photo by Charlie Timberlake

This morning alone, Trey Anastasio has added tour dates to his summer schedule with his solo band, revealed the first full track from his upcoming album with new side project Ghosts of the Forest and appeared in a new interview with Rolling Stone, in which the Phish frontman and guitarist discusses the GOTF endeavor and impending inaugural tour, the recently announced documentary about him, Between Me and My Mind, his summer tour plans with Phish and more.

Anastasio begins by recounting how Ghosts of the Forest first came to be, citing a desire to bring together two of his longtime collaborators, Phish drummer Jon Fishman and TAB drummer Tony Markellis, into one musical project. The guitarist also reiterated how the GOTF album was heavily influenced by his late childhood friend Chris Cottrell, whose early-2018 death inspired the initial writing session for the new songs.

“He was a nature lover,” Anastasio says of Cottrell. “He loved the mountains. He always would take me hiking. One of the things that was sort of extra sad about the loss was that he was my friend outside of all this—a long-before, boyhood friend. When we were a young band and we would drive out to Colorado from somewhere overnight, he would always grab me and make me hike up the Flatirons, or go skiing, or go fly-fishing, which I sucked at. He would always take me out of the tour. It just dawned on me recently that he was sort of my tether to childhood and to a life before Phish happened—somebody that kind of understood who you could talk to that didn’t work with me.”

Anastasio also recounts sitting with Cottrell in his last days, with an acoustic guitar in-hand: “It was powerful and scary, and also kind of beautiful. It sort of became [about], ‘Well, we’re all going there, we’re all here together in death and in dreaming, and we’re free of time.’ I was thinking about my sister who also died of cancer, and my grandmother. We carry these people around with us.”

The guitarist goes on to talk a bit more about being inspired by those he’s lost, including his sister, and how Cottrell used to love when Anastasio “ripped it” on guitar, leading him to lean heavily on the guitar for the Ghosts of the Forest songs, which he says will translate to the live show as well. Anastasio says he sees the upcoming performances similar to how he viewed his pre-TAB 8 Foot Fluorescent Tubes shows in the late-’90s, and also as a way to continue giving back to fans.

“The longer it goes, the more I feel like I want to honor them,” he says. “The number of times they’ve come to see us, the responsibility and the excitement of the risk grows in my mind. Kasvot Växt that Phish just did was that: just, let’s just do something amazing fresh and new. These people have come to 200 concerts. We owe them. Sometimes I see people later in their careers, and that mentality that starts to happen—’Hey, I’m in a big band. Come pay a lot of money and see me because I’m so great.’ I feel the opposite. You’ve seen it already. It’s my job to do something new and to progress. It’s not like everybody is going to like everything. That isn’t my job, but I want to care. The bands that I loved cared.”

After expressing his excitement for the impending Ghosts of the Forest tour, which kicks off April 4 in Portland, ME—along with admitting his near-obsession with King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, who inspire him to always strive for new music in his own art—Anastasio moves to Phish’s upcoming plans, which he is equally if not more jazzed about: “I’m not even totally sure where we’re going this summer, but I always have it on my radar, ‘How long do I have to wait before I can see these guys again?’ Page said something to me [in Mexico recently]. We were in the band practice room laughing about something, and as we were walking out, he said something like, ‘It’s not fair that we can be laughing that much at work.’ I just thought it was so on point.”

Between Me and My Mind, the new documentary on Anastasio and his various projects, will premiere on April 26 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York (Anastasio will also play a special show at the Beacon Theatre in celebration of the premiere), and the guitarist addressed the film in the interview as well, noting that it was the first time he agreed to such an endeavor since 2000’s Bittersweet Motel (“That was a long time ago and, whatever, that was what it was”).

“At the meeting they said, ‘Look, you just did ‘Petrichor,’ which had dancers and umbrellas. And then Kasvot Växt, and all these complicated songs. It would be fascinating to invite people into the process,'” Anastasio recalls. “We let them come and once they started going they were going. They just were around for a year… They came out on tour and traveled on the bus. At first you’re kind of on guard and then eventually you forget they even exist. That’s when it gets dangerous, because you start speaking honestly… They were around during the period of Ghosts of the Forest, the ‘Soul Planet’ thing, probably a little teeny bit of the birth of Kasvot Växt. It was a good year. It was an interesting year in the Phish world. A fascinating year. That was a lot of fun. I mean, I’m nervous about it. I’m not going to lie.”

Read the full interview here.