Phish Hints At New Halloween Tradition

Jam titans Phish came up with an inventive way to celebrate Halloween in 1994, when they asked fans to vote for an album by another artist they would cover on October 31 of that year at the Glens Falls Civic Center. The quartet wound up tackling The Beatles’ White Album in 1994 and continued the “musical costume” tradition at each Halloween show up until last year, when they debuted material off Fuego, a new album that comes out tomorrow, instead of covering an album by another act. In a just-released NPR interview Phish keyboardist Page McConnell hints that a new tradition may be established for future Halloween shows.

Over the past few years, it had been rumored that the members of Phish felt inhibited by the “musical costume” tradition. Guitarist Trey Anastasio confirmed those rumors when he told NPR’s Arun Rath, “I think everybody kind of got sick of it, to be perfectly honest. So the last couple of years it started to feel like a trap we had built.” Page went on to reveal, “I think doing our own album was a little bit of a liberating experience for me. I kind of wonder if maybe we’ll look to start a new tradition.”

We’ll see if the band does announce a Halloween show as part of a rumored fall tour and what they’d have in store for this “new tradition” or if this is just another case of Phish toying with fans.

Page and Trey also discuss the process of writing as a group, Bob Ezrin’s production skills and much more in the NPR interview.