July 4th, Hold The Festivities: Phish Let The Music Speak In Boulder Blowout

There are holidays and then there are Phish holidays. Depending on who you ask, both New Year’s Eve and the night before (12/30) are historic Phish holidays as well as Halloween, of course, and up until recently the Labor Day weekend (Dick’s Weekend). An interesting question is whether July 4th – Independence Day in the USA – is also a Phish holiday. It’s a date they’ve only played sporadically over the years, usually, but not always, with some sort of recognition, special song selection, and or festive fireworks display. Personally, I think it could go either way.

Which brings us to July 4, 2025 at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colorado. With Johnny Cash’s All-American voice playing over the P.A. pre-show, it was tempting to think an a capella “Star Spangled Banner” might open the night. But on the 249th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the band took the stage – promptly, as promised, at 7:29 p.m. – with nary a hint of red, white and/or blue in any of their outfits, and launched into the first “Bathtub Gin” of the summer. The Gin jam started at a languid pace, half the audience dancing in sunlight, but eventually picked up steam, led by Mike Gordon’s bass. It was a solid jam which kicked off an opening quarter which was remarkable largely for the solid playing in songs, like “Rift,” that might have tripped up earlier versions of the band.

The set took a turn in the improv out of “Oblivion” which not only set the tone for the remainder of the first half, but the rest of the show, as Gordon and keyboardist Page McConnell seemed to declare their independence, jointly asserting themselves, holding off guitarist Trey Anastasio for quite some time, turning Phishy-daylight into Phishy-darkness. When Trey finally did jump in, he seemed comfortably lost in the space his bandmates had created, more or less jamming “Sand” on top of the McConnell/Gordon darkgroove. It was almost as if the show proper started in that “Oblivion” jam, the rest of the first set pushing to the 90-minute mark with fiery versions of old school fan favorites “Timber” and “Guyute” and then extra mustard-and-relish takes on “Back on the Train” and the set closing “Most Events Aren’t Planned” which bubbled with more of that bass-and-keys magic. What the first set may have lacked in flow, it made up for it in stellar, tight playing – a non-holiday holiday parade of all the Phish varieties, from prog to bluegrass to dancefunk.

After a shortish break, the band returned and immediately built on the strengths of that first stanza. If the greys and blacks of their outfits was a potential not-celebrating-the-fourth fashion statement, the darkness of the second set might have been a musical one. Things opened with “Simple,” which often creates a space for effervescent, happy jamming. Friday night in Boulder veered the other way, Trey’s usual major-key soloing replaced by more Mike and Page sonic shadows, egged on by the frantic somersaulting lights from Chris Kuroda. It was a murky place from which the set would not return. A clunky transition into “What’s Going Through Your Mind” would be the lone (quite minor) blemish on the set. “Mind” is turning into a welcome jam vehicle to go with its interesting songwriting, and it lends itself to a psychedelic improv. Once again it was the dark synths and the extra terrestrial electric bass that created an almost negative guitar-free space in which Trey could just kind of be Trey.

As the band dropped into “Tweezer” (either the second or fourth Tweezer of the summer, depending on how you count) it was clear that there was going to be no nod to or celebration of our country’s independence in a year (and week) when, for many, it seems a strange thing to celebrate. As the song portion of “Tweezer” hit its frantic highs and opened up into a moody minimalism, it seemed that the lack of recognition may, in the most Phish way possible, be the recognition itself. Once again, the most interesting ideas of the jam were coming from Trey’s left and right flanks, Kuroda’s summer camp boondoggle lights hard to separate from the music. It was fascinating to find Trey lean into the space created by Page and Mike (and, hopefully goes without saying, the drumming from Jon Fishman), allow himself to be led even while ripping some not-impressive guitar solos. When he finally unloaded in the “Tweezer” it led to an extended peak that was gloriously drawn out, the grand finale of a fireworks show within a fireworks show.

If there was a cover choice that best encapsulated the sonic mood of the night, Phish could have done a lot worse than Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” with its haunting keys-and-bass psychedelia. And, not to read too much into it, but playing a song by certain former kings of England on July 4th has a bit of an inverted irony to it. It was, indeed, a perfect fit, bridging the frantic mania of “Tweezer” with the ensuing “Down With Disease,” Trey doing his best Jimmy Page blistering on top of the heavy-handed hallucination from Page, Mike, and Fish. The “Disease” was, perhaps, a brief glimmer of light in the night’s darkness, but not by much. The jam was pure “Type I” bombast exactly what the set needed at that moment and it put forth the question to the dance-happy audience: does a set need a signature jam to be considered “great.” Because at this point, the band had barely gone “Type II,” nothing had really stretched out beyond its natural form, and yet the set felt pretty great: songs flowing one from the next, each contributing to the mood of the whole, building one on top of the other, the band locked in not by following Trey’s lead but by quite the opposite.

“Disease” eventually dissociated into its constituent parts, a no-happy-place weirdness that took its time reassembling and when it did, who else but McConnell and Gordon to create a rather nasty vamp from which Trey thundered back into a fractured take of the triumphant coda. What that sonic fog finally turned into the opening chords of “Ghost,” there was no doubt this was a killer set, holiday or not. An evil clavinet then an evil Rhodes all accompanied by some low-key low-end masterpiece playing from Mike. The jam built up and all four of Phish went full borg. The band found itself playing what can best be described as a “Ghost”/”Tweezer Reprise” mashup. Kindly take a moment to consider how great a “Ghost”/“Tweezer Reprise” mashup might sound. Yes.

Again, without really going “Type II,” Phish delivered something awesome in the most literal sense. A six-song set that didn’t let up from start to finish, no breathers for the weary, a hot-dog-eating-contest face-stuffing of musical ideas. The encore of “Character Zero” and the capper of the proper “Tweezer Reprise” allowed Trey to unload all the notes he may have held back and gave the crowd a chance to pump their fists and slam their heads on a night when the band was more focused on exploring the nether regions of their sound. Maybe it was a statement and maybe it was just a Friday night Phish show in July. Which is, for many, all the holiday they need.

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Livestream tonight’s Boulder finale and the rest of Phish’s Summer Tour 2025 concerts through LivePhish.com.

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