Though still on their self-described “hiatus” after nearly two years, Phish endures in memory and reputation as the definitive modern jam band. The thrills in their concerts came not from regurgitations of radio hits but from long ambles through songs — covers as well as originals. Their performances were haute cuisine to postpunk's fast food; it takes a connoisseur's ear, a certain ability to discern, to savor the band's subtle virtuosity.
Phish's energy was always collective. Fast licks weren't the point; what mattered was the four members' ability to create something beautiful through simultaneous improvisation. At times it didn't work, but when they were tuned in to one another, there was seldom anything quite so sublime. Patience, from the players as well as the listeners, was essential; the payoff was usually worth the wait.
Phish's artistry, more than simply cooperative, was egalitarian. Its members (guitarist Trey Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell, and drummer Jon Fishman) were fully alert and interactive; no one hogged the spotlight or shrank into the shadows of accompaniment.
Yet while Phish was a band in the fullest sense, one could argue that Anastasio was the first among equals. Much of Phish's setlist grew from his inquisitive spirit. Furthermore, Anastasio has stepped outside the band more than the others. These treks led him to embark on an ambitious exercise with John Medeski, Sun Ra alumnus Marshall Allen, and other free jazz adventurers on Surrender to the Air (Elektra Entertainment, 1996). Anastasio later joined Primus bassist Les Claypool and former Police drummer Stewart Copeland to form Oysterhead, which recorded a bracing CD called The Grand Pecking Order (Elektra Entertainment, 2001).
All of these energies come together on his latest venture, due for release in April on Elektra. The title, Trey Anastasio, says a lot, in that it acknowledges his arrival as a leader. The songs, the charts, the wailing guitar solos, those familiar, easy-fit lead vocals, are all his. Control, not collaboration, defines this disc, from the sizzling, low-key percussion burn of “Last Tube” to the punchy, riffing horns of “Push On Till the Day.” This is Anastasio's most focused solo work ever.
Look between the cracks, however, and traces of Phish emerge, not so much in the results as in the process. The nine-piece band that Anastasio employed for this session (which is essentially the same as the group he toured with last summer) didn't achieve its precise sound by accident. It's built as much on the unique strengths of each member as on Anastasio's ideas. By strict definition, these musicians are sidemen, but their backup strategies grow from their leader's investigations into what makes each of them tick, where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and how they might contribute in ways they'd not yet discovered on their own.
Trey Anastasio, then, is a lesson in performance philosophy. Built on years of experience playing in front of audiences, it follows offbeat paths toward the good old goal of rockin' the house. In this music — and in the revealing accounts of its creation that Anastasio shares here — are buried bits of wisdom for all who make the stage their home.
Why did you decide to cut
Trey Anastasio
with a horn section and straight-ahead dance grooves?
This band is my attempt to step forward from what I was doing with Phish and from what I was able to do with four people. It's been a dream of mine to write for more instruments and to go a little bit deeper with the live stuff. I've tried to combine my love for bands like King Sunny Adé and the big bands with some of the orchestral stuff I've been lucky enough to be able to write, then build all these elements into one band that does stuff I've never heard any other band do before — a lot of cross-rhythms and that kind of thing.
For example?
“Alive Again,” the opening track, has a Latin sort of feel. Nicholas Payton came up and played on it, so he was the fifth horn player. Then he played some wicked stuff on this track called “Last Tube.” That's a longer track, probably ten minutes. It's very high energy, over a Mozambique-sounding drum groove. Then I have a 17-piece orchestra and my 5 horn players. I tried to write these horn tracks where the horns act in a more drumlike manner, but tonal; I tried to have them work with some deep harmonic content, even though they're playing very rhythmically.
Did you write all this material with the album in mind?
With Phish, I was writing specifically for the stage, but with these songs I had this album and this sound in mind, even going back a few tours. I started this band as a trio. On the second tour, it was a five-piece, and then it became a seven- or eight-piece, and now it's nine pieces. It grew slowly, and I wrote the material as we went. I was finding musicians, and I would invite them to come up to the Barn where we record and rehearse. Then I would spend a day sitting with them, asking them about everything that they knew. With our trombone player, for instance, I said, “What's the easiest thing you've been playing — your DNA riff?” Then I'd say, “What's the hardest thing you've been practicing this week — something that shows a direction you want to go in?” I wrote all that stuff into the arrangements.
What did that involve?
I just did what I had to do. I'd modulate into the keys where they played their best. Or I'd say to them, “Right here, for two measures I want the horns to play something and then get answered by a backup vocal.” That's when I'd say, “So what's the hottest riff you've been working on?” I'd turn that into a triplet or something, so it became my thing, but they were playing their stuff. If you do that with everybody, and you have a teamwork philosophy, you can put each person in the band into the best light, where they can play their hottest stuff. The idea is to have the personalities of the individual members in the music.
Based on your experience, what advice can you offer to musicians out there who are trying to advance their careers?
The main thing is not to be afraid to learn lots of different styles, so you can do any gig that comes up. You'll meet more and more people that way. Players being unable to do that was a problem during the grunge years; I saw this happen to some of my friends, and it was kind of sad. They were really talented musicians, but because grunge was the dominant style, and they were 19 or 20 years old, they only wrote these songs that were kind of based on Pavement — and never learned anything past that. These were musicians who could have gone somewhere. But that style came and went, and now none of them plays music anymore. With Phish, we learned everything. We used to do a side gig every Monday night: the Johnny B. Fishman Jazz Ensemble. We'd get horn players and do standards, and it was horrible! Probably anybody who actually knows how to play bluegrass or jazz and heard the four of us stumble our way through those styles, they'd get pretty mad. But that wasn't the point. I would never claim to be a jazz musician. Jazz is the highest form of art; it takes a lifetime to learn. That didn't mean I didn't go to jazz workshops and try to learn every single standard in every key.
You're really advising that young musicians get comfortable with taking risks — in part by expecting to fail a couple of times.
Oh, my God, yeah. I just did this gig with Nicholas Payton; he played on three or four tracks from my album. That guy is so good; I just can't say enough incredible things about him as a human being and as a musician. At one point, we were talking about what we were going to do next, and I said, “When's the last time you got to actually practice? It's been so long since I actually practiced, because I compose and I tour all the time. Boy, wouldn't it be nice to get a month where I can actually practice the guitar?” He laughed about that, because it had also been years since he practiced. What he said was, “Look, after a certain point in your career, you practice on the bandstand.” That's why he tells his young students, “Practice everything you can right now, because this is your time. When you start playing professionally, you're not going to do it anymore. Nobody does.”
What's the most common mistake you see musicians make at auditions?
They play what they practice, just because they get nervous. I know I was guilty of that when we were trying to learn about jazz and I would sit in with the local jazz musicians. You know that they're going to know instantly that you suck, so you try to learn some riff that'll fool them. But it never works, because so much of playing live is about listening and reacting. Joe Pass used to say to never practice anything technically hard, because there's an easier way to say the same thing musically. He said that if you practice hard, you're gonna want to play that live. It just never comes across, unless you're talking about something like “Eruption” by Eddie Van Halen. Obviously he practiced that, but that was a solo. It wouldn't be any good if we were up there and all of a sudden Eddie Van Halen came up and started playing “Eruption.” [Laughs.]
Did anyone in the band have to get past preconceptions about working with you, based on the music you had done with Phish?
I think it was more of a problem that they didn't. Honestly, there are things that Phish does that are unique and very cool. If you listen to some of those tapes, and you hadn't been into Phish — if you just knew that we were a hippie band or whatever — then you wouldn't have any idea that there was anything worth hearing going on there. I don't think any of the people in my band had that clear an idea of what went on with Phish — which is cool. But on the last tour, Phish spent so much time working on arrangements and material. Now I have my rehearsal period before the upcoming tour. The album is done, and the material is much tighter than on the last tour, so I want to get into some of that deeper jamming stuff, but with a bigger group. That's the thing: you couldn't possibly do with Phish what I'm trying to do with this group. It's not like I wanted to go out and start another Phish. Phish is the four of us, and this is nine people.
But it's impossible to avoid bringing some aspect of the music that you've worked on in the past into this project. For instance, your description of writing for the strengths of the people in the group reminds me of the exercises you and Phish would do to facilitate improvisation.
That is something that I learned with Phish. I don't think that any of the four of us are necessarily all that good on our own. Really, it was the maximization of the talents of the individuals in the group that made it special. So I set out to do that even more. When I launched this second band, I thought to myself, “Wow, that really worked with Phish. Rather than coming to that conclusion through years of playing together, what if that was the whole basis of the band from Day 1?” If everyone is adding their own thing, and everyone is in a space where they can be themselves, it's going to sound different. I would put certain constraints on it, in that this is a dance band.
How did that affect your approach to molding the group?
It made it all about entertainment. See, I always thought that the big bands were functional. They were almost like servants to the audience. It's the only popular music that has risen to the level of art; big band jazz was popular and art at the same time. It's the concept of art living by limitation: It's okay to go out there and say, “These people paid money to see me, so I'm going to put this stuff out that will let them have a good time. Then I'm gonna use the holes in the music as places where I can be an artist.” It's both at the same time, and there's nothing wrong with that. It accepts the fact that an audience is gonna come see this, and you want them to have a great time, first and foremost.
As far as the lessons of Phish, though, your mission hasn't so much been to maximize the performance of each member as it has been to move toward a unified and integrated approach, especially in improvising.
You're making a good point. We did these listening exercises in which you had to listen to what all of the other three members were playing at any given time. If someone thought you weren't listening, they could yell and you'd have to stop and sing and describe verbally what everyone else was doing. The exercise forced you to focus so much on the other people that you would forget about yourself. At the same time, in terms of writing the music, maybe I needed an outlet where it was understood that there was a leader. I think it was understood to a certain degree in Phish, but during the past year, it got a little confusing about where to draw that line. There were times when I backed away too much from being the leader. People always point to our tour in 1996, when I decided, “Dammit, I'm gonna stop leading all these jams all over the place.” I backed way back, and it just fell apart.
Did the band know that you were going to do that?
We talked about it. I got a percussion setup together, and I was like, “Page [McConnell, keyboardist], you take the steering wheel for a while.” Though we were all trying to think with one mind, it was still pretty clear that everybody's personality is what it is, and I tend to push myself out there.
But aren't there intrinsic differences between the two models? Phish is about finding communion through parallel improvisation, and funk is about improvising against an essentially locked-in, backbeat-driven groove.
Well, check out what we do on “Last Tube.” With everything that I know, I tried to push that wall a little further on that track than I'd ever heard it pushed before. You know how when Phish is playing there's this listening thing going back and forth? I'm so used to people reacting to my guitar playing in a certain way that I actually wrote that into the arrangement. So you've got these horn parts in the middle of the improvised section where Nicholas is ripping on the trumpet, and I'm ripping on the guitar, and he's chasing me around. It's like a dogfight. [Laughs.] And the background horns are bouncing off these phrases. It's a matter of talking to these guys about being “effectlike,” so I could write in the psychedelic aspects without it being cheesy. Like, the people are playing this stuff. [Anastasio articulates a horn riff repeating and fading, as if played through a reverb.] It's about getting them to think in that way while at the same time writing this stuff — using every tool I've got to push this music into a realm where it's really flying.
The important point is that you didn't tell them to imitate these effects, but rather to use them to find new ways of phrasing and jamming.
Right. A lot of this stuff I sang to them: “I'll take the third, and you take the fifth.” A lot of the parts in this section split into parts that bounce off each other, even rhythmically. I'll start on the guitar with a triplet rhythm, and they come in imitating me but at a slower tempo. [Anastasio articulates the effect of identical parts overlapping in and out of phase at contrasting tempos.] It sounds nuts! Just go back and listen to [the Miles Davis album] Jack Johnson. Again, I would never in any way claim to do anything close to that. That's his music, but all these different things are influences. That is the most important thing I've found: you have to be an individual. You have to avoid doing things that you've heard done before. You can love it, but don't do it, because it's gonna suck.
Another one of your recent projects has involved collaborating with former Police drummer Stewart Copeland and Primus bassist Les Claypool in Oysterhead. Was it difficult for three such distinctive stylists to find a common musical language?
It was surprisingly easy, especially during the album-making process. We did it at the Barn, the same place I did my solo album. We just came in with nothing, aside from two little bits I had that Stewart had heard me play and encouraged me to use on the album. One was “Birthday Boys”; the other was “Radon Balloon.” Actually, “Radon Balloon,” strangely enough, appears on both albums. [Laughs.] There's an orchestral version on my album, which was the original intention for that piece. The one on the Oysterhead CD has a lyric; again, Stewart encouraged me to do some singing on that. I give Stewart a lot of credit for going for it. He was always a hero of mine. I love his drumming — always have. When asked if there was anyone I would want to play with, he was the first person I'd mention, not really believing it would happen.
How did you first get together?
Les had been asked to put together a band for a jazz festival. The promoter called him up and said, “Can you put together a band?” So he called me, and we talked about getting Stewart. At that point I had never met him. [Copeland] hopped on a plane two days later and flew out to Burlington, [Vermont]. Les was on tour at the time with his Flying Frog Brigade, and they were on their way to Burlington, too.
You can tell Stewart's playing after just a few beats. To what extent did you all have to compromise your styles in order to find a middle ground?
There was some compromise. If there was a difficult part, it was playing live. I'm so used to holding the rudder. Even with Phish, that was part of my corner of the equation. It was less so with Oysterhead. Also, I get very obsessed onstage. I really believe that every show should be a full emotional upheaval. [Laughs.]
What happened with Phish was that we had so much material, and we'd always go on without a song list. So when I'd feel like we were losing our connection with the audience, I could fix it instantly by changing direction on the fly. That was much harder for me to do with Oysterhead, and that was a new feeling for me. There were a couple of nights, and one night in particular, when about halfway through the tour I felt kind of helpless. I thought it wasn't going that well and there was nothing we could do because we didn't have any more material. We had only one album, so we were playing the same stuff every night, and I was trying to get used to that.
But Stewart, he holds the rudder in Oysterhead, just because of his power and talent as a drummer. I mean, the guy is just so driving. If you listen to the Police, he's driving the boat. So that was a really great learning experience for me to give up that position a little bit.
What was it like to work with Les?
He really studied Stewart a lot. Even before we went out to do the album, we talked on the phone a lot, and he was saying, “I'm figuring out where Stewart puts the kick drum.” He and Stewart may be the two most dominant on their given instruments that I know. If you've ever seen Primus, he's got a very powerful presence onstage. It's the same thing with Stewart; I saw the Police a number of times in the '80s. To have them both up there was just incredible, and when it got going onstage, it was very powerful. Now, it didn't always work that way. Everybody had to really get together to get that power; we're all used to being powerful on our own. None of us in Phish is necessarily all that heavy, so we would try to find heaviness through unity. We'd feel very inclusive regarding each other; that would draw the audience in, and the whole thing would get very heavy. But we didn't have all those years with Oysterhead, so it's a different kind of heaviness. At times it felt a little more like three individuals.
You don't get that impression so much on the album.
Well, I really like the album. Live, it was a little more hit-or-miss. The last two or three shows, we got it. That's a very different mind set between where I was coming from and where Stewart and Les were coming from. Even the concept of improvisation was completely outside of Les's world a few years ago, although now he's getting into it. And Stewart was like, “Oh, we're gonna jam? Are you kidding me?”
Will Oysterhead resurface? Or is this part of an emerging pattern for you of assembling groups over the years to explore what different combinations can offer?
We had such a good time with Oysterhead. We really felt the spark, and we really got along. We very much want to record and tour again. I talk with those guys a lot. I think we got lucky; it could have been a disaster, and it wasn't. On the other hand, I have been enjoying meeting new musicians and having the opportunity to play. For example, I played with Nicholas Payton on my album, and on “Last Tube” especially his playing on that sounds so different than the way he normally plays. It was so cool to see him out of his element; it made me think that I'd love to do that more. That's the cool thing about the Barn. Maybe I could get this guy Maynard [James Keenan, vocalist] from Tool, and Tom Morello, the guitar player from Rage Against the Machine, and Nicholas and … I don't know. [Laughs.]
Phish is officially on an extended hiatus. What does that mean?
I'm getting anxious to play with Phish again. We generally intend to play together. But in order for it to work in the way that we hope it will — which is to inspire us to be thrilled to play together again and keep it going at a frantic, creative, and passionate pace — we had to accept the possibility, when we stopped in October last year, that we may never play again. We really said that to each other. We shook hands and said, “All right, have a nice life.” I know we all hoped that we would play again, but without saying that it was just a vacation. By saying that, then you're really separated. We really broke the thing down, but that was part of the growth process. The way I feel today, I would be amazed if we didn't play again. But we have not said anything to each other to that effect. I actually spent the whole day with those guys today. We kind of hung out in the room, doing our own thing. We say, “How's it going?” And then we say, “See you later.” Something inside of me can't wait, and with that being said, I'm really excited about what I'm doing right now, and who knows where things will go?
It sounds as though you have an abundance of great options.
That's right. The bond with those four guys is like, they get the joke. There's so much history: you say just one word, and everybody gets it. You can't replace 17 years, from the age of 18 to 35, being with each other 24 hours a day, eight months a year. And everybody is doing such cool stuff: Page has his own band, I have my own band, and Mike is doing an album with Leo Kottke. By the time we get together, we'll have so much new energy to give back and forth to each other. So I'm looking forward to it … while still saying that it may never happen. [Laughs.]
Has improvisation become less important in this era of postpunk, three-minute, Blink-182 songs?
I don't know if I can generalize about that, but I was watching that documentary, When We Were Kings, about Muhammad Ali and George Foreman at the Rumble in the Jungle. There's footage in there of James Brown, and it's unbelievable: sweating, deep, throbbing, heavy meltdown music. I still listen to a lot of Hendrix bootlegs, and that's the same thing. To me, a concert is like a ritual. It's got to go deep. That's what I'm looking for. All of the work I've been talking about is just so I can get onstage and feel washed over in waves of energy and sound. I will say that I've tried much harder to get it onto an album than I've ever done. With Phish, we never really talked about albums that much. And now that my album is done and I can play it for the band, that's gonna be just one more tool to make the concerts ten times better. It's like, “Listen to this. This is you! Now let's go out there and do this live.”
