Trey Anastasio Talks Phish ‘Baker’s Dozen’ Residency & Summer Tour

This summer Phish will try something new by incorporating a 13-show run at one venue into their tour. Phish’s “Baker’s Dozen” residency will be held at Madison Square Garden in New York City between July 21 and August 6. Guitarist Trey Anastasio spoke with Rolling Stone’s David Fricke about the “Baker’s Dozen” run and more.

“We think of it as a residency. We’ve been talking about it for a number of years. When we started the band, for all intents and purposes, we had a residency. We used to play at the same place,” Trey said in reference to their days at Nectar’s in Burlington. “We kind of always looked for that, even when we started our own festivals. We’d set up in the middle of nowhere for three days. It was the possibility of a certain kind of looseness. That was the idea.” Anastasio discussed playing at MSG, “There is definitely an energy, definitely a sound at the Garden. It actually vibrates. [The arena sits over the Penn Station railroad terminal.] The whole room goes up and down – so much so that the mic will swing back and forth and bump you in the nose. When people start dancing, the mic stand will sway, depending on the tempo.”

Fricke asked the guitarist about what the band has talked about in regards to the residency:

We’re gonna go up to Vermont and hang out at [Anastasio’s studio] the Barn pretty soon. We’ve been very consciously open about this. There has not been a lot of nailing down. The mystery of it is weird, to be set up in this one place for a long time. But we’re relaxed about the whole thing. I think the relaxed feeling is the point of doing a residency.

The idea grew organically: “What if we just stayed here for a long time?” At the Garden, we always have our band rooms in the same place, the rooms for family and friends. Everybody’s hanging around. You get backstage, and you feel like you’re home. Sometimes the soundchecks are so loose. And you have to wonder: How much of that looseness is about the place?

Trey also talked about Phish’s return to Dick’s Sporting Goods Park and its effect on the band’s playing, “You’re outside, under that gorgeous Colorado sky. Everything has an effect on the playing.” He also mentioned some of the other stops on the upcoming tour, “Chicago is incredible in its own way, We put ‘The Baker’s Dozen’ on the map, then went ‘How are we going to fill this in? We gotta go to Chicago.’ And we hadn’t been to Pittsburgh in a long time.” Phish Summer Tour 2017 begins on July 14 in Chicago.

Head to Rolling Stone for more of Anastasio’s chat with David Fricke.