When it comes to Phish, they can never say ‘ever’

By JOSH L. DICKEY

HAMPTON, Va. — As if anyone really believed Phish was going out like that.

It’s been nearly five years since the Vermont-based jam band dug into its vast library of songs — “For the last time ... EVER!” guitarist Trey Anastasio taunted then — at a weekend festival that was meant as a grand finale but turned into a sloppy mess of raw nerves, mixed emotions and churned mud.

May they never say “EVER!” again.

The foursome — Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell and drummer Jon Fishman — has returned for a reunion tour long awaited by its fiercely loyal fans.

And if Phish’s sold-out summer tour is any indication, a few mortgages, marriages and offspring picked up along the way haven’t slowed down Phish fans’ rabid, drop-whatever-you’re-doing-and-go ethos.

“The fan base has aged,” Shapiro said. “A lot of the people who did this in their 20s are now in their 30s. It’ll be a little different crowd, but ... for them, this was always more than just a show. It’s a part of their life.”

It was 26 years ago that Phish formed at the University of Vermont. They are known for their amorphous blend of rock, jazz, bluegrass and other styles, along with intense improvisations. No two shows are ever the same.

Though the band didn’t achieve mainstream success in the pop realm, they released seminal albums and were a hugely popular and lucrative touring act, often likened to the Grateful Dead, and had an incredibly devoted fan base.

Whether Phish retain that kind of influence — and pick up a new generation of fans, as The Grateful Dead did in the mid ’80s — will in part depend on the quality of the music (the group is already working on a new album). While Phish always could conjure moments of sheer greatness that their fans came to expect, the taut, nimble playing demanded by their challenging songbook began to slowly erode following a universally acknowledged peak performance on New Year’s Eve 1999.

At their “farewell” performance, a two-day affair at Newport State Airport in Coventry, Vt., tears flowed onstage, lyrics were forgotten or abandoned and much of the jamming was downright sloppy. Adding to the ecstacy/misery dynamic were the frayed nerves of thousands of fans who, just days after a week of freakish downpours in the area, had to abandon their cars on the highway when the washed-out parking areas closed, hike in with what little camping gear they could carry and survive 48 hours in a knee-buckling mud bog that soiled everything in sight.