Phish Continues April 2022 Run At Madison Square Garden: Setlist, Recap & The Skinny

Phish played the second of their four rescheduled concerts at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night. Phish’s December 30th shows have become the stuff of legend, with the band frequently playing their best on New Year’s Eve Eve. Thursday’s show was not, in fact, played on December 30th, but, appearing as it did a night before the rescheduled New Year’s Eve concert, it instantly became an honorary member of the 12/30 Club.

The evening was special before the first note was played, as the band welcomed the real Suzy Greenberg, who was seeing Phish for the first time. From there, it was all about the music, as the quartet played exceptional jams out of songs like “Ghost” and “Chalk Dust Torture,” while treating the crowd to greatest hits and rarities alike.

The evening began in a way very few Phish shows do: with banter. Trey Anastasio told the crowd that the actual, real-life Suzy Greenberg — the “hero of the song” — was in the audience, seeing her first Phish show. The band played the song that Steve Pollak (aka The Dude of Life) had written about her after their relationship came to an end decades ago. After thanking her for the years of fun she’d given the community, the band launched into a tight, rocking “46 Days.”

“Plasma” had the first type II jam of the evening, a brief ethereal major-key excursion, which included a “Passing Through” tease from Mike Gordon, briefly echoed by Trey. The rare but always welcome suite of “The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday” and “Avenu Malkenu” appeared next, followed by an excellent “Wolfman’s Brother” that included an extra helping of funk, bolstered by some swinging rhythms from Jon Fishman. The band had yet another rarity debuted in the ’80s up their sleeves: “Esther,” making its fifth appearance in the last decade. The song, which is quite difficult to play, featured more right notes than wrong ones.

The set’s highlight was its final song. “Ghost” initially appeared headed for waters that are familiar to the song. But the band found its way into a slinky groove, from which they saw a runway to the musical mountaintop. Trey leaned hard on his delay effects, shooting some aural laser beams out of his guitar as he brought the jam to a massive peak.

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

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The second set picked up right where the first left off, as “Chalk Dust Torture” wasted no time before going deep. The jam built methodically and patiently, with some beautiful fret work from Trey, accompanied expertly by Page McConnell, before reaching an exceptional peak. Madison Square Garden seemed ready to explode as the peak was immediately followed by a segue into “Tweezer.”

Though the “Tweezer” jam was not quite as long than “Chalk Dust,” it, too, was brilliantly executed, with some thrilling interplay between Trey and Mike Gordon — and even between Trey and himself, as the guitarist alternated back and forth between two distinct riffs, one of which resembled “Your Pet Cat.”

A brief but strong run through “2001” was followed by an excellent “Maze.” Trey spouted some fiery licks in “About To Run,” then “The Mango Song” served as an appetizer to “Harry Hood.” Mike sang the word “Kung” a couple times during the song’s intro — but the “Kung” stopped there. The jam out of “Hood” included a “Plasma” tease but otherwise stuck to typical “Hood” form, with Fishman laying down some inhuman grace notes en route to a lovely peak. The set-closing “Character Zero,” on the other hand, was quite atypical, featuring a brief return to “Tweezer” in the middle.

As the band returned to the stage for the encore, Trey struggled to find the right key for “A Life Beyond the Dream,” but proceeded to play the song beautifully, before the band brought the concert to a raucous close with “Tweezer Reprise.”

Phish returns to the stage on Friday for a three-set concert, which was rescheduled from New Year’s Eve. Webcasts are available for purchase via LivePhish.com.

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