a lot of things, because we're not done."
The Phish story may not be done, but it's on pause. Last October, the
Vermont-based quartet announced that it was going on hiatus
indefinitely. By many accounts, it had been the most popular live act
in American music for the past 10 years, inheriting the movable feast
that had been the Grateful Dead's. But with huge success came a huge
organization and huge headaches.
All four bandmates --- Anastasio, keyboardist Page McConnell, bassist
Mike Gordon and drummer Jon Fishman --- agreed that if had become too
much and had to stop for a while. So, this summer, the guitarist is
touring as the leader of the Trey Anastasio Band, an octet with a
four-man horn section.
The group, which comes to HiFi Buys Ampitheatre on Thursday, fulfills
a dream that Anastasio, 36, has long nourished.
"I've always wanted a band that combines the rhythms of African bands
like those led by King Sunny Ade and Fela with the harmonies of an
American jazz big band," he explains. "As I was saying, Phish can be
a dance band, but that's just one of the many things it does. When I
formed this new band, I told the guys right from the start that it
would be first and foremost a dance band."
King Sunny Ade and Fela Anikulapo Kuti are Nigerian musicians who
adapted the traditional Yoruban music of their country to the
amplified instruments and in-your-face showmanship of American rhythm
and blues and rock. Their ensembles often included 20 or more
performers, and songs would be extended for 10, 15, or 20 minutes on
waves of polyrhythms.
"I've seen King Sunny a number of times, and I've listened to many of
Fela's records," Anastasio says. "They have two qualities I always
look for in music. No. 1, they seem to focus on providing a great
time for the audience. If you go to see King Sunny, you know you're
going to dance all night long. But, No. 2, if you just want to stand
there and check out the music, there's a lot to listen to. Each
player is playing a fairly simple pattern based on an ancient African
rhythm, but when you overlay them they fit together like a puzzle and
create those cross rhythms that are endlessly complex. Santana does
the same thing.
"Jazz big bands were doing the same thing, but in three-minute pop
songs. I think it's one of the few times in American music that art
and popular entertainment intersected. I don't consider myself a jazz
musician, but I've played a lot of jazz, and I love those harmonies.
A lot of rock bands try to break your heart by being heavy, but my
heart can be broken more easily by melody and harmony.
"So I wanted to combine that African rhythm and that jazz harmony
with the rock 'n' roll I grew up on. They say that the music you
listen between 15 and 20 is what stays with you for the rest of your
life. For me, that was '70s rock. Even if that was a rather vapid
period for rock 'n' roll, it's what I relate to. I just want to
inject some more substance into it."
The Trey Anastasio Band began as a trio when bassist Tony Markellis
and drummer Russ Lawton backed Anastasio on his first solo tour in
the spring of 1999. When the band reconvened this past winter, the
original trio was supplemented by saxophonist Dave Grippo, trumpeter
Jennifer Hartswick and trombonist Andy Moroz. For this summer's
swing, the winter's sextet became an octet with the addition of
keyboardist Ray Paczkowski and saxophonist Russell Remington. The
band keeps growing as its leader keeps hearing more parts for the new
music he's writing.
Last October, Anastasio got a chance to write out different kinds of
parts when the Vermont Youth Orchestra invited him to score a piece
for the 85-member ensemble. In fact, the day after the last Phish
show in San Francisco, he flew back to his home, just north of
Burlington, and started writing out of charts. He took two Phish
songs, "My Friend, My Friend" and "Guyute," and combined them into an
orchestral suite.
In some ways, Anastasio is using this open-ended sabbatical from
Phish as an opportunity for the musical education he always wanted.
He's learning to write for an orchestra and for a horn section. He's
learning to work with African polyrhythms and with jazz harmonies.
And he has signed up with an art-rock power trio called Oysterhead,
where he gets to play with Primus bassist Les Claypool and ex-Police
drummer Stewart Copeland.
"The Oysterhead experience was as much of a going-back-to-school
thing for me as the youth orchestra, and they were back to back,"
Anastasio says. "I recorded the Oysterhead album right after the
orchestra performance in February, and I learned very different kinds
of stuff." The Oysterhead album, "The Grand Pecking Order," will be
released in October when the trio launches its first tour.
In the meantime, Anastasio's original bandmates are catching up on
their agendas that had been put on hold during the busy Phish years.
McConnell is sifting through the band's live tapes to edit them for
release, and he's leading a piano trio. Fishman is playing with Pork
Tornado, which Anastasio describes as "a tequila-drinking bar band."
And Gordon is pursuing his long-deferred dream of becoming a
filmmaker. There's no timetable to get back together, but the door is
definitely open.
"I was getting a little frustrated," Anastasio says of the decision
to put Phish on hold, "and it had nothing to do with Page, Fish or
Mike. When a band gets that big, it begins to take over everything. I
found I wasn't writing as much music as I used to. Life had become
focused on the nonmusical aspects of running a large organization. I
felt the years were kicking by and I was missing this chance to learn
all these things.
"The luckiest thing was that all four of us felt the same way and
there were no bad feelings at all. The best thing about our success
is that it allowed us to take this break. If we hadn't taken
advantage of that opportunity, if we had just kept floating along,
that would have been the real shame."
CONCERT PREVIEW
/ The Trey Anastasio Band \
7:30 p.m. Thursday. $32.50. HiFi Buys Ampitheatre, 2002 Lakewood Way S.W.
404-249-6400, www.ticketmaster.com.
It's tonight, kiddies! Many pholks have been down on multiple night
runs because of the band's repetition of songs, but Phish always
hooks up Atlanta up phat and I know TAB will be no exception. And
yes, I do consider TAB part of Phish. It's kind of like the unified
cosmic energy and all its tributaries in that way.
In the article, when the writer says "he gets to play with Claypool
and Copeland," does anyone else interepret that as an allusion to
Les's comment during the Saenger O'head show : "I, I get to play with
Stewart fucking Copeland! You don't get to play with Stewart
Copeland!" which at the time I considered faux adulation for Stewart
whose performance I was not favorably impressed with.
By the way, Amfibian's version of "The Wedge" makes me want to go
check them out live!
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