About Phishjam.com
2017. Mexico, Summer shows, Bakers Dozen, Dicks and another four shows at The Garden to close out the year. Seemed perfect.
Armed with so much music, my early 2018 play-list was bursting. Particularly with the variety and length of tunes played throughout the Bakers Dozen. Lawn Boy, a Mr. Completely return and of course August 6th. I felt like I had tunes to last me forever.
But then the unexpected happened.
Phish started their 2018 Tour, with two shows at Lake Tahoe (Harveys), then were off to The Gorge. The first two shows of the tour were great table-setters, but the seismic shift in jams and sounds to come began to unfold Night One at The Gorge.
The quartet launched the Phish debut of Set Your Soul Free to start the night. Five songs later, it was on!
Simple. Depth. Sound. Cadence. Tones. Particularly from Trey’s Guitar were unleashed like never before. To get the Simple jam started Anastasio filled the Gorge with a whirring, slashing, teasing sound almost whipping around the historic venue (5:45 in, on the Phish App). The jam lasted, but it turned out to be only a tease of what was to come.
Chalk Dust like I never heard before to open Set Two. And when I say never, I mean never! The myriad of sounds exploding from Trey’s amps; the different pedals depressed. You can see and hear it clearly at the 7:10 mark of the video below. Instinctively, Page, Mike and Fish gave Trey the space to explore. I ate it up. We ate it up. It lasts for four or so minutes…
Then somehow after the smorgasbord of sound, Phish found a way to project beauty in the jam. But those early sounds were what got this jam going. And what really sucked me in.
These were guitar sounds that I never heard before. Clapton, Santana, Hendrix. Jerry, Page, Gilmour. Never. And they seemed to flow from Trey fingers and feet with such ease and confidence. Little would I know that this was just the beginning!
The show closed with Light and Tube featuring some more of Trey’s new reverberating genius.
This continued throughout the tour but on Night Two in San Francisco, only a few nights later, I started to feel like these sounds were here to stay. Trey’s rig had either grown, or he started to utilize more it. Tube was short, but insane.
The second set began with Set Your Soul Free, and as perfect a jam I would ever want; almost orchestral between the four long-time bandmates. This included new sounds that sounded like lightsaber movement combined with a wah wah, but controlled but Treys desired notes (begins at 10:46 below).
This was and still is revolutionary in the jam space.
No other jam-guitarist has or is moving away from their own personal guitar sound during jams like Trey does. Something Anastasio has normalized during his shows, but I cant get enough of!!!
I always wondered how Trey creates those sounds and tones and echoes and more. The website and Twitter account of treysguitarrig.com helped, but for the time being I went to shows, mostly GA, close enough to the stage, and waiting for Trey to foot those pedals to tickle my ears with wildly new and dynamically exciting sounds.
Then Trey blessed us with this:
Wow!!!
The pieces started to click. The sounds and actions all started to make sense. That crazy sound I could never identify, feeling like you are being sucked in — Trey explained it. Its his recorded sound sample in reverse!
Slowly and admittedly, only occasionally am I able to understand what Trey is doing in real-time. But whatever he is doing within the confines of that rig, its making music so much better for me — really since that day I first heard those whaling licks launched at The Gorge in 2018.
And so now its my goal to underscore from each show all the wonderful jams, and I’m hoping to spread the ear-tickling joy to others through this newsletter.
