Trey Anastasio, photo by Bill Kelly

Trey Anastasio’s acoustic tour continued over the weekend with two nights at Missoula, Mont.’s Wilma Theatre. While every live performance from the Phish frontman holds to a high standard of originality, the acoustic format always offers him the flexibility to show off his wide-ranging catalog. With the third and fourth performances on the independent run, Anastasio continued to expand the run’s repertoire with more solo and duet arrangements with pianist Jeff Tanski, interspersed with a few proper surprises.

Both Friday and Saturday’s shows included far more songs new to this tour than repeats from the first two nights, adding a total of 34 Phish favorites and solo originals to the list he’ll be drawing from on this run. On Friday, the tracks he hadn’t delivered acoustically since last year included “Sigma Oasis,” “Billy Breathes,” “Rift,” “When the Words Go Away,” “Blaze On,” “Sleeping Monkey,” “Horn,” “Simeon,” “The Lizards,” “Everything’s Right,” “Farmhouse,” “Fluffhead,” “A Life Beyond The Dream,” “What’s Going Through Your Mind,” “Possum” and “Carini.” On Saturday, Anastasio, rotating between solo sequences and pairings with his longtime collaborator Tanski, reintroduced “Free,” “NICU,” “Lawn Boy,” “Hey Stranger,” “Secret Smile,” “Valdese,” “Maze,” “Turtle in the Clouds,” “Steam,” “Split Open and Melt,” “Let Me Lie,” “The Wedge,” “Drift While You’re Sleeping” and “Wading in the Velvet Sea,”

Anastasio’s Montana shows also included their fair share of entries that harkened back past last year’s landmark tour. On Friday, he returned to “Buffalo Bill,” an outlandish Hoist outtake he’d issued solo only two times before, and last in 2018, as well as his Bar 17 solo original “Goodbye Head,” last performed in concert in 2019 (not including his 2020 Beacon Jams livestream series). Night two brought the solo favorite “Mercury,” which he’d last performed live in 2021.

In April, Anastasio released Trey Anastasio – Live and Acoustic, his first independent live album since 2020’s Burn It Down and a record of his 20-show series with Tanski from last spring, which marked his first proper acoustic tour in six years. The album will feature 22 tracks culled from the run’s repertoire, including Phish classics like “Stash,” “Billy Breathes,” “Lifeboy” and “Divided Sky,” all produced by Vance Powell.

Anastasio and Tanski will continue with six further performances across the country through June 24. Find tickets and information on the full acoustic outing at trey.com.