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Monday, November 17, 1997 By MICHAEL MEHLE, Scripps Howard News Service

Even as Phish was ascending the throne as America's biggest jam band, its members worried something was amiss. Namely, they thought they weren't jamming enough.

Sure, there was plenty of improvisation; a Phish show without it is like a Kiss concert minus pyrotechnics. But to the members of the Vermont quartet, the improvisation was following the same, predictable path.

So the band began to loosen its set lists and song structures. Some songs began to take on a slower, funkier groove, and Trey Anastasio's guitar work wasn't as likely to be the focal point of the extended jams. But beyond such tangible differences, keyboardist Page McConnell says, the band adopted a new attitude.

"There has been a certain playing style that has developed this year, a certain kind of improvisation that's the next evolution, hopefully, for us," McConnell said of the band. "It's difficult for me to put my finger on what it is and what it isn't, except to say that it feels a little different to me the way we're jamming."

The new approach started to develop at the end of the band's last American tour. Phish had spent the past three years growing from a cult phenomena to one of the country's top touring forces.

In small part, the band filled the void left by the Grateful Dead's demise; in larger part, the combo cultivated its own fervent following hooked on the group's dizzying ability to jam on the blues, a cappella harmonies, jazz excursions or old Talking Head covers. Like the Dead before it, Phish has attracted a nomadic fan base that treks across the country.

Expanding popularity aside, the band began to feel stagnant while performing in large arenas earlier this year.

"We had just moved into arenas for a lot of these towns, so night after night we were in these half-empty arenas, which are generic-looking from the inside," McConnell said. "It's soulless. They don't have a vibe. They're big metal buildings with Budweiser signs. And I think that we were starting to let go at that point because we felt, 'What does it matter?' Let's just try to go for it and make it happen.'

"We started to ask ourselves the question, 'Why does the jamming feel like we're always playing the song the same way? Why does it always go like this, when it could go like this?' We asked these questions even though we didn't have the answers."

The band - McConnell, Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jon Fishman - began to find the answers and a new direction while playing in Europe, where its popularity lags behind its success in the States. Performing before crowds of 500 to 2,000 people, the group felt free to let itself adventure.

"You can't plan on this sort of thing - a creative burst," McConnell said. "Things were looser. There was less pressure, less big-show hype. There was less everything, and we were all feeling real loose.

"It helps when you try these things in a smaller club. There's less pressure. You can't deny it."

One night in particular captured what Phish thought was the next step for the band. "Slip, Stich and Pass," the group's second live release, captures the band's show at a club in Hamburg, Germany, last March.

"It was a small show, a bar gig with 500 people there," McConnell said. "I could reach out and touch people. There was a certain intimacy, and that show seemed to capture that bar-band spirit we have had for so many years, even though in the States we're not necessarily a bar band anymore. In the rest of the world we certainly are."

There will be more live albums in the future, McConnell said, although the band is now concentrating on its next studio effort.

"I don't think we've made the great album that we have the potential to make," he said. "There's some real talent in the band, and it would be a shame if we couldn't put together some kind of a different and really unique sounding album."

And the master plan for the band?

"The master plan of the band is to stay together," the keyboardist said. "That's something bands don't do. Bands don't stay together. What do you do to achieve that? You try to keep everyone as happy as possible. And that's what we're doing."

(Michael Mehle writes for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.)

Copyright 1997, Naples Daily News. All rights reserved.

Quick: Name the band that has been responsible for the best attended musical gatherings in North America for the past two years running.

It wasn’t U2 or the Stones or Lollapalooza. It was Phish four brightly talented players who live near Burlington, Vermont. Phish created a huge cult of fans with an improvisational style of playing that combines everything from country western to 70’s jazz rock fusion.

No one ever knows what to expect at a Phish concert, including the band. They go onstage without set lists. One moment the players can be locked in a maelstrom of dark funk and then suddenly ditch their instruments to sing as a barber shop quartet into one microphone.

That sort of unpredictability, as well as the virtuoso ability of each musician Trey Anastasio on guitar, keyboardist Page McConnell, Mike Gordon on bass and drummer Jon Fishman is exactly what their audience craves time and again.

Phish has released eight discs since 1988, including a new live opus, Slip, Stitch and Pass, which was recorded in Hamburg, Germany, during the groups 1997 Summer Tour of Europe. Of course, all Phish shows become a permanent part of the band’s canon because a battery of tapers are always allowed to bring tape decks to the concerts, creating their own copies to enjoy and trade.

The band is incredibly busy this year alone mounting the European tour, their Great Went Festival extravaganza in Maine in August, a fall/winter US tour and the live album. So we were pretty excited when word came that Trey would give Sno a call and chat about the band and his rarely mentioned love of skiing. Who knew? Who ever asked? That’s here we come in.

Sno: You’ve lived in Vermont?

Trey: About fifteen years.

Sno: College brought you up?

Trey: Yes.

Sno: Then, once you met your bandmates, you decided to stay?

Trey: Right.

Sno: With Phish’s success, you could really move anywhere you want. What keeps you there?

Trey: I would never leave Vermont. I love it. It’s the lifestyle the quality of life. That’s what brought me here in the first place, when I came up and camped and visited saw the lakes and the mountains. But it’s also an attitude that people have up here. I’ve got two daughters now and I want them to grow up in this atmosphere. I’m moving now. I found a guy who was tearing down a 175 year old barn. We took it apart and moved it. So I’m finding my way deeper into the woods.

Actually, this is an interesting thing for Sno we found a guy who had, in the back of his farm, a ski lift a real old rope tow. So, we’re going to put a rope tow up!

Sno: Cool!

Trey: We’re on a very steep hill. So, (laughing) we’re going to have a little rope tow in the back of the barn! It’s a 1000 foot rope tow.

Sno: (That’s) so you can practice your quick turns?

Trey: That’s right. It’s woods pretty much (most) of it will be woods.

Sno: How long have you been skiing?

Trey: Probably since I was eight or nine.

Sno: So you were into skiing long before you got to VermontÉ

Trey: Yeah. And I had been up a couple of times (visiting Vermont) to ski.

Sno: Down in Jersey, it’s just molehills.

Trey: Yeah, I used to ski Bell Bump, which was the molehill of all molehills. It had a rope tow. And Vernon Valley, Great Gorge. That’s where we used to ski.

Sno: So how would you rate your skiing?

Trey: (Pause) Not so good. (Laughs)

Sno: Do any of the other guys in Phish ski?

Trey: Not really. Page can kind of ski. We used to play in Colorado a lot, so sometimes we’d get free lift tickets. We played Steamboat, Crested Butte at the El Dorado and Telluride a number of times. We’d all go out there on the mountain and it was pretty funny (laughing) to see Fishman up there.

Sno: Kind of like (the show scenes in) the Beatles’ "HELP?" Everybody falling over?

Trey: Yeah, it was a lot like that. Page, I think, could make his way down a mountain.

Sno: Do you ski like you play?

Trey: I definitely can draw some parallels. If you’re skiing well, the more you relax and let go, the better you ski. It’s the same thing with music.

Sno: Do you take your time going down the mountain? Like you’re jamming (onstage)?

Trey: Yeah, I think it’s a fluidity thing the more you relax the faster and better your skiing or the better your playing. Tension or trying to beat something into the ground never really worked (for me) in music or skiing. There’s such a parallel. One of my best high school friends lives in Crested Butte and he’s an incredible skier. I always try to play like he skis. I’ll follow him and he’s so completely relaxed, it almost looks like he’s doing nothing. It’s the opposite of that sort of show off, bashing kind of style. It’s really fluid the less I try, the faster I go.

Sno: I suppose there’s this magic point you get to where you let go and relax. But you also have to be aware of what you’re doing and think of things (to do).

Trey: Right. Like, you have to be in shape, for instance. That’s my big problem with skiing.

Sno: You haven’t been doing those deep knee bends on stage enough?

Trey: Right, I don’t do enough and then I go a couple of runs, and my thighs are burning! It’s the same sort of thing with playing, you got to have the tools to begin with. It’s having the technique to execute ideas as fast as they come to you. It’s amazing how you can suddenly find a groove and you’re skiing like you’ve never skied before, everything’s perfect, then, just as quickly, you’re not! You’re fighting it, you don’t have the rhythm, you’re bashing into moguls. It’s really simple when you’re playing music it seems like the simplest thing in the world, suddenly everything’s clicking.

Sno: I’d imagine when you’re playing, you come to places where everything is just so perfect that you never want to break out of it.

Trey: Right. And you think, "this is the easiest thing in the world," you’ve figured it all out. And then, just as quickly

Sno: Boom. You’re out.

Trey: it’s not happening! (laughing) "What’s going on here?" But in the end, to me, it’s not about technique. You have to be able to ski a bump, turn quickly both ways, stop fast. They’re all tools so you (can) get to a place where you’re kind of free.

Sno: Can you think of your worst experience on skis?

Trey: Well, the one I am most embarrassed about was probably when I took my wife, who had never downhill skied before (to the mountain) and said, "just get on the lift."

Sno: Oh, Man!

Trey: (laughing) took her right to the top of the mountain! (I said) "Don’t even think about it, just point them down to the bottom and relax. I’ll follow behind you." She went about a hundred yards down the first trail and crash! She completely bit it. She screwed up her knee; we had to take her down the mountain.

Sno: Has your wife ever skied with you again?

Trey:No! (laughing)

Sno: That was it?

Trey: That was it! She skis cross country all the time.

Sno: So, there’s no family day on the local ski slope for you.

Trey: We ski in the woods. I actually do a lot more cross country skiing in the woods behind my house than I go to the mountain.

Sno: So this your new thing cross country skiing?

Trey: Just about four years ago we started because we moved to where there’s a lot of woods. There’s other skiers nearby, people are cutting trails. I go almost everyday when I’m home. I wake up, have a cup of coffee, strap on the skis and I’m out into the woods. When there’s just two inches of powder on top of a soft crust, in the spring when it melts and refreezes at night. That’s my favorite thing you can go anywhere. I actually, for the first time, skied Mad River, last year. It’s great, when there’s snow (of course). The vibe is incredible; it’s just a bunch of really mellow locals.

Sno: Now, was that downhill orÉ

Trey: Downhill. But Mad River is all trees, it’s tough. It’s just that the woods are such a magical place. It’s so quiet. I also like going up (laughing) as much as I like going down. That friend I was telling you about in Colorado? They always skin up these mountains and then ski down on telemark skis. He’s been trying to get me out there to do that.

Like I said, the worst thing for me, by far, is touring (laughs) there’s no way to get in shape. It’s so bad all you do is stay up all night eating and lying around. And, you don’t get to go (skiing) much. I feel that if I was in shape I could be so much better.

Sno: You need to take more control of your touring schedule and give yourself (some) days off.

Trey: I like playing, though. I don’t like days off on tour it’s boring. (laughs) I guess it depends on where you are I like days off in Europe because you’re in (some place cool like) Prague or Amsterdam. But, I get anxious to play, you know? We’re such stage hogs!

Sno: When you’re skiing, does music go through your head?

Trey: Oh Yeah! That definitely happens. For a while, I was skiing with a Walkman and I really liked it, but it was just too much junk on your head. But, it’s very musical, you know (chanting) boom boom boom boom. I took some tennis lessons once sports to me in general are very musical. But skiing probably, other than maybe surfingÉskiing more than anything, because your in a groove.

Sno: I suppose you could just sit back and do the (music) you’ve been doing for the past ten years, but I don’t think you’d settle for that.

Trey: Nah. Nope, you got to keep moving forward.

Sno: What have you been listening to lately that you really like?

Trey: I’ve actually been listening to Dark Magus. I don’t know if you know Miles Davis Columbia just released five live Miles Davis discsÉ

Sno: What period?

Trey: It’s like ‘74. Dark Magus is one show at Carnegie Hall. It’s just the sickest you got to hear it. If you’re into that sort of thing, it’s just totally its sort of like Pangaea but it’s a little bit more extreme in a certain way. They didn’t release it in this country it was released in Japan but they never released it (here) because it was too much! It was like (loud) WOW WOW WACKA WOW WOW you know what I mean?

Sno: Right!

Trey: No talking. Nothing! (It’s) just two hours of just thick extreme stuff. But it’s so good.

Sno: You’ve got a new live album out. Why would you do a live album if everybody’s out there taping your shows anyway?

Trey: Really, because there was just a lot of stuff that we’ve been wanting to put out. There’s a lot of songs on it that have never been released. If I had my way, we’d release a lot more albums; one (album) a year is a lot for the industry. I’ve got it backed up stuff I want to put out. SS&P was just a really good night, we played in a little club in Hamburg and we really liked it, so we just thought, "hey, what the heck?" (laughs)

Sno: I thought you did such a great job with Billy BreathesÉthe solace of being in the trees and off on your own seems to filter through it. It seems like every note counts.

Trey: Right.

Sno: Is that how you recorded it?

Trey: It was in a barn, in a section of Bearsville (studios in upstate NY). A lot of people record at Bearsville, but the barn is just becoming a place where people do albums. It’s very, very (quiet), there’s a little stream going by. They call it the outpost because you don’t interact with people at the studio; you’re way out on your own.

It is a lot what were talking about, with the skiing. It gives you a chance to settle down from the kind of wildness of being on tour and everything. We did a lot of that album at five in the morning, when the sun was coming up. It kind of sounds like that, especially the stuff on side two like "Billy Breathes" and "Prince Caspian," "Swept Away" all that stuff was recorded as the sun was coming up with the stream gurgling (laughs) next to us.

Sno: So you’ve got the live record out and then you’ll be working on the studio record next year. Do you think you’ll follow the same course or react against Billy Breathes go for a louder sort of thing?

Trey: We’ve kind of had a bad habit of reacting (laughs) when I look back at our albums more than our concerts. I see them all as a reaction against the one before! Like, I really thought Hoist was a good album, but I didn’t like the cover. I felt it wasn’t us. We had hired this graphic designer, which is what bands do. (The design) always rubbed me the wrong way. So we finished Billy Breathes and our manager kept saying, "What are you going to do about the cover?" So, finally, it was the LAST day, and it was, like three in the morning. They (management) said, "We NEED a cover tomorrow." You know all those pictures on the back? We cut them out and stuck them on with scotch tape. Mike (was) on the cover he just shot a picture of himself. The whole thing took like five minutes! It’s funny, because in retrospect, it was a reaction to the (album) before it.

Sno: We loved Mike’s nose!

Trey: Like, Picture of Nectar was all over the map, stylistically. For Rift, we decided, "let’s do a concept album where everything is tied together." In some ways it was a reaction to fact that the record before it was everywhere! For this one, I hope I don’t know, we’ve been writing a ton of new songs. So, we’re just going to move forward. We’re kind of taking this, Ôwhen the spirit moves you’ sort of attitude. If we feel like doing some jamming we’re going to do some jamming so that’s kind of where we are.

Sno: Eventually, if you put a studio in your house, you’ll never leave!

Trey: (Laughs) The only thing about studios is that they’re bottomless pits. You start buying gear, then you need more gear. Then it breaks and you have to maintain it, then it’s outdated. A studio like Bearsville has such a good staff, everything works. When you’re recording, inevitably a couple things will break, like the tape deck will break in the middle of the best take always happens. That’s why I wouldn’t start my own studio.

Sno: But you do have your own ski slope!

Trey: Yes! Quote, ski slope, unquote. It’s (just) this 1950 wheel from an old rope tow. We haven’t found a rope yet.

Sno: Get a good one. We’d hate to read (something bad) about you in Random Notes.

Trey: Well, the funny thing about this rope tow that me and Matt, who I live next to, (are building) is that this place we’re skiing is very steep, there’s a ravine about half way down, so you have to hang onto the rope your feet actually leave the ground!

Sno: Oh, man!

Trey: For about fifteen yards!

Sno: So, what you’re saying is that you have a black diamond rope tow!

Trey: Yes we do!

Sno: Taking this rope tow could be a rite of initiation!

Trey: Yes. There’s a little sign at the bottom (that states), "NEVER LET GO OF THE ROPE!" You go over the ravine, (laughing) you’ve GOT to hang onto the rope!

Postscript: Story/Interview by Carter Alan, Musical Director at Boston Modern Rock powerhouse WBCN. Story included several pictures.