There were times that seemed as if you guys had been together thirty years.

I know, that’s what it felt like to me too, but those guys are so enthusiastic, they really have a reverence for the art of music, and they know Grateful Dead material, and they love to play it. Trey and Page came up with like a dozen tunes that I wouldn’t have thought to do, but they wanted to do them.

Any ones in particular?

Well it was Trey’s idea to do “Viola Lee Blues.” That was the opener.

That set the tone. The curtain opens and you do a 39 minute “Viola Lee Blues.” It was as if you were saying “we are not here to fool around!”

(Laughs) No we weren’t and I think that proved it. We just went on from there. It was tremendously exciting for me.

By the third night, people weren’t even cheering for songs any more. It was already known that anything could happen.

That’s what we are looking for. That’s the feeling we want to have every place we play. I pray that it will never be predictable. That’s what we are striving to create, unpredictability.

Many are wondering how the group came together.

It was kind of cosmic in a way. I wanted to come back on stage and perform and really demonstrate my gratitude for my new vigor. We were talking about maybe doing an Other Ones gig. Then that couldn’t happen because people weren’t available. Then I wanted to do it with Bob, but he couldn’t do it because he was making a record. Then we just sort of started casting around. Someone mentioned Phish, and I thought “I don’t really know their music that well,.” So I got some CD’s, and I was listening, then some people sent me live tapes, and I heard Trey play this one thing, and I thought, “Jeez, I could play with that guy.” I don’t even remember what it was.”

I was going to ask…

It was absolutely entrancing, it was just gorgeous, and but I couldn’t hear the piano well on the live tapes, so I went back to the CD’s and started listening to Page and what he was doing, and so I said “Well…” and my wife said “Come on, Come on, give them a call.” Somehow I got their phone numbers, and I gave them both a call. We talked about it, and they said we’d love to do it, and so we set a date, and we started calling back and forth, and like I said earlier they brought in a dozen Grateful Dead tunes I never would have thought of doing, but they wanted to them. And we got together at rehearsal and the first thing we did together was “Viola Lee Blues,” and from there on out it was like now let’s do this one, and let’s do this one. It was real rehearsal in the sense that the Grateful Dead rarely was. Grateful Dead rehearsals were kind of comical. We believed in public rehearsals.

That’s right. Working it out right there on stage. It was interesting.

And sometimes it was bloody awful.

I’ve heard Phish is a more regimented band. they do forty hour weeks before going on tour.

I wouldn’t be surprised. Their music demands that in a way. I think Page and Trey relished the chance to just stretch out. That was the main criteria I laid down at rehearsals and when we were talking is that I wanted to just open up every one of these songs as much as we could. I wanted everybody to converse together at the same time. which is what ended up happening, nothing makes me happier than that.

How about doing the Phish tunes?

I got off on that. I had thought maybe we would do this tune or that tune, and in the end, we only ended up doing one tune that I though we would do, and that was “Prince Caspian,” and then they brought up those other three, “Wolfman’s Brother,” which I had never heard, and “Down With Disease” and “Chalkdust Torture,” which I hadn’t heard either until we played them at the rehearsal, and then I went and got the CD’s and checked them out. But then I started listening to their other stuff, their other stuff is real interesting, but you can tell by listening to that that they need their forty hour weeks, because they really need to get that shit down.

It was something else watching you do the opening bass line to “Down with Disease” while Mike Gordon was sitting on the side of the stage.

(Laughs) He was probably cringing because I don’t slap.

That was great in that you kept it in your style.

But unfortunately, that’s what I have to do.

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