No Phish Today April 12, 2001 - The Hartford Courant by Roger Catlin Phish members knew the hiatus of their popular band was having an effect on the larger culture when references started popping up in amazing places. "Now there's a skit on `Saturday Night Live' about it," says member Mike Gordon. "These kids are in a dorm room doing bong hits, and one of them wakes up and says: `Phish is breaking up!' and passes out again." The thing about the sketch that most tickled the bass player in Phish? "The name of the dog in the skit is `The Bass Player in Phish'." When the Vermont jam band decided to put down its instruments after its fall tour last year, it was something that had been a long time coming. "We had no breaks longer than a few months for 17 years," Gordon says from Vermont. "It was time for the hiatus." The band's touring gave it a cult following and no small modicum of success: Phish grossed $21.4 million in 42 shows in 29 cities last year alone. But with no live shows on the horizon, some fans, who had planned their lives around the touring schedule, felt a kind of loss. "It's interesting. I do meet people who are genuinely feeling something's missing," Gordon says. "They get a certain spark from planning to go out on tour." But there are alternatives for those tie-die-hards: All four Phish members have been out separately playing the kind of clubs the band hadn't played in years. Just this weekend, Phans can go to two local shows by Phish members. Tonight, Pork Tornado, drummer Jon Fishman's side project with Dan Archer, Phil Abai, Aaron Hershy and Joe Moore, plays Toad's Place in New Haven (where Amfibian, a band fronted by Phish lyricist Tom Marshall, also plays on May 4). Friday, Gordon will appear at the Webster Theatre in Hartford to present his first full-length film, "Outside Out," and possibly play music. "The way that we're billing it, we're showing the film, doing a Q&A, and then Bruce Hampton's band will be playing," Gordon says. He says he may or may not join the band at the set of four gigs this week, but if he does, he will "not necessarily be playing the bass." That sort of experimentation is the point of his film, the story of a teenager who wants to learn the guitar, although lessons from Hampton, who appears as himself, teach him to "unlearn" the guitar in a method of "out"-struction. "Bruce Hampton and I had almost the same idea at the same time and called each other," Gordon says of the former leader of the Aquarium Rescue Unit and Fiji Mariners. "We both wanted to make a mock instructional video. That's what it was going to be initially, but I wanted it to be more of a story. Although the story part is not necessarily where the charm lies." Gordon, who shot the film in 1995 and '97 between band projects, finally got it edited in 1999. A film graduate from the University of Vermont, Gordon's best-known films to date have been band music videos, such as Phish's "Down With Disease" in 1994. "I decided I would give my 20s to concentrating solely on my music career," he says. "Once it got sort of settled, I spent a little time branching out." "Outside Out" has already been a success at some film festivals; it won an audience award at the South by Southwest Film Conference in Austin, Texas, last year. But it hasn't been seen as much as last year's Phish documentary, "Bittersweet Hotel," Gordon says, because potential distributors "thought it was too weird." And, he adds, "It is a little bit left of center, but it does have a lot of charm for people who appreciate its sensibility. It also has aspects that show, uh, my newness to the medium." Besides showing off "Outside Out," Gordon's been working on some other projects during the hiatus - " some film, and some music." He says he doesn't worry about the band's divergent roads "because it's so much fun," he says. "People ask me if I miss it," he says of Phish. "And while I'm glad we're talking about doing it again, there are so many other things to do in the meantime." Most prominently, guitarist Trey Anastasio, currently being seen in the IMAX film "All Access" in a jam with B.B. King in the Roots, appeared in a concert with the Vermont Youth Orchestra in February and played an 11-date tour with a band that included bassist Tony Markellis, drummer Russ Lawton, Dave Grippo on saxophone, Jennifer Hartswick on trumpet, and Andy Moroz on trombone. "He's going to do another tour with that band in bigger places this summer," Gordon says. "Then after doing his piece for the Vermont Youth Orchestra, the Vermont Orchestra wants to write a piece with him." Currently, though, Anastasio is in his home studio with Primus bassist Les Claypool and drummer Stewart Copeland, formerly of the Police. The trio, called Oysterhead, had its unveiling last year in a show in New Orleans. Anastasio has also popped up here and there with bands - Strangefolk in Syracuse, and the Dude of Life in Winooski, Vt. Gordon himself has sat in with Anastasio and, also in Winooski, at a Merl Saunders show. The strangest collaboration during the hiatus was Fishman playing a vacuum cleaner behind a scatting Kurt Vonnegut in a Northampton Arts Council event at the Academy of Music in February. Page McConnell is the only one of the four who hasn't been popping up in concert lately. But the Phish keyboardist has been recording in Los Angeles with the rock duo Tenacious D. Phish is talking about reuniting at the end of this year to begin working on new songs. Even so, Gordon says, as if not to give Phans a false hope, "We won't be touring for a good long while."