Finally it’s our turn. After an exciting first leg, Phish was finally going to play the West Coast run. Would the bust outs continue? How would the playing be? What would the experiences at the Greek Theater and Telluride’s Town Park be like? It had been 9 months since Phish last ventured out west. The choice of small venues had left us all scrambling, searching for tickets – even going out to eat one night a week before Berkeley, a random stranger the next table over saw my shirt and asked me if I had any extra Fridays or Saturdays- but now it was time for the actual shows.
It’s 799 miles from my house to the Greek Theater. The drive starts out in the urban corridor south of Seattle, goes through the Willamette Valley near Portland and then has hundreds of miles of mountain passes in southern Oregon and northern California – including the wonder that is Mt. Shasta – before the endless farmland leading up to the Bay Area. While Mel would get to experience that, I was skipping it, getting on a plane so I could see the first show.
The Greek Theatre is the venue with the most interesting pros and cons that I’ve ever seen. There are parts of the venue – and no I’m not going to say where exactly because they were hard enough to get to – that are up there with any place in the country in terms of sight and sound. And then there’s the lawn with its steep slope. End up there and you’ll be fighting the venue all night. Now this is true of many venues, it’s just that the sweet spot for the Greek is so small.
The solution seems obvious – get in line early. The problem is that the venue also has some cultural issues. The Grateful Dead have a history with the venue. This is one of the main attractions to the place, as it leads to chill security, an actual vending scene, and an extra sense of import to the event. The downside to that is that during the Dead’s runs, people would leave the show and immediately get back in line. Normally showing up for a show 4 hours early is considered excessive. For the Greek, you’ll be a late arriver. Despite the band asking people not to show up before 3, the line formed well before that, giving people the choice of destroying their entire vacation, sitting on the lawn, or being a jerk.
Descending into a new level of insanity, people actually paid migrants to wait in line for them. It takes a certain type of person to claim a moral advantage over others due to their financial flexibility; I’m glad that I never actually met any of the people who played that game.
So the Greek run started with a lot of stress, but it’s nothing that wouldn’t be made up for with a hot show. Phish had just ended an incredible run of shows, with hot playing and fascinating setlists. What surprises would we get on the first night?
Well I guess an incredibly standard show is a surprise too right?
That’s the thing with an improvisational band. You pays your money and you takes your chances. A standard Phish show is still a lot of fun to attend, enjoy the “Kill Devil Falls” and “Tweezer Reprise” and wait until tomorrow. Maybe the sacred creed will be yours.
It’s rare to get Phish fans to agree on much but on the Greek run there’s a bit of a consensus. The turning point was the “Cities.” Perhaps played for the, “Home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks” line, the jam out of it went to some interesting places. Suddenly we had some life here!
Second night was a show of contrasts. The quick drop into “Mike’s Song” was horrid and awkward, but the “Simple” that followed was amazing and well jammed… which made up for the three-minute version of “Seven Below” later. We weren’t quite there yet, but at least there were some signs that the west coast wasn’t going to be shafted.
The third night was perhaps the quintessential night of the run. The simmering line fights evolved into all out warfare. The chilly evenings – which lead to some really cool views of the fog rolling in over the trees in the back of the venue – were most extreme. There was some temptation to just give up on the show and get an early start into Telluride as the first two nights just weren’t worth the hassle. Fortunately, the third night would be where it all changed. Starting with the mid first set “Gotta Jibboo,” the night had something extra. The jams were both high energy and exploratory.
While everything was well played, the highlights were twofold. For those who like the jams, “Light” ended up in an interesting jam of delicate beauty, perhaps not quite as interesting as the Gorge version a year prior with its calypso jam, but close. For the energy people, “Suzy Greenberg” was the best sans Sharon Jones version in years, with an energetic extra jam built around Judas Priest’s “Living After Midnight.” After fighting with the venue for months – first for tickets, then with the culture – for a night it clicked. I suddenly really understood why people were excited for the place. For a show this big, I think I still prefer the ease of access of a Shoreline than the massive amount of work that the Greek is, but when it works, there’s a reward in the venue that few places can match. Even if I never return to Berkeley, I’ll always have 8/7/10 as the perfect evening together.
There are three ways of going from Berkeley to Telluride. The high route is along I-80, through Salt Lake, down to Moab and over to Colorado. That’s the route that map sites suggest at first but it seemed like the least interesting. The low road goes right near Zzyzx Road – always a bonus for me – and then across I-40 in Arizona, through Four Corners, and into Telluride from the south. That was the way that we had planned for our trip, but logistics got to us. There’s only one place to stop that would make the Monday drive short – Kayenta, AZ. Unfortunately, all 4 of their hotels had booked up leaving no room at the inn. That left us with the middle route: US 50’s Loneliest Road in America.
The Loneliest Road first got its name in 1986 when Life Magazine wrote an article about the route and the incredible lack of services to be found on it. The Nevada government decided to take the “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” motto seriously, and used it as an advertising slogan.
So how lonely is it? It’s not quite as bad as Alaska’s Tok Cutoff, but it’s in the same league. It’s 410 miles from Fallon, NV to Delta UT, a stretch that is just broken up by Austin, Eureka – the self professed “Friendliest town on the loneliest highway,” so friendly that there are cops at the town line wanting to greet you with a speeding ticket!- and Ely are all that break up the endless plain->mountain pass->plain drive. It’s a fun drive though. The passes are stunning and the straightaways are fast; it’s a good place to go if you want to see how your car handles at 105 MPH.
Like this for hundreds of miles
It’s not just the Loneliest Road that is that deserted. US 50 merges with I-15 for a while and then separates and then connects with I-70. The ramp onto the Interstate immediately warns you that there will be no services for the next 109 miles. We drove on in the dark as we went over pass after pass. Even though we missed out on the amazing daylight view, driving that route at night has its advantage too. The night sky view is incredible. Ultimately, we had to pull over to the side of the road and just stare up at the Milky Way and some shooting stars. Lighting – most likely in Arizona- was visible off in the distance. It was one of those incredible moments of stillness that make the desert so powerful.
Photo by Melissa Steinberg
After a rest in Green River, UT, it was a quick drive across the state line and into Telluride. Recession Tour ’10 forced us to eschew the Mountain Village condos and even the Town Park camping in favor of camping at the Matterhorn site, 900 feet higher than the “valley” of the town. It’s a spectacular place, surrounded by trees and mountains, but camping at 10,000 feet does have some challenges. Our trip into Telluride proper was delayed as Melissa sprayed the tent with copious amounts of waterproofing. The insane weather of the week before – a bullet we barely dodged – was a friendly reminder that anything can happen in Colorado in any season.
Telluride was founded in the 1870s as a mining town. A century later with the mines largely dry, the populace looked up at the giant mountains and saw a different natural resource they could tap. The switch to a ski resort didn’t come easy at first, as the older residents town looked upon the hippie newcomers with a wary eye. They fought the change of the town’s culture, but what miner can ever resist the call of gold for long? The resorts would stay and by the late 1980s, Telluride would be about tourism, a fact that would be very important to a band from Vermont.
Phish had been a band for five years in 1988. While their playing career had already covered the area from Burlington, VT all the way to South Burlington, VT, and then to such far flung locales as Plainfield, VT and even Hinesburg, VT, they felt that they could do more. So, when they were offered the chance to play a nationwide tour, they jumped at the chance, even if it meant driving 2000 miles in a windowless truck. Unfortunately the promoter of the tour apparently thought that the nation consisted of the Roma bar in Telluride, as that’s what their entire booking was. Phish played there for ten nights to the same dozen people as the rest of the town was boycotting the bar. On their off day they played across the street at the Fly Me to the Moon Saloon to a much larger crowd, which was the source of the famous photo of Trey and Mike carrying the keyboard across the street.
This story – made popular by its telling in The Phish Book – is one of the favorite tales of Phish lore. Just by playing the town for the first time since 1991, this run would have some historic importance. However, the first show also was on the 15th anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s death. The Dead’s run there in 1987 was also famous, albeit poorly played. Throw in the numerology of playing on 8/9/10, and you have a potentially epic moment… or expectations that could never be met.
If the Greek was a venue where everything seemed to be just a little harder than it should have been, Telluride Town Park was the opposite. After parking in Mountain Village, we first got to ride a series of gondolas up and down the hill. It’s a dramatic 2000 foot drop into the town from the last station. Before we even managed to exchange our tickets into wristbands – itself a surprisingly quick action with absolutely no line whatsoever – the trip felt surreal.
One block away from the entrance to the venue is a mountain stream. We sat there for a while, dipping our feet in, listening to the pre-show music over the PA and just relaxed. There might be a better way to putting yourself into the perfect show mood, but I don’t know what it is.
Finally we wandered in, about an hour before show time to discover plenty of room. The 9000 ticket limit was the capacity that the town could absorb, not the venue. Behind the soundboard there was little visibility of the band, but plenty of views of the mountains – no matter which direction you looked, you saw one – and enough space that people formed a hackey sack circle in the middle of the first set. All Phish had to do was not have a repeat of Coventry and it would be epic. We got far more than that.
No, we weren’t quite going to get a repeat of the madness of leg 1, but the first set had quite a few treats, including my first “Light Up or Leave Me Alone” since Big Cypress. Still it was the second set that would be remembered.
It all started, oddly enough, with “Prince Caspian.” The jam section went almost immediately into weird places, with Trey playing the vocal section on his guitar. The jam quieted and something amazing happened. In Telluride, Colorado on the 15th anniversary of Jerry’s death, they somehow found themselves in a jam akin to the “Mind Left Body” theme that the Dead played. Upon listening to it, it seems to be an accidental sort of thing, not an intentional homage, but for a minute or two it felt like Jerry was there. There are some moments that you just have to be present for.
While that wasn’t the absolutely best played song of the night – that award would go to the incredibly powerful “Piper,” it was going to be the moment that everyone who noticed would never forget, a perfect, subtle nod. However, the Deadheads in the audience were about to get a second treat, as Phish came out for the encore and played “Quinn the Eskimo” for the first time since 1999. One of the few shared covers with the Dead (“Johnny B. Goode” being the other obvious one.), choosing that song on that night was a wonderful hat tip. It was the perfect end to an incredible concert, a moment that I will never forget as long as I live.
They probably appreciated the encore selection.
A quick reversal of the gondola -> drive up the hill – this time with the extra obstacle of deer to avoid – brought us back to the campground. The night sky there was only slightly less impressive than that along I-70. We sat up and watched as long as we could, but ultimately the bitter cold got the best of us. You have to prepare for anything up there as the next morning showed.
The sun came up on a beautiful morning, but it wasn’t going to last for long. A few ominous clouds started rolling in. They were rapidly joined by friends, and they brought in some friends of their own. August is called monsoon season for a reason. Our tent was blown around in the hour long downpour, but the waterproofing acted like a champ. The storm meant that we wouldn’t get a hike in, but if you’re going to be outdoors in Colorado, your plans have to be flexible.
After spending the day exploring the town, making sure to cross Colorado Avenue many times carrying various objects, it was again time to walk to the show. For the second straight day we were about to be given the treat of a perfect moment.
According to the liner notes of the original tape of Junta, the “Divided Sky” chant is part of an ancient ritual. They eat a root from a base of a mountain and then, “venture into a vast field at sundown,” as a way of, “paying homage to the gods of the night.” While few people ever read that, there still was always something extra powerful about sunset “Divided Sky“s as anyone who ever saw one of the Gorge versions knows. If there was ever a place that just felt like it was in Gamehendge, it was Telluride Town Park. While it might not translate on tape, this was yet another unforgettable moment.
There were still other highlights of the show – such as the “Carini” with Pink Floyd quotes and the apropos “Shine a Light” encore – it was those three moments that will come to mind when I think of Telluride. I know there were people who were somehow disappointed in the shows, but it was a perfect combination of scenery and music. The energy from the mountains made every song special. This is a show that I can never feel quite rational about, and I’m more than fine with that.
How good was the Telluride experience? On the long drive back home, across Utah, through Idaho, swinging around Oregon, and back through the Washington desert, one thought came to mind. If I were inclined to do so, Telluride would make a perfect final show. There was a serenity that never will be matched. Venturing back into the hell of ticket fights in order to fly into Atlantic City seems a little crass after seeing shows in Gamehendge. Come October, it might feel differently, but the spirit of Telluride will be hard to ever match.
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David Steinberg got his Masters Degree in mathematics from New Mexico State University in 1994. He first discovered the power of live music at the Capital Centre in 1988 and never has been the same. His Phish stats website is at www.ihoz.com/PhishStats.html and he’s on the board of directors for The Mockingbird Foundation. He occasionally posts at the Phish.net blog and has a daily update on the Phish Stats Facebook page.
