Discord and Rhyme

9/12/00, Mansfield, MA, Tweeter Center

SET 1: Wolfman's Brother, Scent of a Mule, My Soul, Ginseng Sullivan, First Tube > Divided Sky, Wilson

SET 2: Down with Disease > Heavy Things > Split Open and Melt, Hold Your Head Up > Bike > Hold Your Head Up, Also Sprach Zarathustra > Mike's Song > I Am Hydrogen > Weekapaug Groove

ENCORE: The Squirming Coil

Listen

By the time the fall tour started, it was all but confirmed that Phish was about to take a break. Trey will make it official from the stage in Vegas in a couple weeks, but the lack of new tour dates announced beyond the Shoreline tour closer was enough evidence to settle any lot debates. And as I wrote at the end of summer tour, it felt – even at the time – like a healthy decision. In hindsight, it seems obvious that Phish had been running on fumes since Big Cypress; in Mike Ayers’ new jamband oral history Sharing in the Groove*, tour manager Brad Sands says “I always felt like, and I think the band might have felt this way, that’s when we should have taken the first hiatus. But we had a new record and all that.”

In the summer, I called out the warning signs when I heard them, most notably when the band performed like they were absolutely gassed. But Phish, even in this diminished state, rarely ever played an obvious clunker like that night in Raleigh. Instead, the fatigue, interpersonal conflict, and substance issues that were causing issues under the hood manifested in a much more subtle symptom: disconnection. The four-way hivemind that had powered the band through the last decade of stylistic evolution was starting to fray, not completely absent but also not as strong or consistent as it had been just a year or two prior.

One tiny way you can hear this decay is when the band forms internal factions. Basically any group of people larger than two is going to occasionally fall prey to team dynamics, familiar to anyone who has played sports, worked in an office, or existed in a family. When things are going right, the team feels like it’s sharing a collective brain, moving the same direction with no friction at all. But when circumstances are less ideal, that cohesion is lost – people take sides, gang up, and generally waste energy on squabbling instead of progressing towards their goal.

Because musical improvisation is such a vulnerable and sensitive process, it tends to be an open window to the amount of internal harmony or strife between the participants. I think most Phish listeners can tell the difference almost subconsciously; I know I felt the positive version of this sense in certain moments this summer, when the band’s communication was absolutely free of resistance. But when Phish isn’t operating as a seamless foursome, it’s equally apparent, even if it just manifests as an itch of wrongness at the back of your mind.

Like a lot of shows in 2000, night two at Great Woods sets off that itch, despite a loaded second set and one of the longest Diseases ever. It’s there from the very start, when a promising Wolfman’s sputters out into Mule – notably, the Phish song that features a literal duel between band members. And it’s present at the end of the first set, where a very strange, rhythmically fragile Wilson brings the first half to an early close.

But it’s most noticeable in that honkin’ 26-minute Disease centerpiece. When I’ve talked about band dynamics recently, it’s mostly to complain about when Trey goes 1v3 against the rest of the band, either dominating them with an endless, noisy solo or isolating himself in his synth and pedals workshop. Both of those things happen in this Disease, but the internal battle lines are much more complex and fluid than I usually notice.

The first 13 minutes are what you expect from a Disease of this era, with Trey at full sprint and the rest of the band clinging on for dear life. There’s an important enabler though, and it’s the guy that would normally be setting the tempo in a rock band: Fish. I wrote a whole post in the summer about Fish’s impressive stamina in both the years 2000 and 2025, but that can cut both ways. When he sides with Trey and the duo decide to go hyperdrive, it can very easily squeeze out the other half of the band – most notably, Mike, who is constantly throwing out interesting melodic ideas that fall on deaf ears from those to his left.

When they finally ease off the gas, there’s a stretch where the full-band chemistry seems to be healing, not coincidentally when Fish’s allegiance shifts from Trey to Mike and he slows down to sync up with the latter’s Weymouth-like groove. But it’s quickly lost when Trey shifts to keys at minute 14, and we’ll barely hear his guitar for the next 7 minutes. It splits the band again, though it’s not exactly Trey versus the world – it’s Team Groove and Team Atmosphere, with Page joining Trey in focusing on color and texture instead of melody.

The AUD mix doesn’t do this segment any favors; whatever Trey is doing is barely audible, and the rhythm section is very front and center. But that just amplifies the creative stasis of the jam, with nobody stepping up to provide a central theme. With Trey off on his own adventure, the remaining power trio should have plenty of creativity to thrive on their own, but Page is too passive, nobody’s following Mike’s leads, and Fish just seems focused on keeping the energy up and away from an ambient collapse.

When Trey returns to his primary instrument, it almost instantly improves. Something as simple as him hammering a power chord and letting it drone out rouses Page and breaks the rhythm section out of their locked groove, and after they close out the song, there’s a compelling two-minute coda where they’re all exploring Japan-like space together, instead of separately.

And after a poorly timed Heavy Things, there’s an excellent Melt that doesn’t do anything too innovative, it just demonstrates that the band is still capable of merging into a single brain with eight arms. Listen to the up-and-down theme Mike introduces at 9:09 and how the rest of the band immediately follows and repeats; that’s exactly what it sounds like when they are clicking instead of clashing.

In 2000, those magical moments were increasingly scarce, and I can’t help but feel like it can be traced back to one particular decision: the stage rearrangement debuted in June 1999. We’re now 15 months into Trey setting up far stage left, and the balance has felt off ever since in ways that track with what I’m describing above. It makes it all too easy for Trey to bubble off into his own experiments, makes Fish the rope in the tug of war between Mike and Trey, leaves Page on the periphery and maximum distance from his closest melodic partner.

My belief that where they all stand matters was only emboldened by the successes of summer 2025 after they moved back to original positions; dipping back into 2000 is a reminder of the opposite effect. Of course, there were more complicated factors afoot in 2000 too, a long list of contaminants to disrupt Phish’s previously robust team chemistry. And by fall tour, those internal fault lines were easier to detect, even if the band could still keep it together on the surface.

* - An excellent read that just so happens to include a few thoughts from me! Pick up a copy at Mike’s site.