Traveling Salesmen

5/15 - 5/19/00, Philadelphia, New York City, Berkeley, Los Angeles

Sonic Sessions (5/15): First Tube, Farmhouse, Twist, Heavy Things, Back on the Train, Piper, The Inlaw Josie Wales, Bug, Gotta Jibboo

World Cafe (5/15): First Tube, Dirt, Back on the Train, Piper, The Inlaw Josie Wales, Gotta Jibboo

The Late Show with David Letterman (5/16): Heavy Things

KFOG Private Concerts (5/18): First Tube, Bug, Back on the Train, Sand, Heavy Things > Piper, The Inlaw Josie Wales, Dirt, Farmhouse

Mark and Brian (5/19): Funky Bitch, My Soul, Gotta Jibboo, First Tube, Bug, Heavy Things, Twist > Tube > Piper -> Llama, Brian and Robert, Magilla

KACD (5/19): Back on the Train, Heavy Things, First Tube

Another entry on the multiple choice question of “What should Phish do after Big Cypress?” was apparently “go all-in on traditional album promotion.” Or at least all-in in relative Phish terms. This week of radio appearances feels like an olive branch to the Elektra Records marketing department, a bi-coastal run of live broadcasts in front of clueless DJs and call-in contest winners, centered around the May 16th release date for Farmhouse.

Phish had tried this strategy before in more innocent times, doing the occasional mid-tour radio spot to promo Hoist in Spring ‘94. When that more FM-friendly record failed to connect – and after their very uncompromising live album the year following sold much better – the band didn’t even bother to play industry ball with Billy Breathes, only getting around to playing Character Zero on Letterman six months after release. For Story of the Ghost, they aimed higher, playing big-time charity festivals, the classy Sessions at West 54th PBS show, and the secret, radio-announced (but not broadcast) show at the Fillmore.

But none of those promotional cycles were as concentrated as this one, comprising five radio sessions across three days and doubleheaders in Philly and LA. Those pairs are made even stranger by the band’s unprecedented setlist discipline – they constrain themselves to entirely Farmhouse material for all but the Mark and Brian set, which only goes off-script after the broadcast ends. Compare that focus to 1994, where they would sprinkle older, non-Hoist tracks into much shorter appearances*, or 1998, when the October promotional dates only tangentially referenced the upcoming record.

The tight setlist puts a lot of pressure on the Farmhouse material to make a compelling case to people who have never heard Phish before. And it’s a tough album to hang that responsibility on. As we discussed last year, Farmhouse feels like three pretty incompatible ideas colliding: a rootiser, song-based push that started with 1998’s acoustic sets, the heavy-groove TAB material, and the last few leftovers from Trey and Tom’s Trampled By Lambs and Pecked By The Dove hot streak. Glass half full, that diversity allows Phish to showcase its eclectic nature within a constrained one-hour set; glass half empty, that indecisiveness gets in the way of making a succinct, memorable radio pitch.

Admittedly, parts of it are semi-effective. Opening most of the sessions with First Tube is smart, as the instrumental is as good as any Phish song at bottling the energy of a live jam, and its danceable menace contradicts the preconceptions of most listeners – in other words, it does not sound anything like the Dead. Piper, now fully in its hurry-up intro era, has a similar effect, but its repetitive structure will always sound weird, even lazy, without standing in contrast against the fussy surroundings of older Phish songs. And the band enlists Gotta Jibboo as the week’s mild jam vehicle, a nice choice for its relaxed, melodic improv, but one that relies upon innocent listeners making it past the very, very stupid lyrics.

The quieter material is less compelling in this format, despite it containing the songs where Phish – or maybe Elektra – saw the most crossover potential. Their chosen single, Heavy Things, is an instant dud, a soft-rock trifle out of step with modern radio trends; its chart peak would be a middling #22 on the Adult Top 40, basically Dentist Office Radio. Dirt and Farmhouse are much stronger songs, but better served by their polished studio versions instead of creaky live vocals. The standout from this group is Bug, which I’ll say again should’ve been the single; its midtempo muscle could’ve clicked in the summer Coldplay broke through with the very similar “Yellow.”

Then again, the music doesn’t really matter when the DJs reveal that the industry, as ever, still doesn’t know what to do with Phish. By 2000, they’re a cultural phenomenon that can’t be ignored, much as they tried – both interview segments this week mention Big Cypress, it clearly made it into the press kit. But the old stereotypes won’t die and the band is still treated like a sideshow. Mark-or-Brian makes a secondhand marijuana joke, and their LA counterpart at KACD asks well-researched questions such as “have you ever considered funk?,” “do you enjoy playing stadium shows?” and of course, “do you consider yourself the heir apparent to the Grateful Dead?”

These guys know Phish.

Only World Cafe’s David Dye treats them as more than a novelty object, asking about the recording of Farmhouse at The Barn and the preparation that goes into improvisation. But his questions also hit some raw nerves that suggest all is not well inside Phish world. Trey sounds a little prickly when his side project comes up, saying the TAB songs “were never going to be on a solo album, that’s a myth” and throws Mike under the bus for concentrating on Outside Out instead of songwriting. Later, Dye asks them if the lack of mainstream success bothers them, and damns them with the faint praise of “this is a real accessible record” before immediately apologizing.

Trey brushes it off and changes the subject, saying that what really matters to the band is forging their own path, from Big Cypress to The Barn – “We wanted to create a space where we could be ourselves and see what came out of that.” It’s a good answer, but an ironic statement while they’re contorting their idiosyncrasies to fit inside the traditional media junket boundaries and hopefully shift some units. And it’s double irony that Phish was doing a very old-school radio tour the precise year when a new piece of software called Napster was launching a new era of music discovery, sharing, and consumption. Consider that 2000 was also the year of Kid A, where the hype flames were fanned by a combination of (unintentional) leaks and (intentional) video squibs posted to the internet.

In the end, it’s hard to imagine any newbies getting hooked by this skim-milk version of Phish, and it feels like a lot of wasted time and air travel carbon. Phish had already done the hard work of building a fanbase on their own terms, venue-by-venue and tape-by-tape, for 17 years, and as their jokey answer to the dumb stadium question emphasized, they were as big as they wanted to be. They didn’t really need to win over morning shock jocks or NPR listeners, unless they were just looking for a new challenge and out of other ideas. At a time where Phish seemed to be at peak strength, it’s a strategy that betrayed hidden vulnerabilities.

* - Most famously in their TV network debut, in which they played (by Dave’s request) a song from two albums ago.