Between Me and My Mind (2019) Movie Script
1
Hey, buddy. Hi.
There it is.
All I do on the piano
is compose,
which is very slow when
I use the paper and compose.
And that's it, I don't
really play the piano, so...
If you're composing, it's great,
'cause you can see
how all the chords lay out.
When Phish started,
I didn't know
I was gonna be in a rock band.
I thought I was gonna be
a composer.
A lot of the first Phish stuff
was heavily composed.
This is the tune "Foam"
that we do.
This is all written out.
It's a big chart. It's all...
And also
"You Enjoy Myself" was that...
a lot of the early stuff.
It wasn't like rock music.
I don't really know what it was.
It's a weird band, I mean...
It's not really... I don't know
what kind of music this is.
You know what I mean?
All that shit.
One guy who was in the band
pretty much quit
because he was like,
"What the hell is this?"
This is the boring reality
of what I do every morning now.
It's just that all these
lyrics are wrong.
Now I have to write
them all down again.
I always have a lot of projects
going on: TAB, Solo Acoustic...
but the musical center
of my life is Phish.
We've been playing together
since 1983.
Yo.
- How you doing?
- Good, man.
I'm sitting here, like,
working on "Thread" right now.
Yeah. Yeah.
Basically, just refer
to the demo for the tempo.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
- 'Cause it's like...
- I hadn't got that far yet.
So funny, I was just sitting
here, like.
I was just thinking of that
tune, like, I was singing...
I know, it sticks
in my head so much.
- Yeah.
- Doesn't it? It's like,
I think we kind of got it up
because we were excited.
You know, that was me.
- It was hopping right along.
- It was hopping.
That's the only thing
I was gonna say.
I really liked
"Come Together," "Frost,".
"A Case of Ice and Snow,"
and that "Love's Only A Number"
thing. That's just the best.
That one seemed almost
the most to me,
with just, you know, with just
the little that we put on it.
That's good. That's great.
Then Mike will have
a couple of songs,
and Page will have
a couple of songs,
and you'll have,
you know, whatever.
And then we'll have songs.
Yeah, that's great.
We need songs right now
because we're trying
to do this thing
called the baker's dozen,
where we're going to do
13 consecutive nights
at Madison Square Garden,
and we're gonna try to do them
without any repeats.
So, that'll be
probably about 280 songs.
You know, most bands do
a similar show every night.
So my head is kind of exploding
with the whole thing.
It's exciting.
I am writing this longform thing
that I'm into now.
This Ghosts of the Forest idea.
My oldest friend Chris is now
in this battle with cancer.
He's stage four.
He used to hunt elk.
That's, like, where
the title idea came from.
Ghosts of the Forest.
They called elk
"ghosts of the forest"
because you could be following
a trail and they just vanish.
You never know when the trail
is going to end.
I was thinking about
my only sibling
has passed away.
Chris and both the girls
have grown up.
It's all just so fleeting.
A couple of albums ago, a door
started opening up for me
in terms of writing
about personal things.
I wrote a song about my sister
called "Miss You"
after she died.
Once that door opens,
it's like a floodgate.
Suddenly you want
to start writing about
what you're really feeling
in your personal life
in a much more direct way.
Suddenly, I'm writing about Sue,
and I'm writing about
my family and friends.
And I want to talk
to them and find out
what is my mom's perspective?
You know,
what is my dad's perspective?
Even as a parent,
I've got my own story
about how I raise
my kids and stuff.
You know, and maybe I just
wanna learn the truth.
My dad worked in Princeton.
My Mom never really fit
in Princeton.
She's a New Yorker
through and through.
When I was 18, she said,
"Go raise some money."
We painted a couple of houses
or something
and I went and became
a street musician in Europe.
That's the kinda thing she
would always encourage me to do.
Very creative, wrote books.
All kinds of creative people
on that side of the family.
I think I've told
you this before,
when you were really little,
four, five, six, you went to
so many plays all the time.
Peter Pan...
South Pacific,
West Side Story.
I mean, Kristy and you,
you both knew
the lyrics
to every single Broadway song.
Yeah.
A lot of Kristy's friends
come and have lunch
with me on this bench.
So it's like, "Let's go to
Kristy's bench and have lunch."
And, you know, it's really good.
- I love the bench.
- I love the bench.
You know, during that whole
time, I mean, you were...
I don't know what
we would have done without you.
There's no good thing to say
when it sucks.
- I know.
- It just sucks.
It sucks.
Anyway, there you go.
But back to music.
I remember you guys
had big parties.
- We had big parties.
- And they went on for two days
- with the speakers on the roof.
- We did.
And everybody was listening
- to great music.
- We were, like, young.
Early 20s.
But your sense of adventure was
magnetic and also paved the way.
Yeah.
Like, when you're like,
"I'm going to Barbados
with a backpack." You know,
to go live on the beach.
And then when you're like
"I'm off to India."
It basically said to me that
that's a possibility.
- Yeah.
- I know it was important to you
that both Kristy and I knew
- there was a world outside of...
- But yes, and...
...that suburban block
that we lived on.
Definitely. You try and
do the best you can, you know?
I don't know.
Remember in hockey we had
the lead puck
and everything, remember?
And the 50 shots before dinner.
And all that stuff,
it was great.
I loved playing hockey
because it was fun
to be good at something,
and I loved playing hockey
because it was with dad.
And I wanted to do
stuff with dad.
- Yes.
- But no matter how good I got,
like, it wasn't enough.
- It was, like, never enough.
- That's true.
In the meantime,
I was playing music.
- Yeah.
- And...
- Happy.
- Oh, man.
Every bit of, like,
anger and frustration
and joy was coming out in music.
You never stopped drumming.
You drummed all the time
when you were two, three, four.
It was like "du-du-du-du."
And you used to sit behind
me in the car and...
It's like...
Like this all day long,
for long car trips.
Like, "Trey!"
And then remember
in the fifth grade,
you're getting kicked
out of class?
- Yes.
- That was why.
"Stop drumming, Trey!"
And you couldn't.
And I became...
I got kicked out of chorus
for drumming.
You must have been born with
just way too many notes
in your brain.
And you'll spend a lifetime
never getting them all out.
Then I looked at you up there,
and I think, wow,
"He is so happy,
and how great is that?"
It feels like everything
just fell into place.
And the result I can read
on other people's faces.
It's not just
that I'm having fun.
It's that they are, you know
what I mean? Or Page is.
I felt like that with Tom, like,
in eighth grade
when we'd, like, write a song.
All of a sudden,
we'd be like, "Oh!"
I thought it was great.
- A lot of things...
- It was scary at times.
I didn't like it at times,
because it was scary
because it was too big.
I felt like you just
were trapped in this madness,
and you couldn't see a way out.
I think that's why
things went south, you know.
The first time you played
at Madison Square Garden,
and everybody was, like, taking
pictures of the marquee,
and oh my God,
your name was up there.
Phish was up there. This was
the most exciting thing ever.
We were so happy.
And then to stand back
and look at these people,
all these people...
I thought
this is just too scary,
and it's going to get bigger.
It just scared me to death.
And I was right.
It did get
a little big there for a while.
When I'm in the barn,
I feel the presence
of my grandmother,
my grandfather,
the lost and the loved ones.
They're all a part of me.
I don't float
through life alone.
I float through life
with pieces of my father,
and pieces of my mother
and friends.
You know,
we're part of a tapestry.
And so this album
is a lot about that.
A minor.
Fish and Tony were
two of the first people I met
when I came to Burlington
and two of the most important
musical collaborators
in my life,
and they've never
played together.
I thought this project
would be a great chance
to start it off
with the three of us.
Build it from there.
That's great.
When you make records,
you clean up all the edges,
for, like, presentation. Put,
like, a click track on this,
to make it straighter.
I don't want to do that anymore.
I want to be organic and alive
and in the moment,
and, like, in the now.
Hello?
It's become a tradition
that Phish plays
every New Year's Eve at Madison
Square Garden, and at midnight,
we do a thing that we call
"the gag theatrical event."
And this year, I have
a really cool idea
that I can't wait
to share with the guys.
We're going to turn Madison
Square Garden into an ocean,
and the stage is gonna
become a pirate ship
floating on top of it, carrying
us along over the audience.
It's gonna be really cool.
- Yo!
- Brother!
I got that from this guy...
It's 26 inches.
It's gonna contribute
to my deafness is the problem.
That's where I keep
all my, like, drum doodads.
- Your herb.
- Yeah.
Greatest thing you ever
told me was that Tommy Lee
really liked
our Rolling Stonescover.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, He did.
That was, like, the only thing
he said to me.
"Hey, man.
I really wanted to be..."
- I was like "Thank you!"
- With the caveman?
- Yeah. I had a tutu.
- The shirt off.
He said something like,
"Yeah finally, a band."
That was his thing, was,
like, a band on the cover,
- like, not trying to be cool.
- Not giving a fuck.
"You guys really aren't cool!"
- Isn't that fucking amazing?
- It was great.
It's a miracle
that we still have a career,
after trying
so hard just to sabotage it.
No band has worked harder
shooting themselves in the foot.
Destroy their own career.
Yeah, that's great.
Alright,
let's just try this. Okay.
One, two, three...
That'll work!
I think that was good!
I love the half thing.
- Yeah well that's...
- That's pirates up there
like, moving the sail
- at that point.
- Well, that's the thing.
- It's like...
- Yeah.
Pulling ropes and shit.
It's like you can't
get enough of that.
You can't...
- You can't do too much of that.
- There's never enough half.
There's never enough
halving off the beat.
You have to put vocals on top,
'cause everybody is...
Right, the "wind
is the music" part?
Yeah, I thought
maybe I would do just
the regular "wind is the music."
That'd be great.
'Cause I thought Page is doing
the "wind is the music"
was a little high.
He might maybe do that.
Or you can do the "soul planet."
- Oh, soul planet, right, right.
- ...through space.
You can kinda do
whatever you wanna to do.
And you go, "soul planet!"
Visually, there's a lot to it,
but musically,
it's just fucking rock,
which is great.
It's just a pocket.
Get a good pocket going and go.
Kinda minimal arrangement,
- you know. It's like...
- My favorite part, by far,
is that we're
passengers on the boat,
and the wind is the music
blowing us along
over the sea of people.
You can definitely get
behind that. I mean, it is what
we've been doing for 34 years.
That's what it feels like.
Except when it's bad.
- Well...
- And then it feels like...
- It feels like...
- When it's bad,
it's me doing it.
Then it feels
like it's just sort of like
the boat's taking on water.
It's just, you know, listing,
and everybody's panicking
in their own way.
I wanna show you this picture.
- Who's that?
- C Cott.
- Is that C Cott?
- Yeah, he's bald now.
- Oh my God. That's awesome.
- Isn't that great?
Looks like a badass,
- doesn't he?
- Oh, yeah.
- I like it.
- He's always looked
like a badass.
That's a great photo.
- I know.
- I've never seen him with...
His hair was falling out
from the chemo.
Oh! He's gone through chemo?
- Yeah, you didn't know?
- I didn't know that.
- Yeah.
- Oh, Jesus.
He's got stage four cancer,
it's, like, it's bad.
- C Cott?
- You didn't know that?
- I didn't tell you?
- I didn't know that at all.
- No.
- It's so weird.
I didn't tell anybody
for, like, a long time.
I just didn't want to talk
about it,
because it was, like,
really bumming me out.
But he did a biopsy
and they found out
he has adrenal cortical
cancer, stage four.
- That sucks.
- Like, serious cancer.
He might beat it.
He's the kind of guy
that if he beat it, I actually
wouldn't be surprised.
- I hope he does.
- Yeah.
He's a great guy.
Anyway...
The first day I ever came to
Burlington, I was 18 years old.
I came to look at UVM.
I went out and I saw.
Big Joe Burrell
& The Unknown Blues Band.
One of the greatest,
most life changing nights ever.
And Tony Markellis
was his bass player,
who's now the bass player
in TAB.
And that was, like,
a big part of the reason
I wanted to move to Burlington.
Here's my dorm
from when I was a freshman.
Right there,
there's Fish's room.
He was a few halls down from me.
He was a freshman, and he had
his drum set in his room.
And I went over and jammed
with my amp.
We started jamming right away.
That was, like, 35 years ago.
When we were just starting out,
we used to play
at Nectar's over there.
This was the band's house.
This house.
This is where we lived.
That was Fish's room,
right there.
Every day at one o'clock,
I would have to go up there
and wake him up.
He liked to sleep.
The Nectar's is one block there.
So we would go over there
and we'd do three sets.
He'd say, you know,
"play 'Mustang Sally, '"
or "play a slow one."
And then at 7 it would
kinda switch to, like,
bar scene, and then
for the late night set,
all our friends would be there
and it would turn into
this crazy Icculus Gamehendge,
people screaming
and all this stuff.
Then afterwards,
we would usually go out
till two in the morning,
go out to, like, the Quarry
or go to Howard Johnson's
or something like that.
I remember walking in that door
with all the sheet music
that was "You Enjoy Myself."
And Jeff,
our first guitar player,
would just be like, "What
is this? I'm not doing this."
And Page being like,
"I'll do it, yeah let's do it."
In the basement,
and then learning all the
down there.
It says The Hood Plant.
It was the hood plant.
That's where, you know,
they packaged the milk,
when we were living there.
And that's where
the song came from.
A previous owner
of this small house
was named Mr. Miner,
so we used to get all his mail.
And then we got these
like...
You know, like,
Publisher's Clearing House...
"Thank you, Mr. Miner."
And we were always like,
"Thank you, Mr. Miner."
Turn around there,
you look up on the second floor.
That's where Sue lived.
She was, like, a waitress
at.
She lived right up there.
And I lived right here.
She was 19.
Still together.
All right, let's go.
- Dude, man.
- What's up, buddy?
- How's Fish doing?
- Fish is good.
What a fucking distance
he's gone.
Yeah.
- From the fucking laundry pile.
- Right?
You remember that?
Like in the green house,
he had a laundry pile
and two drumsticks.
He didn't even have a bed.
No, I know, he would just sleep
on a laundry pile.
He just slept on a laundry pile.
I go up there, he's got
five kids, amazing wife...
- He's got a bed.
- He's got a bed!
He's got a bed.
- It's like...
- Country mile.
It's in B.
It's just like,
put everything in B,
'cause it's good for these.
- Great.
- I just... Putting it in B
gets me... yeah.
- Wait, stop for a second.
- Yup.
So it goes...
Double that.
Same thing.
- To G.
- Yeah, yeah, okay.
Like that.
- Yeah, that's it.
- Okay.
So here's what it sounds like
- with Fish playing that.
- Okay.
Now comes the D. To D.
Now to G.
I think it's an F sharp, now.
Fish's voice
sounds really good on that.
That's a good place to keep him.
It's a good thing for him, yeah.
He also only
has to stay on one note.
That's also good.
- That's cool, man. That's great.
- That sounded so good.
It's gonna be great.
It's gonna be really fun.
- That's gonna be another year.
- Another year.
They keep coming.
They just keep rolling. 18.
It doesn't seem like 18 years
- since Big Cypress.
- Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. That's a lot.
At Big Cypress I had
a 6-week-old daughter,
and now I got
an 18-year-old daughter.
Here we are. We've come a long
way from the little house.
Yeah.
In a lot of ways,
I think this last year
has brought it back to that fun.
I really think that
- the fun we were having...
- I agree.
...when we were rehearsing
in the basement
or up in Fish's room
there at the little house
and the comfortableness
of walking on stage
and having fun, and just,
it felt very similar
to walking on stage at Nectar's,
and just having
all those people there
and, you know, loving it
and just the joy of it.
It's still there. It was hard
to keep a close hold on that joy
for all those 30 years
or 35 years or whatever,
but I really feel like
it's back.
I'm back to that spot again
where I'm feeling that joyous
about it again. It's back, baby.
- I agree, man. I really do.
- Alright, man.
- That was great! Thank you.
- See you soon. Thank you!
When I was, like, 16, my parents
were getting divorced.
And I remember a tangible
feeling of things coming apart.
Everything
was kind of falling apart.
My sister was off to college,
we were selling the house,
and my music friends
became sort of my new family.
And they still are to this day.
Okay.
Man.
Dude, that amp sounds...
I can't believe
how good that amp sounds.
What's the dynamics sound like?
That's the dynamic, and...
Well, actually,
it's not that different.
Try the ribbon.
I've got to adjust
the gain over here.
Does that sound cool up there?
Can I hear that?
That's great, man.
That's, like, fucking funeral
shit. Hold up, one more time.
Now move it to here.
I just really liked those bass
notes alone, you know.
Okay, vocals time.
Cool.
That ties that bit together.
Slower, louder.
No, I hate that.
- It's way too...
- It's horrible.
Yeah.
That's good.
So that's just...
It's coming up on the synth.
Okay, okay.
It's like a creepy
ice cream truck or something.
Just go. Yeah. Try it again.
Try it again.
- Fucking awesome, man.
- It's great.
Talking about things
I've never done before? This.
Like this kind of an album.
Like, emotional, spacious...
We're like the playing band.
Like, the way that it's...
I don't know,
things just go where they go.
I can't vouch for anything.
You know, like I said,
it's gonna just roll forward
and all of a sudden one day
it's gonna be like "It's done!"
Whatever it may be.
This might just be like
a guidepost to something
that gets played live,
who fucking knows?
I just can't tell.
This is not what I expected,
and I'm liking it.
All right, get ready,
cause we're going.
Oh, man, I remember all this.
It's making me a little bit,
almost, like, nervous.
Like walking.
Like, walking into this house,
where I haven't been
in 15 years.
It's like...
It's where my kids grew up.
Just sort of...
I'm really feeling it now,
the whole ghosts
of the forest thing.
'Cause I used to hang out
back here a lot.
Like, I always walked to
the barn through the woods.
I think I see it.
I could just knock on the door
and say, "Can I look inside?"
I put that basketball hoop up.
I feel like a creeper
looking at this guy's house.
Hello! Sorry we're walking
through your woods.
- Hi, I'm Trey. Nice to meet you.
- How you doing?
- You used to own this house.
- I did.
I didn't mean to, like,
be creeping you out,
walking through your woods.
It's Vermont,
we're pretty casual.
- We were just like walking...
- You had a camera crew.
You couldn't have been
up to too much.
No.
- Hi!
- Hi!
I'm Trey.
We met at South End
Kitchen one day.
- Yes! I remember that!
- And we talked about our house...
- Oh, my God! We've met!
- Yes. Welcome.
- Is this freaking you out? Okay.
- Not a bit.
If this isn't
freaking you out...
- No, no, no.
- Going out to get dinner.
So great that you guys got the
garden and the chickens going.
- We're trying.
- I love this house.
I love this house.
Why don't you guys come in?
C'mon, come in.
Oh my God.
Thank you
for letting me look at this.
I'm taking these off.
Hi! I used to live here.
- You're Trey.
- Yeah, I play in Phish.
Opal, she goes to my school too
and she's in my grade.
And she told me
you guys used to live here.
I was like, "Wow!"
Did you guys have
the room, like, upstairs?
That was sort of
like my little studio.
Like, I had a...
I had a soundboard in there
and I used to write songs.
Cool.
Did you play any of the songs
that you've written there?
Oh yeah!
Some of the biggest Phish songs
were written up in that room.
Because that's the room
with a really good vibe.
I don't know whose
room that is...
- Mine.
- ...but whoever it is
must have a good vibe.
My daughter was born right here.
That's the chair
that I sit in at dinner!
Right there.
Her crib was right there
because she liked the warmth
of the wood stove.
And so I wrote a song about her,
it's called Billy Breathes.
That was her nickname,
was Billy. She was so little,
and I was, like, knocked out
by the fact she was breathing.
"Oh, my God!"
So I wrote that song
up on that hill.
The rest of it's all music.
Rest of it's all the words.
But then there's a lot of music
in the middle,
which is kind of, like,
what Phish does.
- Fish crams a lot of music.
- That's very cool. Fantastic.
- You guys got the best house.
- We know.
That was so kind of you
to let us in here.
We just made our Christmas card,
because that's the only picture
that four of us are in.
You gotta, like, just
black me out. Cross me out.
With this stalker we found
in the middle of October
walking through our woods.
All right, we're going.
Morning Mike,
I love being at your old house.
- How are you doing?
- Good.
Jared turned me on to this.
It's five loopers,
and one's to use with your hand.
And you can instantly shorten
them and lengthen them
- and add effects.
- It's a Kaossilator?
It's just like a standard
Boss looper.
- Got the classic 808 too.
- What is that?
That's... This is what,
like, all the classic...
The first hip-hop songs
were all made on this.
Really?
But it's old school.
What do all these knobs do?
So it goes...
Now it goes... Right there.
It goes
to the outro progression.
Okay.
E to G.
When we go to F sharp,
they've turned the sail.
Like, with your bass,
you're, like, turning the sail.
- It's huge.
- Okay.
And you go...
And Fish is like...
That F sharp...
And then the whole thing is
starting to turn backwards now.
Facing the back of the Garden.
And the guys
are pulling the ropes
and the fans are filling
the sail with wind.
- Done!
- Yeah, that's awesome.
This is where
you are decluttering?
I'm just kinda like piecing
things chronologically
and then throwing
a lot out, so...
You're not gonna throw
that out.
Look at this, man.
Look at how close we used to be.
Yeah.
I see videos from this
period of time occasionally.
And me and you are so physically
in sync.
- It's like one person.
- Yeah.
And it makes me sad
that you're so far away.
The tab behind the beat.
I'm so happy that the sound
is so good on stage
that it's okay,
but I kinda want to walk
over next to you.
- Look at this from...
- Look at Fish!
In a dress!
- Speaking of New Year's...
- That's at the Dude show.
Oh, that is great.
Please bring that back.
At least for Halloween.
It's pumpkins.
You look like you could
be in, like,
an amazing '80s band.
What are you doing
with all these? Can you send...
I'm just putting them
chronologically.
Are you sending them
to Shapiro?
This is Kevin.
See these here?
- This is all Kevin here.
- Throw that shit out, dude.
Well, some of it's just crappy.
Oh my God.
- Is that the Clifford Ball?
- It's one of the first one, 97.
- Oh, Clifford Ball is 96.
- That's a great one.
That's a great one.
Look at that picture.
Not bad
for our second festival.
That was not bad
for our second festival.
Good dog!
You like music, don't you?
This album
is a lot more personal.
There's a lot of fear
and confusion in this album.
And sadness.
And I'm not even close to done,
and I'm already getting
to the point where,
like, some days I put it on
and I'm like "I hate this."
And the next day,
I'm like, "Oh, this is okay."
I'm kind of a little bit lost
at sea in that way,
to be perfectly honest.
I want to be alive
and in the moment,
like, in the now.
You know what I mean?
Still has gone nowhere.
That might actually
be good with drums.
Tony?
That's a keeper.
When I was a kid,
I was lucky enough that my dad
wanted to coach me in hockey.
At the same time,
he was very intense,
and there was a lot of pressure.
I just wanted to please him,
and there were times when I felt
like that was
an unachievable goal.
- Where are we going, dad?
- Bent Spoon for ice cream.
I'll take a little Bent Spoon.
Then I got older
and I started to see that
everything I learned from him
taught me how to live. I mean,
he taught me to see a goal
and achieve it step by step.
He taught me to be in a team,
which is what being a band is.
And I'm so grateful
to him for that now.
You know, I hope I was
a good dad to my kids.
And we'll park here. Perfect.
I'll take care of the meter.
You do not want to get
a parking ticket.
They are $45.
Welcome home, Trey.
Hey, how's it going?
Nice to see ya.
- This happens all the time.
- Hi, nice to see you.
Oh Jesus,
this is fucking insane.
Hi Sammy, I'm Trey.
Nice to meet you.
This happens all the time.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you.
- Have a good time.
- Have a nice day.
- Nice to meet you.
- Bye, nice to meet you too.
Mm. Good.
The one thing
that I really wanted for you
was a bachelor's degree,
because I thought
if Phish didn't work out,
the bachelor's degree
would give you
more flexibility as a musician.
You could teach if you chose to.
Right.
What I didn't want was for you
to be restricted
by not having a degree.
Of course, it all turned out
to be moot,
because who cares now?
Right, right.
But back in
the Kenny's Castaways days.
I wasn't certain
it was gonna work out.
If you thought any differently,
you would be insane.
Yeah, of course.
The night where I really became
aware of the phenomenon...
- Yeah.
- ...was The Paradise in Boston.
- Right.
- When we showed up there
and the street was blocked off,
and there were 5,000 kids
in the street trying to get
in an 800 capacity club.
That night, it was clear
that you actually
were building something...
Right, right.
...that had legs.
Now. Did I ever think you could
be at MSG 54 times? No.
You know,
everything turned out great.
- There were challenges.
- What were the challenges?
I'm trying
to think of questions.
There was one major challenge.
Your health.
Which you dealt with.
Right, right.
After the arrest,
the drug court and all
that other kind of stuff,
it turned out
exactly as it should have.
Let me borrow
one of your napkins.
I remember...
I'm talking about
more, like, the Taft era.
And then, you know,
like, I came home,
we were living in the condo
and I had people
in the basement...
I remember that.
I have fond memories
of those six months when
- we were living in the condo.
- Right. I do too.
We didn't have
any big conflicts.
No, actually, no. I don't
remember it that way at all.
I actually have
nice memories about that.
We used to have
four Brown 'N Serve sausages,
a slice of American cheese
and an English muffin
for breakfast.
And then for dinner we had
four Hebrew National hot dogs,
a slice of American cheese
and an English muffin.
I have great memories of that.
I loved that.
And we had
iceberg lettuce salads
with Good Seasons dressing.
He's right. There were no women
around to tell us not to do it.
There were no women, no.
Some of the fondest
memories I have from then
it's the night we watched
The Day Afteron TV,
you went downstairs and started
to compose "Divided Sky."
I have
very vivid memories of all that,
and it's one of my favorite
things you do today.
I was proud of you
before anybody knew
who you were other than me.
Truly.
Very proud of you
and all you've done.
As a father and a citizen,
I'm as proud of you
for that kind of thing as I am
for you as a musician,
for being a good father,
a husband
and all those kinds of things.
You are the best role model,
I have to say.
The hardest thing
in my relationship with grandpa
was my failure
to learn how to communicate
with him when I was younger
in ways that reflected
what my real needs were
or my problems were.
I didn't know how to do it.
I didn't have the mechanism
of vocabulary,
or experience or insight.
Do you feel like
he put lot of pressure on you?
- A busload of pressure on you.
- Yeah, in the same way
I put pressure on you.
I would find ways
to rationalize it or defend it,
account for it, but yeah.
You know, when you think about
the rigorous practices...
Well, I mean... Go ahead.
I put a lot of pressure
that was probably
motivated in the right way,
but executed in the wrong way.
Never putting myself
in your shoes.
Because if I had for a minute,
I might have understood
that I was communicating
in a more harsh way
or more demanding way
or a more deliberate way
than was necessary.
Right.
So today, 77 years old,
I would behave in different ways
than I did
when I was 23 years old.
Right.
I don't beat myself up about it
so much that I'm depressed,
but I think about it.
Citified by then.
You're too cool for school.
Do you remember
how fun it was
taking our daughters
on tour every summer?
- It was the best.
- Wasn't that incredible?
It was my favorite family times.
On the bus,
five or six weeks, at least,
across the country and back.
And it was amazing. Locked
in a bus, you know, at that age.
- Yes.
- It was very special.
And then remember the Star Trek?
We had Star Trekrunning
all the time,
so whenever you got on the bus,
- it sounded like the Enterprise.
- Oh, yeah. We had the DVD series.
"Do you guys watch Star Trek
every night?"
Every tour had it's own...
- There was a Star Trektour.
- That was great.
There was
a Lord of the Ringstour,
- the Doctor Whotour.
- I loved that.
From the get-go,
we started dating.
- Like the first time you had...
- I remember that.
After our first date,
we went to Nectar's
and the next day, I had to do,
like, a six-day Southern tour.
Right.
I don't remember any blowback
from you ever about that.
No.
Probably almost like
the opposite.
Were you were kinda like,
"Go, go, have a good time."
- You've been home a while.
- Yeah, no, I...
Something to do.
Yeah. "Don't you have
something to do?"
"Don't you have some tour
to go on?"
Lily's been having fun,
for the most part.
A couple moments.
So fun.
A couple not fun moments.
No fun due.
You know, you were using,
and I was drinking a lot.
It was it was all part
of the social anxiety.
It was my way too of managing
that whole craziness.
So when all that went away,
it was just...
You know?
Yeah.
I don't know what...
You would have died, I think.
I thought you were going to die
the night got arrested.
That's what I thought
when the phone rang
at 4 in the morning,
"Well, this is it."
Very fortunate, very grateful.
You know?
Yeah.
Did you ever regret
marrying me?
No.
No. No, really!
In my mind, like,
everything had like gone...
Yeah.
It was sort of like, you know,
like I had failed
and I messed up.
- That's how I felt.
- Yeah.
Kinda always felt
you kind of figured that out.
I knew you did. That's why
I knew you wouldn't leave.
I never thought
you would, anyway.
I didn't want to leave,
that's for sure.
Nope.
No way. I'm not going anywhere.
- You're stuck with me.
- I know. You're too lazy.
I'm too lazy.
You're too lazy
to go anywhere.
Vegan flan.
Martian eggs
and non-organic unicorn milk...
Chris is like a funny guy.
'Cause he's like
a hard partying,
gruff mountain man.
But inside,
he has, like, the biggest heart
of anybody I've ever met.
He called me up, he said,
"I just went to the doctor.
They said I had stage four
adrenal carcinoid cancer."
It's like a 4% survival rate.
And you know,
my sister died of cancer.
You can't think of the 96,
you got to think of the four.
Four people survived.
- We met when we were 15.
- We were 15 at Taft.
You loved fucking Led Zeppelin.
I was way into the Dead.
I had a fucking big stereo, too.
My stereo was bigger than yours.
Your speakers
were bigger than mine.
So I win.
Remember Copenhagen?
- Remember?
- Right!
- Did we take a ferry though?
- That was a part of it.
- Playing hockey.
- 'Cause we were like skating
down the hall.
Out on the deck of the ferry.
Sock skating around in the dark.
There was this torrential storm.
And finally we got to Amsterdam
at, like, seven in the morning.
He takes two hits of acid out
of his pocket. And he goes...
I said, "If you are
a true friend of mine,
you're not gonna
let me do this by my myself."
As they were sitting
on my tongue.
It was, like, seven in
the morning. I had a day off
and I had to play two shows.
And I had been up all night.
I was like "Ah!"
- I was like, "Okay."
- "All right, fine."
So then he gave me
two hits of acid.
So then the next thing you know,
we're, like, walking
around Amsterdam
for, like, a million years.
We rented bicycles.
Oh, yeah.
There is eons of stories.
Just...
I don't know where
to begin or where to end.
You guys want a dose?
Chris has a...
Do you want to tell them
about the port
where you put liquid acid in?
He has a port here.
Fresh edition.
- Right there.
- That's it.
That's the magic port
for putting...
It's way more effective
that way.
Right into the main line.
The liquid...
And to think, we spent all
those years putting the liquid
in our eyeballs.
- Nothing compared...
- Tomorrow we're going
to the hospital
so I can get a port.
'Cause I can't keep up.
God bless you, Bruce.
Have a beautiful journey.
Thank you so much.
We all love Bruce Hampton.
Thank you.
I thought
that worked pretty good.
This was good too, yesterday.
That was good. That was so cool!
I loved that.
We should do this again.
The more you get to know it,
the better it's going to get.
Miles Davis famously said,
"The hardest thing in music
is sounding like yourself."
That's what I want this to be.
I mean, I'll sing it better and
I'll get the words more better.
I just think it's cool.
The thing is I love it so much.
I love the process.
I love writing music.
I love being in the barn
so much.
Who gets to do this?
- It had its moments.
- Fucking shit, man.
That was pretty good.
That second song
is amazing.
That's a great song.
I love that song.
That whole thing is like,
what a ride.
That's fucking great, man.
It just kept
getting better and better.
Just like, "What the fuck?"
It's good.
Like, when you and Isabella
are joking
about, you know, like,
not knowing where I am.
Do you remember feeling
like that?
I kinda remember
feeling like that.
Remember, Isabella
used to, like, scream,
- and, like, grab your leg?
- She did? Oh, God.
- You don't remember that?
- I do.
Oh, my God.
It was a big whoop-dee-do.
She would hold on to you so
you couldn't get out the door.
And would scream and scream.
I always remember, like,
she was the little sister
and I was the big sister.
So I didn't cry.
- "Get over it, Isabella."
- Really?
- Little sister.
- But it was harder for her?
I think so.
I guess my memories are kind
of mom-centric, of that time.
- I was off rocking.
- You were off rocking.
Don't think
I missed anything important.
Well, daily stuff.
There was probably a positive
to it in terms of mom and I...
I think...
This sounds weird, but it's not.
She likes the space.
And I think you do, too,
and your grandmother does.
- Yeah.
- You like your time alone.
I really liked my childhood.
I actually, like,
I feel really lucky
about the way I was raised.
The creative energy was
kinda amazing.
It was like
you would write musicals
for us to perform in
for the family
and it was so cool.
And you used to dress up
in a costume.
- Remember the sleeping fairy?
- Oh, yeah.
- We gutted the TV.
- Yeah. Oh, my God.
- Yeah.
- Oh, my God.
- I almost died.
- I know.
You wanted to turn
the television into a diorama
because we didn't wanna watch
TV anymore.
- Right. That was great.
- That was so cool.
So we're gonna go
into our house here.
- What is it really?
- House of Fluff.
House of Fluffhead.
How's it going?
Nice to meet you.
It's a trip running into you
right now, I'm 8 days clean.
- Oh, are you really?
- Yeah.
Fucking congratulations man.
That's great.
Hey, Dave. How you doing?
Just threw out all my syringes
and empty packets.
Oh, my God. Fucking A, man.
- You okay?
- Yeah.
It's just a fucking
emotional day, man.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Congratulations.
- Thank you, man.
- I'm so happy that you stopped.
- Thank you, man.
- Keep going, man.
- Thanks, man.
- I don't want these guys...
- Yeah, for sure.
- Are they still...?
- I'll see you around.
I'm sorry about this.
- It's this thing.
- It's okay.
- Congratulations, man.
- I'll see you on tour.
Keep going, that's great.
This is the coolest thing.
I was just looking
at that, what is that?
This is my big secret.
I can't believe
I'm giving away all my secrets.
It's gonna be like that.
It's like a texture.
Yeah.
- You keep playing melodies.
- Can I push a button?
- You hear that?
- Yeah.
What's "puss"?
Tap, tap.
Now it's like...
Now this is a Leslie speaker.
This is so cool.
Fast.
That's my job.
That's dad at work.
Okay, I'm gonna leave.
- I love you so much.
- I love you.
We just finished
The Baker's Dozen,
and we didn't know when we
walked on stage that at the end
that they were going
to raise a banner.
My dad used to take me to hockey
games when I was 10 years old.
I used to dream
of having my name up
in the rafters of Madison Square
Garden as a hockey player.
I never would have thought
that it would be up there
as a musician.
That's pretty cool.
This is where you learned
how to swim.
God, I love it here.
I remember when you were, like,
14, like, was hard.
I had you out on tour
a couple times.
Like, it was just me and you
on the bus.
We were going around.
- I was 12.
- Yeah, you were like...
I was going through
my edgy 12 year old...
Yeah, you were
an edgy 12 year old.
You had, like cool,
black clothes.
I thought you were the coolest
person I'd ever met in my life.
I loved the way
you dressed and stuff.
But you were into, like,
your thing, and it wasn't that.
It wasn't that, Phish, yeah.
And the crowd
was, like, going "Yeah!"
And I was walking down
the stairs this one night,
and you were at the bottom,
it was just me and you,
I was having
dad-daughter rock tour.
I was so excited that
you were on the road with me.
We were both on the bus.
And you were like,
"I'm so bored!"
And then you go, "You just
entertained all those people,
now entertain me!"
I was kind of dejectedly
walking behind you.
And they were still cheering,
but I was thinking
this is such a metaphor for,
like, parenting teenage girls.
It wasn't really weird
until just these past few years
when I started going
on Phish tour.
- Right, right, right.
- And now I'm like on Phish tour.
- Right.
- And like, most of my friends
outside of Burlington
are friends that
I made through the scene.
Yeah.
I just breathed in a bug.
It's really gross.
Is there anything you wished
would have been different?
I had a very happy childhood.
I was always happy
with you and mom.
Like, generally all the things
I, like, think about
that I would have changed
were, like, my shit, you know.
And like, I guess, yeah,
you and mom definitely
weren't amply prepared
to deal with me.
It was very clear,
like, when I started
dealing with issues and stuff,
that you guys
didn't know what to do.
- Right.
- You were, like,
"Oh, God," freaking out.
And it worked out, you know.
So it's all fine. But, like...
Defiantly in the moment
I was, like,
I was freaking out,
because I felt like
I was freaking you guys out.
I was like, you know,
you guys clearly seemed...
I think you can't help, that,
like, as a parent, thinking,
"You know, is it my fault?"
Or is there things
that, like, you know,
- "What could I do differently?"
- Yeah.
Maybe the thing was
I was very, very aware
of you guys thinking that.
And I was like,
it just so... hindered you
from being able to objectively
help me the best that you could
because you were distracted,
I guess, by, like, worrying
about being a good dad.
Right, yeah.
So, like...
which, like, wasn't the problem.
Right, right, right.
That seems like
a big responsibility, though,
for you in that moment
- to be worried about us.
- Yeah.
You know what I mean?
That doesn't seem fair.
Like, you had
a lot to think about
other than worrying about us.
We were okay.
Man, look at this place. Wow.
I wanna go swimming.
It's when your kids
become adults,
and you see them
becoming adults,
I started thinking,
"Was I a good father?"
"Was I there for them?"
I certainly understand
my own parents more.
Bella is a senior in college,
and Eliza's
graduated and working.
And it reminds me that
that's the age I was
when Phish started.
I think about my perception
of my parents at that time
and my feeling
of wanting to break away,
and "I'm going to be in a band.
And we're gonna to travel
all over the world
and get out from this."
Whatever it was.
Today,
I feel exactly the opposite.
I feel how fleeting
certain things are
and how precious they are.
Let's eat food.
I think the first New Year's
we played was the Boston expo.
It wasn't much of a gag at all.
- It wasn't theatrical.
- It really wasn't a gag at all.
We all wore tuxedos
and Fish wore the G-string
that was a tuxedo.
New Year's 94
was the hot dog.
Then we did a series
of four runs
with a fish tank
created on stage.
The next year
was the time machine,
which was we did a good gag
with a guy
that looked like Fish,
in the diaper.
Then, one of my favorites
that gets forgotten,
is that we did
the angels on ladders.
- The snow queens.
- On Seven Below.
And we had the snow falling.
The snow was falling and
we had beautiful angel women.
I thought "Petrichor" was...
"Petrichor" was so cool.
There have been some good ones.
- Fish look what you've started.
- Some funny stuff.
Somewhere along the line,
it just exploded into people,
you know, the whole...
Fucking crazy, man.
It became iconic.
I just put it on as a joke
and Tina said,
"You gotta wear that on stage,
you look like Barney Rubble."
So I did. I wore it for one
gig at Nectar's.
I wore it for one gig at Nectar'
And the next day I came back in
my street clothes and Trey goes,
"Where's the dress?"
And I go, "What do you mean?"
He goes, "You can't
not wear the dress now,
it'll rot the gig."
I continued to wear it
for the next 35 years.
- That's it. That was it.
- There was another time
- you stopped wearing it.
- Well, it was..
I gave you a hard time
about it too, I remember.
It made me so sad.
You took it off,
you started wearing...
I started wearing
a three piece suit.
During that period of time,
I kinda became a little...
I was sullen, melancholy.
- Sullencholy?
- Sullen...
Sullen melancholy!
You were
Jon Sullen Melancholy.
- I could introduce you that way.
- Jon Sullen Melancholy.
Jon Sullen Melancholy.
You could give me a fake piano
and I could play.
Jon Sullen Melancholy.
It's a good balance right now.
Like, everybody has
the right amount of band
and the right amount
of space to exist
outside of the world
of the band.
That was kind of a problem
before we stopped in 2004,
which is when I got
kinda mixed up
in, like, my personal problems.
Like, exploded
to drinking too much
and that kind of thing.
And then, like,
I ended up, you know,
finally, like, getting arrested.
Which was, strangely,
was kind of a good thing.
Because, like, finally,
this, like, crazy thing
that had been rolling along
so insanely, stopped.
Everything just stopped,
and I didn't talk to anybody.
And then, like,
about a year after that,
the three guys
came and visited me,
which was, like...
I remember that.
You know, like,
I wasn't allowed to leave,
I was, like,
sort of under house arrest.
And they came
and took me out to dinner.
That was really nice.
And then we started
kind of, like, firing back up
and we just rebuilt,
like, our life
from that point on
in, like, a much healthier way.
I think probably
the difference in this album is
that there's a lot of moments
of real, raw honesty.
It's like a blues album,
you know?
Because a lot of the songs
that I'm writing
are full of, like, confusion
and, like, fear,
and, like, that's the thing
that I hear most on this record.
And that's kind of what I
actually feel most of the time.
It's fear.
There's an underlying fear.
Hi.
Yes, indeed.
I needed to jump up and down.
So thank you so very much.
Your dad...
It's so good to see you.
There's so much of him in you.
- It's so good to see you.
- It warms my heart.
That's what I've
been telling people,
like, that's
the best compliment.
He was my favorite
person ever. I loved him.
You didn't go one day in your
entire life being with him
that you didn't laugh
at least once.
- I know.
- You were never bored.
And the day he was dying
he was still doing that.
He would kind of go to sleep,
he'd just taken morphine,
- and we all started crying.
- Yeah.
And he woke up
and he goes,
"What, did someone die
or something?"
Like, there's a dad for you.
I was like, "Oh my God."
He was a professional partier.
Many times throughout
our friendship where I'm like,
"I just want
to go to bed, dude."
You know what I'm trying to say?
But it never happened.
I coulda gone to bed.
Okay? You see
what I'm trying to say?
But then I'm thinking,
I'm like, I'm getting older now.
Like, the amount
of fun that we had...
- Like said.
- We would, like,
get up in the morning,
we'd, like,
"Okay, let's climb
to the top of, you know,
that Crested Butte mountain,"
like, in our sneakers. Like...
All right? "Come on, man,
let's go." And we'd go.
I'm never gonna have
a friend like that ever again.
That's me in the '60s, man.
It was wild.
It was some wild days.
And then this is the girl
I had a crush on.
That was in New Jersey.
I definitely remember
having a crush on her,
but I don't remember her name.
We used to play Tetris
on the bus in the back lounge.
We used to play so much Tetris
that I would dream about it.
I was always seeing
Tetris blocks
falling in front of my face.
That was a fun tour.
I think it was 94.
I can't remember.
It's crazy, man. It gets crazier
the longer this all goes on.
Just wanted to give everybody
a full orientation
about what was going to happen.
Hey, guys.
House lights will go out,
you guys will go up
and start to play "Soul Planet."
Right, as you start to play,
the truss above is going
to slowly descend right
over your heads, super slow.
Guys in the red jumpsuits
and a couple
of stage hands come out,
and they're going
to very carefully
distribute those wires
and take up the slack.
They're going to drop the sail,
we're going to turn on the fans
and attach it at the sides,
Where our cast members
on the front
are going to turn it around
while we have men on either side
suspended as they spin.
Then, the 10, 9, 8,
it's all that. The timing.
The cannons are going to go off,
the ceiling explodes and you'll
go into "Auld Lang Syne."
- We'll do something sunrise-y.
- Okay, okay cool.
"Velvet Sea," or...
I don't know.
Okay.
Did you have any other...?
Alright, ready? Go.
Take the stage.
Follow you.
Hope you guys have fun up there.
My Mom? Let me say hi.
- Hello!
- Hi!
I can't tell them apart,
who's who.
We have the same hat!
- Hi, Trey.
- Happy New Year!
The intimidating thing is
these suede sneakers take
20 minutes to put on.
They are too tight.
You wanna go see Page?
This is for Delia's teacher,
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
- If you don't mind.
- Sure.
- It's a good poster.
- It's a great poster.
Who did this?
- I don't know.
- It looks like.
- You mind about here?
- Yeah, anywhere. That's great.
Great. Thank you.
- Colby?
- Colby, it's the teacher.
Colby must be a good teacher.
- Would you mind...
- This is good, too.
This is it for our 17th
Madison Square Garden show.
We could do...
I better do silver, because
everybody else did silver.
It looks a little bigger
in real life
than it looks on...
You know what I mean?
I could block one of those.
- Well, thank you.
- Thank you.
Love you guys, and thanks.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
We'll see you next year.
- Hey! Good to see you.
- Hey, buddy.
Again and again. Every
year, every year, every year.
I'll see you.
You won't see me.
I'll come back during
the set breaks and stuff,
but you'll probably be busy.
- I'll be here. Bye.
- All right.
And Fish had been out all night.
Did I tell you this story?
Yeah, I remember this.
I remember there was some
George Harrison involved.
He came home,
and he was, like...
got on the couch
and went to sleep.
And then we started having
- this huge fight, you know?
- Yep.
I was kinda in shock,
and Fish had been asleep
for, like, an hour on the couch.
And I ran out. I was like,
"Fish, we gotta go!"
He, like, jumped right up.
He was like,
"Okay, where are we going?"
Having slept for, like, an hour.
We just drove around
until the OP opened.
We went out and got beers
at eleven o'clock
in the morning.
It was such a great day.
- It's weird how bad things...
- Yes.
...sometimes end up
being the best days.
They're liberating.
I look back on some dark times,
and I'm like, "Boy, it seemed
rough at the time,
but there was
a certain excitement,
and a certain freedom."
And that when it went away,
I wasn't sad. But I was like,
"I'm never gonna feel
like that again."
Like you feel alive
or something.
Yeah. You were, like,
just so alive in every moment.
How's the show going?
You do what you gotta do.
It's not quite...
Yeah, I know.
It's... Ever since...
I haven't even read
the book yet,
but it's already loosening up.
It's already working.
You're gonna
read the introduction.
Arms getting a little sore
about 2/3 through
the second solo.
I was like...
You feel good.
I was thinking about
that scene in The Last Waltz,
where Robbie Roberts is saying,
"We've been on the road
for 15 years,
and it's an impossible life,
so I wanna stop."
I gotta look at that a little
bit like, really? Fifteen years?
That's all you can take?
C'mon, man!
Like, I'll never stop.
It can be lonely sometimes,
and whatever, it is.
You know, but who cares?
It's like, it's the best.
I'm never going to stop.
I don't want to stop.
I like that, man.
Yeah, man. Record that.
- Yeah!
- Just let that go a few times.
That's kind of Nordic, too.
I like that better
than the piece we just did.
That's actually good!
- That's actually good.
- That's a good intro.
Don't be scared to do
like six or more.
- At least.
- Do more than you think is good.
More, more, more! C'mon!
- It's getting better.
- Yeah!
All right. Okay.
All right now, let's reel it
back in, gentlemen.
Boys, reel it back in.
That was fun.
- Six?
- Let Fish hit,
like, a cymbal at the end.
Like, bash!
Maybe we should
do an ending note.
- Because it's...
- Yeah, like a "Go!"
I'm fucking here!
You're fucking there!
You're fucking there! Here!
We should really do that.
- It's right here.
- You do it.
Finland!
C'mon. It was good.
Alright.
You got that, Bryce?
It's a good thing
we threw in that one.
Yeah.
Good thing we came back to that.
Hey, buddy. Hi.
There it is.
All I do on the piano
is compose,
which is very slow when
I use the paper and compose.
And that's it, I don't
really play the piano, so...
If you're composing, it's great,
'cause you can see
how all the chords lay out.
When Phish started,
I didn't know
I was gonna be in a rock band.
I thought I was gonna be
a composer.
A lot of the first Phish stuff
was heavily composed.
This is the tune "Foam"
that we do.
This is all written out.
It's a big chart. It's all...
And also
"You Enjoy Myself" was that...
a lot of the early stuff.
It wasn't like rock music.
I don't really know what it was.
It's a weird band, I mean...
It's not really... I don't know
what kind of music this is.
You know what I mean?
All that shit.
One guy who was in the band
pretty much quit
because he was like,
"What the hell is this?"
This is the boring reality
of what I do every morning now.
It's just that all these
lyrics are wrong.
Now I have to write
them all down again.
I always have a lot of projects
going on: TAB, Solo Acoustic...
but the musical center
of my life is Phish.
We've been playing together
since 1983.
Yo.
- How you doing?
- Good, man.
I'm sitting here, like,
working on "Thread" right now.
Yeah. Yeah.
Basically, just refer
to the demo for the tempo.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
- 'Cause it's like...
- I hadn't got that far yet.
So funny, I was just sitting
here, like.
I was just thinking of that
tune, like, I was singing...
I know, it sticks
in my head so much.
- Yeah.
- Doesn't it? It's like,
I think we kind of got it up
because we were excited.
You know, that was me.
- It was hopping right along.
- It was hopping.
That's the only thing
I was gonna say.
I really liked
"Come Together," "Frost,".
"A Case of Ice and Snow,"
and that "Love's Only A Number"
thing. That's just the best.
That one seemed almost
the most to me,
with just, you know, with just
the little that we put on it.
That's good. That's great.
Then Mike will have
a couple of songs,
and Page will have
a couple of songs,
and you'll have,
you know, whatever.
And then we'll have songs.
Yeah, that's great.
We need songs right now
because we're trying
to do this thing
called the baker's dozen,
where we're going to do
13 consecutive nights
at Madison Square Garden,
and we're gonna try to do them
without any repeats.
So, that'll be
probably about 280 songs.
You know, most bands do
a similar show every night.
So my head is kind of exploding
with the whole thing.
It's exciting.
I am writing this longform thing
that I'm into now.
This Ghosts of the Forest idea.
My oldest friend Chris is now
in this battle with cancer.
He's stage four.
He used to hunt elk.
That's, like, where
the title idea came from.
Ghosts of the Forest.
They called elk
"ghosts of the forest"
because you could be following
a trail and they just vanish.
You never know when the trail
is going to end.
I was thinking about
my only sibling
has passed away.
Chris and both the girls
have grown up.
It's all just so fleeting.
A couple of albums ago, a door
started opening up for me
in terms of writing
about personal things.
I wrote a song about my sister
called "Miss You"
after she died.
Once that door opens,
it's like a floodgate.
Suddenly you want
to start writing about
what you're really feeling
in your personal life
in a much more direct way.
Suddenly, I'm writing about Sue,
and I'm writing about
my family and friends.
And I want to talk
to them and find out
what is my mom's perspective?
You know,
what is my dad's perspective?
Even as a parent,
I've got my own story
about how I raise
my kids and stuff.
You know, and maybe I just
wanna learn the truth.
My dad worked in Princeton.
My Mom never really fit
in Princeton.
She's a New Yorker
through and through.
When I was 18, she said,
"Go raise some money."
We painted a couple of houses
or something
and I went and became
a street musician in Europe.
That's the kinda thing she
would always encourage me to do.
Very creative, wrote books.
All kinds of creative people
on that side of the family.
I think I've told
you this before,
when you were really little,
four, five, six, you went to
so many plays all the time.
Peter Pan...
South Pacific,
West Side Story.
I mean, Kristy and you,
you both knew
the lyrics
to every single Broadway song.
Yeah.
A lot of Kristy's friends
come and have lunch
with me on this bench.
So it's like, "Let's go to
Kristy's bench and have lunch."
And, you know, it's really good.
- I love the bench.
- I love the bench.
You know, during that whole
time, I mean, you were...
I don't know what
we would have done without you.
There's no good thing to say
when it sucks.
- I know.
- It just sucks.
It sucks.
Anyway, there you go.
But back to music.
I remember you guys
had big parties.
- We had big parties.
- And they went on for two days
- with the speakers on the roof.
- We did.
And everybody was listening
- to great music.
- We were, like, young.
Early 20s.
But your sense of adventure was
magnetic and also paved the way.
Yeah.
Like, when you're like,
"I'm going to Barbados
with a backpack." You know,
to go live on the beach.
And then when you're like
"I'm off to India."
It basically said to me that
that's a possibility.
- Yeah.
- I know it was important to you
that both Kristy and I knew
- there was a world outside of...
- But yes, and...
...that suburban block
that we lived on.
Definitely. You try and
do the best you can, you know?
I don't know.
Remember in hockey we had
the lead puck
and everything, remember?
And the 50 shots before dinner.
And all that stuff,
it was great.
I loved playing hockey
because it was fun
to be good at something,
and I loved playing hockey
because it was with dad.
And I wanted to do
stuff with dad.
- Yes.
- But no matter how good I got,
like, it wasn't enough.
- It was, like, never enough.
- That's true.
In the meantime,
I was playing music.
- Yeah.
- And...
- Happy.
- Oh, man.
Every bit of, like,
anger and frustration
and joy was coming out in music.
You never stopped drumming.
You drummed all the time
when you were two, three, four.
It was like "du-du-du-du."
And you used to sit behind
me in the car and...
It's like...
Like this all day long,
for long car trips.
Like, "Trey!"
And then remember
in the fifth grade,
you're getting kicked
out of class?
- Yes.
- That was why.
"Stop drumming, Trey!"
And you couldn't.
And I became...
I got kicked out of chorus
for drumming.
You must have been born with
just way too many notes
in your brain.
And you'll spend a lifetime
never getting them all out.
Then I looked at you up there,
and I think, wow,
"He is so happy,
and how great is that?"
It feels like everything
just fell into place.
And the result I can read
on other people's faces.
It's not just
that I'm having fun.
It's that they are, you know
what I mean? Or Page is.
I felt like that with Tom, like,
in eighth grade
when we'd, like, write a song.
All of a sudden,
we'd be like, "Oh!"
I thought it was great.
- A lot of things...
- It was scary at times.
I didn't like it at times,
because it was scary
because it was too big.
I felt like you just
were trapped in this madness,
and you couldn't see a way out.
I think that's why
things went south, you know.
The first time you played
at Madison Square Garden,
and everybody was, like, taking
pictures of the marquee,
and oh my God,
your name was up there.
Phish was up there. This was
the most exciting thing ever.
We were so happy.
And then to stand back
and look at these people,
all these people...
I thought
this is just too scary,
and it's going to get bigger.
It just scared me to death.
And I was right.
It did get
a little big there for a while.
When I'm in the barn,
I feel the presence
of my grandmother,
my grandfather,
the lost and the loved ones.
They're all a part of me.
I don't float
through life alone.
I float through life
with pieces of my father,
and pieces of my mother
and friends.
You know,
we're part of a tapestry.
And so this album
is a lot about that.
A minor.
Fish and Tony were
two of the first people I met
when I came to Burlington
and two of the most important
musical collaborators
in my life,
and they've never
played together.
I thought this project
would be a great chance
to start it off
with the three of us.
Build it from there.
That's great.
When you make records,
you clean up all the edges,
for, like, presentation. Put,
like, a click track on this,
to make it straighter.
I don't want to do that anymore.
I want to be organic and alive
and in the moment,
and, like, in the now.
Hello?
It's become a tradition
that Phish plays
every New Year's Eve at Madison
Square Garden, and at midnight,
we do a thing that we call
"the gag theatrical event."
And this year, I have
a really cool idea
that I can't wait
to share with the guys.
We're going to turn Madison
Square Garden into an ocean,
and the stage is gonna
become a pirate ship
floating on top of it, carrying
us along over the audience.
It's gonna be really cool.
- Yo!
- Brother!
I got that from this guy...
It's 26 inches.
It's gonna contribute
to my deafness is the problem.
That's where I keep
all my, like, drum doodads.
- Your herb.
- Yeah.
Greatest thing you ever
told me was that Tommy Lee
really liked
our Rolling Stonescover.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, He did.
That was, like, the only thing
he said to me.
"Hey, man.
I really wanted to be..."
- I was like "Thank you!"
- With the caveman?
- Yeah. I had a tutu.
- The shirt off.
He said something like,
"Yeah finally, a band."
That was his thing, was,
like, a band on the cover,
- like, not trying to be cool.
- Not giving a fuck.
"You guys really aren't cool!"
- Isn't that fucking amazing?
- It was great.
It's a miracle
that we still have a career,
after trying
so hard just to sabotage it.
No band has worked harder
shooting themselves in the foot.
Destroy their own career.
Yeah, that's great.
Alright,
let's just try this. Okay.
One, two, three...
That'll work!
I think that was good!
I love the half thing.
- Yeah well that's...
- That's pirates up there
like, moving the sail
- at that point.
- Well, that's the thing.
- It's like...
- Yeah.
Pulling ropes and shit.
It's like you can't
get enough of that.
You can't...
- You can't do too much of that.
- There's never enough half.
There's never enough
halving off the beat.
You have to put vocals on top,
'cause everybody is...
Right, the "wind
is the music" part?
Yeah, I thought
maybe I would do just
the regular "wind is the music."
That'd be great.
'Cause I thought Page is doing
the "wind is the music"
was a little high.
He might maybe do that.
Or you can do the "soul planet."
- Oh, soul planet, right, right.
- ...through space.
You can kinda do
whatever you wanna to do.
And you go, "soul planet!"
Visually, there's a lot to it,
but musically,
it's just fucking rock,
which is great.
It's just a pocket.
Get a good pocket going and go.
Kinda minimal arrangement,
- you know. It's like...
- My favorite part, by far,
is that we're
passengers on the boat,
and the wind is the music
blowing us along
over the sea of people.
You can definitely get
behind that. I mean, it is what
we've been doing for 34 years.
That's what it feels like.
Except when it's bad.
- Well...
- And then it feels like...
- It feels like...
- When it's bad,
it's me doing it.
Then it feels
like it's just sort of like
the boat's taking on water.
It's just, you know, listing,
and everybody's panicking
in their own way.
I wanna show you this picture.
- Who's that?
- C Cott.
- Is that C Cott?
- Yeah, he's bald now.
- Oh my God. That's awesome.
- Isn't that great?
Looks like a badass,
- doesn't he?
- Oh, yeah.
- I like it.
- He's always looked
like a badass.
That's a great photo.
- I know.
- I've never seen him with...
His hair was falling out
from the chemo.
Oh! He's gone through chemo?
- Yeah, you didn't know?
- I didn't know that.
- Yeah.
- Oh, Jesus.
He's got stage four cancer,
it's, like, it's bad.
- C Cott?
- You didn't know that?
- I didn't tell you?
- I didn't know that at all.
- No.
- It's so weird.
I didn't tell anybody
for, like, a long time.
I just didn't want to talk
about it,
because it was, like,
really bumming me out.
But he did a biopsy
and they found out
he has adrenal cortical
cancer, stage four.
- That sucks.
- Like, serious cancer.
He might beat it.
He's the kind of guy
that if he beat it, I actually
wouldn't be surprised.
- I hope he does.
- Yeah.
He's a great guy.
Anyway...
The first day I ever came to
Burlington, I was 18 years old.
I came to look at UVM.
I went out and I saw.
Big Joe Burrell
& The Unknown Blues Band.
One of the greatest,
most life changing nights ever.
And Tony Markellis
was his bass player,
who's now the bass player
in TAB.
And that was, like,
a big part of the reason
I wanted to move to Burlington.
Here's my dorm
from when I was a freshman.
Right there,
there's Fish's room.
He was a few halls down from me.
He was a freshman, and he had
his drum set in his room.
And I went over and jammed
with my amp.
We started jamming right away.
That was, like, 35 years ago.
When we were just starting out,
we used to play
at Nectar's over there.
This was the band's house.
This house.
This is where we lived.
That was Fish's room,
right there.
Every day at one o'clock,
I would have to go up there
and wake him up.
He liked to sleep.
The Nectar's is one block there.
So we would go over there
and we'd do three sets.
He'd say, you know,
"play 'Mustang Sally, '"
or "play a slow one."
And then at 7 it would
kinda switch to, like,
bar scene, and then
for the late night set,
all our friends would be there
and it would turn into
this crazy Icculus Gamehendge,
people screaming
and all this stuff.
Then afterwards,
we would usually go out
till two in the morning,
go out to, like, the Quarry
or go to Howard Johnson's
or something like that.
I remember walking in that door
with all the sheet music
that was "You Enjoy Myself."
And Jeff,
our first guitar player,
would just be like, "What
is this? I'm not doing this."
And Page being like,
"I'll do it, yeah let's do it."
In the basement,
and then learning all the
down there.
It says The Hood Plant.
It was the hood plant.
That's where, you know,
they packaged the milk,
when we were living there.
And that's where
the song came from.
A previous owner
of this small house
was named Mr. Miner,
so we used to get all his mail.
And then we got these
like...
You know, like,
Publisher's Clearing House...
"Thank you, Mr. Miner."
And we were always like,
"Thank you, Mr. Miner."
Turn around there,
you look up on the second floor.
That's where Sue lived.
She was, like, a waitress
at.
She lived right up there.
And I lived right here.
She was 19.
Still together.
All right, let's go.
- Dude, man.
- What's up, buddy?
- How's Fish doing?
- Fish is good.
What a fucking distance
he's gone.
Yeah.
- From the fucking laundry pile.
- Right?
You remember that?
Like in the green house,
he had a laundry pile
and two drumsticks.
He didn't even have a bed.
No, I know, he would just sleep
on a laundry pile.
He just slept on a laundry pile.
I go up there, he's got
five kids, amazing wife...
- He's got a bed.
- He's got a bed!
He's got a bed.
- It's like...
- Country mile.
It's in B.
It's just like,
put everything in B,
'cause it's good for these.
- Great.
- I just... Putting it in B
gets me... yeah.
- Wait, stop for a second.
- Yup.
So it goes...
Double that.
Same thing.
- To G.
- Yeah, yeah, okay.
Like that.
- Yeah, that's it.
- Okay.
So here's what it sounds like
- with Fish playing that.
- Okay.
Now comes the D. To D.
Now to G.
I think it's an F sharp, now.
Fish's voice
sounds really good on that.
That's a good place to keep him.
It's a good thing for him, yeah.
He also only
has to stay on one note.
That's also good.
- That's cool, man. That's great.
- That sounded so good.
It's gonna be great.
It's gonna be really fun.
- That's gonna be another year.
- Another year.
They keep coming.
They just keep rolling. 18.
It doesn't seem like 18 years
- since Big Cypress.
- Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. That's a lot.
At Big Cypress I had
a 6-week-old daughter,
and now I got
an 18-year-old daughter.
Here we are. We've come a long
way from the little house.
Yeah.
In a lot of ways,
I think this last year
has brought it back to that fun.
I really think that
- the fun we were having...
- I agree.
...when we were rehearsing
in the basement
or up in Fish's room
there at the little house
and the comfortableness
of walking on stage
and having fun, and just,
it felt very similar
to walking on stage at Nectar's,
and just having
all those people there
and, you know, loving it
and just the joy of it.
It's still there. It was hard
to keep a close hold on that joy
for all those 30 years
or 35 years or whatever,
but I really feel like
it's back.
I'm back to that spot again
where I'm feeling that joyous
about it again. It's back, baby.
- I agree, man. I really do.
- Alright, man.
- That was great! Thank you.
- See you soon. Thank you!
When I was, like, 16, my parents
were getting divorced.
And I remember a tangible
feeling of things coming apart.
Everything
was kind of falling apart.
My sister was off to college,
we were selling the house,
and my music friends
became sort of my new family.
And they still are to this day.
Okay.
Man.
Dude, that amp sounds...
I can't believe
how good that amp sounds.
What's the dynamics sound like?
That's the dynamic, and...
Well, actually,
it's not that different.
Try the ribbon.
I've got to adjust
the gain over here.
Does that sound cool up there?
Can I hear that?
That's great, man.
That's, like, fucking funeral
shit. Hold up, one more time.
Now move it to here.
I just really liked those bass
notes alone, you know.
Okay, vocals time.
Cool.
That ties that bit together.
Slower, louder.
No, I hate that.
- It's way too...
- It's horrible.
Yeah.
That's good.
So that's just...
It's coming up on the synth.
Okay, okay.
It's like a creepy
ice cream truck or something.
Just go. Yeah. Try it again.
Try it again.
- Fucking awesome, man.
- It's great.
Talking about things
I've never done before? This.
Like this kind of an album.
Like, emotional, spacious...
We're like the playing band.
Like, the way that it's...
I don't know,
things just go where they go.
I can't vouch for anything.
You know, like I said,
it's gonna just roll forward
and all of a sudden one day
it's gonna be like "It's done!"
Whatever it may be.
This might just be like
a guidepost to something
that gets played live,
who fucking knows?
I just can't tell.
This is not what I expected,
and I'm liking it.
All right, get ready,
cause we're going.
Oh, man, I remember all this.
It's making me a little bit,
almost, like, nervous.
Like walking.
Like, walking into this house,
where I haven't been
in 15 years.
It's like...
It's where my kids grew up.
Just sort of...
I'm really feeling it now,
the whole ghosts
of the forest thing.
'Cause I used to hang out
back here a lot.
Like, I always walked to
the barn through the woods.
I think I see it.
I could just knock on the door
and say, "Can I look inside?"
I put that basketball hoop up.
I feel like a creeper
looking at this guy's house.
Hello! Sorry we're walking
through your woods.
- Hi, I'm Trey. Nice to meet you.
- How you doing?
- You used to own this house.
- I did.
I didn't mean to, like,
be creeping you out,
walking through your woods.
It's Vermont,
we're pretty casual.
- We were just like walking...
- You had a camera crew.
You couldn't have been
up to too much.
No.
- Hi!
- Hi!
I'm Trey.
We met at South End
Kitchen one day.
- Yes! I remember that!
- And we talked about our house...
- Oh, my God! We've met!
- Yes. Welcome.
- Is this freaking you out? Okay.
- Not a bit.
If this isn't
freaking you out...
- No, no, no.
- Going out to get dinner.
So great that you guys got the
garden and the chickens going.
- We're trying.
- I love this house.
I love this house.
Why don't you guys come in?
C'mon, come in.
Oh my God.
Thank you
for letting me look at this.
I'm taking these off.
Hi! I used to live here.
- You're Trey.
- Yeah, I play in Phish.
Opal, she goes to my school too
and she's in my grade.
And she told me
you guys used to live here.
I was like, "Wow!"
Did you guys have
the room, like, upstairs?
That was sort of
like my little studio.
Like, I had a...
I had a soundboard in there
and I used to write songs.
Cool.
Did you play any of the songs
that you've written there?
Oh yeah!
Some of the biggest Phish songs
were written up in that room.
Because that's the room
with a really good vibe.
I don't know whose
room that is...
- Mine.
- ...but whoever it is
must have a good vibe.
My daughter was born right here.
That's the chair
that I sit in at dinner!
Right there.
Her crib was right there
because she liked the warmth
of the wood stove.
And so I wrote a song about her,
it's called Billy Breathes.
That was her nickname,
was Billy. She was so little,
and I was, like, knocked out
by the fact she was breathing.
"Oh, my God!"
So I wrote that song
up on that hill.
The rest of it's all music.
Rest of it's all the words.
But then there's a lot of music
in the middle,
which is kind of, like,
what Phish does.
- Fish crams a lot of music.
- That's very cool. Fantastic.
- You guys got the best house.
- We know.
That was so kind of you
to let us in here.
We just made our Christmas card,
because that's the only picture
that four of us are in.
You gotta, like, just
black me out. Cross me out.
With this stalker we found
in the middle of October
walking through our woods.
All right, we're going.
Morning Mike,
I love being at your old house.
- How are you doing?
- Good.
Jared turned me on to this.
It's five loopers,
and one's to use with your hand.
And you can instantly shorten
them and lengthen them
- and add effects.
- It's a Kaossilator?
It's just like a standard
Boss looper.
- Got the classic 808 too.
- What is that?
That's... This is what,
like, all the classic...
The first hip-hop songs
were all made on this.
Really?
But it's old school.
What do all these knobs do?
So it goes...
Now it goes... Right there.
It goes
to the outro progression.
Okay.
E to G.
When we go to F sharp,
they've turned the sail.
Like, with your bass,
you're, like, turning the sail.
- It's huge.
- Okay.
And you go...
And Fish is like...
That F sharp...
And then the whole thing is
starting to turn backwards now.
Facing the back of the Garden.
And the guys
are pulling the ropes
and the fans are filling
the sail with wind.
- Done!
- Yeah, that's awesome.
This is where
you are decluttering?
I'm just kinda like piecing
things chronologically
and then throwing
a lot out, so...
You're not gonna throw
that out.
Look at this, man.
Look at how close we used to be.
Yeah.
I see videos from this
period of time occasionally.
And me and you are so physically
in sync.
- It's like one person.
- Yeah.
And it makes me sad
that you're so far away.
The tab behind the beat.
I'm so happy that the sound
is so good on stage
that it's okay,
but I kinda want to walk
over next to you.
- Look at this from...
- Look at Fish!
In a dress!
- Speaking of New Year's...
- That's at the Dude show.
Oh, that is great.
Please bring that back.
At least for Halloween.
It's pumpkins.
You look like you could
be in, like,
an amazing '80s band.
What are you doing
with all these? Can you send...
I'm just putting them
chronologically.
Are you sending them
to Shapiro?
This is Kevin.
See these here?
- This is all Kevin here.
- Throw that shit out, dude.
Well, some of it's just crappy.
Oh my God.
- Is that the Clifford Ball?
- It's one of the first one, 97.
- Oh, Clifford Ball is 96.
- That's a great one.
That's a great one.
Look at that picture.
Not bad
for our second festival.
That was not bad
for our second festival.
Good dog!
You like music, don't you?
This album
is a lot more personal.
There's a lot of fear
and confusion in this album.
And sadness.
And I'm not even close to done,
and I'm already getting
to the point where,
like, some days I put it on
and I'm like "I hate this."
And the next day,
I'm like, "Oh, this is okay."
I'm kind of a little bit lost
at sea in that way,
to be perfectly honest.
I want to be alive
and in the moment,
like, in the now.
You know what I mean?
Still has gone nowhere.
That might actually
be good with drums.
Tony?
That's a keeper.
When I was a kid,
I was lucky enough that my dad
wanted to coach me in hockey.
At the same time,
he was very intense,
and there was a lot of pressure.
I just wanted to please him,
and there were times when I felt
like that was
an unachievable goal.
- Where are we going, dad?
- Bent Spoon for ice cream.
I'll take a little Bent Spoon.
Then I got older
and I started to see that
everything I learned from him
taught me how to live. I mean,
he taught me to see a goal
and achieve it step by step.
He taught me to be in a team,
which is what being a band is.
And I'm so grateful
to him for that now.
You know, I hope I was
a good dad to my kids.
And we'll park here. Perfect.
I'll take care of the meter.
You do not want to get
a parking ticket.
They are $45.
Welcome home, Trey.
Hey, how's it going?
Nice to see ya.
- This happens all the time.
- Hi, nice to see you.
Oh Jesus,
this is fucking insane.
Hi Sammy, I'm Trey.
Nice to meet you.
This happens all the time.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you.
- Have a good time.
- Have a nice day.
- Nice to meet you.
- Bye, nice to meet you too.
Mm. Good.
The one thing
that I really wanted for you
was a bachelor's degree,
because I thought
if Phish didn't work out,
the bachelor's degree
would give you
more flexibility as a musician.
You could teach if you chose to.
Right.
What I didn't want was for you
to be restricted
by not having a degree.
Of course, it all turned out
to be moot,
because who cares now?
Right, right.
But back in
the Kenny's Castaways days.
I wasn't certain
it was gonna work out.
If you thought any differently,
you would be insane.
Yeah, of course.
The night where I really became
aware of the phenomenon...
- Yeah.
- ...was The Paradise in Boston.
- Right.
- When we showed up there
and the street was blocked off,
and there were 5,000 kids
in the street trying to get
in an 800 capacity club.
That night, it was clear
that you actually
were building something...
Right, right.
...that had legs.
Now. Did I ever think you could
be at MSG 54 times? No.
You know,
everything turned out great.
- There were challenges.
- What were the challenges?
I'm trying
to think of questions.
There was one major challenge.
Your health.
Which you dealt with.
Right, right.
After the arrest,
the drug court and all
that other kind of stuff,
it turned out
exactly as it should have.
Let me borrow
one of your napkins.
I remember...
I'm talking about
more, like, the Taft era.
And then, you know,
like, I came home,
we were living in the condo
and I had people
in the basement...
I remember that.
I have fond memories
of those six months when
- we were living in the condo.
- Right. I do too.
We didn't have
any big conflicts.
No, actually, no. I don't
remember it that way at all.
I actually have
nice memories about that.
We used to have
four Brown 'N Serve sausages,
a slice of American cheese
and an English muffin
for breakfast.
And then for dinner we had
four Hebrew National hot dogs,
a slice of American cheese
and an English muffin.
I have great memories of that.
I loved that.
And we had
iceberg lettuce salads
with Good Seasons dressing.
He's right. There were no women
around to tell us not to do it.
There were no women, no.
Some of the fondest
memories I have from then
it's the night we watched
The Day Afteron TV,
you went downstairs and started
to compose "Divided Sky."
I have
very vivid memories of all that,
and it's one of my favorite
things you do today.
I was proud of you
before anybody knew
who you were other than me.
Truly.
Very proud of you
and all you've done.
As a father and a citizen,
I'm as proud of you
for that kind of thing as I am
for you as a musician,
for being a good father,
a husband
and all those kinds of things.
You are the best role model,
I have to say.
The hardest thing
in my relationship with grandpa
was my failure
to learn how to communicate
with him when I was younger
in ways that reflected
what my real needs were
or my problems were.
I didn't know how to do it.
I didn't have the mechanism
of vocabulary,
or experience or insight.
Do you feel like
he put lot of pressure on you?
- A busload of pressure on you.
- Yeah, in the same way
I put pressure on you.
I would find ways
to rationalize it or defend it,
account for it, but yeah.
You know, when you think about
the rigorous practices...
Well, I mean... Go ahead.
I put a lot of pressure
that was probably
motivated in the right way,
but executed in the wrong way.
Never putting myself
in your shoes.
Because if I had for a minute,
I might have understood
that I was communicating
in a more harsh way
or more demanding way
or a more deliberate way
than was necessary.
Right.
So today, 77 years old,
I would behave in different ways
than I did
when I was 23 years old.
Right.
I don't beat myself up about it
so much that I'm depressed,
but I think about it.
Citified by then.
You're too cool for school.
Do you remember
how fun it was
taking our daughters
on tour every summer?
- It was the best.
- Wasn't that incredible?
It was my favorite family times.
On the bus,
five or six weeks, at least,
across the country and back.
And it was amazing. Locked
in a bus, you know, at that age.
- Yes.
- It was very special.
And then remember the Star Trek?
We had Star Trekrunning
all the time,
so whenever you got on the bus,
- it sounded like the Enterprise.
- Oh, yeah. We had the DVD series.
"Do you guys watch Star Trek
every night?"
Every tour had it's own...
- There was a Star Trektour.
- That was great.
There was
a Lord of the Ringstour,
- the Doctor Whotour.
- I loved that.
From the get-go,
we started dating.
- Like the first time you had...
- I remember that.
After our first date,
we went to Nectar's
and the next day, I had to do,
like, a six-day Southern tour.
Right.
I don't remember any blowback
from you ever about that.
No.
Probably almost like
the opposite.
Were you were kinda like,
"Go, go, have a good time."
- You've been home a while.
- Yeah, no, I...
Something to do.
Yeah. "Don't you have
something to do?"
"Don't you have some tour
to go on?"
Lily's been having fun,
for the most part.
A couple moments.
So fun.
A couple not fun moments.
No fun due.
You know, you were using,
and I was drinking a lot.
It was it was all part
of the social anxiety.
It was my way too of managing
that whole craziness.
So when all that went away,
it was just...
You know?
Yeah.
I don't know what...
You would have died, I think.
I thought you were going to die
the night got arrested.
That's what I thought
when the phone rang
at 4 in the morning,
"Well, this is it."
Very fortunate, very grateful.
You know?
Yeah.
Did you ever regret
marrying me?
No.
No. No, really!
In my mind, like,
everything had like gone...
Yeah.
It was sort of like, you know,
like I had failed
and I messed up.
- That's how I felt.
- Yeah.
Kinda always felt
you kind of figured that out.
I knew you did. That's why
I knew you wouldn't leave.
I never thought
you would, anyway.
I didn't want to leave,
that's for sure.
Nope.
No way. I'm not going anywhere.
- You're stuck with me.
- I know. You're too lazy.
I'm too lazy.
You're too lazy
to go anywhere.
Vegan flan.
Martian eggs
and non-organic unicorn milk...
Chris is like a funny guy.
'Cause he's like
a hard partying,
gruff mountain man.
But inside,
he has, like, the biggest heart
of anybody I've ever met.
He called me up, he said,
"I just went to the doctor.
They said I had stage four
adrenal carcinoid cancer."
It's like a 4% survival rate.
And you know,
my sister died of cancer.
You can't think of the 96,
you got to think of the four.
Four people survived.
- We met when we were 15.
- We were 15 at Taft.
You loved fucking Led Zeppelin.
I was way into the Dead.
I had a fucking big stereo, too.
My stereo was bigger than yours.
Your speakers
were bigger than mine.
So I win.
Remember Copenhagen?
- Remember?
- Right!
- Did we take a ferry though?
- That was a part of it.
- Playing hockey.
- 'Cause we were like skating
down the hall.
Out on the deck of the ferry.
Sock skating around in the dark.
There was this torrential storm.
And finally we got to Amsterdam
at, like, seven in the morning.
He takes two hits of acid out
of his pocket. And he goes...
I said, "If you are
a true friend of mine,
you're not gonna
let me do this by my myself."
As they were sitting
on my tongue.
It was, like, seven in
the morning. I had a day off
and I had to play two shows.
And I had been up all night.
I was like "Ah!"
- I was like, "Okay."
- "All right, fine."
So then he gave me
two hits of acid.
So then the next thing you know,
we're, like, walking
around Amsterdam
for, like, a million years.
We rented bicycles.
Oh, yeah.
There is eons of stories.
Just...
I don't know where
to begin or where to end.
You guys want a dose?
Chris has a...
Do you want to tell them
about the port
where you put liquid acid in?
He has a port here.
Fresh edition.
- Right there.
- That's it.
That's the magic port
for putting...
It's way more effective
that way.
Right into the main line.
The liquid...
And to think, we spent all
those years putting the liquid
in our eyeballs.
- Nothing compared...
- Tomorrow we're going
to the hospital
so I can get a port.
'Cause I can't keep up.
God bless you, Bruce.
Have a beautiful journey.
Thank you so much.
We all love Bruce Hampton.
Thank you.
I thought
that worked pretty good.
This was good too, yesterday.
That was good. That was so cool!
I loved that.
We should do this again.
The more you get to know it,
the better it's going to get.
Miles Davis famously said,
"The hardest thing in music
is sounding like yourself."
That's what I want this to be.
I mean, I'll sing it better and
I'll get the words more better.
I just think it's cool.
The thing is I love it so much.
I love the process.
I love writing music.
I love being in the barn
so much.
Who gets to do this?
- It had its moments.
- Fucking shit, man.
That was pretty good.
That second song
is amazing.
That's a great song.
I love that song.
That whole thing is like,
what a ride.
That's fucking great, man.
It just kept
getting better and better.
Just like, "What the fuck?"
It's good.
Like, when you and Isabella
are joking
about, you know, like,
not knowing where I am.
Do you remember feeling
like that?
I kinda remember
feeling like that.
Remember, Isabella
used to, like, scream,
- and, like, grab your leg?
- She did? Oh, God.
- You don't remember that?
- I do.
Oh, my God.
It was a big whoop-dee-do.
She would hold on to you so
you couldn't get out the door.
And would scream and scream.
I always remember, like,
she was the little sister
and I was the big sister.
So I didn't cry.
- "Get over it, Isabella."
- Really?
- Little sister.
- But it was harder for her?
I think so.
I guess my memories are kind
of mom-centric, of that time.
- I was off rocking.
- You were off rocking.
Don't think
I missed anything important.
Well, daily stuff.
There was probably a positive
to it in terms of mom and I...
I think...
This sounds weird, but it's not.
She likes the space.
And I think you do, too,
and your grandmother does.
- Yeah.
- You like your time alone.
I really liked my childhood.
I actually, like,
I feel really lucky
about the way I was raised.
The creative energy was
kinda amazing.
It was like
you would write musicals
for us to perform in
for the family
and it was so cool.
And you used to dress up
in a costume.
- Remember the sleeping fairy?
- Oh, yeah.
- We gutted the TV.
- Yeah. Oh, my God.
- Yeah.
- Oh, my God.
- I almost died.
- I know.
You wanted to turn
the television into a diorama
because we didn't wanna watch
TV anymore.
- Right. That was great.
- That was so cool.
So we're gonna go
into our house here.
- What is it really?
- House of Fluff.
House of Fluffhead.
How's it going?
Nice to meet you.
It's a trip running into you
right now, I'm 8 days clean.
- Oh, are you really?
- Yeah.
Fucking congratulations man.
That's great.
Hey, Dave. How you doing?
Just threw out all my syringes
and empty packets.
Oh, my God. Fucking A, man.
- You okay?
- Yeah.
It's just a fucking
emotional day, man.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Congratulations.
- Thank you, man.
- I'm so happy that you stopped.
- Thank you, man.
- Keep going, man.
- Thanks, man.
- I don't want these guys...
- Yeah, for sure.
- Are they still...?
- I'll see you around.
I'm sorry about this.
- It's this thing.
- It's okay.
- Congratulations, man.
- I'll see you on tour.
Keep going, that's great.
This is the coolest thing.
I was just looking
at that, what is that?
This is my big secret.
I can't believe
I'm giving away all my secrets.
It's gonna be like that.
It's like a texture.
Yeah.
- You keep playing melodies.
- Can I push a button?
- You hear that?
- Yeah.
What's "puss"?
Tap, tap.
Now it's like...
Now this is a Leslie speaker.
This is so cool.
Fast.
That's my job.
That's dad at work.
Okay, I'm gonna leave.
- I love you so much.
- I love you.
We just finished
The Baker's Dozen,
and we didn't know when we
walked on stage that at the end
that they were going
to raise a banner.
My dad used to take me to hockey
games when I was 10 years old.
I used to dream
of having my name up
in the rafters of Madison Square
Garden as a hockey player.
I never would have thought
that it would be up there
as a musician.
That's pretty cool.
This is where you learned
how to swim.
God, I love it here.
I remember when you were, like,
14, like, was hard.
I had you out on tour
a couple times.
Like, it was just me and you
on the bus.
We were going around.
- I was 12.
- Yeah, you were like...
I was going through
my edgy 12 year old...
Yeah, you were
an edgy 12 year old.
You had, like cool,
black clothes.
I thought you were the coolest
person I'd ever met in my life.
I loved the way
you dressed and stuff.
But you were into, like,
your thing, and it wasn't that.
It wasn't that, Phish, yeah.
And the crowd
was, like, going "Yeah!"
And I was walking down
the stairs this one night,
and you were at the bottom,
it was just me and you,
I was having
dad-daughter rock tour.
I was so excited that
you were on the road with me.
We were both on the bus.
And you were like,
"I'm so bored!"
And then you go, "You just
entertained all those people,
now entertain me!"
I was kind of dejectedly
walking behind you.
And they were still cheering,
but I was thinking
this is such a metaphor for,
like, parenting teenage girls.
It wasn't really weird
until just these past few years
when I started going
on Phish tour.
- Right, right, right.
- And now I'm like on Phish tour.
- Right.
- And like, most of my friends
outside of Burlington
are friends that
I made through the scene.
Yeah.
I just breathed in a bug.
It's really gross.
Is there anything you wished
would have been different?
I had a very happy childhood.
I was always happy
with you and mom.
Like, generally all the things
I, like, think about
that I would have changed
were, like, my shit, you know.
And like, I guess, yeah,
you and mom definitely
weren't amply prepared
to deal with me.
It was very clear,
like, when I started
dealing with issues and stuff,
that you guys
didn't know what to do.
- Right.
- You were, like,
"Oh, God," freaking out.
And it worked out, you know.
So it's all fine. But, like...
Defiantly in the moment
I was, like,
I was freaking out,
because I felt like
I was freaking you guys out.
I was like, you know,
you guys clearly seemed...
I think you can't help, that,
like, as a parent, thinking,
"You know, is it my fault?"
Or is there things
that, like, you know,
- "What could I do differently?"
- Yeah.
Maybe the thing was
I was very, very aware
of you guys thinking that.
And I was like,
it just so... hindered you
from being able to objectively
help me the best that you could
because you were distracted,
I guess, by, like, worrying
about being a good dad.
Right, yeah.
So, like...
which, like, wasn't the problem.
Right, right, right.
That seems like
a big responsibility, though,
for you in that moment
- to be worried about us.
- Yeah.
You know what I mean?
That doesn't seem fair.
Like, you had
a lot to think about
other than worrying about us.
We were okay.
Man, look at this place. Wow.
I wanna go swimming.
It's when your kids
become adults,
and you see them
becoming adults,
I started thinking,
"Was I a good father?"
"Was I there for them?"
I certainly understand
my own parents more.
Bella is a senior in college,
and Eliza's
graduated and working.
And it reminds me that
that's the age I was
when Phish started.
I think about my perception
of my parents at that time
and my feeling
of wanting to break away,
and "I'm going to be in a band.
And we're gonna to travel
all over the world
and get out from this."
Whatever it was.
Today,
I feel exactly the opposite.
I feel how fleeting
certain things are
and how precious they are.
Let's eat food.
I think the first New Year's
we played was the Boston expo.
It wasn't much of a gag at all.
- It wasn't theatrical.
- It really wasn't a gag at all.
We all wore tuxedos
and Fish wore the G-string
that was a tuxedo.
New Year's 94
was the hot dog.
Then we did a series
of four runs
with a fish tank
created on stage.
The next year
was the time machine,
which was we did a good gag
with a guy
that looked like Fish,
in the diaper.
Then, one of my favorites
that gets forgotten,
is that we did
the angels on ladders.
- The snow queens.
- On Seven Below.
And we had the snow falling.
The snow was falling and
we had beautiful angel women.
I thought "Petrichor" was...
"Petrichor" was so cool.
There have been some good ones.
- Fish look what you've started.
- Some funny stuff.
Somewhere along the line,
it just exploded into people,
you know, the whole...
Fucking crazy, man.
It became iconic.
I just put it on as a joke
and Tina said,
"You gotta wear that on stage,
you look like Barney Rubble."
So I did. I wore it for one
gig at Nectar's.
I wore it for one gig at Nectar'
And the next day I came back in
my street clothes and Trey goes,
"Where's the dress?"
And I go, "What do you mean?"
He goes, "You can't
not wear the dress now,
it'll rot the gig."
I continued to wear it
for the next 35 years.
- That's it. That was it.
- There was another time
- you stopped wearing it.
- Well, it was..
I gave you a hard time
about it too, I remember.
It made me so sad.
You took it off,
you started wearing...
I started wearing
a three piece suit.
During that period of time,
I kinda became a little...
I was sullen, melancholy.
- Sullencholy?
- Sullen...
Sullen melancholy!
You were
Jon Sullen Melancholy.
- I could introduce you that way.
- Jon Sullen Melancholy.
Jon Sullen Melancholy.
You could give me a fake piano
and I could play.
Jon Sullen Melancholy.
It's a good balance right now.
Like, everybody has
the right amount of band
and the right amount
of space to exist
outside of the world
of the band.
That was kind of a problem
before we stopped in 2004,
which is when I got
kinda mixed up
in, like, my personal problems.
Like, exploded
to drinking too much
and that kind of thing.
And then, like,
I ended up, you know,
finally, like, getting arrested.
Which was, strangely,
was kind of a good thing.
Because, like, finally,
this, like, crazy thing
that had been rolling along
so insanely, stopped.
Everything just stopped,
and I didn't talk to anybody.
And then, like,
about a year after that,
the three guys
came and visited me,
which was, like...
I remember that.
You know, like,
I wasn't allowed to leave,
I was, like,
sort of under house arrest.
And they came
and took me out to dinner.
That was really nice.
And then we started
kind of, like, firing back up
and we just rebuilt,
like, our life
from that point on
in, like, a much healthier way.
I think probably
the difference in this album is
that there's a lot of moments
of real, raw honesty.
It's like a blues album,
you know?
Because a lot of the songs
that I'm writing
are full of, like, confusion
and, like, fear,
and, like, that's the thing
that I hear most on this record.
And that's kind of what I
actually feel most of the time.
It's fear.
There's an underlying fear.
Hi.
Yes, indeed.
I needed to jump up and down.
So thank you so very much.
Your dad...
It's so good to see you.
There's so much of him in you.
- It's so good to see you.
- It warms my heart.
That's what I've
been telling people,
like, that's
the best compliment.
He was my favorite
person ever. I loved him.
You didn't go one day in your
entire life being with him
that you didn't laugh
at least once.
- I know.
- You were never bored.
And the day he was dying
he was still doing that.
He would kind of go to sleep,
he'd just taken morphine,
- and we all started crying.
- Yeah.
And he woke up
and he goes,
"What, did someone die
or something?"
Like, there's a dad for you.
I was like, "Oh my God."
He was a professional partier.
Many times throughout
our friendship where I'm like,
"I just want
to go to bed, dude."
You know what I'm trying to say?
But it never happened.
I coulda gone to bed.
Okay? You see
what I'm trying to say?
But then I'm thinking,
I'm like, I'm getting older now.
Like, the amount
of fun that we had...
- Like said.
- We would, like,
get up in the morning,
we'd, like,
"Okay, let's climb
to the top of, you know,
that Crested Butte mountain,"
like, in our sneakers. Like...
All right? "Come on, man,
let's go." And we'd go.
I'm never gonna have
a friend like that ever again.
That's me in the '60s, man.
It was wild.
It was some wild days.
And then this is the girl
I had a crush on.
That was in New Jersey.
I definitely remember
having a crush on her,
but I don't remember her name.
We used to play Tetris
on the bus in the back lounge.
We used to play so much Tetris
that I would dream about it.
I was always seeing
Tetris blocks
falling in front of my face.
That was a fun tour.
I think it was 94.
I can't remember.
It's crazy, man. It gets crazier
the longer this all goes on.
Just wanted to give everybody
a full orientation
about what was going to happen.
Hey, guys.
House lights will go out,
you guys will go up
and start to play "Soul Planet."
Right, as you start to play,
the truss above is going
to slowly descend right
over your heads, super slow.
Guys in the red jumpsuits
and a couple
of stage hands come out,
and they're going
to very carefully
distribute those wires
and take up the slack.
They're going to drop the sail,
we're going to turn on the fans
and attach it at the sides,
Where our cast members
on the front
are going to turn it around
while we have men on either side
suspended as they spin.
Then, the 10, 9, 8,
it's all that. The timing.
The cannons are going to go off,
the ceiling explodes and you'll
go into "Auld Lang Syne."
- We'll do something sunrise-y.
- Okay, okay cool.
"Velvet Sea," or...
I don't know.
Okay.
Did you have any other...?
Alright, ready? Go.
Take the stage.
Follow you.
Hope you guys have fun up there.
My Mom? Let me say hi.
- Hello!
- Hi!
I can't tell them apart,
who's who.
We have the same hat!
- Hi, Trey.
- Happy New Year!
The intimidating thing is
these suede sneakers take
20 minutes to put on.
They are too tight.
You wanna go see Page?
This is for Delia's teacher,
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
- If you don't mind.
- Sure.
- It's a good poster.
- It's a great poster.
Who did this?
- I don't know.
- It looks like.
- You mind about here?
- Yeah, anywhere. That's great.
Great. Thank you.
- Colby?
- Colby, it's the teacher.
Colby must be a good teacher.
- Would you mind...
- This is good, too.
This is it for our 17th
Madison Square Garden show.
We could do...
I better do silver, because
everybody else did silver.
It looks a little bigger
in real life
than it looks on...
You know what I mean?
I could block one of those.
- Well, thank you.
- Thank you.
Love you guys, and thanks.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
We'll see you next year.
- Hey! Good to see you.
- Hey, buddy.
Again and again. Every
year, every year, every year.
I'll see you.
You won't see me.
I'll come back during
the set breaks and stuff,
but you'll probably be busy.
- I'll be here. Bye.
- All right.
And Fish had been out all night.
Did I tell you this story?
Yeah, I remember this.
I remember there was some
George Harrison involved.
He came home,
and he was, like...
got on the couch
and went to sleep.
And then we started having
- this huge fight, you know?
- Yep.
I was kinda in shock,
and Fish had been asleep
for, like, an hour on the couch.
And I ran out. I was like,
"Fish, we gotta go!"
He, like, jumped right up.
He was like,
"Okay, where are we going?"
Having slept for, like, an hour.
We just drove around
until the OP opened.
We went out and got beers
at eleven o'clock
in the morning.
It was such a great day.
- It's weird how bad things...
- Yes.
...sometimes end up
being the best days.
They're liberating.
I look back on some dark times,
and I'm like, "Boy, it seemed
rough at the time,
but there was
a certain excitement,
and a certain freedom."
And that when it went away,
I wasn't sad. But I was like,
"I'm never gonna feel
like that again."
Like you feel alive
or something.
Yeah. You were, like,
just so alive in every moment.
How's the show going?
You do what you gotta do.
It's not quite...
Yeah, I know.
It's... Ever since...
I haven't even read
the book yet,
but it's already loosening up.
It's already working.
You're gonna
read the introduction.
Arms getting a little sore
about 2/3 through
the second solo.
I was like...
You feel good.
I was thinking about
that scene in The Last Waltz,
where Robbie Roberts is saying,
"We've been on the road
for 15 years,
and it's an impossible life,
so I wanna stop."
I gotta look at that a little
bit like, really? Fifteen years?
That's all you can take?
C'mon, man!
Like, I'll never stop.
It can be lonely sometimes,
and whatever, it is.
You know, but who cares?
It's like, it's the best.
I'm never going to stop.
I don't want to stop.
I like that, man.
Yeah, man. Record that.
- Yeah!
- Just let that go a few times.
That's kind of Nordic, too.
I like that better
than the piece we just did.
That's actually good!
- That's actually good.
- That's a good intro.
Don't be scared to do
like six or more.
- At least.
- Do more than you think is good.
More, more, more! C'mon!
- It's getting better.
- Yeah!
All right. Okay.
All right now, let's reel it
back in, gentlemen.
Boys, reel it back in.
That was fun.
- Six?
- Let Fish hit,
like, a cymbal at the end.
Like, bash!
Maybe we should
do an ending note.
- Because it's...
- Yeah, like a "Go!"
I'm fucking here!
You're fucking there!
You're fucking there! Here!
We should really do that.
- It's right here.
- You do it.
Finland!
C'mon. It was good.
Alright.
You got that, Bryce?
It's a good thing
we threw in that one.
Yeah.
Good thing we came back to that.