and 1997,<ref>{{cite web |last=Browne |first=David |title=The Phish Book |url=https://ew.com/article/1998/11/27/phish-book/ |website=EW.com |access-date=8 April 2019 }}</ref> and ''Phish: The Biography'', a semi-official biographical book written by music journalist and Phish fan Parke Puterbaugh, was published in 2009 and was based on interviews with the four band members, their friends and crew.<ref>{{cite web |last=Robbins |first=Brian |title=Phish: The Biography review |url=https://glidemagazine.com/14923/phish-the-biography/ |website=Glide Magazine |date=20 November 2009 |access-date=8 April 2019}}</ref> An installment of the ] book series on '']'', written by Walter Holland, was published in 2015.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/phishs-a-live-one-9781628929386/|title=Phish's A Live One|website=Bloomsbury Publishing}}</ref> The 2013 book ''You Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me: Phish, Insane Clown Posse, and My Misadventures with Two of Music's Most Maligned Tribes'', written by music critic ], compares and contrasts the fanbases of Phish and ].<ref name="kirkus1"/><ref>{{cite magazine |last=Greene |first=Andy |title=Juggalos and Phish Fans Explored in New Book |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/insane-clown-posses-juggalos-and-phish-fans-explored-in-new-book-105328/ |magazine=Rolling Stone |date=11 June 2013}}</ref> | |||
In addition to books, there have been multiple podcasts which have focused on Phish, its music and fanbase as their central topics of discussion. Among the first was ''Analyze Phish'', which was hosted by comedians ] and ] for the ] podcast network, and ran for ten episodes posted between 2011 and 2014.<ref>{{cite web |title=Phish 101, episode #1 of Analyze Phish on Earwolf |url=https://www.earwolf.com/episode/phish-101/ |website=Earwolf.com |access-date=5 January 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Fuego, episode #10 of Analyze Phish on Earwolf |url=https://www.earwolf.com/episode/fuego/ |website=Earwolf.com |access-date=5 January 2020}}</ref> The podcast followed Wittels, a devoted fan of the band, in his humorous attempts to get Aukerman to enjoy their music.<ref>{{cite web |last=Morchala |first=Chris |title=Harris Wittels: The Parks and Rec Writer Gets to "Analyze Phish" (Throwback) |url=https://relix.com/articles/detail/harris-wittels-the-parks-and-rec-writer-gets-to-analyze-phish/ |website=Relix |access-date=5 January 2020 |date=26 February 2015}}</ref> Despite its truncated run, ''Analyze Phish'' inspired Phish lyricist Tom Marshall to start his own Phish podcast, ''Under the Scales'', in 2016.<ref name="osiris">{{cite web |last=Greenhaus |first=Mike |title=Interview: Tom Marshall and RJ Bee on New Podcast Network Osiris |url=https://relix.com/articles/detail/interview_tom_marshall_and_rj_bee_on_new_podcast_network_osiris/ |website=Relix Media |access-date=5 January 2020 |date=22 February 2018}}</ref> In 2018, Marshall co-founded the Osiris Podcasting Network, which hosts ''Under the Scales'' and other music podcasts, many of which are devoted to Phish or other jam bands.<ref name="osiris"/> In September 2019, C13Originals debuted ''Long May They Run'', a music documentary podcast series; The first season, consisting of 10 episodes, focused on Phish's history and influence on the live music scene.<ref>{{cite web |title='Long May They Run' Podcast Explores Phish History for Debut Season (EXCLUSIVE) |url=https://variety.com/2019/music/news/long-may-they-run-podcast-phish-history-1203336394/ |website=Variety |date=16 September 2019}}</ref> In November 2019, the Osiris Podcasting Network premiered ''After Midnight,'' a five-episode documentary series exploring the creation, execution, and aftermath of Phish's 1999 Big Cypress festival.<ref>{{cite web |title=After Midnight: Phish's Big Cypress Festival |url=https://www.osirispod.com/podcasts/after-midnight-phishs-big-cypress-festival/ |website=Osirispod.com |access-date=17 September 2020}}</ref> | |||
==Other appearances== | |||
] fans began mimicking Phish's song "Wilson" by chanting the song's opening line when quarterback ] took the field during games. The new tradition started after Anastasio made the suggestion at shows in Seattle.<ref>{{cite web |last=Chase |first=Chris |title=Trey Anastasio explains how a Phish song became the rallying cry of Seahawks fans everywhere |url=http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/01/phish-russell-wilson-trey-anastasio |website=USA Today |access-date=3 August 2020 |date=31 January 2014}}</ref> The story behind the "Wilson" chant was featured in a 2014 documentary short by ].<ref>{{cite web |title=NFL Films segment on the Phish and Russell Wilson connection is great |url=https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/nfl-films-segment-phish-and-russell-wilson-connection-great-0 |website=NBC Sports Philadelphia |access-date=3 August 2020 |date=2 January 2014}}</ref> | |||
==Band members== | |||
{{col-begin}} | |||
{{col-2}} | |||
'''Current members''' | |||
* ] – guitar, lead vocals (1983–2004; 2008–present) | |||
* ] – drums, percussion, vocals, vacuum (1983–2004; 2008–present) | |||
* ] – bass, vocals (1983–2004; 2008–present) | |||
* ] – keyboards, vocals (1985–2004; 2008–present) | |||
;Auxiliary personnel | |||
* ] – songwriting, occasional backing vocals (1984–2004; 2008–present) | |||
* Chris Kuroda – concert lighting director (1989–2004; 2008–present) | |||
* ] – sound engineer (1986–2004), luthier (1986-2004; 2008–present) | |||
{{col-2}} | |||
'''Former members''' | |||
* ] – guitar, vocals (1983–1986; guest in 2003) | |||
'''Former touring musicians''' | |||
* ] – percussion, backing vocals (1984–1985) | |||
* ] – horn section (1991, 1994) | |||
{{col-end}} | |||
===Timeline=== | |||
{{#tag:timeline| | |||
ImageSize = width:800 height:auto barincrement:22 | |||
PlotArea = left:110 bottom:100 top:10 right:10 | |||
Alignbars = justify | |||
DateFormat = mm/dd/yyyy | |||
Period = from:12/02/1983 till:02/15/2025 | |||
TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal format:yyyy | |||
Legend = orientation:vertical position:bottom columns:2 | |||
ScaleMajor = increment:5 start:1984 | |||
ScaleMinor = increment:1 start:1984 | |||
Colors = | |||
id:guitar value:green legend:Guitar,_Vocals | |||
id:bass value:blue legend:Bass,_Vocals | |||
id:keys value:purple legend:Keyboards,_Vocals | |||
id:drums value:orange legend:Drums,_Percussion,_Vacuum,_Vocals | |||
id:song value:lavender legend:Songwriting | |||
id:lights value:pink legend:Lighting_Director | |||
id:perc value:claret legend:Percussion,_Backing_Vocals | |||
id:horns value:gray(0.6) legend:Horn_Section | |||
id:touring value:yellow legend:Touring_Musician | |||
id:lines value:black legend:Studio_Album | |||
LineData = | |||
at:05/08/1989 color:black layer:back | |||
at:09/21/1990 color:black layer:back | |||
at:02/18/1992 color:black layer:back | |||
at:02/02/1993 color:black layer:back | |||
at:03/29/1994 color:black layer:back | |||
at:10/15/1996 color:black layer:back | |||
at:10/27/1998 color:black layer:back | |||
at:06/03/1999 color:black layer:back | |||
at:05/16/2000 color:black layer:back | |||
at:12/10/2002 color:black layer:back | |||
at:06/15/2004 color:black layer:back | |||
at:09/08/2009 color:black layer:back | |||
at:06/24/2014 color:black layer:back | |||
at:10/07/2016 color:black layer:back | |||
at:04/02/2020 color:black layer:back | |||
at:07/12/2024 color:black layer:back | |||
BarData = | |||
bar:Trey text:"Trey Anastasio" | |||
bar:Jeff text:"Jeff Holdsworth" | |||
bar:Mike text:"Mike Gordon" | |||
bar:Jon text:"Jon Fishman" | |||
bar:Page text:"Page McConnell" | |||
bar:Tom text:"Tom Marshall" | |||
bar:CK5 text:"Chris Kuroda" | |||
bar:Marc text:"Marc Daubert" | |||
bar:Giant text:"Giant Country Horns" | |||
PlotData= | |||
width:11 | |||
bar:Trey from:12/02/1983 till:10/07/2000 color:guitar | |||
bar:Trey from:10/05/2002 till:08/15/2004 color:guitar | |||
bar:Trey from:10/01/2008 till:end color:guitar | |||
bar:Jon from:12/02/1983 till:10/07/2000 color:drums | |||
bar:Jon from:10/05/2002 till:08/15/2004 color:drums | |||
bar:Jon from:10/01/2008 till:end color:drums | |||
bar:Mike from:12/02/1983 till:10/07/2000 color:bass | |||
bar:Mike from:10/05/2002 till:08/15/2004 color:bass | |||
bar:Mike from:10/01/2008 till:end color:bass | |||
bar:Page from:05/03/1985 till:10/07/2000 color:keys | |||
bar:Page from:10/05/2002 till:08/15/2004 color:keys | |||
bar:Page from:10/01/2008 till:end color:keys | |||
bar:Jeff from:12/02/1983 till:05/17/1986 color:guitar | |||
bar:Marc from:03/11/1984 till:02/28/1985 color:perc | |||
bar:Giant from:07/11/1991 till:07/27/1991 color:horns | |||
bar:Giant from:05/04/1994 till:12/03/1994 color:horns | |||
width:3 | |||
bar:Tom from:10/23/1984 till:10/07/2000 color:song | |||
bar:Tom from:10/05/2002 till:08/15/2004 color:song | |||
bar:Tom from:10/01/2008 till:end color:song | |||
bar:CK5 from:03/01/1989 till:10/07/2000 color:lights | |||
bar:CK5 from:10/05/2002 till:04/13/2004 color:lights | |||
bar:CK5 from:06/17/2004 till:08/15/2004 color:lights | |||
bar:CK5 from:10/01/2008 till:end color:lights | |||
bar:Marc from:03/11/1984 till:02/28/1985 color:touring | |||
bar:Giant from:07/11/1991 till:07/27/1991 color:touring | |||
bar:Giant from:05/04/1994 till:12/03/1994 color:touring | |||
}} | |||
==Studio discography== | |||
{{main|Phish discography}} | |||
{{col div}} | |||
* '']'' (1989) | |||
* '']'' (1990) | |||
* '']'' (1992) | |||
* '']'' (1993) | |||
* '']'' (1994) | |||
* '']'' (1996) | |||
* '']'' (1998) | |||
* '']'' (1999) | |||
* '']'' (2000) | |||
* '']'' (2002) | |||
* '']'' (2004) | |||
* '']'' (2009) | |||
* '']'' (2014) | |||
* '']'' (2016) | |||
* '']'' (2020) | |||
* '']'' (2024) | |||
{{col div end}} | |||
==References== | ==References== | ||
{{Reflist}} | |||
# {{note|college}} | |||
# {{note|ohkee}} | |||
==External links== | |||
# {{note|phishbook}} ''The Phish Book'' by Richard Gehr and Phish, published by Villard, October 1998. | |||
{{sisterlinks|d=Q921267|commons=Category:Phish|b=no|v=no|voy=no|s=no|n=no|wikt=no|mw=no|m=no|species=no}} | |||
# {{note|demos}} | |||
* {{official website}} | |||
# {{note|whitealbum}} | |||
# {{note|languedoc}} | |||
{{Phish|state=expanded}} | |||
# {{note|tmwsiy}} | |||
{{Authority control}} | |||
# {{note|albums}} | |||
{{Good article}} | |||
# {{note|members}} | |||
# {{note|official}} | |||
# {{note|almanac}} ''Pharmer's Almanac: Vol 1'', pg. 32 (1995) | |||
# {{note|savage}} | |||
# {{note|vonnegut}} at Vonnegut.com, Accessed April 20, 2006 | |||
# {{note|wright}} at | |||
# {{note|stone}} ''Rolling Stone review of Lemonwheel'' by Matt Hendrickson, pp.20-22, 10/1/98, Issue #792 | |||
] | ] | ||
] | ] | ||
] | ] | ||
] | ] | ||
] | ] | ||
] | |||
] | |||
] | |||
] | |||
] | |||
] | |||
] | |||
] | |||
] | |||
] |
Latest revision as of 02:44, 13 December 2024
American rock band This article is about the jam band. Not to be confused with Fish (singer). For deceptive internet practices, see Phishing.Phish | |
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Phish performing in 2009. Left to right: Page McConnell, Trey Anastasio, Mike Gordon, Jon Fishman. | |
Background information | |
Origin | Burlington, Vermont, U.S. |
Genres | |
Discography | Phish discography |
Years active |
|
Labels |
|
Spinoffs | |
Members | |
Past members | |
Website | phish |
Phish is an American rock band formed in Burlington, Vermont, in 1983. The band consists of guitarist Trey Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, drummer Jon Fishman, and keyboardist Page McConnell, all of whom perform vocals, with Anastasio being the lead vocalist. The band is known for their musical improvisation and jams during their concert performances and for their devoted fan following.
The band was formed by Anastasio, Gordon, Fishman and guitarist Jeff Holdsworth, who were joined by McConnell in 1985. Holdsworth departed the band in 1986, and the lineup has remained stable since. Most of the band's songs are co-written by Anastasio and lyricist Tom Marshall. Phish began to perform outside of New England in the late 1980s and experienced a rise in popularity in the mid 1990s. In October 2000, the band began a two-year hiatus that ended in December 2002, but they disbanded again in August 2004. Phish reunited officially in October 2008 for subsequent reunion shows in March 2009 and since then have resumed performing regularly. All four members pursued solo careers or performed with side-projects and these projects have continued even after the band has reunited.
Phish's music blends elements of a wide variety of genres including funk, reggae, progressive rock, psychedelic rock, folk, country, jazz, blues, bluegrass, electronic music, and pop. The band is part of a movement of improvisational rock groups, inspired by the format of the Grateful Dead's live performances and colloquially known as "jam bands", that gained considerable popularity as touring concert acts in the 1990s. Phish has developed a large and dedicated following by word of mouth, the exchange of live recordings, and selling over 8 million albums and DVDs in the United States.
Phish were signed to major label Elektra Records from 1991 to 2005, when the band formed their own independent label, JEMP Records, to release archival CD and DVD sets.
History
Formation, The White Tape and The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday: 1983–1988
Phish was formed at the University of Vermont (UVM) in 1983 by guitarists Trey Anastasio and Jeff Holdsworth, bassist Mike Gordon, and drummer Jon Fishman. Anastasio and Fishman had met that October, after Anastasio overheard Fishman playing drums in his dormitory room, and asked if he and Holdsworth could jam with him. Gordon met the trio shortly thereafter, having answered a want-ad for a bass guitarist that Anastasio had posted around the university.
The new group performed their first concert at Harris Millis Cafeteria at the University of Vermont on December 2, 1983, where they played a set of classic rock covers, including two songs by the Grateful Dead. The band performed one more concert in 1983, and then did not perform again for nearly a year, stemming from Anastasio's suspension from the university following a prank he had pulled with a friend.
Anastasio returned to his hometown of Princeton, New Jersey following the prank, and reconnected with his childhood friend Tom Marshall; The duo began a songwriting collaboration and recorded material that would appear on the Bivouac Jaun demo tape. Marshall and Anastasio have subsequently composed the majority of Phish's original songs throughout their career. Anastasio returned to Burlington in late 1984, and resumed performing with Gordon, Holdsworth and Fishman. The quartet named themselves Phish in October 1984, shortly before they performed their first concert together following Anastasio's return to UVM. Anastasio designed the band's logo, which featured the group's name inside a stylized fish. The band's members have given several different origins for the name Phish. In Parke Puterbaugh's 2009 book Phish: The Biography, the origin is given as a variation on phshhhh, an onomatopoeia of the sound of a brush on a snare drum. In the 2004 official documentary Specimens of Beauty, Anastasio said the band was also named after Fishman, whose nickname is "Fish." In a 1996 interview, Fishman denied that the band was named after him, and said the onomatopoeic inspiration behind the name was the sound of an airplane taking off.
In late 1984, Phish began to play regularly at Nectar's bar and restaurant in downtown Burlington, and performed dozens of concerts across multiple residencies through March 1989. The band's 1992 album A Picture of Nectar was named in honor of the bar's owner, Nector Rorris, and its cover features his face superimposed onto an orange.
The band would collaborate with percussionist Marc Daubert, a friend of Anastasio's, in the fall of 1984. Daubert ceased performing with the band in early 1985. Keyboardist Page McConnell met Phish in early 1985, when he arranged for them to play a spring concert at Goddard College, the small university he attended in Plainfield, Vermont. He began performing with the band as a guest shortly thereafter, and made his live debut during the third set of their May 3, 1985 concert at UVM's Redstone Campus. In the summer of 1985, Phish went on a short hiatus while Anastasio and Fishman vacationed in Europe; during this time, McConnell offered to join the band permanently, and moved to Burlington to learn their repertoire from Gordon. McConnell officially joined Phish as a full-time band member in September 1985.
Phish performed with a five-piece lineup for about six months after McConnell joined, a period which ended when Holdsworth quit the group in March 1986 following a religious conversion. Anastasio and Fishman relocated in mid-1986 to Goddard College after a recommendation from McConnell. Phish distributed at least six experimental self-titled cassettes during this era, including The White Tape.
While based at Goddard College, Phish began to collaborate with fellow students Richard "Nancy" Wright and Jim Pollock. Pollock and Wright were musical collaborators who made experimental recordings on multi-track cassettes, and had been introduced to Phish through McConnell, who co-hosted a radio program on WGDR with Pollock. Phish adopted a number of Nancy's songs into their own set, including "Halley's Comet", "I Didn't Know", and "Dear Mrs. Reagan", the latter song being written by Nancy and Pollock. In his book Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, music journalist Jesse Jarnow observed that Wright and his music were highly influential to Phish's early style and experimental sound. Wright amicably ended his association with Phish in 1989, but Pollock has continued to collaborate with Phish over the years, designing some of their album covers and concert posters.
By 1985, the group had encountered Burlington luthier Paul Languedoc, who would eventually design custom instruments for Anastasio and Gordon. In October 1986, he began working as their sound engineer. Since then, Languedoc has built exclusively for the two, and his designs and traditional wood choices have given Phish a unique instrumental identity.
As his senior project for Goddard College, Anastasio penned The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday, a nine-song progressive rock concept album that would become Phish's second studio experiment. Recorded between 1987 and 1988, it was submitted in July of that year, accompanied by a written thesis. The song cycle that developed from the project – known as Gamehendge – grew to include an additional eight songs. The band performed the suite in concert on six occasions: in 1988, 1991, 1993, twice in 1994, and in 2023, without replicating the song list. The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday has never received an official release, but a bootleg tape has circulated for decades, and songs such as "Wilson" and "The Lizards" remain concert staples for the band.
Beginning in the spring of 1988, members of the band began practicing in earnest, sometimes locking themselves in a room and jamming for hours on end. One such jam took place at Anastasio's apartment, with a second at Paul Languedoc's house in August 1989. They called these jam sessions "Oh Kee Pa Ceremonies", a reference to the film A Man Called Horse. In July 1988, the band performed their first concerts outside of the northeastern United States, when they embarked on a seven-date tour in Colorado. These shows are excerpted on their 2006 live compilation Colorado '88.
Junta, Lawn Boy, and A Picture of Nectar: 1989–1992
On January 26, 1989, Phish played the Paradise Rock Club in Boston; the owners of the club had never heard of Phish and refused to book them, so the band rented the club for the night. The show sold out due to the caravan of fans that had traveled to see the band. The concert was Phish's breakthrough on the northeastern regional music circuit, and the band began to book concerts at other large rock clubs, theaters, and small auditoriums throughout the area, such as the Somerville Theatre, Worcester Memorial Auditorium and Wetlands Preserve. That spring, the band self-released their debut full-length studio album, Junta, and sold copies on cassette tape at their concerts. The album includes a studio recording of the epic "You Enjoy Myself", which is considered to be the band's signature song. Later in 1989, the band hired Chris Kuroda as their lighting director. Kuroda subsequently became well known for his artistic light shows at the group's concerts. A profile on Phish appeared in the October 1989 issue of the Deadhead magazine Relix, which marked the first time the band had been covered in a major national music periodical.
By late 1990, Phish's concerts were becoming more and more intricate, often making a consistent effort to involve the audience in the performance. In a special "secret language", the audience would react in a certain manner based on a particular musical cue from the band. For instance, if Anastasio "teased" a motif from The Simpsons theme song, the audience would yell, "D'oh!" in imitation of Homer Simpson. In 1992, Phish introduced a collaboration between audience and band called the "Big Ball Jam" in which each band member would throw a large beach ball into the audience and play a note each time his ball was hit. In so doing, the audience was helping to create an original composition. On occasion, performances of "You Enjoy Myself" and "Mike's Song" involved Gordon and Anastasio performing synchronized maneuvers and jumping on mini-trampolines while simultaneously playing their instruments. Fishman would also regularly step out from behind his drum kit during concerts to sing cover songs, which were often punctuated by him playing an Electrolux vacuum cleaner like an instrument. The band released their second album, Lawn Boy, in September 1990 on Absolute A Go Go, a small independent label that had a distribution deal with the larger Rough Trade Records. The album had been recorded the previous year, after the band had won studio time at engineer Dan Archer's Archer Studios when they came in first place at an April 1989 battle of the bands competition in Burlington.
Phish, along with Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and the Beatles, was one of the first bands to have a Usenet newsgroup, rec.music.phish, which launched in 1992. Aware of the band's growing popularity, Elektra Records signed them that year after they were recommended to the record label by A&R representative Sue Drew. In the summer of 1991, the band embarked on a 14-date tour of the eastern United States accompanied by a three-piece horn section dubbed the Giant Country Horns. In August of that year, Phish played an outdoor concert at their friend Amy Skelton's horse farm in Auburn, Maine that acted as a prototype for their later all-day festival events.
In 1992, the band released their third studio album, A Picture of Nectar, their first release for the major label Elektra. Subsequently, the label also reissued the band's first two albums. Later in 1992, Phish participated in the first annual H.O.R.D.E. festival, which provided them with their first national tour of major amphitheaters. The lineup, among others, included Phish, Blues Traveler, the Spin Doctors, and Widespread Panic. That summer, the band toured Europe with the Violent Femmes and later toured Europe and the U.S. with Santana. Throughout the latter tour, Carlos Santana regularly invited some or all of the members of Phish to jam with his band during their headlining performances. The band ended 1992 with a New Year's Eve performance at the Matthews Arena in Boston, Massachusetts, a performance that was simulcast throughout the Boston area by radio station WBCN. The concert was filled with several new "secret language" cues they had taught their audience in order to deliberately confuse radio listeners.
Rift, Hoist, and A Live One: 1993–1995
Phish began headlining major amphitheaters in the summer of 1993. That year, the group released their fourth album, Rift, a concept album which featured a cover painted by David Welker that referenced almost all of the songs on the record. The album was the band's first to appear on the Billboard 200 album chart, debuting at #51 in February 1993.
In March 1994, the band released their fifth studio album Hoist. The album featured an array of guest performers, including country singer Alison Krauss, banjoist Béla Fleck, former Sly & The Family Stone member Rose Stone, actor and trombonist Jonathan Frakes, and the horn section of R&B group Tower of Power. To promote the album, Gordon directed the band's only official music video, for its first single "Down with Disease". "Down with Disease" became a minor hit on rock radio in the United States, and was the band's first song to appear on a Billboard music chart when it peaked at #33 on the magazine's Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart that summer. To further promote Hoist, the band released an experimental short-subject documentary called Tracking, also directed by Gordon, which depicted the recording sessions for the album.
Foreshadowing their future tradition of festivals, Phish coupled camping with their 1994 summer tour finale at Sugarbush North in Warren, Vermont, that show eventually being released as Live Phish Volume 2. On Halloween of that year, the group promised to don a fan-selected "musical costume" by playing an entire album from another band. After an extensive mail-based poll, Phish performed the Beatles' White Album as the second of their three sets at the Glens Falls Civic Center in upstate New York. The "musical costume" concept subsequently became a recurring part of Phish's fall tours, with the band playing a different album whenever they had a concert scheduled for Halloween night.
In October 1994, Crimes of the Mind, the debut album by Anastasio's friend and collaborator Steve "The Dude of Life" Pollak, was released by Elektra Records; The album, which had been recorded in 1991, was billed to "The Dude of Life and Phish" and features all four members of Phish acting as Pollak's backing band.
On December 30, 1994, the band made their first appearance on national network television when they performed "Chalk Dust Torture" on Late Night with David Letterman. The band would go on to appear on the program seven more times before David Letterman's retirement as host in 2015. For their 1994 New Years Run, Phish played the Civic Centers in Philadelphia and Providence as well as sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden and Boston Garden, which marked their debut performances at both venues. For the December 31 show at the Boston Garden, the band rode around the arena in a float shaped like a hot dog. The stunt was reprised at their 1999 New Year's Eve concert before the hot dog was donated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At the end of 1994, Phish appeared on Pollstar's list of the highest grossing concert tours in the United States for the first time, as the 32nd highest grossing act, with $10.3 million in ticket sales.
Following the death of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia in the summer of 1995 and the appearance of "Down with Disease" on Beavis and Butt-Head, the band experienced a surge in the growth of their fan base and an increased awareness in popular culture. In their tradition of playing a well-known album by another band for Halloween, Phish contracted a full horn section for their performance of The Who's Quadrophenia in 1995.
Phish's first live album, A Live One, was released during the summer of 1995 and featured selections from various concerts from their 1994 winter tour. The album charted at number 18 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and was reported to have sold around 50,000 copies in its first week on sale. A Live One became Phish's first RIAA-certified gold album in November 1995. In 1997, A Live One became the band's first Platinum album, certified for sales of 1 million copies in the United States, and remains their best selling album to date.
Phish ended 1995 with their first New Year's Eve concert at Madison Square Garden. The concert was released in its entirety on the live album Phish: New Year's Eve 1995 – Live at Madison Square Garden in 2005.
Billy Breathes, The Story of the Ghost, and The Siket Disc: 1996–1999
In early 1996, Anastasio and Fishman formed a free jazz side-project called Surrender to the Air, inspired by the music of Sun Ra, which also featured Marshall Allen, Michael Ray, John Medeski, Oteil Burbridge, Kofi Burbridge, and Marc Ribot, among other musicians. The group's only album, Surrender to the Air, was released in March.
Following an appearance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in April 1996, Phish spent the summer of that year opening for Santana on their European tour. In August 1996, the band held their first festival, The Clifford Ball, at the decommissioned Plattsburgh Air Force Base on the New York side of Lake Champlain. The festival attracted 70,000 attendees, making it both Phish's biggest concert crowd to that point and the largest single concert by attendance in the United States in 1996. Phish recorded their sixth album Billy Breathes in the winter and spring of 1996, and the album was issued in October of that year. The album's first single, "Free", peaked at No. 24 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart and No. 11 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and was their most successful song on both charts.
By 1997, Phish's concert improvisational ventures were developing into a new funk-inspired long form jamming style. Vermont-based ice cream conglomerate Ben & Jerry's launched "Phish Food" that year. The band officially licensed their name for use with the product, the only time they have ever allowed a third-party company to do so, and were directly involved with the creation of the flavor. Proceeds from the flavor are donated to the band's non-profit charity The WaterWheel Foundation, which raises funds for the preservation of Vermont's Lake Champlain. On August 8, 1997, Phish webcast one of their concerts live over the internet for the first time.
On August 16 and 17, 1997, Phish held their second festival, The Great Went, over two days at the Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine, near the Canada–United States border. In October 1997, the band released their second live album Slip Stitch and Pass, which featured selections from their March 1997 concert at the Markthalle Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany.
Following the Great Went, the band embarked on a fall tour that was dubbed by fans as the "Phish Destroys America" tour after a 1970s kung fu-inspired poster for the opening date in Las Vegas. The 21-date tour is considered one of the group's most popular and acclaimed tours, and several concerts were later officially released on live album sets such as Live Phish Volume 11 in 2002. Phish ended 1997 as one of the ten highest grossing concert acts in the United States that year.
In April 1998, the band embarked on the Island Tour - a four night tour with two shows at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York on Long Island and another two at the Providence Civic Center in Providence, Rhode Island. The four concerts are highly regarded by fans due to the band's exploration of a jazz-funk musical style they had been playing for the previous year, which Anastasio dubbed "cowfunk". The band performed the tour in the middle of studio sessions for their seventh album, and were inspired by the quality of their performances to further incorporate the cowfunk style into subsequent sessions. The resulting album, The Story of the Ghost, was released in October 1998. The album's first single "Birds of a Feather", which had been premiered on the Island Tour, became a #14 hit on Billboard's Adult Alternative Songs chart. To promote The Story of the Ghost, Phish performed several songs from the album on the public television music show Sessions at West 54th in October 1998, and were interviewed for the program by its host David Byrne of Talking Heads.
In the summer of 1998, the band held Lemonwheel, their second festival at Loring Air Force Base in Maine. The two-day event attracted 60,000 attendees. The band played another summer festival in 1999, called Camp Oswego and held at the Oswego County Airport in Volney, New York. Unlike other Phish festivals, Camp Oswego featured a prominent second stage of additional performers aside from Phish, including Del McCoury, The Slip and Ozomatli.
In July 1999, the band released an album of improvisational instrumentals titled The Siket Disc. The band followed that release with Hampton Comes Alive, a six-disc box set released in November 1999, which contained the entirety of their performances on November 20 and 21, 1998 at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia. The set marked the first time that complete recordings of Phish concerts were officially released by Elektra Records.
To celebrate the new millennium, Phish hosted a two-day outdoor festival at the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation in Florida in December 1999. The festival's climactic New Year's Eve concert, referred to by fans as simply "The Show", started at 11:35 p.m. on December 31, 1999, and continued through to sunrise on January 1, 2000, approximately eight hours later. The band's performance of the song "Heavy Things" at the festival was broadcast live as part of ABC's 2000 Today millennium coverage, giving the band their biggest television audience up to that point. 75,000 people attended the sold-out two-day festival. In 2017, Rolling Stone named the Big Cypress festival one of the "50 Greatest Concerts of the Last 50 Years".
Farmhouse and hiatus: 2000–2002
Following the Big Cypress festival, the band issued their ninth studio album Farmhouse in May 2000. "Heavy Things", which was released as the album's first single, became the band's only song to appear on a mainstream pop radio format, reaching #29 on Billboard's Adult Top 40 chart that July. The song also became the band's biggest hit to date on the Adult Alternative Songs chart, reaching #2 there. In June 2000, the band embarked on a seven-date headlining tour of Japan. In July, they taped an appearance on the PBS music show Austin City Limits, which was aired in October.
In the summer of 2000, the band announced that they would take their first "extended time-out" following their upcoming fall tour. Anastasio officially announced the impending hiatus to the band's fans during their September 30 concert at the Thomas & Mack Center in Paradise, Nevada. During the tour's last concert on October 7, at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, the band made no reference to the hiatus, and left the stage without saying a word following their encore performance of "You Enjoy Myself", as The Beatles' "Let It Be" played over the venue's sound system.
Bittersweet Motel, a documentary film about the band directed by Todd Phillips, was released in August 2000, shortly before the hiatus began. The documentary captures the band's 1997 and 1998 tours, the Great Went festival and the recording of The Story of the Ghost. Phish were nominated in two categories at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2001: Best Boxed Recording Package for Hampton Comes Alive and Best Instrumental Rock Performance for "First Tube" from Farmhouse.
During Phish's hiatus, Elektra Records continued to issue archival releases of the band's concerts on compact disc. Between September 2001 and May 2003, the label released 20 entries in the Live Phish Series. These multi-disc sets featured complete soundboard recordings of concerts that were particularly popular with the band and their fanbase, similar to the Grateful Dead's Dick's Picks archival series. In November 2002, the label released the band's first concert DVD, Phish: Live in Vegas, which featured the entirety of the September 2000 concert at which Anastasio announced the hiatus.
In April 2002, Phish guest starred on the episode "Weekend at Burnsie's" of the animated series The Simpsons. The episode marked the band's first appearance together, albeit as animated characters, since the hiatus began. Phish provided their own voices for the episode and performed a snippet of "Run Like an Antelope".
Return, Round Room, Undermind, and disbandment: 2002–2004
In August 2002, Phish's manager John Paluska announced the band planned to end their hiatus that December with a New Year's Eve concert at Madison Square Garden. They also recorded Round Room over the course of four days in October and released it on December 10. The band had initially planned to record the new album live at the Madison Square Garden concert, but instead felt that demos they had recorded of the material were strong enough to merit release as a studio album. Four days after the release of Round Room, the band appeared as a musical guest on the December 14 episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by former Vice President of the United States Al Gore. During the episode, the band debuted the song "46 Days", appeared in a comedy sketch, and their song "You Enjoy Myself" was featured in a TV Funhouse cartoon segment. During their return concert on December 31, McConnell's brother was introduced as actor Tom Hanks. The impostor sang a line of the song "Wilson", prompting some media outlets to report that the actor had appeared at the concert.
At the end of the 2003 summer tour, Phish returned to Limestone, Maine for It, their first festival since Big Cypress. The event drew crowds of over 60,000 fans, and was the band's final festival to be held at Loring Air Force Base. Highlights from the festival were released on a DVD set, also called It, in October 2004. In November and December 2003, the band celebrated its 20th anniversary with a four-show mini-tour of shows in New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. The December 1 show at Pepsi Arena featured a guest appearance by former member Jeff Holdsworth, who sat in with the band on five songs, including his compositions "Possum" and "Camel Walk".
On May 25, 2004, Anastasio announced on the Phish website that the band would disband at the end of their 2004 summer tour. He wrote that he had met with the other members earlier that month to discuss the "Strong feelings I've been having that Phish has run its course, and that we should end it now while it's still on a high note." By the end of the meeting, he said, "We realized that after almost twenty-one years together, we were faced with the opportunity to graciously step away in unison, as a group, united in our friendship and our feelings of gratitude." The band's eleventh – and at the time final – studio album Undermind was released in June 2004. The band's summer 2004 began with two concerts at Keyspan Park in Brooklyn, New York. The first concert was recorded for the live album and concert documentary Phish: Live in Brooklyn, while the second featured a guest appearance by rapper Jay-Z, who performed two songs with the band. Later that summer, the band appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and performed a seven-song set from atop the marquee of the Ed Sullivan Theater for fans who had gathered on the street.
The 2004 tour finished with the band's seventh summer festival on August 14 and 15, which were billed as their final performances. The Coventry festival was named for the town in Vermont that hosted the event, which was held at the nearby Newport State Airport. The concerts were simulcast in movie theaters and on XM Satellite Radio. "The Curtain With" was the final song the band performed at their then-final concert on August 15. After Coventry, the members of the band admitted they were disappointed with their performance at the festival; In the official book Phish: The Biography, Anastasio expressed that "Coventry itself was a nightmare. It was emotional, but it was not like we were at our finest. I certainly wasn't". The festival weekend was beset by logistical issues, including heavy rain, muddy conditions in the festival area and a traffic jam on Interstate 91.
Post-disbandment and interim: 2004–2008
Following the break-up, the band's members remained in amicable communication with one another. The members also occasionally appeared on each other's solo albums and collaborated on side-projects.
In 2005, Phish formed their own record label, JEMP Records, to release archival CD and DVD sets. The label's first release was Phish: New Year's Eve 1995 – Live at Madison Square Garden, which was released in conjunction with Rhino Records in December 2005. The album was named the 42nd greatest live album of all time by Rolling Stone in April 2015. The label subsequently released several other archival live box sets, including Colorado '88 (2006), Vegas 96 (2007), At the Roxy (2008) and The Clifford Ball (2009).
In December 2006, Anastasio was arrested in Whitehall, New York for drug possession and driving while intoxicated, and was sentenced to 14 months in a drug court program. In 2007, while Anastasio was undergoing rehabilitation, the other members of Phish surprised him on his birthday with an instrumental recording they had made for him to play along with on guitar. During his rehabilitation, Anastasio said he "spent 24 hours a day thinking about nothing but Phish" and began discussing a reunion with the other members of the band.
Phish received the Jammys Lifetime Achievement Award on May 7, 2008, at The Theater at Madison Square Garden. All four members attended the ceremony and gave a speech, and both McConnell and Anastasio performed, although not together.
In response to a June 2008 rumor that Phish had reunited to record a new album, McConnell wrote a letter on the band's website updating fans on the current relations between the band's members. McConnell wrote that while the members remained friends, they were currently busy with other projects and the reunion rumors were premature. He added, "Later this year we hope to spend some time together and take a look at what possible futures we might enjoy." That September, the band played three songs at the wedding of their former tour manager Brad Sands. Later in 2008, the band reconvened at The Barn, Anastasio's farmhouse studio in Burlington, Vermont, for jamming sessions and rehearsals.
Reunion and Joy: 2008–2011
On October 1, 2008, the band announced on their website that they had officially reunited, and would play their first shows in five years in March 2009 at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia. The three reunion concerts were held on March 6, 7, and 8, 2009, with "Fluffhead" being the first song the band played onstage at the first show. Approximately 14,000 people attended the concerts over the course of three days, and the band made the shows available for free download on their LivePhish website for a limited time, in order to accommodate fans who were unable to attend.
When the band decided to reunite, the members agreed to limit their touring schedule, and they have typically performed about 50 concerts a year since. Following the reunion weekend, Phish embarked on a summer tour which began in May with a concert at Fenway Park in Boston. The Fenway show was followed by a 25-date tour which included performances at the 2009 edition of the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee and a four date stand at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. At Bonnaroo, Phish was joined by Bruce Springsteen on guitar for three songs.
Phish's fourteenth studio album, Joy, produced by Steve Lillywhite, was released September 8, 2009. "Backwards Down the Number Line", a single from the Joy album, reached number 9 on the Billboard Adult Alternative Songs chart in October. In October, the band held Festival 8, their first multi-day festival event since Coventry in 2004, at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California.
In March 2010, Anastasio inducted Genesis, one of his favorite bands, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the museum's annual ceremony in New York City. In addition to Anastasio's speech, Phish performed the Genesis songs "Watcher of the Skies" and "No Reply at All" at the event. Phish toured in the summer and fall of 2010, and their concerts at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisconsin and the Utica Memorial Auditorium in Utica, New York were issued as CD/DVD sets in 2010 and 2011 respectively.
Fuego and Big Boat: 2011–2016
Phish's ninth festival, Super Ball IX, took place at the Watkins Glen International race track in Watkins Glen, New York on July 1–3, 2011. It was the first concert to take place at Watkins Glen International since Summer Jam at Watkins Glen in 1973. In September, the band played a benefit concert in Essex Junction, Vermont which raised $1.2 million for Vermont flood victim relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene.
In June 2012, Phish headlined Bonnaroo 2012 with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Radiohead. During their 2013 Halloween concert at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the band played twelve new songs from their upcoming album, which at the time had the working title Wingsuit and would later be renamed Fuego. During the concert, the band was joined onstage by actor Abe Vigoda, who is mentioned by name in the song "Wombat", dressed in a wombat costume.
Phish ended 2013 with a New Year's Eve concert at Madison Square Garden that also celebrated their 30th anniversary, as they had played their first concert in December 1983. The concert featured a nine-minute montage film celebrating the band's career, and the band performed an entire set in the middle of the arena from atop an equipment truck.
Phish released Fuego, their first studio album in five years, on June 24, 2014. The album peaked at number 7 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and became their highest charting album since Billy Breathes reached the same position in 1996. During their Halloween 2014 concert at MGM Grand Las Vegas, the band performed a set consisting of ten original songs inspired by the 1964 Walt Disney Records sound effects album Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House.
In 2015, Phish performed both a summer tour and their tenth multi-day festival event, Magnaball, was held at the Watkins International Speedway in New York in August. Phish's fourteenth studio album, Big Boat, was released on October 7, 2016.
The Baker's Dozen and Kasvot Växt: 2017–2019
Phish played a 13-night concert residency at New York City's Madison Square Garden from July 21 to August 6, 2017, dubbed "The Baker's Dozen". Each concert featured a loose theme with performances of unique cover songs and a special doughnut served each night to the audience by Federal Donuts of Philadelphia. No songs were repeated during the Baker's Dozen run, with a total of 237 individual songs performed across the 13 concerts. The complete Baker's Dozen residency was released as a limited edition 36-disc box set in November 2018. A scaled-down triple CD set featuring 13 song performances, titled The Baker's Dozen: Live at Madison Square Garden, was issued simultaneously with the box set.
Phish planned to hold an eleventh summer festival, Curveball, in Watkins Glen, New York in 2018, but the festival was canceled by New York Department of Health officials, one day before it was scheduled to begin, due to water quality issues from flooding in the area. At their Halloween concert that October at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, the band performed a set of all-new original material that they promoted as a "cover" of í rokk by Kasvot Växt, a fictional 1980s Scandinavian progressive rock band they had created. The Kasvot Växt set was released as a standalone live album on Spotify on November 10, 2018. All four concerts in the 2018 Halloween run were livestreamed in 4K resolution, which marked the first time that a major musical act had ever offered a 4K livestreaming option.
Between Me and My Mind, a documentary film directed by Steven Cantor about Anastasio's life, his Ghosts of the Forest side-project and Phish's 2017 New Year's Eve concert, was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2019. In June 2019, SiriusXM launched Phish Radio, a satellite radio station dedicated to the band's music.
Sigma Oasis and Evolve: 2020–present
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Phish postponed their 2020 summer tour until 2021. Before 2020, Phish had embarked on a summer tour every year since their 2009 reunion. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Phish hosted free weekly "Dinner and a Movie" webcasts of archival performances on Tuesday evenings until Labor Day weekend, after which they were hosted monthly.
Phish released their fifteenth studio album Sigma Oasis on April 2, 2020. The album was premiered through a listening party on their LivePhish app, SiriusXM radio station and Facebook page. The album consists entirely of material the band had been performing in concert over the course of the previous decade, but had yet to appear on a studio release.
In January 2021, Anastasio told Pollstar that the band was unable to perform or rehearse together due to COVID-19 restrictions and quarantine rules currently in place in the New England states, but said "As soon as it's feasible, we'll be back."
Phish performed their first concert since the start of the pandemic on July 28, 2021, at the Walmart AMP in Rogers, Arkansas, having not performed since February 23, 2020. Beginning with their concerts at The Gorge Amphitheatre in late August, the band began requiring attendees to show proof of vaccination or a negative test for COVID-19. During their 2021 Halloween concert, Phish debuted a set of new original science fiction-themed material under the guise of the fictional band Sci-Fi Soldier. According to Pollstar, Phish were the ninth highest grossing concert act in the world in 2021, with a $44.4 million gross from 35 concerts. Phish also had the fifth highest concert ticket sales in the world in 2021, with 572,626 tickets sold.
Due to an increase of cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in New York City, Phish postponed their 2021 New Year's Eve concerts at Madison Square Garden from December 2021 to April 2022. In lieu of the traditional New Year's Eve concert, Phish instead performed a three set New Year's Eve concert on December 31, 2021 from a soundstage they dubbed "The Ninth Cube".
Phish released Get More Down, a studio version of their Sci-Fi Soldier material, on October 31, 2022. In August 2023, Phish performed two benefit concerts at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York for recovery efforts following a flood in Vermont and upstate New York earlier that summer. The band raised $3.5 million for the relief efforts through their two concerts and merchandise sales. The band performed a version of their Gamehendge song cycle at their 2023 New Year's Eve concert at Madison Square Garden, which featured actors portraying the story's characters, and an appearance by actress and musician Annie Golden during the song "Harpua".
Phish performed four concerts at Sphere in Paradise, Nevada in April 2024, and were the second music act, after U2, to perform at the venue. The concerts featured visual effects created by the Montreal studio Moment Factory. The four shows grossed $13.4 million from 65,665 tickets sold.
Evolve, Phish's sixteenth studio album, was released on July 12, 2024. Mondegreen, a four day Phish festival at the Woodlands of Dover Motor Speedway in Dover, Delaware, was held in August 2024. 45,000 people attended the four-day Mondegreen festival.
Reception and legacy
Phish were part of the jam band scene that gained prominence in the mid 1990s. Following the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, the Los Angeles Times named Phish as among the scene's most prominent bands, alongside Blues Traveler, the Dave Matthews Band, Spin Doctors, and Widespread Panic. Phish's popularity grew in the 1990s due to fans sharing concert recordings that had been taped by audience members and distributed online for free. Phish were among the first musical acts to utilize the internet to grow their fanbase, with fans using file-sharing websites such as etree and BitTorrent to share concerts.
In 1998, Rolling Stone described Phish as "the most important band of the '90s". Phish have been named as an influence by other acts in the jam band scene, including Umphrey's McGee and the Disco Biscuits Other musicians have also counted Phish as an influence, including Adam Levine and James Valentine of Maroon 5, Ed O'Brien of Radiohead, Brandon Boyd of Incubus, and reggae musician Matisyahu.
Phish's festival events in the 1990s inspired the foundation of the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee, which was first held in 2002. Co-founder Rick Farman, a Phish fan, consulted Phish managers Richard Glasgow and John Paluska about festival infrastructure during the early stages of planning. The festivals also inspired other jam band-oriented concert events, such as the Disco Biscuits' Camp Bisco, Electric Forest Festival, and the Big Ears Festival.
Phish are well known to their loyal fans, called Phishheads, but the group's music and fan culture are otherwise polarizing to general audiences. The tribal nature of Phish supporters has encouraged comparisons of Phishheads to the Juggalos, followers of the hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse. Phish heavily contributes to music-based tourism with their "traveling communities" of fans, and they have been simultaneously hailed and criticized for their near-constant tour dates, which bring with them the capital value of tourism and necessitates the increased security and community planning that come with any music festival. Jordan Hoffman of Thrillist explains "the solace many find in attending religious services is somewhat mirrored for me in seeing Phish," and even though Phish fans are generally considered welcoming and friendly, the reception of the group from the outside is often one of unease and confusion. The BBC listed Phish as one of "Eight smash US acts that Britain never understood" along with fellow jam bands Dave Matthews Band and Blues Traveler. In describing the band to a British audience, BBC journalist Stephen Dowling wrote "Attending a Phish gig has become a rite of summer passage for American teens in the same way that attending Glastonbury has for British teenagers."
The band has a number of celebrity fans, including: Sean Avery, Rocco Baldelli, Drew Carey, Tucker Carlson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Abbi Jacobson, Katy Tur, Aron Ralston, and Bill Walton. Bernie Sanders, who was the mayor of Burlington when Phish formed, described them as "One of the great bands in this country" in 2016.
Phish has performed 83 concerts at Madison Square Garden since their debut performance there in 1994. In August 2023, Phish surpassed Elton John as the musical act with the second most concerts performed at Madison Square Garden, behind only record-holder Billy Joel.
In 2019, Billboard ranked Phish as the 33rd highest-grossing concert touring act of the 2010s. In 2022, Pollstar listed Phish as the 33rd highest grossing touring act from 1980 to 2022, with a cumulative gross of $595.8 million. Pollstar also listed Phish as the act with the ninth most tickets sold in that same time frame, with 13.3 million tickets sold.
Musical style and influences
According to The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, the music of Phish is "oriented around group improvisation and super-extended grooves". Their songs draw on a range of rock-oriented influences, including funk, jazz fusion, progressive rock, bluegrass, and psychedelic rock. Some Phish songs use different vocal approaches, such as a cappella (unaccompanied) sections of barbershop quartet-style vocal harmonies. The band began to include barbershop segments in their concerts in 1993, when the four members began taking lessons from McConnell's landlord, who was a judge at barbershop competitions. In the 1997 official biography, The Phish Book, Anastasio coined the term "cow-funk" to describe the band's late 1990s funk and jazz-funk-influenced playing style, observing that "What we're doing now is really more about groove than funk. Good funk, real funk, is not played by four white guys from Vermont."
Phish were often compared to the Grateful Dead during the 1990s, a comparison that the band members often resisted or distanced themselves from. The two bands were compared due to their emphasis on live performances, improvisational jamming style, musical similarities, and traveling fanbase. In November 1995, Anastasio told The Baltimore Sun, "When we first came into the awareness of the media, it would always be the Dead or Zappa they'd compare us to. All of these bands I love, you know? But I got very sensitive about it." Early in their career, Phish would occasionally cover Grateful Dead songs in concert, but the band stopped doing so by the late 1980s. In Phish: The Biography, Parke Puterbaugh observed "The bottom line is while it's impossible to imagine Phish without the Grateful Dead as forebears, many other musicians figured as influences upon them. Some of them - such as Carlos Santana and Frank Zappa - were arguably at least as significant as the Grateful Dead. In reality, the media certainly overplayed the Grateful Dead connection and Phish probably underplayed it, at least in their first decade." Anastasio has also cited progressive rock artists such as King Crimson and Genesis as significant influences on Phish's early material. In a 2019 New York Times interview, he observed, "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."
In his 2018 book Twilight of the Gods, music critic Steven Hyden wrote that he found the Grateful Dead and Phish to have "significantly different reference points" in terms of influence and style. The Grateful Dead, Hyden explained, were "informed by the totality of American music from the first sixty years of the twentieth century: Blues, country, folk, jazz, and early rock 'n' roll," while Phish's music contains elements of "hopped-up bluegrass, jazzy disco, porno-movie funk, Broadway theatricality, and shockingly sincere barbershop harmonies. But it all stems from classic rock." Hyden observed that "If the Dead encompasses American music from roughly 1900 to 1967, Phish picks up the story right through the AOR era, from '68 to around the time Stop Making Sense debuted in theaters in the mid-eighties."
Live performances
Main article: Phish concert tours and festivalsThe driving force behind Phish is the popularity of their concerts and the fan culture surrounding the event. Each a production unto itself, the band is known to consistently change set lists and details, as well as the addition of their own antics to ensure that no two shows are ever the same. With fans flocking to venues hours before they open, the concert is the centerpiece of an event that includes a temporary community in the parking lot similar to the "Shakedown Street" bazaar held outside Grateful Dead concerts.
Similar to the Grateful Dead, Phish concerts typically feature two sets, with an intermission in between. During concerts, songs often segue into one another, or produce improvisational jams that can last 10 minutes or more depending on the song. Several regularly performed songs in Phish's repertoire have never appeared on one of their studio albums; these include "Possum", "Mike's Song", "I Am Hydrogen", "Weekapaug Groove", "Harry Hood", "Runaway Jim", "Suzy Greenberg", "AC/DC Bag" and "The Lizards", all of which date to 1990 or earlier and have been played by Phish over 300 times in concert.
Chris Kuroda, who has been Phish's lighting director since 1989, creates elaborate light displays during the band's concerts that are sometimes improvised in a similar fashion to their music. Justin Taylor of The Baffler wrote, "You could hate this music with every fiber of your being and still be ready to give Chris Kuroda a MacArthur "genius" grant for what he achieves with his light rig." Kuroda is often referred to by fans as the unofficial fifth member of the band, and has been given the nickname "CK5".
Since Phish fans began to discuss the band's live performances on the internet in the late 1990s, they have developed a widely used framework for analyzing the varied forms of improvisation that would regularly occur during a given show. A January 1997 post by Phish fan John Flynn on the rec.music.phish Usenet group first defined the two "types" of jamming that Phish performs in concert. Flynn wrote: "I think Phish jamming falls into two types of jamming: 1) Jamming that is based around a fixed chord progression 2) Jamming that improvises chord progressions, rhythms, and the whole structure of the music." Since then, Phish fans have used the terms "Type 1" and "Type 2" and Flynn's definitions to contextualize the structure of Phish's shows and songs.
Because Phish's reputation is so grounded in their live performances, concert recordings are commonly traded commodities. In December 2002, the band launched the LivePhish website, from which official soundboard recordings can be purchased. Legal field recordings produced by tapers with boom microphones from the audience in compliance with Phish's tape trading policy are frequently traded on any number of music message boards. Although technically not allowed, live videos of Phish shows are also traded by fans and are tolerated as long as they are for non-profit, personal use. Phish fans have been noted for their extensive collections of fan-taped concert recordings; owning recordings of entire tours and years is widespread.
Fans' recordings are generally sourced from the officially designated tapers' section at each show, by fans with devoted sound recording rigs. Tickets for the tapers' section are acquired separately from regular audience tickets, and directly from the band's website, instead of the venue or a service like Ticketmaster. However, tapers are also required to purchase a general admission ticket for concerts. Recordings patched from Paul Languedoc's soundboard were also made until 1994 and circulated among fans.
In 2014, the band launched their own on-demand streaming service, LivePhish+. The platform features hundreds of soundboard recordings of the band's concerts for streaming, including all of their shows from 2002 onwards, as well as all of their studio albums. Phish continues to allow fans to tape and distribute audience recordings of their concerts after the launch of the LivePhish storefront and streaming services.
Books and podcasts
Several books on Phish have been published, including two official publications: The Phish Book, a 1998 coffee table book credited to the band members and journalist Richard Gehr which focused on the band's activities during 1996 and 1997, and Phish: The Biography, a semi-official biographical book written by music journalist and Phish fan Parke Puterbaugh, was published in 2009 and was based on interviews with the four band members, their friends and crew. An installment of the 33⅓ book series on A Live One, written by Walter Holland, was published in 2015. The 2013 book You Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me: Phish, Insane Clown Posse, and My Misadventures with Two of Music's Most Maligned Tribes, written by music critic Nathan Rabin, compares and contrasts the fanbases of Phish and Insane Clown Posse.
In addition to books, there have been multiple podcasts which have focused on Phish, its music and fanbase as their central topics of discussion. Among the first was Analyze Phish, which was hosted by comedians Harris Wittels and Scott Aukerman for the Earwolf podcast network, and ran for ten episodes posted between 2011 and 2014. The podcast followed Wittels, a devoted fan of the band, in his humorous attempts to get Aukerman to enjoy their music. Despite its truncated run, Analyze Phish inspired Phish lyricist Tom Marshall to start his own Phish podcast, Under the Scales, in 2016. In 2018, Marshall co-founded the Osiris Podcasting Network, which hosts Under the Scales and other music podcasts, many of which are devoted to Phish or other jam bands. In September 2019, C13Originals debuted Long May They Run, a music documentary podcast series; The first season, consisting of 10 episodes, focused on Phish's history and influence on the live music scene. In November 2019, the Osiris Podcasting Network premiered After Midnight, a five-episode documentary series exploring the creation, execution, and aftermath of Phish's 1999 Big Cypress festival.
Other appearances
Seattle Seahawks fans began mimicking Phish's song "Wilson" by chanting the song's opening line when quarterback Russell Wilson took the field during games. The new tradition started after Anastasio made the suggestion at shows in Seattle. The story behind the "Wilson" chant was featured in a 2014 documentary short by NFL Films.
Band members
Current members
|
Former members
Former touring musicians
|
Timeline
Studio discography
Main article: Phish discography- Junta (1989)
- Lawn Boy (1990)
- A Picture of Nectar (1992)
- Rift (1993)
- Hoist (1994)
- Billy Breathes (1996)
- The Story of the Ghost (1998)
- The Siket Disc (1999)
- Farmhouse (2000)
- Round Room (2002)
- Undermind (2004)
- Joy (2009)
- Fuego (2014)
- Big Boat (2016)
- Sigma Oasis (2020)
- Evolve (2024)
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External links
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Categories:
- Phish
- Musical groups established in 1983
- Jam bands
- Jammy Award winners
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