In The Year 1997

11/7/97, NBC Television Studios (Studio 6A), New York, NY

SET 1: Farmhouse, Mike's Song Jam

Our first glimpse of Phish in Fall 1997 came on late, late night TV, and what we saw wasn’t entirely familiar. For the first time since the mid-80s, all four members of the band sported facial hair, including the exceedingly rare Mike Beard. Unlike the sartorial crimes of previous national television appearances, they looked like they looted an Eddie Bauer, all flannel and broken-in, tastefully baggy jeans. And in contrast to the stale song choices of their TV bookings in 1994 and 1995, they chose to debut a never-heard-before tune: Farmhouse, the theme song for Tom and Trey’s recent rural spurt of songwriting.

It was appropriate that all this expectation subversion didn’t happen on The Late Show with David Letterman, but it’s even later and even weirder little brother, Late Night With Conan O’Brien. Debuting in 1993 when Dave lost the battle for The Tonight Show and took his ball to CBS, Conan’s show was the closest thing to Phish on television, a slow-burn cult favorite made by a cast of nerds who stumbled into the mainstream. Like Phish, it never did huge numbers, but its audience – nightbirds who mayyyyybe weren’t entirely sober – was extremely loyal, creating a feedback loop of in-jokes and surreal, experimental humor, hidden in plain sight on over-the-air television.

At times, it was hard to tell if you were watching a talk show or a parody of one. Letterman may have shaken up the format in his time at NBC, but Conan took it a step farther, from the host’s self-deprecating mannerisms to absurd recurring skits and characters that laid the path for 2000s Adult Swim anti-comedy. Dave may have had Top 10 lists and Chris Elliott, but Conan had the Walker, Texas Ranger lever, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and Masturbating Bear. If Letterman sprinkled the late-night format with postmodernism, Conan dunked it in the stuff, doing all the familiar moves with fingers crossed.

Mike Beard

So it was the perfect television home for Phish, particularly in 1997. As pal Steven Hyden put it in Twilight of the Gods:

“[Phish] turned their geekiness into a positive by acknowledging their distance from the classic-rock gods, reimagining rock history as a fun house for a special breed of rock nerd who is simultaneously reverent and irreverent toward the genre’s conventions. In the process, Phish pushed classic-rock mythology into a postmodern realm.”

Or in other words, Phish is to the rock concert experience what Conan was to talk shows. And by the final months of 1997, they were even deeper into that hall of mirrors, not only commenting upon and toying with the familiar tropes of rock and roll, but doing the same for expectations about Phish itself. Staying one step ahead of their fans was a Phish tradition from the very start, but the gap had accelerated over the course of this pivotal year, from the strange shows of Europe and the flood of new songs through the unpredictable summer tour, where narratives were hard to grasp.

Trey Face

On Conan, they brought that mischief to an unsuspecting national audience. Officially there to promote Slip Stitch and Pass, which came out 10 days prior, viewers may have expected Cities, or an abridged Wolfman’s or Taste. Instead, it’s the world debut of Farmhouse, a laid-back, stripped-down ballad more straightforward and simple than the Phish of even a couple years prior would ever permit. 

But beneath the surface, it’s still full of winks: quoting directly and at length from a note left by the B&B Trey and Tom were staying at during their songwriting session and shamelessly borrowing melody from “No Woman No Cry.” Played on TV, it impishly shifted the stakes from “how will they translate to a broader audience?” to pull the rug out from even their loyal fans tuning in. For one more twist of the knife, they go into commercial playing the intro to Mike’s Song, a cruel, brief tease of The Old Phish denied to home viewers.

Eddie Bauer looting

It’s also yet another misdirection for the tour to come. It feels wrong that Farmhouse kicked off Fall 97– it would only appear in three shows over the rest of the year, and it wouldn’t make it to a studio release until it was the title track on the album after next. The farmhouse was not Big Pink; Phish had not pulled a Basement Tapes and gone back-to-basics, complete with beards and flannel, since The Great Went. The more logical prologue, if they wanted to debut something fresh and new, would have been Black-Eyed Katy…but when did Phish ever do the logical thing?

All in all, it’s right and good that this bait-and-switch happened on Conan instead of Letterman. Dave may have been the one Phish themselves watched in the wee hours at UVM, but their career arc more closely tracked the Simpsons-to-Studio-6A trajectory of Trey’s fellow ginger. Playing Letterman might have felt like they Made It, but the gonzo environment of Late Night was more in tune with Phish’s frequency. It was the perfect setting to launch what would become their most legendary tour, one that would be confrontational in the moment and ever more beloved after it was gone.

[Don’t look up who the other guests were that night.]