Phish Ends Dick’s Run With Another ‘Long-Ass Set’

This is how the storm delay ends: not with a bang but a whimper.

Last night was the one-year anniversary of the evening a packed house of Phish fans — or at least, the ones who weren’t able to cram themselves into the limited amount of dry space available at Dick’s Sportings Goods Park — got good and soaked from a show-delaying thunderstorm.

But aside from a passing rain shower before sunset on Sunday, the three-hour delay for the finale of this year’s four-night Dick’s run was a dry one. It was prompted by the threat of a nearby storm that, in the end, politely kept its distance even as fans waited for gates to open.

Would Phish’s resulting “long-ass set” (as promised by the band’s official Twitter account) be a barnburner, offering emphatic punctuation to a historically great summer tour?

Nah.

Sunday’s show was stocked with high-quality song selections, leaning toward the band’s first two decades of creative life. But as evidenced with other rain-cramped performances, Phish doesn’t have the greatest proficiency (with the odd glorious exception) at crafting an extended set that echoes the internal rhythms of its customary two-part affairs. And so last night felt, from the couch, like an unexceptional first set that kept chugging along without ever growing into something more strange and beautiful.

This being Phish in 2023, the members’ playing was more muscular and precise than it had been through long stretches of late-3.0 — including justifiably lauded performances like those of the Baker’s Dozen in 2017, when the quartet’s creativity was thrilling, but its basic execution level on songs was a lot … squishier, let’s say.

These days, when Phish plays (for instance) a by-the-numbers “Moma Dance,” it’s sizzling. Trey Anastasio sounds more dexterous on guitar than he has in years, and Jon Fishman continues his year(s)-long era of dominance, generating energy within otherwise-typical renditions by complicating his rhythms and offering endless opportunities for bandmates to embroider their parts and take new ideas out for a walk.

Phish just sounds good these days, even when covering familiar ground. And so, on the heels of so many memorable performances this year, it’s hard to hear the Dick’s finale as anything but the least impressive performance in a summer full of winners. The unplanned change in format didn’t shake loose any dose of musical weirdness, or prompt unusual song choices, or inspire any sense of drama that translated across the screen or speakers. Instead, Phish wrapped up a historically great tour with a technically proficient but relatively uninspired slog.

Read on after The Skinny for the rest of the recap and more.

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The songs were well-selected but stayed determinedly in-character. Potential jam highlights, like the second-slot “Down With Disease” and the “Everything’s Right” several songs later, offered pointed moments when the four musicians created for themselves the option of stepping outside the song’s form or typical jam progression — but they tested the improvisational waves for just two minutes or so before heading back to shore.

The band also offered a rich choice of songs that a Phish set doesn’t typically rely on but which offer solid wild-card opportunities for standout moments on any given night. These — including “The Moma Dance,” “Kill Devil Falls,” “2001,” “Fuego,” “Runaway Jim” and “Twist” — received brightly colored readings. On first hearing, they seemed to include little subtext or complication to savor upon repeated listenings.

From my seat in front of the webcast (informed also by anecdotal reaction from some fans on-scene), I can’t say whether or not Sunday’s Dick’s finale offered, in the end, an inspiring cap to the run and to the preceding summer tour.

But the state of the Phish union is strong, as we head toward the eight-show fall run and then, one hopes, a New Year’s Run of some sort.

In the future, when fans think back on the many thrilling highlights of 2023, we’ll have so much to remember: from Mexico to the April run to a summer tour that winningly extended Phish’s coronavirus-era hot streak.

And when we sift through the very strong 2023 Dick’s run, we’ll revisit highlights like the moving “Carini” opener on Thursday, implicitly dedicated to the late fan known as Frenchie; the Friday “Sand,” which extended this current golden age for the song; and the much-clamored-for Type II window out of “AC/DC Bag” on Saturday.

As for last night’s show? Not out of spite but out of an abundance of other stuff to remember, a Don Draper quote from Mad Men will likely apply.

“This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.”

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Jeremy D. Goodwin is Arts & Culture Senior Reporter at St. Louis Public Radio, an emeritus board member of the Mockingbird Foundation and a Phish fan.

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