c. taylor crothers © phish 2009 from the Festival 8 Express

You sat in with Phish at Festival 8 for Exile on Main Street and “Suzy Greenberg.” How familiar were you with Phish before that weekend and how did that collaboration come about?

Phish asked my manager Alex Kadvan for some horns and at first he was only going to send Saundra Williams and the horns to them. Saundra and I used to sing together in a wedding band. And then he called me up and asked me if I was interested and I said, “Sure.” They wanted me to play around with the songs, so I went on the website, and I looked them up. I had heard the name Phish come up over the years, but I was never into them. I saw their name and was like, “Oh yeah, oh yeah, these guys.”

Before the show we had two, three-hour rehearsals and went through the whole album, but they kept changing what they wanted. Trey has so much energy and he’d say, “I want you to do background on this too.” That happened up until the night of the show when they threw in “Suzy Greenberg.” I hadn’t heard “Suzy Greenberg” before that afternoon. We had the rehearsal that day at Noon or 1 PM, so we go into the hotel to get it ready, and I kept going “Saundra, what’s that melody—Suzy, Suzy Greenberg?” It was really fun.

I can’t believe you only had two rehearsals.

Two rehearsals—that was it. Well, I’ll say three because we did a third one the day of the show.

Were you familiar with Exile before you started rehearsals? Was that an album you heard over the years?

No, I was not familiar with that album. I was like, “Oh, the Rolling Stones.” One song or two songs I might have heard on the radio, but I was never into that rock stuff.

A few songs had a ring to them when I started singing them again—I mean there are some really great songs on that album like “Happy.” I loved watching the drummer of Phish when he was singing that song with his little dress. I was like “awww.”

He actually very rarely sings with the band.

I know. He was killing though. They had fun. They were just as nervous as we were. When we stepped up there and did the first two songs—the first one was “Tumbling Dice,” and the other one was “Sweet Virginia”—Trey looked up at us after we got through the first song and he gave us a wink. Suddenly he was alright. I wanted to make sure I didn’t step on anyone but he told us to just go off his energy, you know? That was fun. He let us loose.

Some Phish fans didn’t like it but you know…those people who had a problem with it probably don’t like anything. Let me tell you, I know that. Being on that stage I know it. I did a concert once and these people right in front of me were talking with their hand in their ears, frowning up. I was like, “soundman, maybe you need to turn me down because people have their hands in their ear.” It’s so annoying how that can annoy you, so I said to myself, “Sharon, forget those two. Look at all those other people here.”

I know Alex recommended the guys in the horn section, but a lot of the usual Antibalas guys were busy with the new Fela! musical. Had you worked with this particular horn section before.

The only Dap-King was Dave Guy. The others were Tony Jarvis and David Smith. I know the Phish guys called them Dap-Kings, but we had never played together before. I said, “You can call them anything you want, just call them back” [laughter]. They sound good together—it was like a crutch. For me, Saundra is my crutch. I think for Dave those guys were his crutch. We had to go to Mexico for some shows before [Festival 8], and we had other things to do, but Dave’s got this mind—when he hears something, and he plays it once, he knows it. With my mind I gotta write something down. But at least the stuff with Phish was pretty easy—I mean the background stuff. The toughest song for me, the one I had problems with, was “Let it Loose.” That one was really nerve wracking to me, so I had to really concentrate on that one. On the plane when I was in Mexico, I was thinking about it. Saundra had time to learn her part, so she was my crutch.

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