Down The Road

10/27/95, Kalamazoo, MI, Wings Stadium

SET 1: Runaway Jim, Fluffhead, Taste That Surrounds, Horn, I Didn't Know, Rift, Stash, Fee > Suspicious Minds > Hold Your Head Up

SET 2: Also Sprach Zarathustra > David Bowie, Dog Faced Boy, Poor Heart > Simple > McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters > Keyboard Army, Bouncing Around the Room, Possum

ENCORE: Life on Mars?

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A year ago, I wrote about the effect of Halloween on shows in its immediate vicinity. The stress of learning an entire album while simultaneously playing a full slate of tour dates undoubtedly puts stress on Phish, and you’d expect its effects only to grow as the deadline approaches. When I ran the numbers last year, I found that the show immediately before Halloween was pretty variable, despite the burner they played on 10/29/94. Meanwhile, the show after 10/31 is consistently great as the pressure lifts — an effect that will sadly be blunted this year due to a 8-day mid-tour break. 

Here in 1995, this show kicks off the final trio of performances before the holiday, and the band’s already starting to sound a little tight — just a glance at the fan ratings suggest these shows are a step down from the red-hot previous week. In Kalamazoo, there’s a very forgettable first set, apart from the Suspicious Minds closer and Fish’s developing Elvis banter impression, and a second set with solid versions of Bowie and Simple that would fall well down the list of tour highlights. 

But there’s one song that has yet to take a night off on this tour, despite my lack of mentions: the humble Possum. It’s easy to take Possum for granted, given that Jeff Holdsworth’s greatest contribution to his former band is the second-most played song in Phish history. But in 1995, Possum was at its peak, consistently clocking quarter-hour versions and fitting like hand in glove with the era’s hard rock inclinations.

The Wings Stadium Possum — slayed, no doubt, on I-94 just outside the venue — is a good representative of the species. It spends three solid minutes chugging to the song’s opening chords, sprinkling in three different secret language cues and a Thriller misdirection along the way. When it reaches the jam, Trey settles in for the long haul: roughly 10 full minutes of just about the most traditional blues-rock soloing you’ll get at a Phish show without a Funky Bitch or Jesus Just Left Chicago. But “traditional” is relative, of course; there are few guitarists that would use such a straightforward song for a masterclass in tension/release, paragraph-length phrases, and climaxes that go on well past the point of reason.

Possum has been on fire for at least the last year, gaining some extra oomph starting in Fall 94 and carrying its momentum over into the new calendar. On this tour, practically every version has carried something notable: Champaign’s spent a lot of time fighting through Dave’s Energy Guide tangles, Chandler’s jammed on the Allman Brothers’ “You Don’t Love Me” and Trey held a note for 32 seconds, Sacramento’s encore placement features a Johnny B. Goode interpolation. And the summer tour was chock full of plump Possums as well, with versions at Deer Creek, SPAC, and Great Woods (chosen for Velvet Appalachia) especially standing out.

Though the general path of the jam’s climb from muted calm to absolute frenzy stays the same, the exact route is always shifting. And if the working theory is that the magic of Fall 95 is equal parts bravado and patience, Possum is low-key the perfect song for that recipe. Like a lot of Phish songs, it was originally meant to be a goof, a 12-bar rip-off of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Swamp Music,” undercut by (shocker!) inane lyrics and a real groaner of a pun. But as Phish progressed from dorm cafeterias to sports arenas, the irony gradually sloughed off as the band grew more comfortable rocking without a wink and Trey embraced his Guitar God status. 

But despite that newly-realized swagger, I also like how Possum remained an oasis of their foundational silliness. It’s one of the last songs to regularly include secret language, which Phish has started phasing out now that they no longer need to quiz audiences in new markets; in Fall 95, all but one occurrence of the language comes in Possum. The inclusion here of “Beat It” teases is almost an updated “secret language,” a nod to rampant rumors about the Halloween album choice that you would only be aware of if you were a rec.music.phish regular or part of the nerdiest lot conversations. 

So Possum has it both ways — it’s one of the likeliest songs to appeal to a totally fresh listener who somehow found himself at a Phish concert, and it remains full of references to reassure the longtime fans that they’re still in on the joke. It’s the perfect vehicle for a tour where Phish is figuring out how to sell out arenas without selling out, staying true to their original, insular wit while inflating their sound to fill bigger and bigger rooms. All from a song written by the guy who’s not even in the band any more.

[Ticket stub from Golgi Project.]