Get set for splashy Phish at Music Awards April 2, 1993 - The Boston Globe By Steve Morse Forget about Phish ever getting too cocky. They may be brash, but they remember their roots. The neo-hippie jam band did not come from highly trendy scenes in New York or Los Angeles, but from the quaint college town of Burlington, Vt. It was there they honed their tight ensemble sound - a darting blend of rock, jazz and bluegrass - by playing in local bars for many years. "It was so easy to get a gig in Burlington. It's not a place where hundreds of bands vie for a half-hour slot. It got to the point where we'd play five nights a week," says Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio. "We'd have a total, anything-goes attitude. We'd do musicals and weird things and even build things out of the microphone stand. And we'd get people up onstage. That's where we developed our spontaneity-is-it philosophy." Today, Phish is spontaneous in a much bigger pond. They've toured with Santana. They've toured with the Spin Doctors, Blues Traveler and Widespread Panic in the so-called HORDE tour (which stands for Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere). And they perform Wednesday at the Pepsi Boston Music Awards at the Wang Center, where they're also up for the rising star award. But it all started in Burlington. "There are more bars per capita in Burlington - about 52 or whatever - than just about anywhere else," Anastasio says in a recent phone interview. "And most of those wanted to have bands. We also started when the drinking age was 18. That was back in 1983-'84. "It all grew slowly. I remember we first grew into New Hampshire, then made the big step to Boston. We did a couple of gigs at Molly's, then the Paradise. At first, they wouldn't give us a gig at the Paradise, then finally we just rented the place and it sold out the first night. The guys at the Paradise were all scratching their heads." Phish has been rolling ever since. Playing "in the style of the Grateful Dead," as many club ads have proclaimed, they appeal to teen-and-twentysomething Deadheads who think nothing of traveling great distances to see them. "We don't sell that many records, but we sell a pretty huge number of concert tickets," says Anastasio, whose group may even headline Great Woods this summer. "There's lots of other bands who sell seven or eight times as many records as us, but not nearly as many concert tickets." Phish's appeal comes from their wacky stage presence: A New Year's Eve show at Northeastern this year found drummer Jon Fishman wearing a frock and blowing into a vacuum cleaner hose at one point. The group also loves free-flowing jams, which explains the comparisons to the Grateful Dead. "For a rock act, the Dead have a couple of incredible things about them that other bands don't have," says Anastasio. "One is their level of improvisation . . . But the other is organizational. The Dead are very family-oriented and have health insurance for all their crew, and profit-sharing. That's a definite influence on us from the Dead's scene. They also put their crew's children through school, so you end up with people who are a lot happier working for you." Phish has been together 10 years, with no end in sight. Three members went to Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., a liberal arts enclave that laid the groundwork for the band's inventive, jam-session style, ranging from barbershop harmonies to atonal fugues. "We get along so well. We take a day off and there's always a sense of excitement when we come back," Anastasio says of fellow Phish mates Fishman, Page McConnell and Mike Gordon. "We love playing together so much that even when we do a sound check before a show, our sound guy will yell at us to stop, but we'll keep jamming." Phish is relentless about learning more about music. "We're listening to early Meters stuff right now and trying to learn from that," says Anastasio, referring to the famed Mardi Gras party band. "When we get home, we're going to learn every song from one of their early albums. . . . We've also learned albums note for note by the Dead, Zappa and Aerosmith." While known for offbeat, fantasy lyrics, Phish has a change-of-pace new disc, "Rift," which is more serious. Part of it examines a broken relationship. "The album has a different flavor," says Anastasio. "It's not like 'Nectar,' which was more fantasy. You just write what you write at a given time." The new disc, produced by R&B great Barry Beckett (whose credits include Aretha Franklin), found Phish recording several takes of most songs, rather than their usual single take. "Our philosophy had always been to just go in and do it. A lot of songs on our first three albums were just one take," says Anastasio. "But on this new one, Barry would come to us after our first take and maybe say nothing except, 'Guys, can you do it again?' Or: 'Can you put more soul into it?' When you realize he's produced for Aretha Franklin, then you listen hard. We learned quickly that there's always room for improvement."