Photo: Danny Clinch

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“We wanted the whole thing to be fully immersive from the moment that people stepped inside,” Trey Anastasio says of Phish’s four-night run at Sphere in Las Vegas on April 18-21. “From start to finish, even in the hallway, you entered an organic world. Then when the lights went down, until the first note of the first song, there was music composed and sculpted for the walk-on, which is not something we normally do. This continued through the set break and all the way out the door. We were trying to get people to lose their complete sense of boundaries.”

As Anastasio looks back on the event, he reflects, “It got better with each passing night. Jon Fishman has been saying over and over again: ‘We’ve got to go back there.’ We all kind of get it now. I can’t wait to play there again.”

In the interim, beyond (re)visiting the performances via LivePhish, folks will soon be able to experience another aspect of the residency. “We’re going to release an album of all the atrium music,” he says. “One of the fun things I did was creating the sounds that were part of that journey from the minute that people entered. It hasn’t come out yet because things have been busy, but we’ve mastered it and we’re going to put it out.”

Phish’s immediate focus, however, is the group’s 16th studio release. Vance Powell and Bryce Goggin produced Evolve, which found Anastasio (guitar, vocals), Fishman (drums, vocals), Mike Gordon (bass, vocals) and Page McConnell (keyboards, vocals) gathering in November 2023 at the group’s Vermont recording studio, The Barn. There, over a couple of days, they performed a series of songs, most of which the quartet had previously explored in the concert setting. Some compositions, including the vivacious “A Wave of Hope,” and the poignant tandem of “Mercy” and “Lonely Trip,” initially had appeared on Anastasio solo albums during the pandemic before Phish took them for a spin. Others, such as the spirited “Pillow Jets” and the foreboding “Monsters,” had been live debuts, while the rollicking “Valdese” and Gordon’s original tune, the vivid “Human Nature,” were new offerings.

As Anastasio considers the process of recording Evolve, he notes, “We’ve worked so hard to be able to play together live. We really listen to one another and that’s where we excel. It’s sort of the secret sauce with Phish, so you have to let us play. I really like the way it all turned out.”

Then he pauses, laughs and adds, “But what do I know? I’ve never seen Phish.”

When you began thinking about performing at Sphere, were you concerned that the technology could potentially distance you from the audience and almost be dehumanizing?

Yes, we had that in mind from the beginning. When I experienced the demo in Burbank, the first thought I had was: Whoever uses this is going to have to stick to the rules of vaudeville and theater, or else this technology is going to eat the show. It’s going to take pacing, tempo and patience. Working on that Broadway show [Hands on a Hardbody], it was the same thing—how do we keep this small? The idea is you want the audience leaning forward into the story. If you have a lot of flashing lights and whoop-de-do, it doesn’t add up to an emotional experience.

When you first get the demo of this thing, they put you on a roller coaster. It’s unbelievable and so hyperrealistic that I thought I was going to puke. [Laughs.] You’re on a rollercoaster, but your inner ear isn’t moving. It’s incredible. As soon as it’s over—about two minutes later—most people can’t even keep their eyes open. So the first thought I had was that the trick to this place is going to be not using it all the time. Use it sparingly and within the rules of theater.

The rules of theater—which are rules that grew out of hard-learned lessons— can’t be broken. I’m going to give you a tiny example of that. Peter Gabriel has done great shows on a large scale for many years. I’ve seen him so many times. I love his new album. I love his first album. I love him. I remember I went and saw him once, and he had all these cool things. He had a giant eyeball—this curved thing that he climbed up while he had a camera in his mouth. Then he suddenly started projecting the inside of his mouth, and he was climbing on the inside of his own mouth.

He did all these other things, and at the end of the show, he did the oldest vaudeville trick in the book. He walked out on a long ramp, put a suitcase on the ground, opened it and then his whole band, who had wireless instruments, walked into the suitcase. He zipped it up and acted like it was really heavy. It was his last American show and he said, “Well, I’m off to Europe now. Goodbye, everyone.” Then he walked off and carried his whole band out in the suitcase. This is something from the 1600s that’s been in thousands of plays, and it was the most effective thing all night.

There’s the lesson of the small gesture. You have to think about it when you play that place because people are watching a video screen. I think our team did that incredibly well. They kept it moody and dark at the right times, and they knew when to turn it on and when to turn it off.

When we planned all that out, we would use the example of what Led Zeppelin used to do with John Bonham live. He was the big fire in Led Zeppelin, and a lot of times, if you listen to Zeppelin bootlegs, he would just stop for long periods. There’d be a Rhodes and then when the drums came in, it was like, “Ahhhh.” So we talked about that. We were like, “OK, the wall could be almost like John Bonham where sometimes you turn it off and make everybody wait for it. Then when it comes back on, it’s a woo.”

Two words I’ve heard from people who worked on the show in describing Phish’s intentions are immersive and emotional. How did you plan to achieve both of those?

First off, it was a team effort with the guys in the band, Abbey [Holmes], Moment Factory, Chris [Kuroda], Gif [Andrew Giffin], Garry [Brown] and so many others.

What I learned from doing the Broadway show, and also working with Abbey on Ghosts of the Forest, is that while it’s important for the writer and the composer to know what the narrative is, your goal should be show, don’t tell.

In the Phish world, that same conversation happened with a lot of the songwriting moments. Don’t be literal. I have to edit when I’m writing alone and sometimes when I’m co-writing, I have to know what I’m talking about.

But again, show, don’t tell. I saw the Stop Making Sense tour. I was 18 years old in the sixth row. I saw three Talking Heads shows within one year, but I saw the tour they filmed. It was incredible and very influential on me. Through that concept of not being literal, David Byrne ended up saying more with his lyrics. It was a commentary on culture at that time. Stop making sense—don’t tell me what to think and I’ll think so much more deeply. It probably first came out through his collaborations with [Brian] Eno. They were stumbling on that with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and all that stuff.

I should also point out that Abbey ran lights on the Stop Making Sense tour. I just met somebody who was the producer of the film, and he was saying he still feels guilty that she didn’t get enough credit because the film didn’t entirely capture what she had been doing with the lights on the tour.

When I worked with Abbey on Ghosts of the Forest, we had a narrative for every single element of that show, even though we tried to keep it nonliteral. I had decided I was going to write a whole show from the ground up with no songs that anyone had ever heard before. She was doing the visuals from the ground up and we were within a limited budget, which is great. Limitations are great. She ended up making a set that was a combination of video and fabric.

The live show had a full narrative arc. He dies. These women are holding his spirit in their hands in white boxes on the side of the stage. There was a reason they were holding those light boxes. We knew what it was, but Abbey is incredibly gifted at not showing her hand. It’s utterly unimportant that the audience member has the same interpretation. You almost want the audience member’s interpretation to be different because if you get to that level, then it’s a piece of art.

At the Sphere, there were definitely a lot of nonliteral, but conscious choices in terms of imagery combined with the content of the songs, the sequence of the songs and then the thematic sequence of the four nights.

The U2 show had a lot of grand gestures, which served their aesthetic but isn’t quite the Phish style. Was there a particular element you sought to implement that felt like the quintessence of Phish?

I loved the U2 show, they just used the Sphere in a different way than we did. The U2 show is on a click. The drummer has a click in his ear, and a lot of the background vocals and stuff are prerecorded. That’s the way pop music is played these days. A Broadway show also is usually to a click. That means the background vocals, sound effects and second layers of guitars are on tape. Then the band was playing along to a movie with incredible visuals.

Again, I loved the U2 show but we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to jam. So the biggest hurdle was how we were going to get that effect in the other direction, which is to let Phish play the way Phish plays, where we don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s very tricky to get that massive wall of video to respond organically.

Well, Abbey, Gif, Moment Factory and Garry achieved that, and I think it’s the reason that it resonated on such an emotional level because you couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. How could Phish be playing these jams and five minutes into it, when something spontaneously happens, the video on the wall does exactly the same thing? The leaves were turning color in response to the music at the same time the sound was rolling around backwards. It almost shouldn’t be possible, but it was. That’s why Drew Carey wanted to put his junk in a blender. [Laughs.]

We physically manipulated the visuals in response to the music. That was a very tricky thing to figure out in conjunction with Garry’s use of surround sound, which he was doing organically.

Abbey was at the control helm with what was almost like a video game console that Gif created with help from Moment Factory. So Abbey was able to make the video respond if we went fast or if we went hot in the jam. She had control over all the parameters of the visuals. I don’t know how to find the words, but it wasn’t just focus. It was like when you want to edit a photo on your phone, and there are all those parameters. She had that kind of a system for her visuals.

So if Page went to a sizzling synthesizer, and I went to an effected guitar sound, along with the cymbals and Mike’s bass, she could move the video with us to sizzle visually.

When I spoke with Abbey, she said that the 30-minute “Down with Disease” was the measure of success from her perspective because it meant that the band had been able to play freely. Did you feel that way from the initial moment you took the stage?

The day before the first show, as we were all out in the room sitting at the board with Abbey and Chris, watching and talking, it was coming into focus.

If you’re going to build 12 hours of content, how much content are you going to build for “Down With Disease?” Certainly not 30-minutes worth. We don’t know which song is going to go for 30 minutes. I’ve gone on stage, started “Down With Disease” and thought it was going to be long but it wasn’t. Then “Ruby Waves” was the next song, and it was. These things have minds of their own.

But here’s where having Chris was a saving grace. He is good with even a small light show, since a lot of what he does is so musical and tempo-driven. So Chris would sit there for a long period of time while Abbey was doing the wall, or he would have a little look that complemented what was on the wall. Then if, all of a sudden, “Down With Disease” was going and Abbey felt the music was changing, she could whoosh out the wall and say, “Take it, Chris.” Then he could lead the charge with the lights when we were off in ether-land. He’s the world’s foremost master of making it up on the lights. Most bands don’t have that blessing. So he could take it while she configured her artistic vision and then she’d whoosh back in with more wall. They could speak in paragraphs.

In the second set, Abbey also broke up the space with physical objects that rose out of the ground. That was in response to what we referred to as the tyranny of the wall. It’s still a video wall, and it’s big, so you end up craning your neck a lot. Abbey’s solution was to put in things that would rise to break up the physical space. Each night they were different and they were related to the theme. So there was kind of an underwater motif on the liquid night, and that was to break up that giant space.

photo: René Huemer

Sphere offers a unique sonic environment. Did that guide the music in any way?

Garry built this mini-Sphere array when we were rehearsing in Pennsylvania, and he started figuring out how and when he was going to utilize the surround. People have been trying to do surround and 5.1 and Atmos for years, and stereo still kind of keeps hanging in there for the way to listen to music. The reason is because of the speed of sound and the wacky things that start to happen when you send things in every direction. He completely conquered it, though. I thought the sound was fantastic.

There were other strange limitations that led to successes. You can’t have amps at Sphere because the PA is the wall behind the band, which means there’s a slapback if there’s any sound on stage.

So we took away our amps and it sounded so good. That’s because there are onstage leaks. Now my guitar didn’t go into the vocal mic.

Bass is also particularly tricky. For example, an acoustic piano is a very sensitive instrument. If you have an acoustic piano on stage and a large bass amp, there’s going to be bass in the piano.

There’s been this group for a long time called People for a Louder Mike. People for a Louder Mike started when Mike went from a small bass amp to a huge PA on stage. It looks and sounds cool, but it goes into the drum mics, it’s in the piano, it’s everywhere. So that gives the sound men, both Garry and Vance, very little control over the bass.

At the Sphere, Mike had to take the bass amp off, and we were each standing on a thumper, which is a thumping bass pad that simulates the feeling of having a massive bass amp behind you. It’s really cool. My legs were vibrating with bass, but there was no sound coming out.

Everything sounded so good, and it was a revelation. We all want to hear Mike. We all love Mike. Who doesn’t want to hear Mike? Well unless I’ve lost my mind—and I haven’t—if you listen to the Sphere shows on LivePhish, the bass sounds incredible.

On the first night during “Life Saving Gun,” you mentioned your vantage point from the stage. What could you see from that perspective?

The surprise to me was that even though the Sphere is arena-size in terms of numbers, it’s arrayed, like a proscenium theater. I liked that period in our career when we played theaters, so that was a comforting, joyous memory. I always thought Phish was a great band in that realm, during the era from 1992 into 1994.

For such a vast space, the Sphere is steeply sloped, which means that people are pretty close to our faces. That makes for a good show, when I can scan across and see how people are dancing and can say to myself, “Wow, that person looks like they’re having a great time,” or “That person is lost in thought.” If you’re playing and you’re watching somebody like that, you get outside of yourself. It’s a really special feeling. I never would’ve anticipated the Sphere had that element.

I had an interesting moment during “Lifeboy.” On one hand, the visual content transported me to another setting where my synapses were firing as I tried to add context to whatever I was seeing. It was quite a rush and it felt like the promise of Phish at Sphere was being realized. But then beyond that, something happened I can’t remember experiencing at a Phish show, where I flashed back to the night you debuted “Lifeboy” at Portland Expo in 1993. Do you have any thoughts as to whether this might have been prompted by the performance, the nature of the visuals or some other factor?

What you just mentioned, was out of the whole four nights, as emotional to me as any other moment. The “Lifeboy” that moved you, it moved me too—the way it all fell together on an emotional level.

Sometimes the years add up to something. It all comes and goes so fast, and that was a special time. Then, all of a sudden, to be singing this song, there’s all that shared history and friendship.

It happens every once in a while. It is the delivery and it is the moment.

I thought the “What’s the Use?” at The Beacon Jams was like that. The city was shut down and the string players made it there and the doorman opened the door, and it was the only marquee lit in all five boroughs. Everybody was socially distanced, and nobody knew how we were going to get out of this thing. Then all of a sudden, we’re playing this song and it was just killing me.

But you never know. These things are organic. “Lifeboy” at Sphere was kind of like that. We’re out there in Vegas playing it, and we recorded the original “Lifeboy” in LA when we were young and the four of us all lived in an apartment together. It was a long time ago and you remember this stuff. It’s a mixture of gratitude, the lyrics of the song and the memories. It’s poignant.

I’m going to tell you another one. Jim Pollock didn’t know that we were going to do that Pollock array during “Taste.” I went to college with Jim at Goddard. All of the sudden, the whole Sphere was like a crown of Jim Pollock art—all that beautiful art, everything he drew over all those years. He was drawing stuff for posters when we were 19 years old. It was a lifetime of art.

Jim goes to a lot of shows. He’s up front most of the time and I know where he stands. So there he was with all of his art around him and when I looked at his face, I cried.

This stuff goes so deep with friendships. At this point in time, I’m so close to Page, Mike and Fish. I don’t even have words for it. That’s what it really comes down to. All this stuff about community and shared history, that’s the most important thing. It’s sort of like everything.

But what I would add by saying “yes and” to what you’re saying, is that music continues to move forward.

We are so grateful that all four of us are healthy and we’re playing better than ever. We’ll see what happens, but speaking for myself, I don’t think Phish could exist without all four band members. We’ve talked about it and everybody’s always kind of like, “Go ahead without me if I die. Knock yourself out.” But I don’t really want to be on stage with a fake guy in a dress. [Laughs.]

I had a ticket on my bulletin board to see Led Zeppelin when John Bonham died. They were about to do a tour, John Bonham died and that was it. No more Led Zeppelin. I wish I could have seen Led Zeppelin, but that’s OK because six months later, I got to see Talking Heads, who were a young band.

I used to see Sun Ra so frequently— the actual Sun Ra in front of the Sun Ra Arkestra, with Marshall Allen, June Tyson, Michael Ray and the whole gang. I saw Miles, I saw Zappa, I saw King Crimson. I saw Talking Heads numerous times. These bands come and then they end.

But let’s go forward. You can go see Billy Strings now. You can see King Gizz. You can see Chappell Roan—yeah, she’s a pop star.

I was such a massive Zeppelin fan at that time—I still am—and Robert Plant deserves an incredible amount of credit because he’s gone on and done all this creative stuff, and he won’t look backwards. He’s like, “I’m going to go sing with the astoundingly talented Alison Krauss and do something new.” I have such admiration for him doing that. He kept his childlike wonder and moved forward. What a cool thing.

This seems like the ideal segue to the new Phish album. Can you talk about the process of making it? After you’d performed these songs live with the band, you decided to step back and made an acoustic demo album. What prompted that decision?

One thing that we’ve found over the years, going back to our first Phish record, is we would sometimes make an album like Big Boat, go out on the road and the songs would get so much better when we played them live. The one exception on Big Boat is “Petrichor”—a lot of that was done in the home studio and it’s more like a demo that Fish drummed on top of.

So for Sigma Oasis, we played the songs live before we recorded them, and as a band, we liked Sigma Oasis. We feel like it sounds like Phish. That’s been a real problem with our albums. They don’t always sound like Phish.

This time, we decided that the process should be the same. I played three shows at The Mission Ballroom [in June 2023], where I played a whole bunch of potential new songs with one member of Phish and one member of TAB—Fishman and Dezron [Douglas]. Then I played some of them on the TAB tour and some of them on the subsequent summer Phish tour, and I started to feel out which ones the band members were feeling good about and also which ones the audience was responding to.

Then I decided I would throw out all of the demo versions and all of the band versions and go back in to make what I call a fake album of solo acoustic versions of more songs than went on the album—maybe 14 songs, most of what was on the album and a couple of others.

The reason is because when I started doing solo acoustic tours, I made this discovery. I had been told by many producers in the past that if a song works on a solo acoustic guitar, it inevitably works with a band or with any kind of arrangement. A song that works just works. There’s some kind of magic to that. You can play “Maze” on the solo acoustic guitar. I don’t know why, but you can. Every great producer has tried to tell me that, and I’ve seen it in interviews with Quincy Jones, Brendan O’Brien, Steve Lillywhite and Rick Rubin. They all say the same thing: Sit on a stool, sing me the song and then we’ll go into the studio.

So I went over to Bryce Goggin’s studio and we did this exercise where he said, “I’m not even going to turn the studio on. I’m just going to put the iPhone on the console. Here’s your stool. Sing me the songs.”

What you discover is whether the form is right. And in some weird cases, you even discover that the key isn’t right or that it needs a B section or that some of the lyrics are a little wonky.

I’ll give you a specific example. “Oblivion” was in the key of C sharp until I put it down on the acoustic guitar. It’s now in the key of B. We played it live in C sharp with Phish once or twice and probably with TAB. Then, when I sat down on a stool and played it, it just sounded better with my voice a half step off from C sharp down to B.

Suddenly, I’m sitting with the acoustic guitar and there’s an open B string on the guitar, and this cool intro riff appeared on the acoustic guitar, which did not exist in the original form of the song when it was in C sharp. It wasn’t until I put it in B that I found this really cool riff.

That’s what came out of putting it on the acoustic guitar. It’s an old-fashioned way of songwriting that I think the ease of using Pro Tools on your laptop has made less common because get you really excited about the sound effects and the drum beats and all that stuff. People didn’t used to have home demo recordings, so they had to work on the songs.

So I went all the way back down to solo acoustic. Then we went out and tried to make sure that we played each song once or twice live on tour, so that the whole band would be cooking before we went into the studio.

When we went up to The Barn, the idea was to record the album very quickly and live, with two or three takes maximum—the way old-fashioned records were made. That’s the way people like Aretha Franklin or The Band used to do it. They didn’t just construct things on a laptop. We wanted it to be that kind of a record.

photo: René Huemer

Thinking back to the days before Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper’s, they’d also mic the room and you can hear it on some of those recordings.

If you listen closely on Evolve, I think right out of the gates on “Hey Stranger,” you will hear Jon Fishman responding on the drums to the guitar solo.

I think we recorded the whole album in two days up at The Barn and there were mics all over the place. Everybody was wide open, there were mics up in the ceiling and the whole barn was vibrating. There’s not even a control room at The Barn. The console is right in the middle of the room. It’s very uncontrolled.

All that being said, it’s funny that you brought up Pet Sounds because I was out in California a couple of weeks ago and I went to EastWest, the studio where they recorded it. That’s where Brian Wilson went in with the Wrecking Crew and it’s exactly the same as it ever was. It made me think that I might want to make a record utilizing that kind of process. Also, doing the Steely Dan thing was kind of a reminder of that.

But we’re really happy with the way this record turned out. We feel pretty good about it.

Can you point to another song where you achieved what you’d hoped to accomplish?

I really like “Pillow Jets.” It’s probably my favorite track on the record. I like the way it came out. The vocals are great all across the board and I think the playing on the outro is cool.

“Pillow Jets” has a backstory. When COVID happened, these sculptures went up in front of the Met by this Kenyan artist, Wangechi Mutu. It was called The NewOnes, will free us. They were there the whole pandemic while the city was shut down—these really cool, otherworldly women sitting there very powerfully. I would walk by with Sue, my wife, and she would say, “I wish they would come down and lead us.”

That’s what started the song “Pillow Jets”: “They will come/ On pillow jets of sound/ The proof of wonder/ Celestial starlight gowned/ The ghost enchanter/ The eagle guide/ Beautiful and brown.”

They’re coming down on clouds to save us from ourselves and the conjurers of thunder are not so psyched about it. They’re kind of mad. Then the jam to me is like they’re conjuring thunder.

But I like a lot of the songs on the record. I love the way “Lonely Trip” came out. That was a cool song when it was born in COVID, but it was kind of demo-y. Then when Phish played it in front of an audience, I felt a connection.

I also love “Mercy,” “Ether Edge” and “Hey Stranger.” I think they all came out well on the record. “Monsters” is another one—it’s slow and simple, but I think it’s really cool.

Julia Mordaunt [Phish’s Creative Director] likes “Valdese.”

Is there a story to that one? When I first heard it, I was reminded of the Elmore Leonard novel, Valdez Is Coming, although the name is pronounced differently.

We were thinking about Valdese, North Carolina, which is a very interesting town just outside of Asheville. There’s a fascinating story associated with it. If you search “Waldensian Trail of Faith,” you can find out about the religious group that come over from Italy and settled there in the 19th century. Tom [Marshall] and I love sinking our teeth into something like that. It’s a Tom-Trey thing and perfect fodder for a song.

You recently inducted Steely Dan into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Can you talk about their influence on your music?

It was an absolute thrill to be able to induct them. Plus, Donald Fagen offered me a job as a guitar player, so I can die happy. [Laughs.] He is not a real ebullient guy. Getting a smile out of him isn’t easy but I know I was ripping it pretty hard on the guitar because I saw him nodding along a little bit. Then he made a dry joke when I was walking off. He was like, “You need work?” [Laughs.]

I started high school in the late ‘70s and those records were pretty fresh at that time. They were on at parties and when I started playing the guitar, that was definitely a huge influence. I learned a lot of those solos and it all came back pretty fast.

With the songwriting, there’s a direct line to the great American songbook style of songwriting. I know Becker and Fagen were into jazz, but they had that Brill Building song structure with B sections and arrangements. I love that stuff.

I also love that the characters they wrote about were sort of disenfranchised, messed up and broken. They described the era that they lived in very accurately, particularly the ‘70s and ‘80s.

I’ve heard Walter Becker say that by writing in character, they were able to say things they wouldn’t otherwise dare to say.

I think they’re often insidious. Go do a deep dive on “Kid Charlemagne,” which I sang that night. It’s pretty heavy. It’s about Owsley, but it also draws a direct line from the dreams of the “tune in, drop out” ‘60s to a bunch of junkies lying on the street.

I think that’s why Pink Floyd resonated so much during that period. They were willing to sing about the darkness and some of the nonsense they saw.

Steely Dan similarly resonated because of their characters.

A few days earlier, you played with Billy Joel. You came out for “Sleeping With the Television On,” a deep cut from Glass Houses. Was that your suggestion?

I think somebody in his band had suggested “Shameless,” this song he wrote with Garth Brooks, because it has a big guitar solo. But during soundcheck I told him there were two songs I wanted to play. One was “Sleeping With the Television On” and the other was “Roberta.” He said to me, “‘Roberta,’ you know that?” I said, “Yeah, that’s on one of your best records, Streetlife Serenade.” He’s like, “Nobody knows that stuff,” and I’m like, “Yes, they do.” He did two records that I think he overlooks—Streetlife Serenade and Turnstiles—then he did The Stranger and he blew up. I couldn’t convince him to do “Roberta,” but we had that conversation.

Then he led you into the “Layla” coda. Did that just come up in the moment?

He did a little bit of “Layla” in soundcheck, but he never said we were going to play it. Pretty much all we did during soundcheck was play these classic rock songs, one after another. It was such a cool experience. It went on for about an hour, one classic rock song after another. We did Beatles songs, like “Taxman.” I also have a video clip of us playing “Born to Run.” It’s my little secret thing that I have in my phone—I knew somebody who was out there. His whole band knows that song, and we were really singing it out. [Laughs.]

But no, I didn’t know we were going to play “Layla.” He just started playing it. I played it on that stage not too long before with Derek [Trucks] at the Garden Party.

Speaking of the Garden, did it feel like a big MSG summit with you and Billy Joel?

When he first walked up to me, he was laughing and he said, “How come everybody says I was saying shit about you. I never said any of that.” I was like, “Yeah, I don’t read the internet.” It was cool.

We’ve played 83 shows there and he’s played over 100. One of the fun things about playing the Garden that much is we know so many people who work there. Talking to the really cool ushers and the doormen—the staff is very much like family. When I go to sports events, I know everybody there, and it’s pretty cool.

It’s funny to think that Phish had that at the beginning of our career at Nectar’s. I knew the cook and the dishwasher, we played there so much. It was a long residency, but I think we’ve played far more shows at the Garden.

It feels like a club and it certainly does for him. At soundcheck, we didn’t even practice the songs we were going to play. Maybe for a second, he was like, “You know this?” and I was like, “Yeah, I know this tune.” He was just ramming out songs and we had fun for an hour. The whole thing was so great and such an honor.

He’s a legend and an absolutely welcoming, warm and ridiculously talented piano player and singer. If we get a chance, maybe we’ll get him down there one time to play with us. That would be really great.

The release of Evolve and the run at Sphere underscore how active and forward-thinking Phish remains. You continue to connect. I just spoke with Maggie Rose, who told me how important Sigma Oasis was to her since it came out during the pandemic, at a time when there were not a lot of new releases. Meanwhile, you were just at an awards show honoring Steely Dan. Do you ever think about your career in terms of formal accolades or the like?

I really don’t. At this point in time, I’ve narrowed my focus down to two things. One—age gracefully. Two—stay as healthy as possible so that we can enjoy this for a little while longer.

I love writing music. It’s so much a part of me. It’s like breathing.

It’s also such a blessing to be able to play music for people and with people. I don’t really think about the rest of it because it’s too much fun to play “Reelin’ in the Years” while looking at Donald Fagen [Laughs.]

I’m such a fan of music. When you just said Maggie Rose knew one of my songs, I almost fell over because she’s amazing. Then to play with Billy Joel means so much to me.

I’m also so happy to be able to watch all these exciting younger musicians like Maggie Rose. When Billy Strings said he was going to work with Jon Brion, who is one of my favorite producers, my head almost fell off.

Jason Isbell was also at the event with Steely Dan, doing an introduction, and I got to go tell him how much I enjoy his songs.

I went out and did that tour with Goose. They’re writing their own songs, and my hat is off. It’s like, “Keep going guys. It’s not always an easy path, but keep trying because sometimes something comes through the ether that touches someone in a way that’s unexpected. You don’t know what’s going to happen or when it’s going to happen, then you’ll see a look on someone’s face and it’s really cool.”

There’s so much new music and I want everybody to keep writing songs so I can listen to them. I’m still just a fan, and maybe that’s why I write so much music. It’s so exciting for new songs to come into the world.

It’s all about just loving music—either with a live concert or writing a song. They’re kind of the same thing. It’s like the birth of something. It’s a joy.

There’s another part of it too. When Ella Fitzgerald used to walk on stage she would say, “We’re all here.” I love that and I say it to myself. What that means is everyone who’s supposed to be here is here. We’re together. It’s exactly as it’s meant to be.

Just like you and I were in that room in 1993 and then at Sphere. It was a combined experience with me and you and all of our friends.

We’re at a point with the band now where before we go on stage, we have a little moment of gratitude that we’re all healthy and we get to do this again. Our friends and family are here and there are kids running around. It’s a very precious thing.