Photo Credit: Dean Budnick

On Wednesday, July 25, Phish returned to Uncasville, Conn.’s Mohegan Sun Arena for the second and final night of its two-night run. This was the band’s first booking at the venue since its inaugural performance in 2019. While the band’s first night comprised a straight-ahead assortment of deep cuts and timeless classics, performed with precision and ease, its follow-up was nowhere near as simple; for night two at Mohegan and the fifth night of its summer tour, Phish built on the steady foundation cemented in the preceding shows to deliver the gutsiest, nerdiest show of the season so-far. Beyond a fistful of next level jams, the genre forerunners made headlines with a subtle twist on a golden oldie, bringing “The Curtain” back into the fold and issuing its closing improvisatory passage “With” later, as the apex of a massive second set jam.

Phish took the stage with a gleaming, funky “AC/DC Bag,” which tipped into some deeper jam territory towards the close as if forecasting the band’s thrilling set to come. The band then tipped into “The Curtain With,” a former favorite from the band’s first five years that has recently become a rarity, with only five stagings since 2017 prior to the Mohegan closer. In typical Phish fashion, after the audience became all-too-comfortable with its new tour’s format, weirdness was waiting around the corner.

For the uninitiated – the meticulous, pointillistic final frame jam for “The Curtain With,” which typically stretches past the 10-minute mark, has a complex history: Just before its incorporation into the end of “Rift,” the band debuted a version of “The Curtain With” that scrapped the sprawling two-part composed and improvisatory jam. This abbreviated version has since come to be known as simply “The Curtain,” and fully supplanted the original in the band’s live catalog for 12 years, though the two compete for inclusion again today. As the soaring, melodic groove of the quartet’s second track on Wednesday did not promptly launch an extended jam, it would be “The Curtain.” Or so it seemed.

After this moment, which was a highlight on its own, business continued as usual through the first set, with longtime staples “Steam,” “Maze,” “Farmhouse” and “Mull”– featuring a “Tequila” tease from Trey Anastasio–following with true synchronicity between the bandmates, who effortlessly traded the lead on genre-bending, dynamic improvisatory passages. Fan’s found a moment’s reprieve in a loose, light and drifting “Reba,” which took a dramatic turn with the arrival of a massive, dense and insistent set-closer of “Most Events Aren’t Planned,” drawn from Page McConnell’s 2002 Vida Blue project.

From the set break, Phish rode again with “Blaze On,” bringing the track’s frenetic energy to a jam with striking dark and stormy moments. The band then rode this momentum into “Mike’s Song,” which some fans suspect may have been a callback and final inclusion of the “Weekapaug Groove” counterpart that was conspicuously absent in the band’s first show at Mohegan Sun Arena in 2019. But what came next caused a much greater stir.

Whereas Phish has typically plotted the “I Am Hydrogen” instrumental as the transition point between “Mike’s” and “Weekapaug,” Wednesday’s show proved the exception when the band teased the usual track, then dove headfirst into the missing “With” jam, staging the section as a standalone entry for the first time ever. The band used this moment to dig as deep as ever in this summer’s tour, cascading into “Weekapaug” in a face-melting moment fans are calling “Mike’s With Groove.” Watch a fan-recorded video of the sequence below.

In the wake of this early climax, Phish kept on with “Leaves” and a medley of “Fuego” “Lonely Trip” and “More,” then closed out the second set with Fluffhead. The lights went down, then rose again, and the band returned for an encore of “A Life Beyond The Dream” and “First Tube.”

Phish will perform again tomorrow, July 26, to kick off its three-night run at East Troy, Wis.’s Alpine Valley Music Theatre. For tickets and more information on these shows and Phish’s full summer calendar, visit phish.com/tours. Fans can stream the band’s summer tour 2024 performances and dig deeper into the vault via LivePhish.

Read on for the complete setlist from Wednesday’s show.

Phish
Mohegan Sun Arena – Uncasville, Conn.
7/25/25
Set I: AC/DC Bag > The Curtain With > Steam, Maze, Farmhouse, Mull, Reba, Most Events Aren’t Planned
Set II: Blaze On > Mike’s Song > The Curtain With > Weekapaug Groove, Leaves, Fuego > Lonely Trip > More, Fluffhead
Encore: A Life Beyond The Dream, First Tube
Notes:
Trey teased Tequilla during Mull. The Curtain With was performed in two parts: The Curtain after AC/DC Bag and the “With” after Mike’s Song. The latter portion began as I Am Hydrogen.

Setlist via phish.net