Phish Figure Aaron Woolf Running For Congress

When Phish front man Trey Anastasio was a student at Princeton Day School one of his close friends was Aaron Woolf. Woolf acutally co-wrote two early Phish classics, “Wilson” and “Golgi Apparatus,” with Anastasio and Tom Marshall. Following an illustrious career as a filmmaker, the Democratic Party has tabbed Woolf to represent the party in an upcoming election for the 21st Congressional District in New York.

According to Time Warner Cable News, Woolf earned unanimous support from all 12 Democratic Party chairs on Wednesday. “I’m incredibly honored and privileged to represent the independent spirit of the North Country, the independent spirit of all of you. I really look forward to talking with and meeting all the great people of this district,” Woolf said in a brief statement following his selection. It appears Woolf will take on Republican Elise Stefanik this November for the Congressional seat Bill Owens will leave.

Woolf was part of the crew that discovered and spent time at The Rhombus -an important site in Phish history. As per Dog Gone Blog, Woolf lost touch with Anastasio and only realized his words had been put to music when someone played “Golgi Apparatus” on a stereo at a party he was attending. Anastasio recounted the situation in a 1991 interview, “My friend Aaron didn’t even know that this whole band existed or anything, like a year ago; he had no idea about any of this. And I’m telling you, ‘Golgi Apparatus’ was something we used to sing every day at school, in eighth grade, at least fifteen years ago. I got him to come to this gig at the Marquee and we did ‘Golgi’ and he was standing there just freaking out. But the thing was that he had actually heard it — that’s not the whole story; I just remembered, the whole story is that he was at a party in California. He had no idea about the band, and somebody put it on the stereo, (that’s right, ’cause then I met this other guy who told me that he was at the party with him) and Aaron started going ‘I wrote this! I wrote this!’ And they went, ‘No, man, this is Phish.’ So he says, ‘What are you talking about — I wrote this!’ The ‘whole thing…runs like a junkyard dog.'”

We’ll see if Woolf reaches out to Trey to help support his campaign.