From Phish, food for thought on breakup August 8, 2004 - Philadelphia Inquirer By Tom Moon Even in the process of breaking up, Phish is doing things differently. The Vermont powerhouse - which plays its last traditional venue Thursday at the long-sold-out Tweeter Center, and bids farewell next weekend with the two-day Coventry festival in its home state - isn't exiting amid the usual rock-and-roll acrimony. There's no bad blood, no name-calling, not even those nagging "creative differences." The jam band that built its reputation on thrilling group interplay, and became massively popular with little attention from radio or MTV, is presenting a typically cohesive front. "People are having a hard time with this, I think, because there's no ugliness," guitarist Trey Anastasio said last week from the Barn, the recording studio adjacent to his house. "But it's the truth. We get along incredibly well, we have the deepest connection as friends... . Our lives changed, we're moving on. It's more than OK for everybody." A big reason for the split, according to Anastasio: The demands of keeping Phish, the giant organization, afloat were preventing Phish, the musical entity, from evolving. "It was starting to get to be too much for all four of us to handle," Anastasio, 39, says, sighing wearily as he outlines the discussions that led to Phish's May 25 retirement announcement. "I mean, I have two young daughters; my schedule is different now... . "I want to be doing music, writing music. Phish became bigger than music, a lot bigger," he says. "If I only have so much time, I'm not going to spend it sitting in the conference room talking about the merchandise company." Anastasio said the band - which began at the University of Vermont in 1983 when he, drummer Jon Fishman, and bassist Mike Gordon were freshmen - tried several times over the years to circumvent the business side. Its members found some relief in a 22-month hiatus that ended in December 2002, during which Anastasio put together a solo project. But Phish couldn't escape its reputation as a legendary concert attraction. Its shows weren't just two-hour performances: For many fans, they stretched into days-long parties that invaded arena parking lots and took over whole city blocks. Employees who managed the logistics of the mammoth events provided not only sound and lighting, but also services such as health care and security for more than 20,000 kids a night. Next weekend's farewell - at which Phish, the sole attraction, will play three sets a day - is even bigger: The band's seventh "city-size" festival has sold 70,000 tickets and will begin admitting campers to a 600-acre airport site near the Canadian border at noon Thursday. "The bigger organization you build, the more expectations you have," Anastasio observes. "We built a big box for ourselves, and no matter how much you try, and we tried as hard as four people can, you can only break out so far." Two of Anastasio's cohorts, Fishman and keyboardist Page McConnell, are also married and have kids. Anastasio says that the lifestyle changes that come with parenthood were a factor in the decision to disband, but that the motive was primarily musical: "There's other people in the world to play music with, all of us realize that." He mentions Gordon's recent tour with guitarist Leo Kottke: "Page and I went to see him, and we felt so happy hearing him playing his [heart out], finding a way to interject bass into music that exists just fine on its own. It was like, 'There's Mike, growing right in front of us.' You have a dear friend of yours, you want to see that." Asked about what happens next for him, Anastasio rattles off a list of dream projects. Most are along the line of his recent instrumental release Seis de Mayo, experiments with larger ensembles such as the orchestra he conducted at Tennessee's Bonnaroo festival in June. He would also like to explore what happens if he adds more horns to his 10-piece band. The Bonnaroo experience, which found Anastasio conducting the Phish favorite "Guyute" and others, was a mindblower, he says. "I never heard anything remotely as good," he recalls. "Just from a sound level. You get on the podium and the violins are at your left ear, the cellos on your right, the brass at 2 o'clock, and they're all aiming right at your head. Every musician is incredibly tuned into your body language as a conductor. If you tense up your shoulders, they play tense... . Man, I learned a lot doing that, even if it isn't a direction to go in." All of Anastasio's options have one thing in common: They're designed to operate on a less glitzy scale. "That's the thing driving me the most: the effect that all the bigness that went along with Phish had on the music... . I'm thinking sometimes the kind of music you write could be limited by the expectations and sheer size of the crowd. I want to strip those things away." He mentions a 2002 show he and his solo-project band taped at a Philadelphia recording studio for WXPN-FM's syndicated radio program World Cafe. They came out and discovered that the audience was sitting down in the small room. "I like having people dance, don't get me wrong, but this was an entirely different kind of creative moment. You could feel that people were listening. We started off with quiet, hymnlike compositions that I usually have a hard time fitting into the show. And as we went along, playing these pieces with no drums or anything, the lightbulb went off: Harmony really moves me, and harmony is pretty much absent from popular music." He began to think about Duke Ellington and what he did with his compositions of the 1930s: He added a layer of harmonic sophistication to simple rhythmic music. "I spent so much time standing on stage trying to find ways to make a concert explosive," says Anastasio, who has Debussy, Nigerian juju pioneer King Sunny Ade, and Ellington in his current listening rotation. "I'd like to keep the grooves, the framework people need to be able to let loose, but then add more rich harmony." Anastasio expects to record and tour with his own band. But after taking part in the Dave Matthews and Friends tour last winter, he's decided to avoid longterm band commitments. "I don't want to get remarried," he says. His plan is to write and record all kinds of things and worry about how they fare in the marketplace later - to make decisions the way Phish did early on, when it dedicated entire performances to famous rock albums (the Beatles' White Album was one favorite) and developed three-day festivals as a way to play longer sets on a schedule that suited them as musicians. "In the context of Phish, there was more worrying about [the marketplace] than maybe was necessary," Anastasio says. "It's nobody's fault, just the way things go. Being a creative artist means doing the work and letting the audience catch up." He says that most of the time, he's happy with the foursome's decision to dissolve. But there have been trying moments - returning to venues that hold memories, encountering fans who don't quite understand the reasoning, making jokes onstage that only a Phishhead would understand. Since the announcement, the shows have taken on new significance, Anastasio observes. "You want to soak every second of it in, because you know it'll never feel like this again. "I find myself looking at the audience, trying to take snapshots in my mind, and hearing things differently. Lyrics I always thought were gibberish are starting to take on meanings. The other night, [a show in Wisconsin] was really emotional: The last song was 'Possum,' and the last line we sang was 'Your end is the road,' and all of a sudden that line finally said something to me." He and the others have all had moments of doubt, he says. "Today I'm in the Barn working on new stuff, so that's been great. But yesterday was different: I probably spent two hours comatose with depression. At one point I made myself a vodka tonic and walked around the lawn going 'What am I, the stupidest guy in the universe for putting an end to a union that's still thriving creatively?' " "I have no idea if Phish will be remembered at all, or how," he continues. "All I know is we had these moments on stage that were really elevated, and I'll always remember those. It happened really frequently, at least once a night, and that's unusual. A source of the scariness about the whole thing is the thought that I'm not going to be able to get to that place again." Anastasio pauses, then reels himself back in. "That's the chance we're taking. Change happens. You've got to keep looking for the next sound, the next musical moment." Article Copyright © 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer