Threat of a Mule
SET 1: Julius, Gumbo, Divided Sky, Punch You in the Eye, Stash, My Mind's Got a Mind of its Own, Axilla (Part II), The Horse > Silent in the Morning, Hello My Baby, While My Guitar Gently Weeps
SET 2: Timber (Jerry The Mule) > Sparkle > Ya Mar, Run Like an Antelope, Billy Breathes, Cars Trucks Buses, You Enjoy Myself, Sample in a Jar > Frankenstein
ENCORE: Bouncing Around the Room, Rocky Top
Even the classic Phish months have their off nights. Oddly enough, both December 95 duds happen on the first show of the month’s two two-night runs, at UMass and in Lake Placid. By phish.net ratings, every other show this month does Iron Man numbers, and only 12/4 and 12/16 fall below the 4-stars-out-of-5 threshold. There should be no adjustment factor for the Mullins Center, a venue that the band played twice, non-consecutively, in 1994. It’s just...kinda flat and inconsistent, especially in the context of its neighbors.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why this show feels off. Maybe they were still sore after that New Haven Tweezer, even with the off-day in between to recuperate. Or maybe the off-day itself is to blame — when you’re riding a hot streak, the worst thing you can do is stop and take a breather. Perhaps with two shows and four sets to stretch their legs on, they didn’t quite floor it as much as they did on the tour’s one-night-stands, removing the leadfoot delirium that is key to the Fall 95 sound.
Yet the show is not without its highlights, including another strong first-set Stash and a mid-second-set Antelope that I suspect would be better remembered (or at the very least jam-charted) if it wasn’t for a gauzy AUD. My favorite performance on the night is a song that I associate most with this particular tour, but haven’t really had the chance to dig into yet: Timber (Jerry The Mule), or as it was known by fans for many years, Timber Ho!
Timber is a dusty oddity of the Phish catalog, with only some of the barbershop and bluegrass tunes and — depending whether you consider it a cover of Strauss or Deodato — Also Sprach Zarathustra predating it. Folk singer Josh White’s best known version came out (as “Timber”) in 1956 as a duet between White and Sam Gary, but there’s an even earlier version, called “Jerry,” that came out on one side of a 78 in 1944. Like a lot of early folk/blues, its roots probably date back even farther as a work song or chain gang chant, as the liner notes for the ‘56 release suggest:
When Josh and Sam Gary wrote this song over ten years ago, they had in mind the Negro convicts in country road gangs which they frequently saw in their travels. Wondering how men could take the kind of treatment at which any mule would have balked, this song was a natural expression of their feeling. It's the story of a mule who had the sense to say "Enough!".
The synopsis points out another reason why Timber is an anomaly in the Phish catalog — not only is it old, but it’s also political. The fact that Jerry the Mule wreaks vengeance upon “the boss” in the final verse shouldn’t be overlooked; it’s absolutely a song with civil and labor rights activism hiding just slightly beneath the tales of logging and pack animals. The jaunty White original recordings might not lay it on thick, but Odetta’s haunting 1957 version certainly brings out the rebellious undercurrents.
I’m not sure why a bunch of geeky Vermont white kids decided (probably unwisely) to tackle such a heavy and racially-charged folk standard in 1987, but Phish kept it around through the Nectar’s days before putting it on the shelf after 1990, apart from a one-off on New Year’s Eve 1992. Then 258 shows later they brought it back for good, supposedly inspired by two fans with a sign in the front row on 7/8/94. Clearly they enjoyed fulfilling the request, as Timber saw really its only stretch in regular rotation during Fall 95, getting the call 11 times, often as the second set opener.
That’s where it lands tonight, and Timber sets an eerie tone that the rest of the set, unfortunately, can’t match. The song’s off-kilter chords and frenetic, tom-heavy drums lead to a jam that typically bottles the dissonant experiments of Summer 95 into a more digestible serving, 7 or 8 minutes of uneasiness befitting the story of a mule brutally murdering a man. There’s always something wrong about a good Timber jam, coalescing from the paranoid scales Trey plays, the unpredictable clatter of Fishman’s drumming, and the metallic horror-soundtrack piano Page prefers.
In a weird way, the 12/4 Timber feels like the night’s most direct sequel to the 12/2 Tweezer while never coming within a mile of the tempo of that flamethrower — it’s the chopped-and-screwed version. Despite skating on the edge of cacophony, it builds over its five minute jam in a very Phishy way, experimental but with a payoff, a terrifying mini-narrative that suits the song’s dark lyrics.
And after all that, they play...Sparkle and Ya Mar. It initiates a series of questionable setlist decisions down the stretch, including rusty versions of Billy Breathes and Cars Trucks Buses after that hot Antelope and a run of Sample, Frankenstein, Bouncin, and Rocky Top to end it. I’ve lamented before that one of the few flaws of 1995 Phish is the ability to maintain a consistent mood over the course of the set, at least when they’re not playing just one song for most of it. Timber, as much as it feels like a Fall 95 song to me, is also kind of a bad fit for the tour, which generally eschewed emotional arcs in favor of rocking people’s blocks off. For all-you-can-eat buffet shows like this one, lacking a monster centerpiece jam, it’s just a particularly ominous side dish without a main course.
[Ticket stub from Golgi Project.]