Five Ingredients to Phish's Best Tour of 3.0
These are the reasons Summer 2021 was Phish's best tour of the current era
It seems like every year of 3.0 my friends and I discuss the ongoing tour and optimistically assert that Phish (mainly Trey) is playing really well this year. “PHISH IS BACK” I inevitably text upon hearing the first above-average jam of the season. I’ve probably texted that every year since it was first uttered in seriousness by phans online in 2009…probably following the Tweezer at Red Rocks. I’ll let that be decided in the comments.
It’s hard for a simple layman such as myself to properly articulate just why the playing was so stellar this summer but allow me to try:
Trey’s playing is super clean.
I’d imagine Trey’s new Languedoc is a contributing factor but there has clearly been a change for the better in Trey’s actual chops since the beginning of the outstanding TAB tour in 2020. Perhaps Trey was bored by the state of life with the Covid shutdowns. Or maybe Trey didn’t want to disappoint the classically trained musicians who played with his band. I suspect both. Whatever it was, Trey’s accuracy is much better and his tone has settled back down after years of it being extremely touch-and-go.Furthermore, Trey has been using his new synthesizer effect (move over Page) which has been a great addition (hear: the last 10 minutes of 8/1/21 Tweezer). He has also been using his boomarang in a really cool way, less for the chorded echos plaguing 3.0 and more for those darts of psychedelic noodling he has laced within jams this year.
First sets have finally, after 12 years, broken out of their cookie cutter formula.
Beginning in 2009, it was almost guaranteed that there would be very little experimentation within the first stanza of a night. No more. This summer featured heavy first-set jamming, sometimes within songs which normally don’t receive such treatment at all. First sets are now unpredictable rather than being merely a warmup for set two.Full-band improv is better.
There have been highlights of quality full-band improv in 3.0 but in 2021 it seems far more consistent. The weak link has obviously been Trey in this third era of Phish (sorry some of you get SUPER MAD when I state this fact). For quality sum-is-greater-than-its-parts playing, Trey not only needs to be playing well but he needs to be leading well. He has been. Trey is seeking out jams. It’s like he is once again fully comfortable in the band he helped create. There seems to be less rush to get to the next song and more excitement just enjoying his craft on stage. He’s been starting on themes within jams, riffing on licks he hears from Page or Mike, and pushing new ideas.Fishman is playing his best since 2.0 (maybe 1.0).
It’s not only that he’s more active than previous years, he’s also actually attacking the jams. Just off the top of my mind are the unique beats during the Harry Hood and Cities jams at Shoreline, not even considering some of the drumming within the deeper type-II affairs we have been graced with this summer. Sometimes he’s not just driving the backbone of a jam with a fantastic beat, many times this tour he’s flat out rolling the entire jam with nonstop fills. Video from the streams have been particularly helpful with actually witnessing the activity taking place behind his kit.I am purposely avoiding his usage of his newfound audio samples.
Setlists are creative.
Phish has been arranging how they play songs in interesting and fresh ways. My thoughts immediately are drawn to the intro-less 8/14 Scents & Subtle Sounds and then playing the now-elusive introduction during the first set of 8/15 only to snap into Moma Dance. Oh, and speaking of Moma Dance, here’s another song which cut some new teeth. I like how Trey is singing the song slightly differently with a new emphasis on “the moment ends, the moma daance" That’s the best I can do typing it--sorry. Songs are being broken up in sets in unusual ways; various experiments fitting Chalkdust into sets comes to mind. Also, many of the segues have been thoughtful and buttery again (a product of Trey ignoring such things for much of the past decade).
Stay tuned for a rundown of the tour’s best highlights in the next newsletter.