Solidifying the sound August 9, 2004 - Burlington Free Press By Sally Pollak and Brent Hallenbeck Band creates own brand of jam rock as Nectar's becomes center of Phish's growing universe With Phish keyboardist Page McConnell on the way in, guitarist Jeff Holdsworth was on his way out. Lead guitarist Trey Anastasio remembers a band practice in the King Street house when he brought in sheet music for "Harry Hood." Mike Gordon, Jon Fishman and McConnell wanted to see it; Holdsworth wanted no part of it. "It was a defining moment," Anastasio said in "The Phish Book." "We knew something would have to give. "I'd always felt something significant could come out of the band, but I think Jeff considered it more of a fun weekend thing. So when I added learning charts to the equation, he was like, 'Forget it.'" Holdsworth found religion, graduated from the University of Vermont in 1986 and left Phish's sphere. Gordon found religion, too, of a sort. He had what he called his "peak musical experience of all time" at a show in the cafeteria of Goddard College. In "The Phish Book," he described how he got so high before the second set he could barely stand: "We turned off all the lights, and I started jumping up and down with the beat, not caring how I looked for perhaps the first time in my entire life. As we jammed, I felt more spiritually in tune than ever before. I felt at one with the buildings, wall outlets, chandeliers, and these people I loved. As we kept jamming, my ecstatic state didn't diminish no matter how I played or what style we played in. "The whole experience was like viewing a huge well-lit room after having been blind. I felt completely illuminated." The music, steeped in improvisation, is the band's own brand of fusion rock: Phish plays jazz-influenced rock 'n' roll, but also straight-ahead rock. The band is tight, the players focused. Phish prides itself on its work ethic and is not afraid to let an improvisation go on for 10 or 15 minutes, confident that it will lead to a new and higher place. Anastasio and drummer Fishman joined McConnell at Goddard as students in 1986. McConnell earned $50 each for luring his buddies to the perpetually struggling college. Anastasio, searching for a music teacher, heard about composer Ernest Stires of Cornwall. He showed up at Stires' home and said he wanted to learn about composition. Stires said OK, that he'd work with Anastasio -- talking about music, listening to music, analyzing eight bars, thinking about composer Igor Stravinsky -- as long as it was worthwhile. "It's a love-God thing for me," Stires said. "It's not for money." Stires became Anastasio's mentor, and Anastasio began passing on his new musical knowledge to his band mates. Gordon noted how Stires often quoted Stravinsky: "'Run from beauty, and it will follow.'" "I said, 'Let's write some music,' and he took off," Stires said. "He's a very quick study. He needed to have some doors opened." Stires, now 78, said he has listened to Phish for anything with "inventiveness and musical quality." "Trey wouldn't be so enormously successful unless he was hitting some major vein in the psyche of his generation, now a younger generation," Stires said. "What he's hitting is a mystery to me." Making gravy The Phish sound was coming together. So were its fans. Phish drew 169 people to an Oct. 15, 1986, show at Hunt's, then Burlington's top music club. Within a year, Nectar Rorris, who ran the bar and eatery bearing his name until he sold it last year, booked Phish for regular Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night gigs. Unlike most Burlington club owners, Rorris didn't charge a cover; he knew the band's growing following would fill the place on nights that were normally lean for live music. "When you see people followed more and more, you know the band is good," Rorris said. "I noticed the drawing card they had." Already, it was a two-way street between Phish and its fans. The band, too, was benefiting from the Nectar's crowd. "Vermont has had a huge impact on what our music is like," Anastasio told The Boston Globe Magazine. "It's slow-moving, and people are really down to earth. It's not a confrontational culture up here. When we used to play at Nectar's, it was so laid-back. We'd play three sets a night, just feeling our way as a band. It was such a mellow atmosphere that we were free to stretch out and experiment, to attempt outrageous things and make utter fools of ourselves." Phish's music radiated from the stage where Anastasio's dog, Marley, hid under the piano. The crowds grew larger and larger. And Phish kept changing its material. Phish's performances became distinct events; fans could come night after night and hear or see something new. The band's first scheduled road trip to Colorado turned out to be a bust -- Phish was taken by a sham promoter -- so the group found itself back at Nectar's. They had talked up the trip, told all their friends and showed up at Nectar's "with our tail between our legs," Anastasio said. They hung a poster of the Rockies on the barroom wall and played on. "There wouldn't be a Phish without Nectar's," Anastasio said. "It really all started there. ... The vibe and the way the stage was set up: For us, that was the ultimate goal." Nectar's was the center of the universe. Band members came in for coffee, to play pinball, read the newspaper and hang out. "This was like a home to them," Rorris said. It was during a break at Nectar's, over a shot of tequila, that Anastasio met the woman who would become his wife, Sue Statesir. "Our whole social life revolved around the sidewalk in front of Nectar's," Anastasio said. "Nectar was like the surrogate father." They weren't looking beyond the revolving neon Nectar's sign on Main Street. "If there's one thing I can say for all four us, it's just that we were enjoying every minute of it so much we didn't even have time to think about a plan," Anastasio said. "Playing at Nectar's, we weren't thinking, 'We'll play here, and this will be a stepping stone to anything.' That grew out of being a party band. It seemed like it was always a party." Information for this story comes from recent and archival material from The Burlington Free Press, and from these sources: "The Phish Book" by Richard Gehr and Phish; "The Phish Companion" by The Mockingbird Foundation; phish.com; "The Phish Phenomenon," The Boston Globe Magazine, May 7, 1995; "The Final Word on Phish," The New York Times, June 13, 2004; the public television documentary " 'IT:' A Phish Concert Special"; and "Phish Split," Rolling Stone magazine, June 24, 2004. Article Copyright © 2004 Burlington Free Press