Destination Bound

12/2/99, Auburn Hills, MI, The Palace of Auburn Hills

Experts believe structural damage from this show’s Gin led to the Palace’s implosion in 2020.

SET 1: Runaway Jim, Farmhouse, Heavy Things, Roggae, Run Like an Antelope, Wading in the Velvet Sea, Poor Heart > Sample in a Jar > Free, The Squirming Coil

SET 2: Boogie On Reggae Woman, Gotta Jibboo, Bathtub Gin -> Also Sprach Zarathustra > You Enjoy Myself -> The Little Drummer Boy

ENCORE: Bold As Love

Listen

If you sensed a certain frustration as I worked my way through the Fall 99 tour, this show is partly to blame. It’s long been near the top of my favorite shows attended, one of my go-to dark horse picks before it moved above-the-radar with a LivePhish release in late 2020. Even if it didn’t quite reach the heights of my beloved Palace ‘97, it’s a worthy successor, a night that confidently captured all the best things happening with Phish in the final month of the decade.

With that very familiar signpost on the horizon, my expectations were that the arc of the September/October tour would gradually bend towards it. But while all the Palace pieces were present, they were never really assembled into this kind of complete show. Cohesive sets were rare, and when they did happen, they relied on the structures and jamming styles that worked in the past instead of crafting a new breed. Isolated jam highlights were more frequent as songs like Gin and 2001 turned in all-timer versions, but these landmarks didn’t reliably elevate the rest of the show or set like a ‘97 Ghost or a ‘95 Mike’s often did. Overall, it was a tour that felt off balance, an unsteadiness that never resolved.

But after another short vacation break – one spent largely in the studio commencing work on what would become Farmhouse – Phish came out of the gates for the year’s final tour with everything in its right place. I’m aware attendance bias could be putting the usual thumb on the scale, but tonight feels like the Platonic ideal of a late 99 show, a fully realized representative of its era without all the growing pains. It’s a perfect overture for Phish’s final victory lap of the 90s.

Where all that hyperbole might seem most partisan is in the first set, which is, objectively, quite mid. I’ve railed against many similar sets this year, and that run of Farmhouse, Heavy Things, Roggae (and the nearby Velvet Sea) looks like pure first-night-energy sabotage on paper. But it’s revisionist to ignore the segment of Phish’s ‘99 goals that pushed towards softer and quieter sounds. And coming off of studio time, this “easy listening” strain of Phish has rarely sounded better on stage: unhurried, delicate, refined. It’s where the heart of the first set is, instead of the meatier songs on the list.

That relaxed pace carries over to the second set, at first. Both Boogie On and Jibboo are thoroughly chillaxed, the band far more restrained in its groove than the sugar-high glee of the cowfunk days. It particularly suits the newer song, the tour’s first hint that Phish is more comfortable with their TAB inheritance, leaving more space between the heavy grooves. Even Trey goes light on the effects for most of the jam, setting a single bweeoooo and concentrating on melodic ribbons that never really build, just float off into the distance. Even if it still comes in under 10 minutes, it’s easy to hear what will propel the marathon Sands of the month.

But if you thought it was going to be a mellow night in Auburn Hills, that’s where it ends. The centerpiece of the set finally welds together the two MVPs of the fall tour, as well as the extremities of new experiments Phish have been working on all year. Gin is a tidal wave, loud and accelerating to Llama tempos by the last five minutes. Yet it’s threaded through with the same patient, tasteful approach of Jibboo, with Trey only tipping over into deranged effects-pedal multiplicity at the climax. The sixth minute is a favorite mini-passage; listen to Trey loop a sustained note and stumble onto a mischievous little earworm that changes the song’s course immediately.

Forgot this was the “Hampton Comes Alive Tour”

After reaching escape velocity, they fall upwards into the deep space of a 2001 that can hang with any of the fall’s top versions. It’s notable for being what I think is Trey’s most tactful use of his mini-synth, a new toy that was already starting to wear out its welcome in September/October but provides the key element here with a “Close Encounters”-style transmission. After making first contact, they settle back into more earthly and relaxed territory for the second jam and a YEM that features an eerie theme running, unusually, all the way from the tramps section through to the vocal jam.

By the time Fishman’s done singing a solo, horned-up version of Little Drummer Boy, the topography of the show has completed a full circle from calm to stormy to calm again. Which isn’t an insignificant feat, in a year where most of Phish’s innovation has been on the polar edges of those loud-soft dynamics. Up ‘til now, they’ve struggled to find ways to feature both sides without herky-jerking the flow; tonight solves the equation.

It’s rare to hear that kind of breakthrough on a tour’s opening night, until you consider the compressed nature of the 1999 touring schedule. There’s probably also some benefit from “sleeping on” all the big changes and additions made in the fall; instead of building the plane while flying, they’ve had a couple months to let their new sound ideas rest and marinate. Or maybe it’s just the mind-sharpening effects of a deadline; there’s a real big show looming at the end of the month, and the more purposeful playing tonight compared to the fall sounds like a band with a clear destination in focus. What a difference a couple of months makes.