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PHISH PHANS ARE HOOKED
 November 13, 1994 - The Dayton Daily News
 by Dave Larsen

JAM-HAPPY ROAD WARRIORS JOIN A GROWING CHORUS OF BOOGIE BANDS

The barefoot legion rolls into town on Thursday. Tie-dyed hordes of nomadic music fans will arrive in every manner of conveyance, from dilapidated VW Microbuses to Daddy's Lexus, descending on Hara Arena.

Some will roam the parking lot in search of a ticket. Others will be scrambling for position with their recorders and microphones to tape the show. Few will be seeing the scheduled act for the first time.

The concert will be performed without a planned set list, and could last for three or more hours, shifting seamlessly from song to song with improvised instrumental passages.

Surprisingly, given the ritualistic trappings, the band on the bill isn't the Grateful Dead. It's Phish, a like-minded quartet from Vermont.

Phish has never had a hit single. The band's latest album, Hoist, spent only one week in the Top 40 of Billboard's album chart. Yet the group regularly sells out arenas throughout the United States - playing to more than 315,000 fans in the first nine months of 1994 - and has combined album sales of almost 1 million.

Phish is only one of a growing number of modern-day hippie bands who are following the Dead's lead and finding success on their own organic terms. Blues Traveler, the Spin Doctors, Widespread Panic and the Dave Matthews Band are among the jam-happy road warriors who built their devout followings the old-fashioned way - through years of constant gigging.

"That's where we cut our teeth, if you will," said Phish keyboardist Page McConnell. "We've played hundreds of shows - anywhere from 150 to 160 shows a year, that sort of schedule - for at least the last five years."

"I think we developed our sound right on the stage," agreed Aaron Commess, drummer for the Spin Doctors, in a separate interview. "We've never been much of a rehearsal band. We've always just kind of learned material and gone out on the stage and played it, especially in the early days. I think that's where our sound came from - just getting up there and playing."

The barefoot boogie bands fuse a variety of styles into their lengthy, free-flowing sets, drawing on varying combinations of rock, jazz, blues, country, funk or pop. All share a mutual love of improvisation.

"We all came from the same place, especially us and The Blues Traveler," Commess said. "There's a similarity in what we're about. We're both organic rock bands that play songs and stretch out a little bit."

The Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler both spent years playing the New York City club scene. The former band saw its studio debut, Pocket Full of Kryptonite, go platinum last year, and the latter's latest album, Four, debuted in October at No. 55 in Billboard.

The Virginia-based Dave Matthews Band's major label debut, Under the Table and Dreaming, also hit the charts in October at No. 34. Widespread Panic, from Athens, Ga., saw its fourth album, Ain't Life Grand, bow at No. 85 in September.

Phish, which was formed in 1983 at the University of Vermont and played its first-ever show in the Midwest at Dayton's Canal Street Tavern on March 29, 1990, debuted at No. 34 in April with Hoist, the band's fifth release. Two tracks from the album, Down With Disease and Sample in a Jar, received a fair amount of radio airplay.

"It's not like we were tearing up the charts," McConnell admitted. "We didn't sell hundreds and hundreds of thousands of copies, either, but there was some airplay, and certainly plenty of people have been introduced as each album has come out."

But many fans lept on the bandwagon long before Phish released its first two independent label releases, Junta and Lawn Boy, in the late '80s. Many Phish Heads, as some of the band's faithful refer to themselves, follow the group from city to city, keeping tabs on upcoming shows via Doniac Schvice, a bi-monthly Phish newsletter, and the Phish.Net. computer discussion group on the Internet.

"Our first fan is still with us - she actually works for us now," the keyboardist said. "It's sort of been like this all along, except much smaller in the beginning."

The first Phish Head, Amy Skelton, sells merchandising for the band.

McConnell credits "tapers," fans who record the band's concerts, for helping to build Phish's following. "It's a big part of how the word has spread over the years. People making tapes and play them for their friends."

Phish's built-in fan base played a large role in the band's signing to Elektra Records in 1991.

"We weren't particularly anxious to get signed, but a few different labels were approaching us," McConnell recalled. "We were already touring the country by that point, all the way out to the west coast, so it was certainly in our favor that we had this fan base, which most unsigned bands don't have."

The band's devoted audience, as well as those of the other groups in the genre, makes them attractive to concert promoters. "Any band that can come to the table with a large fan base is an added plus," said Dan Kemer, marketing director for Cleveland's Belkin Productions, which is promoting Thursday's performance.

Kemer said the main similarity between the Grateful Dead, whose Ohio concerts are also booked by Belkin, and younger acts such as Phish is the devotion fans have to the bands. "They travel, they have their own networks - they have their community. I don't know necessarily if it's the same community, but they definitely do have their own communities, in similar fashions."

"They allow us to do what we do," McConnell said of Phish's fans. "Without them none of this would be possible. It's a great thing. As long as they're having fun, and being careful and taking care of themselves out on the road, I think it's great."

The caravan certainly has a wealth of acts to choose from.

"There are plenty of bands out there that experiment in improvisation," McConnell acknowledged. "Especially now - there are a lot of bands out there that are playing those sorts of things.

"I think that the way that we do it - the way the four of us interact - is what's unique about our band. It's not so much someone taking a solo, or that sort of a thing, it's really much more of a group effort."