Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio is one of the most influential musicians in the jam band scene.  He just finished co-producing Phish's latest album, Farmhouse, due out May 16.  The band is currently preparing for an upcoming two-night stand at New York's Radio City Music Hall May 21 and 22 as well as an extensive summer tour in the U.S.  He recently took time out of his busy schedule to speak with Jambands.com from the band's office in Burlington, VT. 

JW:  Hypothetically speaking, if someone had played the album Farmhouse for you in 1988, what do you think your reaction would have been?

TA:  That's a good question.  I think that I would have liked it in the sense of albums that I actually listen to for pleasure,   Neil Young for example.  I don't think that it would have  necessarily been the direction that I wanted the band to go in at the time. 

JW:  What was the vision at that time?

TA:  Well, in 1988 I think I was at Goddard (College), which was when I was doing that whole Gamehenge thing.  I don't think that there's ever been a time when I was working so hard.  I mean, I was living alone in a little apartment and was working from the minute I woke up until the minute I went to bed.  I was listening to a lot of Stravinksy and Ravel.  I really was only  listening to classical music at the time.  Ravel was sort of an impressionist composer of sorts and it was music where there were sort of flurries of notes that were big, broad strokes of sound.  I was trying to do a lot of stuff like that: breaking ground in every direction.  I don't think that the power  of the simple tune was at the forefront of my mind at the time. 

JW:  Well, let's take a song like "Sand" off the new album, or "First Tube."  What was the songwriting process like compared to writing something like "Foam" or "Squirming Coil?"

TA:  Right.  Point exactly.  "Foam," as an example, was completely composed on score paper: bass, drums, piano, guitar.  Like I said, I was really in the mindset of writing a kind of music that combined classical composition with rock and roll energy that wasn't progressive rock, you know what I mean?  When I wrote "First Tube," "Sand" and "Gotta Jibboo," that was after a couple of years of the four of us talking about how important it was to us to groove.  It had never been our strong point.  If you listen to early tapes, you know, the groove was the last thing that we thought about.  For a couple of years, starting at the end of '96, we started talking a lot about how we were going to improve the groove. Finally what I did was I set up a power trio tour with two musicians that I know who do nothing but groove: Tony Markelis and Russ Lawton.  You know, Tony's never taken a bass fill in his life.  He refuses to.  All he thinks about is groove.  So I got them up into the barn and I had them start grooving.  I said, "start to groove in the key of C sharp."  So they would groove.  And I told Russ, "I want you to play the simplest beat that you know on the drums, the beat that you've been playing since you were twelve years old, the easiest thing you know," and he  did.  And then I said, "Now Tony, join in in the key of..." whatever and we did one in each of the twelve keys.  And then they left.  Then I wrote songs around these grooves and I took what I thought were the best nine or ten songs written in that style and brought them over to Phish.   So, the songs were written completely from the concept of groove first.  We had to learn new grooves in Phish and it's probably the first time that you've ever heard Mike [Gordon] play the same three notes for six straight minutes. 

JW:  Would you say in some ways that's just as difficult if not more difficult than learning a Stravinsky-esque composition?

TA:  Yes.  To me, I think it may be even more difficult.  That is one thing that's kind of changed in my mind, and I'll use Neil Young as an example again.  Near the end of high school and the beginning of Phish, which started right after high school, that just wasn't where my interests lay and over the years that's completely changed.  Now I would probably site a few Neil Young albums or maybe as another example like Joni Mitchell's Blue, which I was just listening to last night.  I'll use that as an example of one of the greatest albums ever written and probably one of the few really timeless albums from the 60's through the aughts or whatever we're in now (laughs).  You know, because it's so personal and so simple and so direct.   It's just direct emotion and it's a really hard thing to reveal yourself in that kind of a personal way. 

JW:  Do you think it's ever possible to achieve that sort of deeply spiritual groove with very complex compositions?

TA:  Well, I would like to think that and there are two points on the new album where I feel like we did so. What happened was we were doing all that work in composition and theme and variation and working on all that stuff that we were doing in 1988 and then we kind of forgot about it. We retained it in our memory, but we stopped thinking consciously about it.  So when you come to a song like "Dirt" or "First Tube," even though that was intended to be simply about the groove... "First Tube" for example.  You know how there's that strange rhythmic thing with the melody at the beginning?  That stuff just starts popping out without you even thinking about it, at which point I'm always really glad that we all did the work when we were developing.  We learned all the jazz tunes and did all of the stuff that at certain times felt like a waste of time because we were never going to be a jazz band.   But then that harmonic sense and sense of mature melodies that comes from playing jazz tunes for instance, hopefully just stays in you and in your ear. "Dirt" is another example.  You know, there's a string quartet in that whole outro section and it's very heavily composed after the lyrics stop when the melody starts on the guitar and then it goes to the bass and Page [McConnell]  is doing that piano figure.  That is pretty heavily composed in the same way  that "Foam" was, but it doesn't really sound like it, I don't think, unless you really listen a little more carefully.  There's a theme, you know, the melody.  Like I said, it starts on the guitar and goes to the bass.  There's a counter-theme that the piano plays and the strings also play.  Then there's that whole descending figure and then the melody comes back to the guitar and then finally comes back an octave up on the guitar.  That stuff was all written out.  A lot of if was charted on paper.  I think it's a little bit more hidden now than it was back then.  It was a little bit more obvious back then I think. 

JW:  It's clear that on Farmhouse you had a lot more creative control.  You co-produced it.  You wrote a lot of the songs, solo.   How was that different in the recording process?  How was the interaction with the other band members?  Was it still a pretty democratic process?

TA:  It was.  I think that in a funny way, it's not all that different than what's been going on the whole time.  The main difference was that we started questioning our roles during the last couple of albums.  The Siket Disc, of course, was all improvised, there are no overdubs or anything. But on The Story of the Ghost especially, we were really questioning each other's roles.  I think what we found was that everybody's hands were tied being who they were. So, we kind of untied our hands on this one and I had a lot of ideas.  Probably the oddest thing is that there's usually at least one song by Mike and there isn't on this album.  I think it's because he was working on his film for the last three years.  He hasn't written a song in a few years.  He's been really working on his film.

JW:  Have any of the other band members been writing any material that we'll hear any time soon?

TA:  I don't know if they have, but I'm certainly encouraging them to. Fish [Jon Fishman] just started writing a tune and I was over his house and we were checking it out.  It's a great song.  Now that the album has come out and I was kind of spearheading this one, I kind of am looking to do the exact opposite.  Whenever we finish a project in a certain direction, I want to do that.  I'd really like Mike to write more music.  Everybody would.  We're always happy if Page and Fish write some tunes, but there's no real pressure I think because they don't usually write songs.  It's not necessarily in their nature.  If they do it's like a happy bonus, but Mike has not been writing music and he needs to write more.  We would all love it if he would write more music.

JW:  I want to shift gears just a little bit and concentrate a little more on the live setting.  I know that at the end of '96 you implemented the no-analyzing rule concerning your live shows.  How strictly do you adhere to that?  Is there really no analyzing at all?

TA:  No, it's not as strict anymore.  Last tour it was kind of like, we still weren't doing a lot of analyzing.  You know, we were just having a great time backstage, but when it needed to come up, it did.  For instance, that song, "Gotta Jibboo," we were learning someone else's groove.  So, that's kind of a hard thing for bass players and drummers to do if it's not their natural feel and it just wasn't working in the beginning.   We were really unhappy with it.  I remember we played one show right before the last Hampton show [Providence Civic Center, 12-13-99].  We all came off stage and we had just played this horrible, non-grooving version of  "Gotta Jibboo" and everyone was steaming around the band room, like gritting their teeth (laughs).  Everybody wanted to say something, but we were all just kind of storming around, honoring the no-analyzing rule.  Finally, there was just an outburst and everybody started yelling at the same time, "What the fuck," you know? (laughs).  And, lo and behold, by talking about it, we figured out what was wrong.  Fish wasn't "swinging the ride."  That's basically it.  He was playing the ride straight.  It's a swung feel, you know?  Imagine if you were playing the drums.  Even though the kick drum is in the same place in the pattern, if you're right handed, it's like (Trey sings the melody).  It's basically the simplest swung versus straight and he had been playing it straight, but it wasn't feeling right and his solution had been to kind of play it louder, you know?  He was trying harder, which doesn't work either (laughs).  As soon as he said that, the next time we played it was in Hampton, it was the first time it was really great and that was right before we went into the studio.  Had we not analyzed it, it may not have ended up on the album.

JW:  Yeah, that was going to be my next question, because certainly if you weren't analyzing those songs in the live setting, you would wind up over-analyzing them in the studio.  As a producer, isn't that what you tend to do?

TA:  Definitely.  The whole goal with this album was to have the recording process seem just like another show.  What we did was we went into the studio October 11th, the day after the Albany shows.  I think October 10th was the last day of Fall Tour.  So we just set up the gear.  Everybody came in and we just kept playing.  You wouldn't have wanted to be in there...

JW:  I think I would have wanted to be in there.

TA:  (laughs) Oh, it was really fun.  It really was just such a good vibe.  Not to overspeak it, but everybody's just getting along incredibly well right now and they were during the making of that album.  That's why I was saying it's funny.  It's like on the one hand, I had a really heavy role in the making of this album.   It seemed more like the way that Phish really is in terms of the way that we interacted compared to a couple of the previous albums, because everybody was just playing their roles.  Nobody was threatened.  If you look all the way back to Rift or something, it's always been basically the same vibe.  Certain people are more prolific.  For example, let's say I was sitting at the board for ten hours doing a mix with Bryce (Goggin, co-producer) and we were deciding whether or not the high hat should get erased or something, or should be overdubbed.  If Fish was just sitting in the room, on the couch, blabbing away in the background, I felt more confident.  So, it's not like his role isn't important.  He likes to stay up late, so  he would come hang out at the barn while we were doing a really late night.  I was always really encouraging him to come over. So, he was not actually producing the album, but still, it wouldn't have been the same without him.

JW:  Would he ever speak up if he had an objection to something?

TA:  He would speak up, but it doesn't happen too often.

JW:  Did it happen at all with Farmhouse?

TA:  Yeah, but I've got a better example of when it happened with another older album when we didn't listen to him (laughs).  It was actually the time  when we learned to listen to him.  You know that song, "If I Could" on Hoist?   Well, right at the end of that, we got into this conversation in the studio with Paul Fox, our producer saying to me, "I really think the vocals should come back in again, because then it's like a pop song."  I had this string thing that I had written out for the outro, where it builds up, you know?  (Trey sings the melody).  In my mind, that would just kind of roll on endlessly for like the next ten minutes (laughs).  Then Paul kind of brought up this point.  He said, "It's really a good pop song, if you bring the vocals back in again."  Then he said, "Figure out a way to bring the vocals back in." So, we came up with that thing that's on the album, where they sort of come blasting in at the end.  Fish hadn't been around for a couple of days when we recorded it and then he came walking in and he was just like, "Oh my god!  It sounds like REO Speedwagon!" (Laughs).   But we had  just spent days working on this thing, you know, hours of work that he hadn't  seen.  So, everybody was like, "Oh, shut up Fish.  You always come walking in here.  You're never here when we're recording." (laughs)  So, we didn't listen to him and I didn't hear that album again for years because I don't usually listen to our albums.  So one day it was on and that part came on and it just sounded so bad to me and it sounded exactly like REO Speedwagon (laughs).  I remembered, years later that if I had just listened to Fish...It was at that point that I realized his role in the studio, which  is Fish just kind of runs around being Fish and then after you're kind of  near the end of a mix, you just kind of bring him in the room and let him  stand there and see how he reacts. 

JW:  Gotta give him credit.

TA:  (laughs) Yeah, exactly.

JW:  I've noticed that a lot of the tours seem to have certain themes.  You had the funk in '97, the last tour concentrated more on your solo material and the whole groove thing.  Is there any kind of preparation for the upcoming tour or the Radio City shows?  Are you trying to put an emphasis on something else?  Do you even plan it ahead that far?

TA:  Not this time.  We all kind of just took off after we made the album.  We just saw each other for the first time a couple of days ago.  I've been playing a lot of acoustic music.  That's all I've been doing.  I'm not sure if that's something that will appear in this tour or not, but I just was talking to Fish this morning and I played him a bunch of new songs and he's really excited and I think Page and Mike are as well.  That might be a direction that we would go in over the next year or two. 

JW:  Will there be any new material unveiled on this tour?

TA:  I don't know yet.  Probably, I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't know if there will be or not.

JW:  I know in the past, the band has done a lot of improvisational exercises, dating back to the early '90s.   You were even composing transitions between songs.  What's the preparation like going into shows these days?  Is there any of that or is it more of just going out and letting it happen?

TA:  We've been really been just going out and letting it happen.   Like at the New Year's show, as an example, we had nothing planned at all. 

JW:  Even the set list?

TA:  Oh, no.  We haven't planned a set list now for a couple of years. 

JW:  Well that's pretty tough compared to a regular show.  I mean, after doing a three-set show the night before, and an afternoon set to go  out and play eight hours straight.

TA:  Yeah (laughs). But it worked, at least for me.  I mean, we felt really  good about that night.  We just felt great about it.  In the past, for a  really big show like that we probably would have tried to do something crazy.

JW:  Like a "Harpua" or "Forbin's."

TA:  Yeah, like planned out some big thing and we just fought that urge fully.  We just told ourselves was all we were going to do is hang out backstage and when it's time to go on, we're going to go on and just play whatever we feel like playing at the time and not think about it at all.  That has been a big learning experience for us.  It's all part of the same thing with the first question you asked.  To me, improvisation is instantaneous composition.  There's a safety in planning.  I was talking about that Joni Mitchell album.  When I listen to that album, it's like you so clearly see who she was and kind of how old she was and what relationship issues she was going through.  It takes guts to just bare your soul in that  way.  I think it's the same as just going on stage and just playing exactly what you want play at any given time.  That's who you are.  You know, there's safety in knowing that you've got this big show planned out that's definitely going to go to a finale and the best song is going to be last.

JW:  Did you plan not to do an encore?

TA:  That was just talked about after the show.  We came off stage and we were standing there and Brad (Sands, road manager) came up and said, "are you  guys doing an encore?"  And we just look at each other and said "No, we're  not doing one." It just felt over at that point. 

JW:  I wanted to go back to what you were saying about spontaneous composition.  Is that something that you try to achieve 100% of the time?  For example, can you envision busting out a thirty-minute version of "Farmhouse" one night or is there a conscious effort to keep certain songs short and concise?

TA:  There's probably no conscious effort to keep it short and concise, but that being said, there's a definite feeling that longer is not necessarily better, by any stretch of the imagination.  At the same time, just taking that New Year's show being the last show that we played, there were songs that I don't think would normally go long that did, you know?  We did "Rock and Roll" or something and that was really long and there were some other really big jams, but that just felt so different, that whole night.  There was just something that felt bigger.

JW:  Were you pleased, generally, with the event as a whole as well as your performance?

TA:  Loved it.  Loved that night.  Loved that weekend and especially that night, all four of us.  It was really a rare moment of full agreement by all band members.

JW:  It was pretty powerful seeing the sunrise.  I had goose bumps.

TA:  Wasn't that just incredible?  It just was unbelievable.   It really was.

JW:  Would you like to return there?  Has there been any talk or any plans to go back?

TA:  Not yet, but we would love to do something else like that.  The only other thing we talked about, and this is just a crazy idea that we wouldn't necessarily do because we have a million ideas like this, but we did talk about doing a show in an arena somewhere.  What you do is you half-sell it, so it's about half full.  Then you black out all the windows.  Everybody comes in Friday night at regular concert time and we start playing and we play until Sunday at about 7 O'clock in the morning.  So basically, you lose an entire day.  So you go in at night and it's pitch black.  We were even talking about having everybody surrender their watches, you know?  (Laughs)  So nobody has any idea what time it is.  There would be food, but we would do weird things like serving the wrong food at the wrong time.  You know, you serve breakfast at like 7 O'clock on Saturday night, so nobody has any idea what's going on with time.  The reason it would be half full is that the rest of the room would be decked out with padded places to sit.  The other idea we had was to not tell anyone that this was going to happen, just let them in for the concert and then start playing.  You can leave if you want, but you can't get back in.  That's like the one rule. 

JW:   So if someone had to work the next day or something they'd be kind of screwed.

TA:  Well, there's a bank of phones, but there's a security guard next to the phones.  You can make one phone call, but the only thing you can say is, "I'm  not going to be there."  You can't say anything else.

JW:  No one on the outside world would have any idea what was going on.

TA:  If you really needed to tell somebody, you could say, "I'm OK, but I'm  not going to be there."  (laughs) You could say that if you had to go to  work the next morning.

JW:  So I guess you'd have to serve a lot of coffee to keep people awake.

TA:  (laughs) Yeah, there'd be coffee and anything anyone needed, we would have.  It would all be in there.  It would all be set up.  It would basically be like the indoor version of the New Year's show, except it would be thirty-six hours.

JW:  I'm assuming there would be set breaks.

TA:  Well, I don't know.   I was pretty beat after eight hours, but not really.  I felt pretty energized.  One thing you could do is, which we didn't get into on New Year's Eve, but we talked about wanting to get into more, would be that one or two band members could leave for five or six hours and the other two people could keep playing.

JW:  Like a Fishman drum solo, which of course he doesn't like to take.

TA:  (Laughs) Yeah, well that would have to be his first drum solo, but it would have to last five hours.

JW:  Or you could open the show with "Squirming Coil" and leave Page on stage to play a piano solo for seven hours (laughs).

TA:  No, for thirty-five hours (laughs).  We'd just leave him.  You know, he'd do the whole thing.

JW:  That's a really interesting idea.  I hope it comes to fruition.  Although the tapers would be screwed.

TA:  Oh no, we would have tapes and batteries, but actually there would be like a fishing pole with the tapes, just out of reach (laughs).

JW:  Philosophically speaking, do you think it gets harder as the years go on to come up with original songs, not just for you, but for any musician?  If you take The Beatles for example, they were geniuses, but pretty much anything they did was going to be innovative at the time.  As more and more bands write more and more songs over the years, do you think your options start to get limited? 

TA:  I find it easier and easier to write music and I'm actually doing a symphony thing next February, which I've always wanted to do.  It's like a dream come true. 

JW:  With a full orchestra?

TA:  With an orchestra.  I'm going to write for the orchestra.  That's like February 4th.  Songs don't get easier for me, in terms of writing lyrics and stuff, but music gets easier in my mind.  I think your life becomes richer, but I guess  lyrics have always been a whole different ball game.

JW:  What is the orchestra going to consist of?  Are you going to play an instrument or are you just going to write?

TA:  I'm just going to write.  It's an eighty-five-piece orchestra.  It's the Vermont Youth Symphony.  I think it's February 4th and 5th.  It will be in Albany and Burlington.  At this point, I'm probably going to do a completely re-written, orchestrated version of "Guyute," which was originally supposed to be like an orchestra piece anyway.

JW:  Oh, really?

TA:  I mean in my mind. 

JW:  Kind of a Celtic kind of feel.

TA:  Yeah, it's just in that type of form.  A lot of that music that I used to write sounds like that.  You know like the stuff in the middle of "Fluffhead?" 

JW:  Yeah, I could hear songs like "Divided Sky" or "You Enjoy Myself" being played by an orchestra as well.

TA:  Yeah, because your palette is just so unlimited.  Ernie Stires, who I've worked with for a long time and was sort of my mentor, is writing a piece for guitar and orchestra for me.  So, I'll play that with the orchestra and then they'll do whatever I come up with.  I'm looking forward to it. 

Jeff Waful is the daily news editor for Jambands.com and manages and books Uncle Sammy.