Lessons from Two Nights of Phish

There’s a group of four guys, about my age (50s), about my background (east coast, prep-school, real and quasi-smart ass/intellectuals), who spent their high school years in about the same way I did (when not seeing Grateful Dead shows, then in someone’s parents’ basement playing in or listening to a jam band).

Those four guys make up the band, Phish, named after the drummer, whose last name is Fishman. 

My Phishtory

I spent my college years seeing the Dead every time I could manage it, which meant maybe 15 shows a year: every time there was a spring, summer, or fall tour on the east coast, I would catch as many shows as could make the trifecta of time, money, and friends coalesce in some kind of harmony. By the early-1990s, though, most of my college friends had gone our separate ways; plus, Jerry’s health was failing and the fan scene was getting out of hand (too many people at shows for the drugs alone). I was ready for a change. 

In 1993 when I was being driven around Portland, Oregon, crammed in the backseat of my own small car with grad school friends, Paul popped a random CD in the player, and I fell in love. Here’s a band with the technical know-how and jamminess of the Dead, but they’re young, and they have an over-the-top sense of humor.

I didn’t realize then that their Gen X feel for ridiculous irony would be the foundation of my music scene for the next 30 years, spanning 2,000 shows (I was at 30 to 40), seeing me through insanely fun festivals where the band played 3-5 sets a day and we all slept right there on festival grounds in our tents between sets; to finding them in a farmers market in Portland singing on the sidewalk between gigs as a barbershop quartet; to breast-feeding Finn backstage; to being away from baby Finn for the first time (at their New Year’s Eve 2000 festival in the Everglades); to saying goodbye to the band when we all thought they were breaking up for needed rehab; to saying welcome back to the band (and all the associated good feelings) when I was lucky enough to score tickets to their first shows back on the road.

You could even say that Tracy and I met thanks to Phish. As Paul and I were working out the idea of a divorce, I’d seen their frontman, Trey, play with his incredible solo band at a small venue in DC with Finn. We both enjoyed the show, but I really needed someone else to go hear concerts with, a peer. So, I made myself a dating profile and went online with the goal of having a date to see the next summer’s Phish shows in Maryland. 

Achievement unlocked. Tracy and I saw a bazillion Phish shows together after that, including taking our first trailer, the Frolic, on an adventure to see several. We even reigned as the king and queen of the parking lot scene one night after a show, when someone gave us a cooler full of beer, so we set up camp in the back of my hatchback, against the soundtrack of someone’s tape of that very night’s show, laughing over all we’d seen and heard and handing out those beers one by one to dehydrated, exhausted, grateful, happy, our-new-best-friends phans.

When Tracy and I hit the road, I thought I’d never see Phish again. We could have planned a season of travel around a show, theoretically. We would have had to bet we’d get the tickets we wanted, in a city where we would be able to camp close to the show, in a campground that let us get back in late at night (some don’t), and then we would have had to base that summer of travel around that one night. Goodbye national parks and all else we wanted to see. Which I think you can understand we did not do.

Never seeing Phish again was a sacrifice I was willing to make, but I missed the scene. I missed the connection with fans, the connection with my young-feeling self. Dancing and laughing with strangers and feeling enveloped by joy.

Even when we got off the road, I thought I was done seeing the band. See, Banjo can’t be left with just anyone. When we lived in Maryland, we were part of Tracy’s network of dog foster families, but no more.  And Phish was certainly not going to play in Madison. Of 2,000 shows, they’d played here only once, 25 years ago.

Which is why my mind almost exploded when I heard they were opening their summer 2026 tour here in Madison. The first time I could conceivably see them, and they break precedent by playing in my new hometown?!? And, then my lottery attempts to get tickets paid off, with seats for both nights of their Madison run!

Night 1

Our first night’s show was a dream come true. We rode our bikes to the venue, which I’ve never been able to do. All those years of desperately trying to book a hotel room within walking distance of the show so you could imbibe any way you want before, during, and after the music, then not have to even think about the hassle of all the traffic getting out of there? Now we didn’t even have to pay for a hotel! And, Banjo could stay home!

Tracy and I celebrated our bike-ride ability by riding to our local grocery first to stock up on old-person supplies—no longer hallucinogens or alcohol but now caffeine and protein. We sat in the grass before the show, partaking and playing gin rummy. 

Inside, our seats were freaking perfect, close to the drummer, Fishman, whose kit was oddly placed not in the back of the stage but to the side, where we could watch his every silly-dress-wearing, legendary-powerhouse move. The sound mix was phenomenal, the lighting rigs unlike I’ve ever seen before, and Trey had his transcendent grin plastered on his face the whole damn time.

That night was a bass-driven night of funk. It was the first show since Mike the bassist’s father had died, and his songs were not just dominant; he worked in a Jewish mourner’s Kaddish interwoven in a Phish funk groove. 

The fact that I danced three hours straight is not amazing. The previous weekend we’d spent at a small music festival where I’d warmed up my dancing. The Tuesday of the first Phish show, I’d ridden my bike to my exercise class where I’d upped the weights I’d held for the endurance portion. Then ridden home, then to the show, then danced three hours straight. That was amazing. 

But, this is what it feels like, why I did it.

When I dance with music I love all around me—the air of the arena filled with it—people on all sides of me dancing, eyes on the stage except to exchange the occasional full-energy smile or hug, I lose myself. Any self- consciousness is gone, and I’m in a flow state energized by the electric air around me. When I put my arms and hands in the air above my head, it feels like the music is a large, squishy glove that’s reaching down to me, grasping my body lovingly, supporting me so we can amplify the joy in the air, together.

Phish fans are like baseball fans in that they love to delve into statistical details. When songs were played, what songs preceded or followed what songs, how often per tour, on and on. Instead, I remember the feeling of a set. And, those two sets of that first night were pure joy.

I remember thinking that 1) things you have a lot of nostalgia for—that you think have seen their best days already—even those things can get even better. That 2) you can feel warmth and love from being in a body of people all appreciating beauty at once. I had forgotten both of these truths. 

I won’t say that Phish’s two-night stint in Madison went downhill from there, not by far, but that first night was exceptionally heady, and it was hard to beat. We walked out, elated, found our bikes right away, and I declared that the night had been 100% perfect. Then I realized my rear tire was flat. 

It took us about 20 minutes to get away from the crowds and form a plan: I pushed my bike to the capital and waited for Tracy (this was around midnight) who rode his bike home, then came back for me in the truck. The next day, he took the tube out of the tire, and whereas we’d thought someone had let the air out (during the show, my bike was first in a long row of bikes, so an easy target), it looked instead, also improbably, as though something sharp had gotten lodged between the tube and the tire, puncturing the tube only at the end of my half-hour ride to the show. Maybe? Whatever, Tracy patched it up, and that afternoon we rode back to our grocery store for supplies, then back to the scene of the joy.

Night 2

Second night was different in many ways. Positive changes: we had our friends Guy and Patti with us. They are also previous fans of the Dead, and were even at the same show I was in Chicago when Trey played Jerry’s spot to say goodbye to the fans. They don’t know much about Phish but were game. I love sharing music and I especially love deepening a special friendship in our new town. 

Negative changes: our four-people set of seats was not nearly as close to the stage as last night’s twosome (but, it’s a small stadium so the difference was not much). The vibe of the show was less jubilant and more subdued. Less dancing, more listening. But, that’s the genius of seeing all the shows in a run: you get a big picture and are not tied to the vibes of one show. 

Tracy and I rode our bikes home that night through the lovely summer darkness of Madison, laughing with other bikers riding home from the shows along the bike path. Years ago when Guy, Patti, and I saw the Dead in Chicago (separately, but that’s still a cool thing), we were in the same crowd leaving the show through a reverberating tunnel, all singing Buddy Holly’s Not Fade Away as a promise by the fans never to forget the Dead. This night as Tracy and I took our bikes through a smaller tunnel leaving Phish, I sang the guitar melody for the song Phish ended that show with, “First Tube,” an upbeat, funky weird tune with a positive vibe not even hinting at fading away. I wasn’t coming down off hallucinogens, or handing out beers with Tracy, or even sleeping like a pile of puppies on a hotel floor with my college buddies, but I was doing something better: moving forward.