The Beat Goes On

7/7/00, Burgettstown, PA, Star Lake Amphitheatre

SET 1: Chalk Dust Torture, Gumbo, Divided Sky, Boogie On Reggae Woman > Funky Bitch, Maze -> Shafty -> Maze, Back on the Train, The Curtain > Character Zero

SET 2: Ghost -> Gotta Jibboo, Split Open and Melt, Roggae > Mike's Song > Simple > Weekapaug Groove

ENCORE: Frankenstein

Listen

I’ll tell you one thing I’m excited for when the band’s 2001 hiatus enables a 2026 newsletter hiatus* – the ability to listen to Phish shows as they happen instead of on a 25-year delay. Phish doesn’t just repeat venues from year-to-year, they also tend to plot tours over similar date ranges. And since there are only so many hours in the day where I don’t need my ears for other stuff, I’m forced to choose archival research over couch touring. The sacrifices I make for you people!

I do try to carve out time for the highlights though, as curated by my social feed and the band’s YouTube channel. At the time of this writing, I’ve spun the Manchester Tweezerfest, the Pittsburgh What’s Going Through Your Mind, and the Austin Ruby Waves – all the obvious stuff, but I don’t have time yet to go digging for the more subtle pleasures. I hope nobody out there thinks I’m a 1.0 purist that doesn’t care about modern-era Phish; on the contrary, hearing how vital and creative they remain today is fuel when the going gets tough covering the past. After publishing my essay on the dreary, exhausted Walnut Creek show, it was so refreshing to queue up the 42-minute jam they had just played the night before, 9,131 days after that low point.

Nevertheless, it is pretty jarring to jump back and forth between 2000 and 2025. I would argue the band is far more adventurous today than they were in the final stretch of 1.0, playing democratic jams that are not just longer but packed full of distinct themes and passages. But I do think the 2000 model has the edge on edge – there is a frightening intensity to the older shows that has, understandably, been smoothed over as the band gracefully aged. When I see a show now, I feel like I’m in the comfortable hands of four wise masters; back in 2000, it had the unsettling thrill of being on an out-of-code rollercoaster throwing bolts.

But one thing hasn’t changed in 25 years, and it’s Jonathan Fishman. Somewhere around the half-hour mark of that Pittsburgh WGTYM, it dawned on me that the propulsive force of that extremely long and very uptempo improvisation was being provided by a 60-year-old man. I remember a time in early 3.0 when I – and a lot of other Phish fans, I think – expected the band to start slowing down soon due to the inevitable clash of age and the physical demands of being in a rock band. Yet somehow, for the guy with the most demanding athletic responsibilities, it still hasn’t happened.

I worry that I don’t talk about Fish enough in these essays; I’m much more at home discussing the melodic elements of the music. But I don’t want to take his consistent excellence for granted, and you can make the argument that he’s the band’s MVP at any point in their history. So much of my lens for looking at Phish history is evolution and adaptation, and none of that happens if you don’t have one of the most brilliant drummers to ever play rock music. Fishman can do technical, he can do powerful, he can play across genres. He’s a skilled listener able to turn the beat on a dime, and he has an endless supply of rhythmic ideas to drive the conversation when needed. And he does it all in a dress.

At Deer Creek, four days after this show, there will be an entire set dedicated to teasing Fish. Here in Burgettstown, it’s all business, and it’s the kind of show that makes it clear how valuable the drummer can be. Phish’s dense jamming style in 2000 must have been particularly taxing to Henrietta, asking him to keep a high tempo for long durations. But a year into Trey brute-forcing the heavy groove of TAB into Phish, the band’s namesake has made it his own, finding flexibility around the margins without dropping the steady aerobic zone pulse.

Tonight, that runner’s pace is all over the show, from the opening Chalk Dust to the closing Frankenstein (when Fishman gets to play the one drum solo he tolerates). It’s on display in the first set standout of Maze -> Shafty -> Maze, which never slows down into the creeping funk of the studio version, instead blazing right through until it’s not Shafty, not Oblivious Fool, but a secret third thing. Similarly the Mike’s Simple Groove never pauses for a gentle instrumental breather, it’s in a white-rabbit hurry the whole time.

Spread out over a whole show, that risks one-dimensionality. But Fishman is always keeping it interesting and – more importantly – always keeping it under control. The best illustration is tonight’s Ghost taste-tested against the unhinged previous version in Hartford, when that roller coaster pulled a Final Destination 3. There, Trey bullied Fish into chasing higher and higher gears, producing a very rare situation where the drummer was left wrong-footed. Tonight, the throttle is back in Fish’s hands, and it results in a much stronger rendition, allowed to rage in a cage for several minutes without causing structural damage.

It’s too bad they didn’t show the same deference on Split, where around 9:00 he tries to initiate what would have been a cool stop-start jam – but the rest of the band plays right over it. That’s okay; less than a minute later, he’s locked in with Mike to create a demonic disco beat that they could have explored for a lot longer, if the fourth quarter of this show wasn’t in such a rush. Hey, it’s a long drive to Alpine Valley.

Missed opportunities like that make me think that Fish is a lot happier today than he was in 2000. The band’s ability to listen to each other and immediately pounce on each other’s ideas is better than ever, I’d argue, and he triggers some incredible moments in this summer’s Tweezerfest and Ruby Waves. Then again, his playing on the What’s Going Through Your Mind is awfully 2000-esque, a relentless, driving beat that finally opens up to some caveman theatrics in the last ten minutes. It’s ample evidence that Fishman is now and always was an absolute machine, one that happily never runs out of upgrades.

* - Since several of you have asked, the newsletter won’t go away entirely from 10/7/25 - 12/31/27; I’ll find stuff to write about, don’t worry.