New and Old Friends Abroad
7/9/97, Lyon, FRA, Le Transbordeur
SET 1: Punch You in the Eye > Prince Caspian, Ginseng Sullivan, Split Open and Melt, Dirt, Taste, Sweet Adeline, Harry Hood
SET 2: Down with Disease > My Soul > Cars Trucks Buses, You Enjoy Myself -> Trane To Conamarra Jam -> Ghost
ENCORE: Poor Heart, Hello My Baby
Okay, the familiarity on this tour is starting to get a little ridiculous. After the band-fan interactions of the last two shows, tonight’s show is dedicated and performed to one man alone: the famed Pierre from Häagen-Dazs. Pierre gets extended shout outs in Hood and Disease, has the band introductions in YEM directly addressed to him, inspires a crowd chant, and, finally, appears on stage for the encore so Phish can serenade him with Hello My Baby. All this despite representing “the second best ice cream in the world,” as decreed by Trey, a loyal Vermonter through and through. Pierre is not a metaphor like “the back of the worm.” Pierre is just Pierre.
But while Pierre is the guest of honor in Lyon, it’s the night’s other visitors who steal the show. As Phish’s European itinerary dwindles down, it crosses paths with longtime pal Bela Fleck and his Flecktones, embarking on an international run of their own. A Fleck sit-in was almost an annual occurrence in the mid-90s, from the full Flecktone then-trio playing most of Set II after opening 8/21/93 through solo Bela appearances in 94 and 95. Here, the now four-piece Flecktones invade midway through YEM, staying on through Ghost and a Poor Heart with more false endings than The Return of the King.
Full-band sit-ins with Phish tend to be a chaotic affair, as doubling the musicians on stage produces an improvisational herd of cats. DMB settled for common-ground covers, ARU collapsed into a free jazz freakout, and even the mighty MMW struggled to find space within Phish’s unique chemistry. But for whatever reason the, ahem, Phlecktones hybrid always felt natural, with Fleck and the Wooten brothers keeping up with the manic episode of August ‘93 and the bandleader happy to indulge Phish’s bluegrass studies in 1994 and 1995.
Here again, the Flecktones (now including freshly-minted saxophonist Jeff Coffin) have no trouble meshing with Phish, despite the hosts being midway through yet another evolutionary leap. By diving into a YEM jam and Ghost, the guests collide head-on with the cowfunk experiment, and yet aren’t thrown for a moment that this Phish isn’t the same as the one they jammed with four years earlier. It ends up being a much smoother strain of funk than Phish has been tinkering with all summer, with Fleck and Coffin contributing silvery lines and Mike having a friendly slap-bass showdown with Victor Wooten. Even the “synth axe drumitar” of Future Man sounds…well I won’t use the word “natural,” but it’s less distracting/irritating than Trey’s mini-kit. It all works, a half-hour of jamming that flows like the Rhône, only stumbling when Trey has to count off the brand-new song two times.
After that, they stick around for a Poor Heart that seems more of an auto-pilot pick for the “jazzgrass” guests. But the song still manages to weave in the theme from Sanford & Son, “Yakety Sax,” “Rhapsody in Blue,” and “Free Bird,” in case you thought the Grammy-anointed Flecktones were too respectable to play along with Phish’s sense of humor. And if you doubted the two bands’ comfort level with each other, notice Mike and Victor playing on the same bass below:
That’s all evidence that Fleck and the Flecktones were particularly well suited to sit in with Phish. But is it also possible that Phish, in their 1997 evolution, became a more welcoming band for guest stars? Many of the most significant musical changes — a sparser sound, simpler songs, groove-based jamming instead of high-precision tension/release — created a more hospitable atmosphere for any extra improvisers allowed onstage. If Phish hadn’t sanded off any of its idiosyncrasies — you still better know the end of “Free Bird” as well as you know “Palmetto Quickstep” — there were still more doors available to infiltrate their tight four-man circle.
But there aren’t a lot of opportunities to test this hypothesis, since this year is also the time when Phish guests grow increasingly scarce. After a few drop-ins – LeRoi Moore, Bob Gullotti, Sugar Blue, Ken Kesey – on the U.S. leg of summer, the upcoming fall tour will have only one outside musical guest in the form of Pete “Dr. Banjo” Wernick on 11/16/97. And neither the full Flecktones nor Fleck himself will appear at a Phish show again, despite their obvious chemistry. Ironically, Phish at their most accessible would also become Phish at their most cloistered, too busy pushing each other to new heights to risk any outsiders spoiling the magic. Only Pierre could break down those barriers…and there’s only one Pierre.
[Photos from Ryan McBrayer.]