Don’t think decreasing temperatures and fall foliage are any excuse to put away your Phishing gear; Fall Tour is an extended opportunity to reel in a few monsters that got away this summer. With 2013 being the first full fall tour for Phish since their triumphant return in the summer and fall of 2009 four years ago, you’d think demand to see the boys would be hotter. They somehow kept the fires ablaze through a 25 date summer tour absolutely plagued by serious rainstorms. Despite a Canadian cancellation due to rain, huge storms at Jones Beach, Saratoga, and Merryweather, the quartet trucked along with unbelievable consistency. They closed the tour once again with a strong three night run at Dick’s in Colorado, but that only paused the Phishy Festivities for six weeks and change.
Phish camped out in the control room of the Mothership last Friday night, and transported those in attendance on a three night pilgrimage through time and space. The Hampton Coliseum has a particularly deep Phishistory, including their three night run in 2009 that marked the return of Phish 3.0 in all its sober, polished glory. Despite high expectations for this tour opening run, attendance was unbelievably, pathetically low; full three day passes were going on Stubhub for as little as 90 bucks, with single night tickets dropping below 10 dollars!!! What is this, the God Damn Phillies? My guess is that East Coast Phans were in a similar predicament as me; five plus hours from Hampton with a giant screaming monkey of school and work clinging to their back. I was forced to gaze longingly at the phish.net reviews and couch tour the shows from the 215. Those legends that did make it out to the Coliseum were not to be disappointed.
Friday night’s show may not have broken brand new territory, but it kicked off a tour of unbelievably high expectations—a hero’s tale 30 years in the making—with a totally solid performance. The show got straight down to business with an electric, if standard “Wolfman’s Brother” opener, into the high flying “Runaway Jim”. With the crowds blood sufficiently circulating through their bodies, the boys dove into a nice, slinky, “Mound”, which has seen a serious resurgence in 2013. An impressive, “Walls of the Cave”, another tune that has seen a spike in play this year, closed a beautiful first set.
Phish brought the Mothership on down to mid-nineties funky town with the second sets opening progression. A funked-up, “Twist” creeped through this crowd for 12 glorious minutes, giving way to a well-executed, “Free”, the freaky circus anthem that is, “Roggae”, into the energetic lightning bolt known as, “Sparkle.” Add an equally concise but rocking version of, “Cavern”, and you’ve set the stage for creepy, Octoberesque, “Carini”. Easily the highlight of this show, “Carini” has seen several stellar versions in 2013, with this one stretching out and getting loose for 16 minutes plus. “Carini” got the extended treatment in Saratoga this July, and stood alone as the golden nugget of that run. Expect the song to continue rotation in the second set with extra doses of hard-rocking mayhem. The second set and subsequent encore continued in solid if not particularly memorable fashion.
I’ve seen a few three night runs progressively heat through the first two nights, steaming to a boil during the often under attended Sunday show, and Hampton certainly followed that format. The second night laid on the gas pedal out of the gate, with a high energy, “Bathtub Gin” opener. This gave way to a trifecta of standard, concise versions of some gigantic funk-heavy originals. Both, “The Moma Dance” and “Tube” have not gotten extended treatment from Phish 3.0, to the disappointment of many fans, but either number forces your body into a frantic, spastic, limb-noodling dance no matter how concise the version. A few relative rarities improved this first set, with, “Fast enough for you”, “The Ballad of Curtis Loew” and, “Ya Mar”.
Highlights from the second set came in the form of a 17 minute, jammed out, “Ghost” and a hilarious “Steam”, which featured Trey on drums, Mike playing his fight bell with a pair of drum sticks, and Fishman and Page lounging in their natural habitat. Even if it wasn’t the most polished jam, “Steam” with three percussionists and one Page is worth a listen. A solid, “Quinn the Eskimo”, encored, possibly giving nod to the Grateful Dead and their long standing history with the Coliseum.
Phish has a tendency to punish those who skipped out on the Sunday night show, and reward the Warriors that stuck around for the long hall. Ya, that brings us to Sunday night, an absolute must-hear show highlighted by one of the most exciting second sets I’ve heard this year. Trey decided to blow the roof off the joint early, no time to ease into it. He crushes a beautiful three song progression, opening with the 100 mile per hour momentum of, “Julius”, into a screaming, “Funky Bitch”, topped off with one of my favorite Phish tunes, “Back on the Train”. Like “Julius”, “Back on the Train”, only knows one direction at one speed; forward and fast as hell! It’s a ridiculously approachable Phish song, clocking in between 6 and 10 minutes in almost every case, riding an F9, Trey led riff that gets the whole stadium aboard the train for another night of insanity.
“Ginseng Sullivan”, made its first appearance in over a year during this first set, and would not be the last bluegrass number of the evening. “46 Days”, was up next and this song has become nothing short of a fucking WORK HORSE. The gigantic drop Fishman provides in the opening seconds is reminiscent to his hype-building “Tweezer” intro. With a chorus of equal strength and some often extended jamming in the second half, “46 Days”, has approached legendary status in the last few years. “46” gives way to a beautiful if not perfectly executed “Divided Sky”, highlighted by a 150 second break before Trey’s solo, with many of the attendees holding their lighters out in approval. Page took us higher on the set one closer, with the always beautiful and appreciated Hendrix cover, “Bold as Love”.
The thing about a Phish show, no matter how hard your rocked during the first set, you have to save some gas in the tank; the second set is far more akin to outer-space, totally improvised and inspired free form jamming. 2013 had several second sets featuring only six or seven songs, and the extended treatment of some old favorites is much appreciated.
As the second set began, Trey asked some fans if they were in jail stripes or Where’s Waldo costumes, and when they responded they were dressed in the latter, Trey explicitly stated this next song about jail was NOT for them! This began the fourth version of the old bluegrass number “Paul and Silas”, since Phish’s 2009 return. Out of, “Paul and Silas”, came an absolutely monster version of, “Tweezer”. This led to some of Phish’s most loose, laid back improv of the year. “Golden Age” and “Piper” followed as additional jam vehicles, and just as things got dark and twisted at the end of “Piper”, the band dropped the first ever version of the Bachman Turner Overdrive hit, “Takin’ Care of Business”. Is there any Phishyier song in the world, “it’s as easy as Phishing, you can be a musician, if you can make sounds that are mellow, get a second hand guitar, chances are you’ll go far, if you get in with the right group of fellas.” Ya, you could say they were takin’ care of business in a huge way, and continued to do so through a larger than life, “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, that I felt was teased several times through the second sets long-winded jams. “Sand”, and “Slave to the Traffic Light”, close out the show in classic funky Phish fashion, exemplified by a “Day in the Life”, “Tweezer Reprise” encore. Wow. The view of this performance from couch tour was enough to leave me salivating for more!
The band continues to truck through this tour with Tuesday’s date in Rochester. The quartet pulls into Glens Falls, New York on Wednesday for the first time since the legendary Halloween show of 1994. This show will be webcast through livephish.com, and for those that can’t make it to the tiny stadium, I do recommend streaming from home. Livephish gives you seven beautiful HD camera angles and soundboard quality audio, so tell a few friends to bring the beer and get all Phishy in your pajamas.
Next weekend, the band hits Worcester for two dates at the DCU Center, then Hartford, CT for a single show on the 27th. The pre-Halloween shows end on Tuesday, October 29th in Reading. This will be my first show of this fall’s tour, as tickets are on StubHub for just over 50 bucks and Reading is only an hour and change drive from Philly. This arena is miniature compared to the 15,000 plus shows of the summer, so take advantage of a chance to see the boys in an intimate setting; and you know they’ll be all giddy for the Halloween run, and so am I.
On October 31st, November 1st, and November 2nd Phish sets up camp at Boardwalk Hall in AC. Phish brought disgusting amounts of funk to the Bader Field run in Atlantic City two summers ago, as well as the Halloween run at Board Walk Hall in 2010; expect similar results for 2013. The last three shows of the Fall Tour, the last dates before New Year’s, the first Halloween performance in two years, high hopes would be an understatement. Check back for a more detailed preview of the AC run and some examples of Brotherly Love in recent Phishistory.
Review written by Drew Russin
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