Interview: Burlington Vox article (interview) - May 10, 1995

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Posted to rec.music.phish by kim@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Kim Hannula) 12 May 1995.

Burlington Vox article 5/10

Yes, it's yet another pre-DLCD (that's Double Live CD, sorry to spoil the fun but it's _my_ acronym!) article on Phish, this time from VOX, Burlington's new free weekly music & art rag. Typed without any permission whatsoever. Errors are theirs (pay for tapes? regular schedule of Schvice mailings?), typos are mine.

This is the longer of two posts. The second one will be a short box blurb characterizing the band members.

Fresh Phish: vermont's musical catch of the decade talks tunes, road life and making millions
by pamela polston

It's brunch time at the Country Pantry in Fairfax and the non-smoking section is looking like old home week. About a dozen senior citizens are exchanging greetings, remarking on the spring weather and recalling shat was good last time they ate here. One 70-ish woman cheerfully notes how much she's enjoying her retirement. Not a white head turns when three rather famous young men enter the room and joing me at my corner table.

With shaggy hairdos and unremarkable clothes, Trey Anastasio, Page McConnell and Mike Gordon could be just about anyone from this isolated neck of the woods. But they're not. They're three-quarters of Phish, the biggest musical penomenon ever to emerge from Vermont. A decade after they bagan playing together as college chums, Phish is enjoying the kind of success that hundreds of bands across the country -- including a fair number in Burlington -- dream about. From their hometown base of Nectar's, the band grew slowly and organically, gradually amassing fervent fans nationwide without benefit of a recording contract - though that cams later-- much less hit singles or exposure on MTV.

Cult status pays off. In 1994 alone Phish reportedly grossed #10.3 million from concerts coast to coast -- though only a fraction of that reached their pockets, McConnell notes. Their last tour culminated in an appearance on "David Letterman" and sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden and the Boston Garden. _Hoist_ sold a quarter-million copies, and four earlies albums continue to sell respectably. (Phish is the kind of band wholse fans want to own everything they ever recorded, not to mention dozens of bootleg concert tapes.) Phish employs eight people, not including roadies. A subsidiary mail-order business -- Phish Dry Goods -- sells T-shirts and other merchandise from its Lexington, Massachusetts office. Some 85,000 Phish Heads get a fix from the five-times-a-year band newsletter, perversely named _Doniac Schvice_, and tens of thousands log on to the Phish.Net daily for updates on concerts and tickets, or the lyrics to every Phish song.

But this information is of no concern to the patrons of the Country Pantry, where a hot stack with maple syrup is more relevant than rock stars. And, in any case, this morning at the rural cafe that is near the houses they bought two years ago, the Phishfellows -- minus drummer Jon Fishman, who's sleeping in -- look and act like glitterati as much as they ever did. Which is to say, not at all. Beaming the same genuine friendliness on the waitress that has endeared them to fans, the guys order breakfast then turn their attention to the task at hand: an interview. And if they're sick to death of telling the Phish story -- reported in detail in _The Boston Globe Magazine_ last Sunday -- they're much too polite to let on.

Later we'll catch up with Fishman at the band's rehearsal space in Westford. After the interview and photo session, they'll practice for four hours, pow-wow with their manager and strategize their next month- long tour. This follows the June 27 release of _Phish Live_, the band's sixth album. What follows is alternating conversation and encapsulation, because -- sorry, Phish Heads -- space does not permit the entire interview verbatim. Bootleg tapes will be available for sale at ... no, just kidding.

I (= interviewer): Let's talk about that name.

TA: Well, the story behind that is that we'd met and started jamming together. We knew about two songs. Jeff [Holdsworth, a previous guitarist who left after he was "born-again"] knew someone who wanted us to play at this ROTC Christmas jormal dance -- black tie. We decided to do it, but we didn't have enough songs for a whole evening. We didn't have mike stands, just hockey sticks with mikes duct-tapes to a table. No name, nothing. "Phish" just kind of got thrown in there because of Fish's name. Anyway, we went to the gig with about 35 cover song, like "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress," "Heard it through the grapevine," stuff like that. They hated us. [Michael Jackson's] Thriller had just been released; they cranked it up on the turntable, and we couldn't compete. So we selected the name for that gig, and it just stuck.

I: You must have a stack of reviews by now. Has anyone ever written about you without making puns with your name?

TA: You could be the first.

I: When did you start playing original material:

TA: Right away. When Fish and I went to Europe [summer of '85], we were playing street music. I wrote this song, "You Enjoy Yourself" -- which is on our first album -- and it had all these composed parts. When I came back and gave it to the band, I think the line was drawn there. Four of us wanted to go with this really out-there type of music, and Jeff wasn't into it. Page was very into it.

I: So when did you start playing Nectar's?

TA: Our first gig was actually upstairs Nectar's -- they wanted to test us. That went well. Page wasn't actually in the band yet, he joined right after that. That was 1984.

I: What kind of crowd did you have?

TA: A lot of friends, probably. Actually, our first bar gig downtown was Doolin's, pre-Ruben James. We used to play there at five o'clock every Thursday, happy hour.

PM: We had about one or two people that would come to see us every week -- the _same_ people.

TA: This woman Amy Skelton, who's now head of our merchandising and touring operation, was our first fan. Amy used to truck friends in from all over the place. It kind of grew from that.

TA: So we did the Nectar's thing, and it kept getting more and more crowded. We eventually started playing at The Front because it was bigger. And Hunt's. Then what happened was, Any had moved to New Hampshire, and she started getting us gigs at the Stone Church in Newmarket, and that became kind of a scene. We'd pack that place.

Then we tried to get a gig in Boston. We played a couple of small gigs there, then rented out the Paradise. It sold out. They wouldn't hire us, but we knew we could pack it, so we just rented it.

PM: Some people from Burlington organized buses. Most of our fans came down. Not only were we not known in Boston, but we sold it out without anyone from Boston coming! That was like 650 or 700 people.

TA: It was a shock to me. I didn't even know about the buses until we got there and there was this long line of people out front...

I: And you knew every one of them.

TA: Yeah. That was great. After that gig, it afforded us the opportunity to get into these other clubs all over the country.

AT THIS point Phish was working with a college friend, John Paluska, who became their manager and continues to work exclusively for the band from Dionysian Productions in Lexington. Paluska bagan to set up regional mini-tours, such as a "trade" with the Southern band Widespread Panic. Each time the band went out, the circle of clubs and college towns expanded -- a sort of concentric ring approach that eventually jagged across the entire country. It was four men and a dog -- a Golden Retriever named Marley, who used to lie under the piano at Nectar's gigs -- in a Plymouth Voyager; the crew and equipment followed in a rented truck.

TA: We finally were able to afford a van, with a TV and everything. It was Fish's Voyager, and one night onstage [at Nectar's] he took the keys and said, "The Voyager's parked out front, and we never want to see the stupid thing again!" He threw them out to the audience, somebody caught the keys and...drove it away. It was having a lot of problems at that point.

PM: It only went 40 miles an hour.

I: You don't know what happened to it?

PM: Actually we do know. That guy who took it was named Toast. Rumor has it that he ended up selling it for $3000.

IN 1991 Phish signed a contract with a major label, Electra, a decision they continue to be happy with. Except for one ill-fated effort with an MTV video, Electra has largely stayed out of the way of Phish's tried- and-tre grassroots formuls, and seems content with its relatively small -- but steady -- rate of record sales: 550,000 last year. The band retains remarkable artistic control, and has complete autonomy over its aproach to touring. And even the van is gone now; Phish travels in the comfort of professional touring buses.

I: I want to know what you do on tour, I mean, in the bus when you're driving for hours and hours.

TA: It's wild. I don't know if we should print this.

PM: We play a lot of chess.

I: I don't believe you! Everybody?

TA: Mostly him and Fish.

PM: Pretty much every tour we have a tournament, and pretty much every night we drive after the show. So we'll get on the bus at midnight or one and drive for five to eight hours. I don't usually go to sleep until we get to the place, then I sleep most of the day.. Fish is that way, too, so it's a good way to pass the time.

I: How about you two?

TA: We're in the back lounge goin' wild.

I: Like?

MG: Tetris -- the only video game I'll play. We kind of go through phases. At one point we had a hundred "Simpson" episodes that people gave us, so we just watched them over and over again.

I: Do you have diferent drivers every time?

TA: The buses are leased, and we've had two or three drivers. The guys driving these buses drive 11 months of the year. They live in their buses. The guy we're going out with this tour, Dominic, we've been wanting to work with him for a long time. He's been driving for like 25 years; he drove Jimi Hendrix...

MG: He used to manage NRBQ.

I: He must have some good tales.

TA: He's got some _great_ tales. He drove Alison Krauss for awhile, and every night after the show the whole band would sit in the front lounge playing just for him. And he's got a great bus.

I: So old manager don't die, they just become bus drivers?

MG: Yeah. Speaking of which, we went through this phase of playing bluegrass on the bus every night.

I: What kind of music do you listen to on the bus?

MG: We listen to a lot of bluegrass, actually.

I: Like Breakaway?

PM: We love Breakaway, they're one of our favorite bands. People give us a lot of tapes, too.

TA: Every tour is different. There was this one tour when we were still driving ourselves, we were listening to Gladys Knight every day and picking up hitchhikers. And then there was the Miles [Davis] tape....The cool thing about this band, I think, is that in any two- month period it's just, you know, we'll get really into a certain kin of music, and then it's just gone. But right now Fish and I are in this Velvet Underground phase. I just can't get enough of it.

WE Decide it's time to meet Fishman at the rehearsal "barn" -- about five miles down a twisty, dusty road at the home of soundman and master guitar-maker Paul Languedoc. We make a caravan of Anastasio in a Caddy Fleetwood -- what he calls his "grandfather car" -- McConnell in a very cool flatbed Land Rover, Gordon in a vew Volvo, and me and the photographer in modest Japanese jobbies. I think about what Gordon called "a functional family". These guys get alon better than brothers, and their extended families actually have a huge party every year. When we arrive, Fishman arrives wearing not his trademark housedress but a T0shirt his mom found at a garage sale. It reads: "I fish, therefore I am." After the photo shoot, I ask Phish about their sound -- a soaring jazz-rock fusion thing given to extended jams and eclectic surprises. Often compared to the Grateful Dead, Santana and Frank Zappa, it seems to blissfully transport the young, clannish, peace-loving, neo-hippie Phish fans, to, well, nirvana.

I: How would you describe your music to other people?

MG: Actually, I've got something funny to say abou that. Paul was on the pone with ome company and the woman was saying, "What kind of music are they, anayway -- hard rock or Elton John?"

I: Those were the only choices?

MG: Yeah. He said Elton John.

I: What would you have said?

MG: Hard rock.

I: And if you had other choices?

JF: That's always the hardest question.

TA: I know what I'd like to think.

I: What's that?

TA: I'd _like_ to think we were Sun Ra meets the Velvet Underground in a seedy New York bar. But it's not true.

JF: That's what we're shooting for, though. No -- Sun Ra meets Velvet Underground at a bluegrass festival. In the middle of Appalachia.

TA: In the middle of a scene from _Deliverance_.

I: That's good. So if I were to ask you if you had a new musical direction, that would be it?

JF: That would be it.

MG: Or Iggy Pop meets Jerry Garcia and kicks his ass.

---

This is a sidebar blurb, from VOX, a Burlington music/art paper, May 10, 1995. Typed in without permission. Teen Beat-type tone theirs, typos mine.

Phish Phacts

Trey Anastasio guitarist -- "the leader." Born September 30, 1964 (Libra) in Fort Worth, Texas; grew up near Princeton, New Jersey. One older sister. Availability factor: married, first child on the way. College: started at University of Vermont, graduated from Goddard College. Musical training: music major, studied with Vermont composer Ernie Stiers, guitar lessons from Paul Asbell; learned a lot from Burlington saxophonist Dave Grippo. Musical influences: "changes every week." This week it's Velvet Underground, Pavement, gospel, bluegrass, Neil Young's _Tonight's the Night_.

Page McConnell pianist -- "the sensible one." Born May 17, 1963 (Taurus) in Philadelphia, grew up in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Older brother, younger sister. Availability factor: engaged to be married. College: started at Southern Methodist University in Dallas; graduated from Goddard College (and lured Anastasio and Fishman from UVM for a $50-per-head "finder's fee"). Music training: started piano lessons as a child, studied music in school. Musical influences: other band members, Burlington pianist Lar Duggan, dad (a jazz fan).

Mike Gordon bassist -- "the indecisive one." Born June 3, 1965 (Gemini) in Bost, grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts. One brother. Availability factor: "seriously involved." College graduated from UVM. Music training: piano and guitar teachers, in jazz band in high school; played bass about 15 years. Musical influences: growing up, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Dead. This week, Charlie Hunter Band, but listens to bluegrass most of the time.

Jonathan Fishman drummer -- "the cute one." Born February 19, 1965 (Pisces) in Philadelphia, grew up in Syracuse, New York. One brother, one sister, all three adopted. Availability factor: totally. College: started at UVM, graduated from Goddard. Music training: three drum lessons at age 13 at which he learned to read music; practicing about eight hours a day for three years at Goddard; playing with Phish, and meeting others drummers on tour. Musical influences: Sun Ra, Ivo Popasov's Bulgarian Wedding Band, Velvet Underground now. Growing up it was Led Zeppelin, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

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