Stool Test

10/17-18/98, Mountain View, CA, Shoreline Amphitheatre

10/17: Carolina, Sleep, Never, Possum, I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome, Free Bird, Driver, Wading in the Velvet Sea, Harry Hood > Helpless

10/18: Hello My Baby, Billy Breathes, Piper, Roggae, Loving Cup, Albuquerque, The Old Home Place, Guyute, Brian and Robert, Sad Lisa, Four Strong Winds, I Shall Be Released

Listen on phish.in: Night 1, Night 2

If the album release cycle nudged Phish back into a mild identity crisis after a solid 12 months of swagger and confidence, at least their second charity stop of the month allowed them to test out an alternate form. The annual Bridge School shows benefitting Neil and Pegi Young’s organization for verbally and physically impaired kids ran for 30 years with just one rule: no electricity allowed. Before, during, and after the MTV Unplugged craze, everyone from Dylan and some of the Dead to Ministry and Metallica showed up at Shoreline with their acoustic gear for a weekend of shows with Uncle Neil playing host and occasional collaborator.

While Phish had done plenty of acoustic dabbling over the 90s, most notably with the bluegrass sidebars of 1994 and the mini-stage of 1996, they hadn’t played an entirely unplugged set since a one-off in a basement in 1985. And the opportunity came at an opportune time, when Trey and Tom’s songwriting started getting a little folksier – not exactly American Beauty, but at least folk-curious. There’s a world where you could imagine the next Phish album, Farmhouse, as their Americana record, anchored by the title track and quieter material like Dirt, Sleep, and The Inlaw Josie Wales, even though its final form was the usual stylistic grab-bag. 

These Bridge shows offered a chance for Phish to prove they could pull off an all-acoustic configuration, but left unsettled the question of whether they should. The reactionary ideal of an unplugged performance is seeing an artist get “back to basics,” a public simulacrum of intimate songwriting sessions or a chance to refocus on The Song without the excesses of the usual live performance. But the “basics” of Phish were never campfire sessions or traditional songwriting craft, and their core DNA is very electrified, hyperactive, and uncozy prog-rock. As Phish got steadily bigger and louder over the 90s, they also got better, and even the minimalist explorations of the late decade tended towards effects-drenched cosmic ambience instead of organic coffee-shop sounds. It wasn’t a given that scaling the Phish sound back down to a false analog nostalgia would actually work as more than mere novelty.

The awkwardness of that equation is on full display on night one, where Phish maybe pushed a little too hard to play along with the stripped-down format. Their recent folkier interests are represented by the debut of three new songs, suggesting there was a backlog of soft, earnest material just waiting for the right environment. But the whisper-thin material is not Phish’s strongest – Sleep and Never, no thanks; Driver, you’re cool, you can stay – and they anchor a set that never quite gets comfortable within the unfamiliar constraints.

It’s cute that they start off both nights by singing barbershop to the kids sitting at the back of the stage, but a bit pandering to also dust off the a capella Free Bird, even if it does take the unplugged concept to a Phishy extreme. It’s great to hear Mike play banjo (and Page play bass!) on Blue & Lonesome, but kind of a travesty to put Jon Fishman on brushes and muted drumsticks for most of the set. Possum and Hood, the only two oldies given an acoustic makeover on night one, both demonstrate the central issue with Phish unplugged: without the volume dynamics of a normal Phish performance, these songs sound very weird and flat.

The first night finishes with an attempt to recapture the magic of Farm Aid with Neil Young hopping in mid-jam and steering it into one of his own classics, this time Hood > Helpless. But their miraculous instant compatibility in an electric setting doesn’t translate – turns out, Phish makes a better Crazy Horse than Stray Gators. Neil and his tiny guitar cannonballing into the delicate pool of the Hood jam is pretty clumsy*, and the band’s harmonies on Helpless are ragged without the glory. That rumored 1999 tour, in any alternate dimensions where it actually took place, hopefully remained all-electric.

But night two makes big strides with a less ambitious goal: just pick the songs from the Phish catalog that sound best with acoustic guitars and piano. Billy Breathes, Piper, and Roggae all sparkle, while Loving Cup and Albuquerque (bold!) are both effective covers and good diplomacy for the boomer-heavy crowd. The big swing on Guyute works out too – Trey warns that they are “stretching traditional acoustic music just a little bit further” but it turns out great, resembling chamber music at times and making clever use of Neil’s iconic pump organ. 

The guest segment goes better on night two as well, even as it threatens to tip into a superjam. Sarah McLachlan seems like a terrible candidate for a Phish sit-in, but her duet with Trey on Cat Stevens’ “Sad Lisa” is lovely and spooky, and her presence sweetens the harmonies for the subsequent two songs as well. Ian and Sylvia’s “Four Strong Winds” is a lower-pressure Neil collaboration and Phish captures the Alberta back-porch vibes well, with a little accordion assist by a dude from the Barenaked Ladies (a real dream summit for dirty white hat college kids). And if Phish is going to do a Dylan cover more soulful than Quinn the Eskimo, I’m happy that Neil’s there to guide them through it. 

With such dramatic progress from night one to night two, it was reasonable to expect that this wasn’t the last we’d hear of Phish Unplugged in Fall 98. But outside of a little bit of Sessions at West 54th and a Colorado radio session, this configuration went back on ice until Festival 8, eleven years later. Even if Phish – or at least Trey, who would make acoustic sets a regular part of his solo shows – were increasingly interested in exploring these quieter tones, the main track of late 90s Phish couldn’t be diverged from its noisier destiny. That leaves these shows as a flawed and fascinating path untraveled, probably for the best – an uncompleted bridge to nowhere.

* - His sit-ins with REM for Ambulance Blues and Country Feedback were much better, do check them out.