[We would like to thank Landon Schoenefeld (@nomidwestlove) aka @_colonel_mustard (Instagram) for recapping last night's show. -Ed.]

From the moment the announcement was made, I knew I was all in for Mondegreen, Phish’s first festival in nearly nine years (Curveball notwithstanding), but of course I wanted more. Summer tour has traditionally been tough for me as I usually have my hands full with work stuff, but I also knew as a rabid fan of this band for the last twenty-five years, that four shows would leave me unsatiated. So, when a friend casually floated the possibility of adding Bethel to our roster, I reluctantly agreed.

I have visited sheds north and south and east to west with a collect-them-all sort of zeal. I have always heard good things about Bethel but had never made the trip to these hallowed grounds near Yasgur’s Farm in upstate New York. Of course, as a card carrying hippy, I had to make the pilgrimage to ground zero of the most famous festival in American history. Yes, this is where Woodstock happened in August of 1969, but risking my mind becoming mired in a claustrophobic clutch of clichés, I will try my best to spare this recap from being drenched in a rainbow collage of psychedelic prose.

We assembled a rag-tag crew of first timers from all points west including California, Washington, Montana, and Colorado. Weather in this part of the country in August is certainly a wild card, and I’ll be honest, the forecast coming into the weekend didn’t look great. The drive here was certainly a challenge, white knuckles clutching the wheel through a veritable shit storm.

Would the deluge continue? Will they cancel the shows? The mudslides and downed trees along the way added to my already creeping anxiety; however, the Gods smiled on us and cleared the skies, making way for some of the most perfect weather at an outdoor show I’ve had in recent memory.

On Sunday there was a ten percent chance of rain, but the swift moving storm clouds before the show threatened to hit us with that ten percent. A very light mist began shortly before showtime, but those clouds, thankfully, turned out to be all bark and no bite. After this light squall, we were treated to a stunningly beautiful, but moody, cotton candy skyscape.

The band hit the stage a little later than the previous shows at 8:08. We welcomed the “I Never Needed You Like This Before,” the relatively new pandemic era rocker fit nicely into the opening slot. A possible homage to the debut performance on The Tonight Show, Trey played with backing band, The Roots on this date four years ago. The boys had swing right out of the gate with Mike laying down some booty shaking bass lines to get the crowd moving.

“46 Days” was up next, and while it didn’t go that deep, it had impactful playing, modulating quickly into blissful territory early in the jam. Great full band interplay with Fishman flourishes abound.

“Bathtub Gin” came next. Lips moved reflexively in synchronization to the familiar tune. Gin for me almost never disappoints, and although yes, we do love to take a bath, I wasn’t so stoked when smacked on the forehead with a few stray, fat and cold raindrops. Alas my worry wart tendencies were overblown, like usual, as the precipitation remained sporadic and dare I say almost pleasant. Gin gave the band its first opportunity of the evening to open up, flirting with both major and minor before finally settling on minor.

In waves, orchestrated by the wind, a few drops of rain dashed themselves against the windows, where they surrendered their antic wildness, their whiplash abandoned, there sea bullet roulette, to join the zendo of day dreamers sliding in a slow, soft, wriggly meditation towards the puddle of being. Some riffs from Trey reminiscent of “Saw it Again” gave way to spacey synths and some bodacious basslines. Trey started doing what he does best, tearing it up, patient and ferocious at the same time, before bringing us gently back to earth with a truncated outro.

When considering plausible bust outs, certainly no one would have guessed “Fikus.” Most of the crowd seemed a little lost at first, but I’d like to mark a few extra hetty points of knowing the tune without having to look at the online setlist. As a budding phan, this rarely played Story of The Ghost song resonated with me with its compelling bass driven percussive experiment, the lyrics delivered in an enchanting Mike Gordon spoken word monologue.

The live version is perhaps sparser than the album version as it lacks the layered poly-rhythmic effects of tin cans, mason jars and the ocean found on the studio cut. But boy howdy, this appeared to be one of the biggest bustouts of all-time with a gap of eight hundred and one shows, being played only five times, the last of which was in 1998. I have to shout out my friend @sleeping_llama for being my on-call statistician and supplying me with the breakdown via text. Thanks Daniel!

“Theme From The Bottom” came after. “Theme” in recent history can be added to the ever-growing list of songs that can literally go anywhere and do anything, but this rendition sticks a little closer to the vest.

“Timber Ho” is always welcomed by me and seemed apropos considering all the downed trees encountered on the journey here. Some very sexy playing from Trey gave way to a glissando of semi quavers. CK5 delivered some impressive lighting with his limited rig, fragments of the throngs being illuminated through beams of trapezoidal light. At this point in the show, real experience began to transmute into spiritual equations, and we were all here for it.

The new Gordo tune “Human Nature” came next. The waxing and mustardy moon appeared out of the clouds and bumped its golden beer belly against the more ascetic plexus of city shine. Kuroda did not oblige when I pleaded with him to stop shining that thing in my face.

I was stoked to catch “Limb by Limb” as its increasingly becoming a rarity these days. The “Taste” adjacent jam puttered into a complete breakdown, re-landing into the opening chords of the song, and pulled back into the station by soft singing from our favorite little drummer boy.

Next up the band sneakily placed an “Axilla” into the setlist just to make sure we were paying attention. Speaking of shining that thing in my face, we’ve become accustomed to hearing it’s sequel “Axilla II” in recent years, erasing one of the previously held longest gap songs by continuing to play it all but exclusively save for twice in the past few years.

“Sigma Oasis” closed the first set. I began to think about the sacred space Phish provides for us. Life is hard sometimes, but it’s funny to me how the compounding stress of a few months can be easily undone by the music you love in about ninety minutes. And as far as reorientation is concerned, nothing aligns the old ontological gyroscope like a healthy dose of lysergic acid diethylamide or psilocybic fungi, but I digress, as I promised earlier, I wasn’t going to go there.

Setbreak was no weirder than usual. The crowd was agog when the band retook the stage for the last set of the weekend. “Buried Alive” to me has always been an omen of things to come and was tackled with aplomb.

Next up it was time to get this show on the road with “AC/DC Bag.” This Bag was the longest jam of the night and started with some familiar sounding riffing from Trey. His phrasing here really sounded like he was teasing something, but I’m not talking about the Manteca tease in there, so please don’t @ me. We traversed into some dark and spacey terrain with some benign organ fills from Page into some swampy clav. For a moment near the end of the jam they seemed to be flirting was a reprise of the “46 Days” from earlier in the show, to my ears anyway. They did sprinkle us with a couple Fikus teases before devolving into some unhinged 4.0 sounds.

Next came “Fuego.” Do you like dad rock? To which I answer, you goddamn right. Fuego has been pure fire lately, and this version was no exception with a syncopated jam. Trey’s playing was mortised into place, feeling his way for melodies like pathways up a mountain. At which point they seemed to break linear order into luminous quanta–which they reassembled into synergistic wholes, much like a Bucky Fuller design. Together with the “Bag,” it didn’t quite reach the heights of the “Tweezer> Pillow Jets” of night one, but should at least be in the conversation for jam suite of the weekend.

An eldritch segue into “Golden Age” came after. Forgive the Olympic metaphor when I say they stuck the landing. By the way, if you’d like a proper tutorial on when and how to clap during “Golden Age” please see me after class. Trey’s playing bordered on blissfully out of control, coloring over the lines. Behind the minutiae, the chaos, the mockery of life, he detected the invisible pattern; announcing his discoveries in the metaphysical pigment of space. No searching for formulae, no crucifixion of ideas, no compulsion other than to create.

“Simple” came next and thoughts turned to my sweet one at home. She’s a bit of a newb and a little confused that there is in fact no saxophone in the band, rightly so. They delivered a short version standing in the shadow of the behemoth that was presented at Alpine N2.

A personal anecdote, I pride myself in being able to predict future bangers after the first listen. I knew it with “Mercury.” I knew it with “Wave of Hope.” And after listening to the Page/Trey collaboration on January, I knew it again with “Life Saving Gun.” Fishman gave us his signature percussion rinse with some plundering bass from Cactus, made complete with some long sustains from Trey.

“Harry Hood” seemed like an obvious choice even though I did not add it to my setlist game. In general, I was skunked throughout the weekend, but still managed to do pretty well in real life. It was beginning to get wet again, but the band seemed to stop the rain in the song’s coda. No minor key deviation here. I like my “Hoods,” like I like my cats–light and fluffy. A classic finish to a very respectable show. An orgone energy seemed to surround everyone around me. A stranger in front of me was handing out high fives, so I stepped in the queue to receive mine.

There were no screaming maniacs calling for an encore, but the band decided to give us a couple more anyway, starting with a perfunctory “A Life Beyond The Dream.” The bellows of a huge sigh filled the air with the vapid carbon dioxide of disappointment. Surely, I jest. “Say It To Me S.A.N.T.O.S” another one of my aforementioned future bangers came last. They didn’t even try to trick me into thinking it was “Ghost.” It was all business at the end.

I was filled with a familiar feeling. My soul swooned softly. I knew something was going on here that transcended entertainment, but I didn’t have a name for it, I still don’t have a name for it. It seems somewhere between art and magic and whenever I encounter it—in poetry, music, literature, films, or paintings—I enter what Robert Anton Wilson might describe as virtual reality. For a moment a pin had been pulled away from the axis of the universe.

I love this band, and I love my Phish friends, they are my compass in this life, and I’m filled with gratitude that we made it through another amazing weekend together successfully. We’re all here together and the weather's fine. The New England charm was thick, the vibes immaculate, and the band revealed to me a new trick, dabbling in the science of pluviculture. And thankfully they know how to turn it off at exactly the right moment.

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