Tourist Trap
SET 1: Sample in a Jar, Stash, Uncle Pen, AC/DC Bag > Maze, Glide, Sparkle > Free, Strange Design, Amazing Grace
SET 2: Mound > Prince Caspian, The Fog That Surrounds, Suzy Greenberg -> Keyboard Army -> Jam
ENCORE: My Long Journey Home, I'm Blue, I'm Lonesome
Phish visits to New Orleans always strike me as a little awkward, a little stiff. After the band outgrew Tipitina’s — their early 90s home in NOLA — up through the present day, the performances have fallen into one of two categories: festival appearances or guest-heavy sets. In 1994, New Orleans got one of the horn section shows on 5/4 and a thoroughly unremarkable stop at Tulane on 10/14 (a show so boring it stalled my essay project for a year). In 1996, they’ll make their Jazzfest debut, a milestone that’s pretty mediocre musically (ditto their 2014 return). Beyond that, despite many, many appearances by individual band members, Phish has largely avoided New Orleans as they criss-cross the country.
That’s an odd aversion, given that New Orleans is a city where improvised music is practically written into the municipal code. But visiting jambands have always played uneasily in The Big Easy, which you could perhaps trace back to The Dead’s bust there in early 1970. While Phish loves to tinker with the jazz, funk, and gospel sounds that originated or evolved in New Orleans, they seem to get intimidated when they find themselves faced with the real thing. Suddenly, Vermont feels a million miles away from Louisiana.
That imposter syndrome is thrown into sharp relief at the end of this show’s first set, where the band yields the stage after their barbershop rendition of Amazing Grace to “Nathan,” an otherwise unidentified vocalist who sings the hymn a second time. “We’re gonna now give you the real version of that song,” Trey admits, and as soon as Nathan starts singing (after asking a fan with an Etch-a-Sketch(?) to say grace), the band’s well-practiced, technically-competent a capella skills sound pretty hokey. Quickly, the ringer quiets the chompers and, by the end, has them organized into a theatre-sized choir worthy of the tune. I’m not sure I buy that “Nathan” was just a random audience member, but his semi-anonymity reinforces the legend that you can’t throw a beignet in New Orleans without hitting someone with tremendous musical talent.
For most of the night, Phish plays like they’re cowed by these high local standards, lacking the intoxicating arrogance they’d started building over the last week. It’s a startlingly jam-free show, up to the point where it becomes ALL JAM, as show openers Medeski Martin and Wood join the stage for the second time in three shows. Here again, Phish seems like they’re hiding behind guests who can stake a more authentic claim along the tributaries of New Orleans music — MMW might not be from the city, but they’re definitely adept practitioners of its jazz-funk recipe.
Unfortunately, the second appearance of the Phish/MMW super-septet doesn’t go quite as well as the first. Keyboard Army provides the cover for MMW to get set up and the two bands don’t even bother with a song, launching right into 36 minutes of pure improvisation that occupies more than half the second set. It starts, oddly enough, with a Montana-like groove, then ebbs back and forth from free playing to more structured segments, moving through passages vaguely reminiscent of Ghost, “Foxy Lady,” and “Gypsy Queen.”
It’s fine, though it definitely overstays its welcome, and by the end offers a strong rebuttal to the old “what if they just came out and JAMMED, brah?” fantasy. It’s seven insanely talented people occasionally locking in but mostly playing tentatively, waiting for someone to take the lead, which never really happens. Structurally, it’s more similar to Trey, Fish, and Medeski’s Surrender to the Air, albeit a much tamer version, with musicians who are less experienced with free playing. It’s a swing at Trey’s perennial Sun Ra aspirations, but with an ensemble that hadn’t been relentlessly rehearsed into an effortless hivemind like an Arkestra, and without a strong, glitter-robed leader conducting.
Encoring after the mega-jam with two unamplified bluegrass songs (including the first My Long Journey Home since last winter) only punctuates the strange vibe of this show. It’s Phish playing reenactors instead of innovators, showing deference to their forerunners without demonstrating how they’ve creatively and respectfully woven the music of many genres into their own DNA. For a tour that draws strength from Phish finding un-ironic comfort in their own musical skin wherever they play, the stop in New Orleans feels awfully timid and touristy.
Edit: I don’t always have to agree with Trey, but it is nice when we see things similarly. Thanks to Jambase for the quote, from a 1996 Guitar Player magazine.
I didn’t know what to make of it in New Orleans! [Laughs.] It was an experiment. In Austin we had this incredible 25-minute jam with both bands, with this screaming peak where everyone was running around the stage at a full sprint and shit was buzzing all over the place. And then New Orleans, about three days later, we decided to go for it again and literally start from nothing, which is the big risk. But between both bands, we’d rather take a risk than not. I don’t generally like saying this because I don’t like to stomp on someone’s experience–and people did come up and say New Orleans was an incredible experience–but I personally didn’t like it. [Laughs.] I liked that we were on a limb. I’d much rather jump off the cliff than walk on the path, and we jumped. But I thought we were sucking.