Well it has been FAR TOO LONG since I have spewed thousands of words about Phish here so let’s change that!

 

After some internal – and external – discussion about what I might want to take on for my next deep dive into a Phish Tour gone by I have decided to take on a two leg tour that many love but few discuss in depth. So as to not bury the lede too far I will tell you that this next project is to get comfy with the 40 shows that make up the Fall/Winter tours from 1999.

 

So why this year, this tour, now?

 

Part of that is the simple fact that I have a great appreciation for these shows and know that many others do as well. Excepting those of us who were not able to get on board prior to Hiatus or The Long Wait for any of a hundred different reasons, most people are at least familiar with this era of Phish even if they haven’t spent much time with it. For many this was a time that marked the long, dark descent towards those two events I just mentioned but for many of us this was our early to mid 20s, living (mostly) free and easy in the latter days of the Clinton US, living and breathing the then-exploding jam music scene that Phish helped to foster in the preceding years. But more than anything this is a time in the history of our band that I feel gets a bad rap due to its proximate association with where the scene had gotten at this stage and the later impacts of several factors that quite frankly I will not be focusing on for the most part.

 

My goal here as always is to focus first on the music, particularly the jamming styles and other minutiae. I am not a musician nor am I a historian but I am someone who really fucking loves this band and all that comes with it. So if you are into the dorky, setlist-dissecting, tease-hunting, trend-finding side of Phish fandom you are in the right place. While I was lucky enough to hit eight of the shows I will cover I am by no means going to put my experience forward as anything more than anecdote. Where possible I will add what context I can for what we heard and saw coming from the stage but that is and always will be skewed by my perspective so I welcome any and all to join in and add to the conversation as we proceed.

 

So with that I say get your ears primed, your dancing shoes shined, and your notebooks lined (gimme a break, my rhyming cadence is rusty). There will be a post or two more setting the table for what is to come but soon enough we will begin on our journey from one BC to the other, with stops at all point in between…