Phish performs with Tahoe in mind
Beloved jam band changes venues, raises funds for Caldor victims
Phish was the surprise of the Bay Area summer concert calendar.
No, it wasn’t a surprise just how good the Vermont quartet was during the first of two nights at Shoreline Amphitheatre at Mountain View on Tuesday. That was no shocker at all, given that we were dealing with the world’s greatest jam band.
The surprise was that these two Mountain View shows were happening at all.
Just a week earlier, these fans — or, in Phish speak, “Phans” — had no idea that they’d be grooving to guitarist Trey Anastasio, bassist Mike Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell and drummer Jon Fishman at Shoreline.
Many of them originally had planned to be with Phish at the
Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena in Stateline, Nevada, this week, but then promoters were forced to move the shows to Shoreline amid the horrible air quality and hazardous conditions caused by the Caldor Fire.
As the wildfire already had forced promoters to postpone or reschedule concerts by country stars Dierks Bentley and Eric Church at the same Tahoe venue, many people expected the same fate would befall the Phish gigs.
And moving the show to Shoreline was harder than you might think, especially since the Mountain View venue is run by a whole different promoter — Live Nation — as opposed to Another Planet Enter
tainment, which books the Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena as well as the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and other venues.
The result is that the Bay Area now will host a total of four Phish shows this year — make that five, if you toss Sacramento into the mix. The group also is set to perform Oct. 16-17 at Chase Center in San Francisco, as well as Oct. 15 at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. Showtime is 7:30 p.m. and tickets are $55-$95; apeconcerts.com. (Plus tickets still remain for Wednesday’s show at Shoreline; $85, livenation.com.)
But it was obvious Tuesday that Tahoe was still very much on the minds of concertgoers and performers alike.
That number most definitely included Anastasio, who spoke to the crowd early on in the first set — something he rarely does — and conveyed the band’s love and concern for the Lake Tahoe area.
“We are all thinking of everyone there,” Anastasio said.
Yet this is a band that does more than just talk the talk.
As such, the group is collecting donations for the Caldor Fire Fund at the El Dorado County Community Foundation through its WaterWheel Foundation booth at both Shoreline concerts. The donations then will be matched by the band and go directly to people affected by the wildfire. Go to phish. com/waterwheel for more information. Donations to the Caldor Fire Fund also can be made directly at eldoradocf.org.
Phish kicked off the first set with the alwaysfun “Glide,” with the opening lyric — “And we’re glad glad glad that you’re alive” — drawing smiles and hoots of joy as the audience settled in to enjoy the first Bay Area Phish show since July 2018. (The group was supposed to play in San Francisco in 2020, but those shows were postponed because of the pandemic.)
From there, the group ventured right into “Colonel Forbin’s Ascent” and “Fly Famous Mockingbird,” two big Phan favorites — just ask the guy wearing the “Straight Outta Gamehendge” shirt at Shoreline — but for no real good musical reason.
Things picked up a notch with “Wolfman’s Brother,” then again with “Stash” — which provided the first sizable psychedelic jam of the night — only to stall a bit with a somewhat throwaway version of “Bouncing Around the Room.”
Yet the first set would end in triumphant fashion as the band delivered a thrilling rendition of David Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream,” complete with the type of fretboard fireworks that long ago earned Anastasio a place among the top rock guitarists of all time.
The musicians would show off their jam band chops — and how — at the start of the second set as they poured themselves into a marathon version of “Soul Planet” that lasted a mind-blowing 47 minutes. No, that’s not a typo. The rest of the second set was filled with relatively concise tunes, with the exception of the 15-minute-plus version of “Harry Hood” that brought the main set to a close.
The group returned to the stage for a terrific twosong encore of “Fee” and “Wilson,” sending fans out of Shoreline on a high note and definitely looking forward to more good music the next night.