Happy 60th Birthday Jon Fishman: 6 Essential Side Projects Through The Years

Jon Fishman co-founded Burlington, Vermont-based band Pork Tornado in 1997 along with Phish collaborator Dan Archer, who produced Lawn Boy, saxophonist Joe Moore, bassist Aaron Hersey and keyboardist Phil Abair. After Phish went on their first hiatus in 2000, Pork Tornado became Fish’s main gig for a few years.

Pork Tornado released their self-titled debut album in 2002 and toured around the record. Like Fishman’s musical tastes, the band offers an eclectic array of styles but at its essence is a rocking bar band. With Phish beginning to tour again in the 2000s, Pork Tornado stopped performing regularly but have reunited over the years, including last weekend at Nectar’s in Burlington for the “Celebrating Sergei: An Analog Outpouring” concert.

Joe Moore sadly passed away in 2024 and the band honored him with a performance at the Burlington Jazz Fest that year with longtime Phish collaborator Dave Grippo (Big Country Horns) stepping in for Joe. (Watch the set above).

Another Fish-associated act, Jazz Mandolin Project participated in the “Celebrating Sergei” concert honoring longtime Nectar’s sound engineer Sergei Ushakov who recently died. JMP was formed by Jamie Masefield in 1993. Masefield played banjo in Dixieland jazz bands including the legendary Preservation Hall Jazz Band, but switched to mandolin. Fishman came aboard in the late 1990s. He toured with the band into the 2000s and also contributed to a few records.

Jazz Mandolin Project’s set featured originals “The Phoenicians” (from 1999’s Tour de Flux) and “Spiders” off the 2000 Blue Note release Xenoblast. JMP — Masefield, Fish and bassist Danton Boller — also covered Miles Davis’ “Milestones” and Black Sabbath’ “War Pigs,” the latter featuring Chris Friday on vocals. Listen to the show below via taper Hunting Sound Man:

The aforementioned Chris Friday is the lead vocalist for the Burlington-based band Touchpants. The group’s brand of “Outrageous, Disgusting Musical Comedy,” as Dan Bolles wrote in an excellent 2014 profile in Burlington’s Seven Days publication, tracks with Fish’s will to be weird. Read an excerpt from the 7D article below:

Going to see Touchpants is like a last-call bar hookup. Somewhere deep down in your booze-battered psyche, you know it’s a bad idea. You know you’ll wake up in the morning smelling of equal parts whiskey, cigarettes, and shame. You also know you’re gonna do it anyway because, hey, it’s been a while, right? A person has needs. And sometimes those needs supersede your moral code, negligible as that may be in a bar at 2 a.m. Sometimes you need a cheap thrill.

Sometimes, you just gotta go home with Touchpants.

Fish collaborated with Touchpants in the mid-2010s. The 7D article above was in preview of the group’s 4/20 show at Burlington’s Club Metronome in 2014. The band — Friday, bassist Aram Bedrosian and guitarist Colby Dix — along with Fish, offered a brief tour in 2015 that included afterparties during Phish’s run at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. (The video above is from a Phish afterparty near Philadelphia).

While it was a one-off, a notable Jon Fishman collaboration came in 2016 when he joined the lineup of Phil Lesh & Friends, led by Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, at the Lockn’ Festival in Arrington, Virginia. Phish was on the Lockn’ bill that year in a rare non-hosted festival play, and keyboardist Page McConnell also played with Lesh as well as The Infamous Stringdusters and guitarist Anders Osborne. Fish also drummed alongside Joe Russo.

As JamBase’s Scott Bernstein noted, “One of the most intriguing parts of the set was the inclusion of Russo and Fishman. Russo led the drumming corp as he spent years as Lesh’s drummer with Furthur and it was particularly cool to watch Joe direct Fish.”

Check out”Shakedown Street” above.

Earlier in 2016, Fishman was an outspoken supporter of Vermont Senator and then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who was also the mayor of Burlington when Phish was formed in 1983. While on the campaign trail for Bernie, Fish became familiar with fellow Maine residents The Mallett Brothers Band.

Fish performed his first official show with the Americana act in Maine shortly after he himself entered politics, becoming an alderman in Lincolnville, Maine. The drummer went on to tour the Northeast with The Mallett Brothers Band in Spring 2018.

Watch The Mallett Brothers Band featuring Jon Fishman from Brooklyn Bowl in 2018 in the video posted above.

Around the same time Fish was touring with The Mallett Brothers Band, Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio’s close friend Chris Cottrell sadly lost his battle with adrenal cancer. Cottrell’s death affected Trey deeply and spurred him to create his Ghosts of the Forest album and live band. Anastasio tapped another longtime friend, Jon Fishman, to play drums.

The Ghosts of the Forest record was released on April 12, 2018. The studio personnel included Fish along with Trey Anastasio Band keyboardist Ray Paczkowski and bassist Tony Markellis. Ghosts of the Forest would also be Tony’s last recording project with Trey, as Markellis passed away in 2021.

Anastasio offered a brief tour around Ghosts of the Forest in Spring 2019 with shows on both coasts. The touring band included Fish, Markellis and Paczkowski as well as TAB trumpeter Jennifer Hartswick and relatively new Anastasio collaborator Celisse Henderson.

Watch Ghosts of the Forest’s full show from the United Palace Theatre in New York City above.