A Short Time To Be There

4/17/99, San Francisco, CA, Warfield Theater

SET 1: Dark Star -> It's Up to You, Days Between -> Dark Star -> My Favorite Things, Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo, Bird Song

SET 2: Terrapin Station > Down with Disease -> Dark Star > Friend of the Devil, Casey Jones, Morning Dew, Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad -> And We Bid You Goodnight

ENCORE: Box of Rain

Playing with the Grateful Dead is both a blessing and a curse. Perform with just one of the core members, and you’re marked for life as Dead-adjacent, no matter your career path up to that point or what you try to do after. On the bright side, Deadheads will show up to your shows basically forevermore; on the other hand, they will expect you to sound like the Dead, if not play a cover. “Sounding like the Dead” being a particularly tricky goal, that sets a tough standard for any musician, particularly if they have interests beyond choogly country-space-rock.

Nobody symbolizes this better than Phil Friend John Molo’s primary employer Bruce Hornsby, who was an MTV star in his own right before doing a couple tours of duty with the Dead in the 90s. Now, no matter how many weird electronic records he makes, “former member of the Dead” is a label he can’t escape, and ticket-buyers expect a Dead cover as much as “The Way It Is.” The same effect is playing out today with John Mayer, who can sell out arenas solo but now feels obligated to throw a bone to the tie-dyes in the crowd at most shows.

In between, there’s countless more examples: Billy Strings, Joe Russo, Warren Haynes, Margo Price, members of Wilco and The National, Cass McCombs, Ryan Adams, Chris Robinson, Larry Campbell, Neil Casal, Mikaela Davis. All of them artists who held strong musical brands of their own going into playing with the Dead; all of them who left with both the benefits and unfair expectations of Deadhead approval. 

You would think that Phish was inoculated against this effect by 1999, having firmly taken the baton after Jerry Garcia’s death and established themselves as the alpha jamband. But even as Phish sold out the same U.S. circuit – minus the stadiums – that the Dead used to fill, their cultural penetrance remained low. Without a “Touch of Grey” or a historical connection like the late 60s, Phish remained in the Dead’s shadow for 99% of the population. 

And even within that 1%, there was still skepticism that they were worthy heirs. In some ways, Phil tapping Trey and Page was similar to Trey showing up to play at Radio City with Goose 23 years later – an endorsement that appears to establish a line of succession. Phish fans saw it as a moment of vindication, while many unconvinced Deadheads resigned themselves to finally giving those Vermont weirdos a chance. The shows were both milestone and major test, even before a single note was played.

It would seem to these biased ears that Trey and Page passed that test with honors, but the lingering skepticism 16 years later when Trey was announced in the Fare Thee Well lineup suggests not. Revisiting these tapes and the videos, it seems like the Warfield crowd was kind of stacked with those already converted to Phish – every time they drop into a Phish song during the run, it gets a loud reaction. But while these tapes quickly spread in Phish trading circles, and everyone on our side agreed our guys stepped up to the challenge, maybe they didn’t carry the same weight in Dead-land – there, these were Phil’s comeback shows, not a tryout/torch-passing.

pat-pat

But maybe that didn’t matter, and maybe Trey and Page passed a completely different test on behalf of Phish as a whole. They came into Deadworld, for just a brief three days, and left with their identity intact, no more Dead-affiliated than they were before. Yes, perhaps they were inoculated by a decade-and-a-half of lazy media comparisons, which will never really stop. But the Phil & Phriends experiment ends up proving how smart it was to musically keep the Dead at arm’s length for so long, until they could meet them as near-equals. 

That status is best represented in this run by the four Phish songs the band plays over the three shows. It’s surprising and very gracious that Phil wanted to play Phish material at all; nobody would’ve begrudged three setlists of Dead and classic rock covers. And it’s blatantly disproportionate to the other bandleader on stage, with Steve Kimock only granted one original (“It’s Up To You”) and a favorite cover (“My Favorite Things”), both squeezed into tonight’s first set*. 

But the performances also show something else: Phish can play Dead songs, but when the Dead – or one member of them at least – tries to play Phish songs, it sounds weird as hell. Just as this new context brings Page’s regular contributions into focus, the absence of one Jonathan Fishman proves his irreplaceability. John Molo, an incredibly skilled drummer, handles the Wolfman’s groove naturally, but feels a little lost in the quiet parts of the jam here and in Caspian and can’t match Fish’s sustained intensity on Chalk Dust or Disease. Phil contributes too – his attempt to play the Down with Disease part without Mike’s slap or effects is a hilarious disaster. The jams on these songs tend to disintegrate into prolonged tentative noodling, Trey and Page trying to get the others involved without much success, nobody knowing where to end.

The cynical take – one that I’m sure many Deadheads reached for – would be that this proves the Phish material inferior to the Dead (and Dylan and Floyd and Rodgers & Hammerstein) classics that facilitate more natural jamming. It’s not entirely wrong, and I expect bands around the world to be playing Ripple far longer and more often than Chalk Dust Torture. But it also proves once and for all that Phish is not just a Dead sequel, they’re a band with a sound of their own and influences that stretch far beyond the guys from 710 Ashbury.

That made it easier, once these shows were finished, to go back to just being Phish. There are some lingering effects: Trey will play Row Jimmy a couple times on the TAB tour next month, and Phil will show up for half a set at the Shoreline in September (where he’ll play on as many Phish songs as Dead songs). As with the post-Fare Thee Well crop of Dead soundalikes, one can also probably trace a couple Trey compositions back to this experience – you can practically hear him writing Get Back on the Train in his head as he plays the chooglier songs. Farmhouse, recorded later in 1999, would be Phish’s most Americana record to date, but it’s a half-hearted move in that direction, equally informed by the locked-groove trances of TAB material. 

In fact, 1999 Phish as a whole will sound as un-Dead as possible, as they continue to dive into minimalism, texture, and electronics. It’s arguably the closest they’ll ever come to contemporary, “fashionable” sounds, and the opposite direction from giving into the pressure of becoming officially Dead-approved. To fans, these Phil & Friends shows may have looked like a momentous vindication; to Trey and Page, it was truly just a side gig, a brief diversion in the broader narrative of Phish’s late 90s. Call it arrogance, but it’s that attitude that preserved Phish’s spot as the Dead’s true heirs.

“No babes in arms”??

In a way, it’s the Kimock vs. Trey battle recapitulated on a larger scale. A hundred post-Dead acts – including several featuring actual members of the Dead – have tried to scratch the post-Jerry itch in the safest way possible, forever chasing the old feelings through replication instead of evolution. Phish was one of the few - and definitely the best – who kept the spirit of the Dead alive without leaning too heavily on their sound. A quarter of a century later, it’s still true, with most jambands circling the same 60s cul de sacs while the post-Phish generation has largely failed to find new turf. The Dead’s shadow still looms large, and Phish, except for the occasional brief visit, did well to escape it.

* - Both are pretty interesting performances though! Trey funks up the lite-jazz “It’s Up To You,” spending the jam on his wah pedal in a Moma trance. And “My Favorite Things” provides an exceedingly rare opportunity to hear Page play an earnest jazz piano solo.