15-Year-Old Pianist Shares Another Phish Medley
By Scott Bernstein Mar 3, 2015 • 7:00 am PST
We asked Eric how he goes about putting these medleys together. “I decide the first song and some of the long, major, or recurring songs beforehand (“Divided Sky,” “Runaway Jim,” “Theme From The Bottom”) but most of the rest is just hearing a chord or phrase which reminds me of another song.” He mentions that in this new medley “Character Zero” is similar to “Wilson,” while the jam of “Runaway Jim” has similarities to the “Reba” jam.
Ingersoll has been listening to Phish his whole life thanks to his father Chris, who’s an old school Phish follower that started seeing the band in the ’80s. “I’m sure you can imagine the pride and sublime pleasure I get every time he sits down at the piano, melding the Page (McConnell) part with the Trey (Anastasio) and Mike (Gordon) parts into his own creation for the song that is never the same,” Chris tells us. Eric finally caught his first Phish show at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco last fall the night that the San Francisco Giants won the World Series. Chris was a proud papa when Eric correctly predicted Phish would encore with “Meatstick” based on the keyboard McConnell turned towards.
Eric’s latest creation starts off with “Runaway Jim” and includes portions of “Billy Breathes,” “Divided Sky,” “Character Zero,” “Theme From The Bottom,” “Free,” “Waste,” “Reba” and “Tweezer” with a bit of Stephen Malkmus’s “Jenny & The Ess-Dog” thrown in for good measure. We love what he did with “Reba” in particular. Take a look:
