Nothing Could Be Finer: Phish Keeps Run Rolling In North Charleston

Phish rolled into North Charleston Coliseum in North Charleston, South Carolina at about the halfway point of their Summer Tour. It’s a tour marked by some strong peaks, grab-bag setlists, and tougher-than-usual tickets at many venues. The secret is out: this band is pretty good.

It’s also a tour notable for being heavy on indoor shows for a Summer Tour. With climate change making our summers less predictable, this is probably going to be more common (look at what happened at Bonnaroo). As a New England Phish fan who has toughed it out through the chilly fog of Bangor, Maine, in 2019, waited an hour in the bowels of Fenway Park for a thunderstorm to pass that same summer, and was baked alive in Hartford in 2022, the move to indoor arenas for Summer Tour is very much welcome. And that’s before we get to the fact that indoor Phish, with all the Kuroda goodness that promises, is objectively better.

Before the band enters the back nine of their tour in favorite outdoor destinations such as the Pavilion at the Mann and SPAC (along with the band’s first trip to Forest Hills Stadium in New York City and a return to the indoor confines of the United Center in Chicago), they had to take care of business here, in the middle show of the North Charleston three-night run.

They opened the concert with “The Moma Dance,” the same song that opened the whole tour way back in New Hampshire. It’s a call that’s either reliable or predictable, depending on your perspective, but clearly the band likes it as a starting point that gets their muscles limber and creative juices flowing for everything that follows. One always hopes that they take “Moma” to new places, but they never really do. The “NICU” that followed was similarly by-the-books although, of course, who doesn’t love “NICU” early in a show?

The first surprise of the night came in the three spot with “Jesus Just Left Chicago.” The song was last played on December 3, 2019, which marks this as the first appearance of a ZZ Top cover in the “4.0” era. Blues hasn’t been on Phish’s menu much of late — the days when songs like “Julius,” “My Soul,” and “Funky Bitch” were in heavy rotation is long past — but Page McConnell in particular seemed to enjoy taking a big bite out this song, growling the vocals, delivering a hammering piano solo, and then complementing Trey Anastasio’s guitar solo with stylish rhythm playing.

Following the unexpected cover, the quartet pulled up the longstanding original “Divided Sky,” landing the heavily composed piece with a solid conclusion. “Destiny Unbound” was next, and while it isn’t quite the bust out it once was, it’s played infrequently enough that I always forget that Trey likes to put a little extra mustard over the break. “Monsters” then got a rare first-set appearance, and while it felt weird to get a cool-down song in a set that hadn’t been particularly “hot,” it found its way to a fiery climax, with Trey channeling his inner David Gilmour to his delight.

In “Plasma,” lighting designer Chris Kuroda then painted the arena in purple and yellow hues, as if to give Trey’s psychedelic soloing the proper dorm room blacklight treatment it deserves. The jam contorted itself around in usual fashion until Jon Fishman picked the tempo up with liberal use of his cowbell and wood blocks. Sure, Fishman “never solos,” but there are moments like these when the other three members shift to rhythm duties and Fishman floats on top of them, decorating their work with a hundred subtle accents while staying firmly in the pocket. The man is a wonder.

The lack of big fan-favorite jam vehicles in the first frame was corrected with a set-closing “Bathtub Gin.” Their playing didn’t branch out into the kind of “Type II” exploration that the song is capable of; instead the band played it straight but shared one brain as they inched the beats per minute up slowly but surely, until they hit the pinnacle in an absolute frenzy. Mike Gordon’s chunky, melodic bass lines were the guiding force in this journey.

As with the first night at North Charleston, the first set felt a bit light on improvisation compared to other shows on the tour. On night one, the band made up for it with a mammoth “Down With Disease.” What awaited fans on night two?

“Mike’s Song” was a promising choice to open the second set, and the band didn’t let the crowd down. The foursome launched straight into the deep end of the pool as soon as the jam section began, and with Page playing the clavinet, they slid into a grimy funk and stayed there for several minutes. Trey picked things up, and for a moment it seemed certain that the band was going to transition into “Cities.” The foursome instead collectively jumped into some imaginative lines and toyed with the boundaries of the song before bringing it home.

Given their creative play, the prospect of a second jam was tantalizing, but instead it became a classic “Mike’s Groove” with “I Am Hydrogen” and “Weekapaug Groove.” The latter song got a bit wild, with Trey monkeying around with his effects pedals to create a full suite of textures before he reigned the song in (prematurely, to my ears).

After that came “Mercury,” a song that they don’t always take deep, but always go to some interesting places when they do. This version didn’t quite go the distance but was assertive and powerful nonetheless, with Trey bringing strong ideas out of the composed part of the song, and steering the ship through some raging waters.

Although “Soul Planet” isn’t my favorite song, it is generally a great jam vehicle by virtue of its tempo and it fires the band into their improvisational section as if from a cannon. The version they played was one of the better takes in recent memory. The jam ended in a sustained, explosive climax — the highest peak in an evening full of them — but the song was more notable for the music the band created during the buildup. As they found a sturdy uptempo groove, Trey set up guitar loops that gave the melody a nice push-and-pull tension that everyone grouped around. This is a passage I’ll be returning to, if nothing else than to figure out what they did.

Speaking of songs that aren’t my favorite, if I may be rude, “Joy” took the chillout spot of the second set. Trey concluded his ballad with a tasteful, emotive guitar solo, and then Fishman opened the trapdoor into “Harry Hood.” As a set-closer “Harry Hood” did “Harry Hood” stuff, as usual, but it was also a fakeout closer.

Trey thanked the crowd and wished them goodnight, and the lights went dark — but only for a second. They then sprung into “I Am the Walrus.” What can you say? By his own admission, Trey likes to hear the crowd go “woo.” It’s the final few minutes of noise rock, however, that makes the song one of their best new-ish covers.

The band then followed the stout second set with an encore of a site-specific, a cappella rendering of the traditional “Carolina” (last played on December 6, 2019) and a typically raging “Say It To Me S.A.N.T.O.S.” After that, it was lights out, with one more night in Carolina to come.

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Livestream Phish’s Summer Tour 2025 concerts via LivePhish.com.

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