Phish Wraps Hampton Coliseum Return With Back-To-Back 20-Minute Jams

It’s been a pretty stellar year for Phish. Having capped off arguably the best Summer Tour of the still-nascent “4.0” era with arguably the best individual show of 4.0 — the “Tweeprise” fest at Saratoga Performing Arts Center on July 27 — they took a fall victory lap through the Southeast.

This brief fall tour may not have hit the high points that the summer brought, but the quality remained consistently high, their current catalog has settled in a good place, and the new/old stage formation seems to have inspired more democratic and inspired play than they’ve found in years.

Yes, life is pretty good in Phish land.

With the leaves turning and September Tour winding down, and before the band resets for their returns to the MSG and Mexico parts of their touring schedule, they had business to attend to at one of the most storied venues in their history: Virginia’s Hampton Coliseum.

“First Tube” began the festivities. The song is one of their finest closers but the energy has never quite fit the leadoff spot for me. Nonetheless, guitarist Trey Anastasio was all grins, so you can do a lot worse as a tone-setter in a venue they clearly love. “20 Years Later” and “AC/DC Bag” followed, and despite that fact that both have inspired some fantastic jams, neither song strayed too far from the script on this evening.

After “AC/DC Bag,” “Foam” kept the band’s ’80s vibe going. It’s incredibly impressive that a band with a catalog this deep can simply drop into a song so complex and rely on nothing more than muscle memory. It’s one of those songs that no other band could have written, and I wish they played it more often.

“Life Saving Gun,” one of the newest songs in their repertoire, then outshined all the oldies with another sparkling rendition. It seems like the band is still trying to figure where to place this song, but the tempo suits this spot in the first set, taking the energy up a notch right when fans are ready for a full meal. They showered the jam with a variety of effects at the start and then settled into Trey time, as he took a standard (for him) solo that built up into a sustained note. Again, however, the song was on the short side, and instead of a meal it was another appetizer.

“Roggae” would normally slide right into the first-set cool-down spot, but the song has been coming to life of late, with renditions on April 22 (in San Francisco) and July 16 (in Philadelphia) of this year stretching out further than usual. This version continued the trend, with a gorgeous, languid outro jam that teased around the song’s borders.

Predicting Phish is a fool’s errand, but I wouldn’t be surprised if “Roggae” emerged as a late-in-life jam vehicle the way “My Friend My Friend,” the “Axilla” coda, and occasionally “Sample In A Jar” have.

Another curious choice followed, with a mid-first-set “2001.” The song is usually reserved for when the second set could use a little oomph, but here it provided a nice little four-on-the-floor break to get the crowd moving. The funk continued with the always-welcome “Meat,” giving the band a chance to get silly and play around with pauses and individual solos.

“Split Open And Melt” then did what the song does better than anything in the band’s rotation: getting predictably unpredictable and bathing the entire arena in noise. This one collapsed into a soft pillow of electric Miles Davis-like abstraction before returning to the song proper and fumbling the ending a tad.

No doubt some fans thought it was the end of the set and made a break for the restroom, but the band pulled out “Golgi Apparatus.” After all, you can’t close a set without those bright white lights. At this point, some other fans probably took their ticket stubs out to the hallway, but they then got a third straight set-closing song with “Most Events Aren’t Planned.” Whew!

All in all, it was a strangely constructed set with many delightfully old-school selections, but it also lacked the longer excursions that we all shell out the big bucks for.

A second-set-opening “Mike’s Song” is just what the doctor ordered, though. The jam stayed close to home for a while, but Jon Fishman’s extraordinary drumming punctuated what could have been some basic (for them) vamping by the other three guys. It morphed into a classic “Mike’s Groove” with “I Am Hydrogen” and “Weekapaug Groove.” The “Weekapaug” in particular whipped the audience into a frenzy with relentless pace and fluid soloing by Trey.

Phish’s newest favorite song, “What’s Going Through Your Mind” followed, prompting a reflection that it’s actually been nice that the band has taken a break from introducing new songs to the repertoire. It’s allowed the material of the past few years to find their places in the show, and given the band chances to really explore all of the songs’ corners.

With this rendition of “WGTYM,” they brought the jam down to a nice, meditative place right from the jump. Mike Gordon filled the space with delicate and creative basslines, which Trey picked up on, soloing for a little while before switching to a staccato rhythm guitar and bringing the tempo back up. The band hinted at a peak but then pulled it back again until all that remained was Trey squiggling around on his guitar.

This created a seamless, must-hear segue into “Scents And Subtle Sounds,” the high point of the evening. The early minutes of the jam were highlighted by evocative piano work by Page McConnell, until once more the band brought the music down to a quiet setting. Once in this place, Trey slowly built it back up with sensitive, evocative playing. The others crafted a soft bed for Trey’s guitar work to emote, before they built it up again into some real hive-mind playing. The entire piece was special, and after a few jamming dead-ends it shows how the band sometimes has to mine a few songs before they find that gold.

“Lonely Trip” was such a perfect choice to follow Trey’s emotional playing in “Scents And Subtle Sounds” that it almost felt inevitable. And the rest of the show also followed a fairly predictable route: an uptempo “Ghost” and a raging “Chalk Dust Torture,” both of which stayed pretty close to home. Then an encore of “A Life Beyond the Dream” and “Harry Hood.”

It wasn’t close to the tour closer that we enjoyed in Saratoga Springs last month, but it’s hard to imagine anyone left the Mothership disappointed.

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