Where The Sets Split
7/9/94, Mansfield, MA, Great Woods Amphitheatre
The transitional year of 1994 can be viewed as a long, slow metamorphosis to modernity for Phish. For the bulk of fans who hopped aboard in the back half of the 90s, certain aspects of 1993 and earlier years feel downright foreign — clubs and theaters, the occasional opening act, appearances at multi-band festivals, and a shotgun approach to tour booking, covering nearly every major market from coast to coast. But the summer of 1994 is nearly bookended by a format familiar to the next generation of fans: the two-night stand at a large outdoor venue.
Red Rocks in June and these Great Woods shows are the first two examples of this species…and I’m tempted to disqualify Red Rocks since it’s a smaller and singular variety of amphitheatre. But no matter your criteria, these runs are a preview of what would come to be the standard summer tour experience, spending two days or more just far enough outside of a metropolitan area to feel like you’ve escaped reality and established a temporary society with a weirdo band at the center. Eventually this ritual would reach its apex with Phish festivals, but until then — or for fans who never made it to the Northeast air-strip throwdowns — multiple nights at a shed in Noblesville or George or Saratoga Springs were the next best thing.
There’s a different energy to these stands than you get from multi-night indoor runs — such as those in New York City and San Francisco earlier in 1994. In an urban area, fans can live simultaneously in two worlds, spending their days sightseeing or visiting non-Phish friends, returning to assorted hotels after the show every night. Outdoor runs are more relentless, with many fans camping near the venue and spending long, sweltering days on lot. It’s immersive, with no distractions, just a steadily building buzz of excitement (and substances) compounded over multiple days.
That vibe can’t help but infect the band, who are also working with the rare luxury (at this time) of not having to pack up and travel after the show. And like the theater residencies of spring, the residency also creates a challenge/opportunity for a longer-form statement, a four-set canvas instead of the usual two. Knowing that a healthy chunk of the crowd would be there for both nights, Trey in his setlist-obsessive days would surely take this into account in how he managed the ebb and flow of the run.
On one level the band appears to use these two shows as a journey through the past, opening the run with the final Gamehendge, playing as many songs from Junta as from Hoist, and ending it with shout-outs to “Suzy Greenberg,” The Dude of Life, and “Looks Too Much Like” Dave. There’s also a certain “we made it, Ma!” quality to the run, celebrating that they’ve reached the point where they can fill the big shed for the Boston area, not once but twice, and without compromising their essential weirdness — there’s still a Big Ball Jam, even in a 20,000 capacity venue.
But kicking things off with Gamehendge also had an interesting knock-on effect for the rest of the run’s sets, perhaps unintentionally laying down a template for future show structures. On the 8th, it pushes two typically first-set improv staples, Reba and Stash, into the second frame, where they thrive in the hands of a more warmed-up band — to the point where one of those performances made the cut for A Live One. The 9th also takes a somewhat unusual shape for the era, with a very laid-back and song-focused opening set paired with a second set packed with heavy hitters and heavy on energetic flow.
That latter case might not seem so weird today, but it marks a shift from the band’s earlier approach, where the two sets were more equitable. Sure, there were certain songs or routines that had a semi-permanent home in the first or second set, but the prevailing goal of both frames were to demonstrate the band’s eclectic abilities, with a healthy mix of genres and improv vehicles sprinkled across the two halves of the show. But from roughly this point on, with the notable exception of a few eras, shows tended to follow the back-heavy structure of 7/9, with a focus on songs in the first and a focus on improv in the second.
On this specific night, the band might have just been easing into the show for the sake of a storm-weary crowd, or because of bad traffic heading into the venue. Or perhaps, with the confidence and luxury of playing two nights in front of a large audience, they felt like they could pace themselves, conserving some energy for the final set of the run and throwing some light on newish and recently-revived songs. Improv-light first sets are a controversial topic in today’s era, but this reorganization may have set the stage for the deeper exploration of the mid-90s. If you give the “casual” fans what they want in the first half, it gives you license to go full blast in the second, to the extreme of 40-minute Tweezers and four-song sets.
Those depths aren’t quite plumbed on this night, but as with the 8th, the second set is denser than usual, with four songs clocking over 12:50 and connected via shorter, faster songs that give the set a segue-fest type of pace, minus the teases. Two sets at that intensity might have overwhelmed a crowd at the end of their 48-hour party, but Phish, in their benevolence, chose to ease their fans into night two with a low-impact set, with an Antelope capper to raise the crowd’s heart rate before the second set’s sprint. In their game plan for one of the first outdoor doubleheaders, they may have stumbled upon a new format for the future, when a band in search of an audience increasingly starts to challenge the one they’ve earned.