Trey Anastasio Acoustic Spotify Playlist

Guitarist Trey Anastasio continues his current solo acoustic tour tonight at the Knight Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina. After presenting three shows in this format last year, this run also finds the Phish frontman playing entirely acoustic throughout the full solo performances.

Anastasio has incorporated acoustic guitar into studio recordings and live appearances throughout his lengthy career. This week’s Saturday Stream offers a Spotify Playlist made up of both studio and live tracks in which Trey has donned an acoustic guitar. In some cases, he switches to electric, like on live versions of “My Friend, My Friend” and “Fluffhead” (and from electric to a brief acoustic “Big Black Furry Creature From Mars), while other times Anastasio tracks both electric and acoustic guitar parts on studio cuts like “Miss You” off Big Boat.

The 50-track playlist begins with Trey’s studio work with Phish dating back to the mid-1980s demo The White Tape and continues through the aforementioned 2017 Big Boat LP. Next comes a number of live selections, including several from Phish’s 1994 Fall Tour featuring Page McConnell on upright bass, Mike Gordon on banjo and Jon Fishman on mandolin on bluegrass covers such as “Ginseng Sullivan,” “I’m Blue, I’m Lonesome” and “My Long Journey Home.” Trey also plays fiddle in that setup on a cover of “Tiny Little Butter Biscuits. There’s also Phish’s acoustic take on The Who’s “My Generation” from Halloween 1995. All four members of Phish can be heard playing acoustic guitar on a 1995 rendition of the aptly named “Acoustic Army.” The live portion of the playlist also includes several versions of Billy Breathes songs played on a mini-stage at Deer Creek in 1996, including “Waste,” “Trainsong” and “Strange Design.”

The playlist then heads back into the studio via Anastasio’s solo releases, kicking off with “At The Gazebo” and “Ray Dawn Balloon” from his 2002 self-titled album. The Seis De Mayo strings-accompanied arrangement of “Inlaw Josie Wales” can be compared Phish’s Farmhouse recording of the same instrumental that featured Bela Fleck on banjo and Jerry Douglas on dobro. Douglas tapped Trey’s acoustic talents for the title track to the former’s 2002 album Lookout For Hope, which after a pair of Oysterhead tunes closes out the playlist.

Listen to Anastasio going acoustic below: