One of the most talked about Under the Scales conversations featured Trey speaking with Dan Kanter. How did you and Dan first connect, and had he spoken with you and Trey in a formal setting before?
No, the three of us hadn’t been together at the same time I don’t think. I really needed Dan there to be my “guitar expert,” to enable the “deep dive” aspect of that guitar interview. Dan and I met in the audience at Bader Field in Atlantic City during those shows [in 2012]. We’d stayed in touch since then, and he just naturally sprang to mind when I thought of the many questions I had about Trey’s guitars. I could frame the questions in an interview, but I knew they’d be more meaningful and legit if I had a meaningful, legit dude like Dan with me.
You have revisited your Phish sit-ins on several Under the Scales episodes. Many times in the 1990s, especially around New Year’s Eve, you sat in with the band on a fun cover or conceptual gag. How did that tradition start and develop over the years?
Trey kind of brought that up in “Part 1” of the interview, when he talked about how jokes would begin on the bus and then just immediately flow out onto the stage without much thinking or analysis. So if I happened to be on the bus when one of those jokes was forming, like, “Tom should sing the song ‘Tommy’ by The Who!” or, “We really should cover that Proclaimers’ song, ‘500 Miles’ or ‘Tubthumping,’” then the likelihood of a Tom appearance that night would be pretty high. Now, the band travels on completely separate buses, so the breeding grounds for jokes like that have diminished a bit. Plus, as Trey said, their filter for gags like that has gotten a little more developed. I personally think gags are great, and I think the audience loves Phish gags, but perhaps impromptu gags are going to be fewer and further between in favor of more planned ones.
You and Steve Pollak have been two of Trey Anastasio’s primary songwriting partners since before Phish. Yet, in Steve’s Under the Scales episode, you mention that your friendship and writing collaboration really started blossoming around Festival 8 in 2009. When did you first start working on songs with Steve, and do you plan to release any of those collaborations outside of the podcast?
That really was the beginning. Steve and I have written together several times and have maybe 10 songs now. The podcast was a good way to release that one song called “Second Sight.” I, unfortunately, referred to it as its working title “Night” also during that interview, so now people call it by both names. That’s the danger of an untraditional release—no real control, no way to gauge reaction, etc. That’s kind of fine with me, but I think Steve would prefer if we did a tour or something, or at least a show to kick off an album release. I’m not ruling it out, but it’s also something that right now isn’t top priority, but that could change! We’ll keep writing, and I’ll get excited, and boom, we’ll do a quick show somewhere.
*Your songwriting trips have factored into several episodes of the podcast, and the way you and Trey write together seems to change a bit on each trip. How would you describe your collaboration during the recent North Carolina trip that led to a few Big Boat songs that Trey discussed in Relix’s recent Phish cover story?
“No Men” and “Blaze On” are extremely poignant memories from that trip. You’re right—every one of the writing excursions was different, and I think I would love to sit down with Trey and play the songs and recreate the session as a podcast. We have a lot of material to do that with! Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks was our destination. Possibly, its proximity to Kill Devil Hill, the real life counterpart to “Kill Devil Falls,” was what drove us there? I don’t recall. But it was one of those beautiful houses on Ocean Boulevard, empty during February, during the off-season. We knew that, and so we had the place to ourselves.
You mentioned to me that you always love collaborating with someone when you are working on a project. How does working with an artistic partner help your creative process?
Maybe, because I started songwriting in collaboration with someone, it’s how I just need to do it? Judging from the few attempts I’ve made to write alone, I really have personal proof that one plus one is three, when songwriting anyway. Perhaps it’s sharing the creative hurdles, but also the joy of completing a song? Again, this is a tough question to nail down, apart from saying that it just works better for me to write with someone else.
It has been a few years since your band Amfibian last played or recorded. Do you have any plans to work under that name again?
It’s always in the back of my head. No concrete plans right now, but honestly, I can feel part of me stirring. My inner, sleeping reptile brain is awakening after a long hibernation.
Speaking of Amfibian, long before Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, you actually helped bring guitarist Scott Metzger into the jam/live music scene. How did you first meet Scott, Andrew Southern and the rest of the RANA crew and bring them into your band?
Scott is such a great guy. I need to re-hook up with him, soon I hope. I can’t take credit for that, really. My pal Matt Kohut, who was my bass player, was also in a band where he discovered Scott called F-Hole. F-Hole joined Amfibian kind of at the same time that Andrew Southern came aboard—I knew [Andrew] from Princeton Day School. And they formed RANA together during Amfibian’s downtime. [Metzger joined RANA while playing with Amfibian, and their time with Marshall helped land the group a residency at New York’s Wetlands and began a longstanding association with Russo.]
Of all songs you have written, is there one in particular that you think has become more timely or appreciated years after it was first performed or released?
Yes! “Buffalo Bill!” It is extremely relevant now, given the current political climate.
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