This post first appeared on the Phish.net forum on July 16, 2023.
Mostly, I was responding the phenomenon of these different scenes I've known chasing each other around for so many years that it's been difficult to keep track.
1985 was the year that the Grateful Dead really turned my head around. It happened on November 1st to be exact. My entire understanding of music shifted like tectonic plates suddenly quaking after the pressure had been building for years. Almost simultaneously, a dear friend was seeing his college band Phish for the fourth or fifth time. He has quite possibly exceeded 300 shows at this point but doesn't really keep track. There's a lot to keep track of in that nearly 40-year time span.
Here's the thing, though. I didn't see Phish until 1987, one of my biggest three "touring" years with the Grateful Dead. That was a whopping 18 shows. I'd never done anything like it before in my life. Every other band was just a single whistle-stop hit, except for Phish who I saw twice that summer. The funky cassette packages a friend would later mail from Vermont starting in 1988 and 1989, complete with elaborately painted j-cards, were like telegrams from a blooming scene. Something cool was happening in Vermont.
At the same time Phish was finding their touring sea legs, the Grateful Dead were having a third or fourth wind. From a Pearl Street apartment in Burlington (where I was living that summer of 87), we watched with horrified glee as Touch of Grey played on MTV repeatedly. There were mini-docs about the "scene," appearing later in the summer as the "Day of the Dead," and their only top 40 hit ever was smearing the classic rock and pop radio airwaves. The band who I saw at Nectar's, Phish, was cool. Somehow, they fit into my then growing pantheon of neo-hippie bands such as New Potato Caboose, Living Earth, Max Creek, and so on. Phish was a little different, though.
Fast forward to 1990, my biggest touring year with the Grateful Dead, and I managed to fit four Phish shows into the schedule. By this point, I knew their music well, had my favorite tunes and listened for new ones, but my life was heading in a new and different (i.e. post-college) direction. Still, at any given point from 1991 through 1995, if I was going to see live shows, multiple live shows, I was going to have to choose between my big three: JGB, the Grateful Dead and Phish. There were countless other bands I could see locally no matter where my transience took me (D.C., Maine, New York, Colorado, Oregon), but these were the two bands I'd travel for.
All of this ended in 1995. Jerry's death was a crushing blow, and it signaled the true end of an era for me. I pretty much hung up the traveling shoes for good. The Dead were no more. Phish? I loved them, but I wasn't going to tour. Life had to move on to the business of adulting. Ratdog in 1996 was the last Dead-related show I attended outside of a small handful of Zen Trickster parties until 2001. My Phish shoes were hung up in 1998. I was done. It was done. I didn't even seek out live recordings or anything. Past was past.
OK, it's never really over, is it? In 2001, a friend convinced me to drive over a thousand miles to Asheville, NC from Rockland, ME to see two Phil and Friends concerts. How did she convince me? A FedEx package delivered crisp FOBs of Phil's April 1999 Warfield run with Trey and Page. I couldn't believe that my two camps had actually teamed up and made music together. And what music! After a rough winter at a new job in an isolated community and failing relationship, the road trip made sense. It led to a second act as a music fan I would never have thought possible.
First of all, Phil Lesh's Quintet from 2000-2003 was something to behold. No one had ever heard this catalog interpreted in this manner. At the second show I attended that spring, Phil played a nearly 45-minute Dark Star-> Blues for Allah-> Dark Star that left me speechless and wondering what it was that I had been missing. Earlier in the day, I'd stood baffled in front of someone's van, trying to i.d. the year on a particular Dead recording (I have a knack for this), only to discover that everyone was laughing at my reaction to Dark Star Orchestra (DSO). I'd never even heard of them at that point. This was a voyage of (re)discovery.
While I missed seeing Phish live during the 2.0 era, my concert life was reenergized with Phil, DSO, and some memorable Ratdog shows. The machine was up and running again. In 2006, worlds collided for me when I saw Phil Lesh and Friends at Great Woods. The Gordon Russo Anastasio Benevento (G.R.A.B.) collab opened, and it was a rocketship experience for me. Where had this been in my life? Missing, it turns out. Still, I very much enjoyed hearing Mike (one first set sit in) and Trey (the entire second set) jam with Phil. It was vindication, in many ways. While some Deadhead friends turned up their noses, I was enamored. This felt like a very special moment in time.
When Phish reunited in 2009, I was equally stoked by the possibilities signaled by the latest iteration of the Dead. What had been a one off, Terrapin Station: a Grateful Dead Family Reunion in 2002, led to a tour of the Dead in summer 2003 and 2004. The 2008 election brought the "Core Four" back together in support of Obama. This iteration was to add Warren Haynes and start touring in April of 2009 on the heels of Phish's triumphal return at Hampton earlier in March. The worlds were overlapping and knitting together once again.
The Dead were a bit disappointing in 2009, Warren Haynes unable to propel the momentum forward for me. No matter, I had some Phishin' to do that summer! What a blessing to have had them back, I thought, just as the Dead grow stale. Then, in a move I would never have anticipated, Bobby and Phil partnered up with John Kadlecik, the sanguine soul of Dark Star Orchestra, and Joe Russo, the propulsive element behind G.R.A.B. Worlds were colliding again, and now summer plans were knit around choosing between a Grateful Dead act and Phish. Wait, what century is this?
Summers of 2010, 2011, and 2012 were busy ones, and the show balance fell in a band's favor only because it fit with my schedule. Thus, summer 2010 saw a ton of Furthur with a little Phish in the fall; summer 2011 featured a little bit of both since I was preoccupied with moving; summer 2012 found me hitting four for each band, weaving their schedules together for a convenient Northeast loop. Ratdog shows, when they toured, were a seasoning that had been sprinkled in ever since I returned to the fold in '01. 2007 was a particularly strong year for Bobby (re: Steve Kimock guested), and it came at a time when neither Phish or Phil were out there much (OK, except Mountain Jam).
Somewhere along the line, and I'm not exactly sure where or when or how, Phish's gravity had begun to pull a bit harder. My focus for 2013 was zeroed in on Phish, and the Furthur shows just didn't fit my schedule. Fall in Worcester was nice, and padded enough summer that late in the year to get me through winter. Still, that summer, I was having to choose between my beloved camps. Not easy choices, choices I had been making since about 1987 or 1990, and here it was 2013. The following year, I was vaguely aware of a Ratdog tour, but Randall's and Chicago all but erased that possibility, and I was satisfied. Randall's was as close as I'd been to a Phish fest yet, and I was loving it.
Nothing prepared me for 2015, though. Worlds collided again. Trey would be playing in Fare Thee Well? Rumors had been flying in late 2014. Steve Kimock. John Kadlecik. Mark Karan. I've forgotten the others by now, but there were others. Trey? All right. My mind immediately went back to those April 1999 discs I'd received way back when, and I was very excited at the prospects for what this would bring. So, it seemed, was the rest of Boomer and Gen X America. Purportedly, a fairy at the GDTS TOO got us in, and for the first time in a long time, I was having "that" sort of anticipation. I mean . . . come on. Fifty years? And one of Phish is at the helm?
Summer of 2015 is a bit of a blur, now. It just happened to coincide with my introduction to medical cannabis. It just so happened that I couldn't resist Magnaball. The biggest Grateful Dead even in ages, and a Phish festival? It was a lot to process, and I don't think I have fully processed it except to say this: I thought that was it. Fare Thee Well was a goodbye, right? Adios? Well, by fall of 2015, Bobby and the drummers were already making up new vows, enlisting John Mayer, and that brings the audience to 2023.
For the past eight summers, there has been an audience tug of war between Dead & Company and Phish for some. Searching Phish.net for Dad & Slow (Dead & Co.) one can see that complaints and bickering debates over who is more worthy of hard earned cash have been raging the entire time. Musical debates aside, no one can argue that these two cultures haven't grown exponentially. Phish has been selling Dick's out the entire time, while Dead & Co. fill stadiums and sheds with their multigenerational tribe.
In 1985, Twenty Years So Far seemed like a long time for any rock band, let alone the notoriously dissolute Grateful Dead. In 2023, it's a head scratcher still how all of this continues. Who knows what Bobby & Company will bring to the world musically over the next few summers, but it won't be as monumental as this "Last Tour" has been. The Shakedown Streets, mad vending and carnival atmosphere will subside more than likely. The silky smooth stadium sound system Slipknots will be a recorded memory. The tough choice some were making this weekend–Alpharetta for Phish or San Fran for Dead & Co.–won't exist. Period.
There will be other iterations of Phil and Friends, but let's be clear: Lesh is 83. Bob will tour his Wolf Pack, but at 75, it's hard to imagine how much this will capture the Deadhead nation's imagination. There will always be Dead cover bands, too, but they cannot possibly capture the weight of what I'm considering, here: the Grateful Dead and Phish scenes have interwoven and overlaid themselves in my life for almost forty years.
That's a lot of joy through music; let's "keep the mother rollin' / One more time."
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