Swimming against the tide May 1, 1996 - Guitar Player by Matt Resnicoff Phish's Trey Anastasio braves new waters. Solo albums by leaders of well-known groups tend to be hollow replications of those bands, without the ballast that grows over time between musicians with a common goal. But since Trey Anastasio is just as likely to lead Phish through a hoe-down as a Dizzy Gillespie tune, his first serious independent project was bound to be as unpredictable as one of Phish's remarkably popular concerts, where spontaneous, anarchic jamming is the main attraction. Between those appearances, Phish has unleashed its good-natured backbeat on albums featuring cameos by everyone from country fiddler Alison Krauss to the ultra-funky Tower Of Power horn section. Like no other pop phenomenon, Phish spawns in all rivers. Trey has temporarily expanded his ambitions into a collective recording called Surrender To The Air. He invited some esteemed associates to New York's Electric Lady Studios, set up instruments, and let his band-for-two-days jam their way around some very loose transitions he'd composed while driving near his Vermont home. Surrender is banshee jazz in the grand Sun Ra tradition--trumpeter Michael Ray and saxophonist Marshall Allen served for years as colorists in that space-jazz titan's kaleidoscope--and finds Trey and Phish drummer/namesake Jon Fishman applying their versatile sensors to a long, dissolving suite of free improvisation. New York guitar renegade Marc Ribot shudders his whammy through one of the four tunes on the disc sharing the title "And Furthermore," and the two guitarists twang-thrash among a host of adventurers, including keyboardist John Medeski of the hipster funk-jazz trio Medeski, Martin & Wood, and the Aquarium Rescue Unit's Kofi and Oteil Burbridge. There are inevitable changes afoot for Phish--Trey, bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell, and Fishman--as they head into an upstate New York barn to record their next record, one Trey promises will sound nothing like Surrender. It should sound even less like Hoist, the 1994 Elektra disc that signaled the onset of a band's most feared disorder: record company dictum. "We've hit a wall," he says. "My reaching the point of wanting to put out this album is symbolic of where all four of us are. We fell into a trap of forgetting where the bare truth is. We've crossed that line--now we're moving toward a void, ready to jump." Is Surrender To The Air an ancillary element in the Phish universe? You might say that. On another level, I definitely don't look at it as a side anything in terms of music. Phish has been my main focus for 12 years, and this album is an idea I've had in the back of my head for a long time and was really excited to finally get to do. I feel as good about it as anything I've ever been involved in. Retailers will have a blast deciding what bin to put it in, since it turned out to have a real Sun Ra vibe. Well, I didn't think of it as the Trey Anastasio album. I mean, it was my idea, but once we were all in the room, I was thinking of a group thing, and that's what it turned out to be. I like collaborating in general, and it's not going to have my name on it. It's just going to say Surrender To The Air. It's hard to say if it'll be under jazz or rock, but for me, this was just a pure...it doesn't really say anything on the cover! There's a picture of each person who played, their names, and that's it. But that's it. But that's why I feel good about it: There was no commercial intent--or any intent--other than giving the world some really cool music. You'd played with Michael Ray before, on Phish's live "Gumbo." And I played with his group Cosmic Crew, and I bumped into all these people at different times. For a couple or years now I'd been thinking it just seems like the perfect combination of personalities to get together in a room. Before anybody got there, I set up instruments, amps, and a couple of synths all over the room, put a Rhodes in the middle, and got everyone in a circle, no headphones or anything. There was leaking all over the place. I thought, old jazz records were recorded that way, and if somebody played a clam, you left it in. Ribot always has such a distinct presence, and you're playing so uncharacteristically, it's tough to tell where one guitarist starts and one ends. Right--I wanted that. I feel it's the best playing I've done, and on a lot of it people won't even know it's guitar. I like that about Marc, like when he plays with a nail file. I get sick of cliches. But what was really in my mind was, "How can I be super supportive?" That's defining characteristic of everyone on this. They play in an egoless way, which gives it a King Sunny Ade thing--everyone's bits create a greater whole. There's stuff on there you don't realize is keyboard. Medeski's got his own style on organ, and Michael plays trumpet like no one I've ever heard. Marshall, obviously, is completely in his own league, the furthest thing from a cliche. That's something Sun Ra used to say to his band: "Develop your own style or you'll be replaced by a button." Is that bizarre, percussive melody on "Down" played on guitar? That's Ribot. And you've got that envelope filter on the bass. Yeah. He had a bass amp he had never played through with a built-in envelope filter, which he requested beforehand. Ribot was just using the house Fender, and I was using a Vox AC30, with a wah-wah, a Whammy Pedal, and delay for the long weeeooo sounds. But that Whammy Pedal--oh! Some players are afraid of getting one because they'd be tempted to get lost in it. You can, but at the same time, it's the first effect in a long time that's so versatile even guitar players probably won't recognize when another player is using one. You can do anything with it. All that dipping whammy-bar sound is the Whammy, and you can set it for one of the "harmonize" functions, turn the pedal halfway up, and play chords that sound like hell. [Laughs.] It's the best invention since the wah-wah. There's a distinct Jack Johnson vibe on the album, especially "We Deflate." I agree with you, that reminds me of Miles Davis' Jack Johnson too. That might be the heavy rhythm guitar I was playing there. I love that album. It's one of my three or four favorites of all time. [Gasps.] I've listened to it 5,000 times. John McLaughlin--I think it's the best thing he ever played. But I was happy that a lot of this came out like nothing I'd heard before, though there are obvious nods, such as that particular section. It's funny, the first thing I did when I was done and we mastered it, I listened to it and then popped on Bitches Brew to see if I had inadvertently come out with something that sounded like that album. I'm not putting it in the same category. [Laughs.] I just wanted to see. This has a more symphonic-meets-jazz vibe. Even when you hope to go in a conceptual direction no one's ever explored, you've still always got some past reference point for the outer limits. You must have to spend a lot of time at this before you find a direction that's truly yours. Absolutely. You could answer this better than me, but I think it succeeded in going in a different direction. There are things I like about different styles of music, and a lot of people have criticized me and Phish: "How come you do bluegrass for a section of your show, and then fugues, and then Jack Johnson jazz? Make up your mind!" I've never been able to. With this, I was trying to put the intense limits of each thing into a piece where nothing repeats. That blast at the beginning goes into the funky "We Deflate," then a Latin section, then the duet with Ribot, then meterless piano with guitars in the background. Then we hit a buildup that's supposed to be absolute extremes--from breathy horns all the way up to sickness--into funk-rock, which, again, is something you hadn't heard yet. And then it goes into a fast swing and ends with the bluesy bass line. At the same time, most of it was free jazz. These are the greatest players. I was freaking out. I can't tell them what to play, but I can hopefully take that playing and put it within little boundaries, into a digestible form. And I also had this thing about talking about it--I don't like talking about music, even though I'm blabbering now. Did you ever see Sun Ra? Yeah. What can I say to Marshall Allen? If I practiced my whole life and could get even into the bottom end of the universe that he's at the top of, that would be a life accomplishment. He's the closest thing walking the earth right now to being able to pour out pure emotion. There were times when he was all the way across the room, and I'd be playing and all of a sudden I'd hear somebody whisper something into my ear--and I'd turn around, and it was him. It's hard to explain...[Exhales.] I learned so much from this--it was incredible. Medeski, Martin & Wood played with Phish recently, and someone at one show told me that your audience didn't quite know what to make of it. Was it New Orleans? Yes. I didn't know what to make of it in New Orleans! [Laughs.] It was an experiment. In Austin we had this incredible 25-minute jam with both bands, with this screaming peak where everyone was running around the stage at a full sprint and shit was buzzing all over the place. And then New Orleans, about three days later, we decided to go for it again and literally start from nothing, which is the big risk. But between both bands, we'd rather take a risk than not. I don't generally like saying this because I don't like to stomp on someone's experience--and people did come up and say New Orleans was an incredible experience--but I personally didn't like it. [Laughs.] I liked that we were on a limb. I'd much rather jump off the cliff than walk on the path, and we jumped. But I thought we were sucking. It's nice to be able to take a chance, at least in principle. Well, we lived through the '80s and saw so many bands go in a direction where no one took a risk. Our philosophy has always been "more risk." We played at the Spectrum in Philadelphia and just went out and started playing each other's instruments. [Laughs.] Page was playing bass--he's never played bass in his life--Fish was playing keyboards, Mike was playing guitar, and I was on drums. In front of 20,000 people, we were just up there fucking around. You have the confidence that you won't get rotten vegetables thrown at you because the audience shares your confidence. They throw rotten vegetables at us if we don't do that. It's the weirdest thing, but it's great for us. If we play the same song two nights in a row, they'd throw vegetables. This New Year's we did two nights in Worcester, Massachusetts, and two at Madison Square Garden and didn't repeat a single song any of the four nights. And that's what they want! When something happens that has never happened before, the greatest goal of our audience is to have been there to see it. There's a popular idea about rock being so free lately, but even in its freedom there are a lot of strict requirements. You know what creates those requirements? It comes back to money. 'Cause what do you have to lose? What is the impetus behind wanting to do a good show? So people will say you're good and you make a lot of money? But if your impetus is joy, what brings that? I don't think Donald Trump is more full of joy than Sun Ra, who was the most joyful person I've ever seen; he lived in an apartment in Philadelphia with his band and wrote music until he died. Michael tells stories about being up at six in the morning rehearsing--for what? There'd be more people in the band than in the audience. The only reason is that music is a spiritual language. So you always have to be evaluating your intent: Am I trying to impress or live? The first time you set up in the basement and everybody sucks and it doesn't matter--why should it ever be any different? People start feeling, "Now we're successful, we need to prove something," but that's crap. You became successful because people heard joy in your music. The early New York punk scene--all it was about was truth and energy. Then it became fashion, and money and popularity became involved: "If I do this onstage I'll gain something, because it worked with this other musician." Then you're off the track. But Sun Ra or Miles or Zappa went strong until the end because they remained true and heard voices of what you're supposed to be. Which probably informed your decision to release Surrender. But you realize, of course, that if Sun Ra himself were around to propose this same music to a major label, he'd be laughed out of Rockefeller Plaza. Absolutely right. But the impetus is the same. I hadn't even thought of putting it out--I thought to jam. Being the spiritual language, there's a lot more truth in it than in English, and if 90% of it is just going for it, you'll end up with truth recorded, and that's the most valuable thing. The first thing I thought when I walked out of the studio was, "Man, if I could just convince radio programmers to play this. The stuff they're playing isn't working; the world is fucked up. If they'd just play this for people going to work in the morning, they'd save the world." For more on Trey's gear, technique, and background, check out the August '92 and September '94 GP. © 1996 Miller Freeman Publications