There's something Phishy about jazz-jam band Vida Blue January 4, 2004 - St Petersburg Herald Tribune By Philip Booth Fortuitous happenstance, if you will, might be the best way to describe Phish's best music: Its most impressive tunes are born of jams, and the band's most inspired improvisations probably constitute its greatest hits. Vida Blue's "The Illustrated Band," the second album from Phish keyboardist Page McConnell's side project, was similarly unplanned. The group's open-ended collaboration with Afro-Cuban sensations the Spam Allstars, who mix Latin rhythms with turntable sounds, is the result of McConnell's vacation in Miami last March. He sat in with the group at nightclubs in South Beach and Little Havana. DJ Le Spam (Andrew Yeomanson) subsequently got onstage with McConnell at Vida Blue shows in Philadelphia and Providence, R.I. Two weeks later, the Allstars joined Vida Blue at Middle Ear (the Bee Gees' studio) in Miami, McConnell said from his home in Burlington, Vt. "It was quite a fast track," he said. At its core, Vida Blue's sophomore disc, considerably less song-oriented than the group's self-titled debut album, is a collection of jams, ranging from the brief "You Don't Know" to the sprawling "Little Miami (Reputation)," which runs nearly 21 minutes. The pieces reportedly were edited down from much longer tracks. "This was more or less a jam session, in a lot of ways," McConnell said. "I felt like the stuff that was most compelling was the improvisations, and that there was some good stuff there. This album is more of a party. (The debut) was a bit more introspective, perhaps." The collaboration seemed like a natural to McConnell. The keyboardist and his bandmates, bassist Oteil Burbridge (the Allman Brothers, Aquarium Rescue Unit) and drummer Russell Batiste (the Funky Meters, Papa Grows Funk) needed something readily provided by Yeomanson, flutist Mercedes Abal, percussionists Lazaro Alfonso and Tomas Diaz, saxophonist A.J Hill and trombonist John Speck. "I had been drawn to (Afro-Cuban rhythms), but it wasn't necessarily like, 'I've got to put together a Latin Afro-jazz band,'" McConnell said. "They don't have a rhythm section. We don't have horns." McConnell assembled Vida Blue, named for the ace Oakland A's southpaw pitcher, in September 2001, a year after Phish went on hiatus. The keyboardist was the last of his Phish bandmates to embark on a side project. "I was kind of relaxing and unwinding from 17 years on the road," he said. "I began to feel like, one, I definitely wanted to get back together with Phish, and also that I wanted to have done something concrete … during the hiatus." "I'd never been a bandleader before," he added. "Even in Phish, it's a very democratic process, where anybody can be leading the fray at any given moment, or any two people can be leading the fray at any given moment. It's its own thing. Everything about this (Vida Blue) I had to do -- write the songs, produce the album, design the T-shirts. It was both fun and educational. "I really had a pretty good idea (that Phish would reunite). Heading into it, I felt like it should be at least a two-year break. … But nothing was definite. And at the time, it was nice to have it be unknown." Vida Blue will be joined onstage by the Spam Allstars for Sunday's show at Jannus Landing. The concert, which also features the Jazz Mandolin Project with Phish drummer Jon Fishman, will take place on the heels of a four-show Phish run in Miami. McConnell's day-job band remains as exciting as ever, he said. "As much as we are in a scene, we don't think of ourselves as being in the scene in a conscious sort of way," he said. "When we started playing in '83, the sorts of bands that were playing were the MTV bands of the early '80s, like Culture Club. After about 10 years or so, grunge came along. So much has happened over the years, and now there's a jam-band scene. "But we're still kind of doing our own thing." Article Copyright © 2004 St Petersburg Herald Tribune