In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Page McConnell discusses details regarding Phish’s newest album Sigma Oasis. The interview also touches on comparisons between Phish and the Grateful Dead, Phish Food ice cream, watching bandmate Trey Anastasio perform during Fare Thee Well and how Phish will continue during the coronavirus crisis.

“The process was just a little bit different than it had been on the last two [albums],” McConnell said of Sigma Oasis. “We weren’t working with an outside producer, and we’d actually gone into the session with the idea that we were going to do another four-way writing session, and do one in the afternoon and one in the morning. It just ended up that we focused on this.”

“In terms of my playing, I’m really happy with a lot of the piano playing. In the past, it’s hard for me sometimes to listen to some of my playing, and I don’t actually listen to our records, but I have listened to bits of this over the last couple weeks,” McConnell explained. “It’s still holding up. I spent probably five or six days doing overdubs in my studio, which actually is where I am now. It wasn’t something I had necessarily planned on doing, but I just really dove in and reorganized my studio, had all my keyboards in one room and was able to just roll through these songs. Some of them I spent quite a bit of time on. A song like ‘Thread,’ I probably was working on for five days straight, just on keyboards.”

When asked about Phish gaining Grateful Dead fans when the Dead stopped playing, the keyboardist pushed back a bit. “You know, just to back up to the premise of the question, although when the Dead stopped playing, there was certainly the perception that all these fans came over to us,” he said. “From my perspective, when that was actually happening, the Dead fans didn’t think as much of Phish as they did of the Dead, and vice versa.”

“But what ended up happening was the real influence that I felt when the Dead stopped was all the people that came to Phish weren’t there for the music,” McConnell continued. “They were there to sell stuff in the lots and try to make money. It was a little bit of an ugly scene, sort of the darker underbelly of their scene just came over to our lot because it was the next lot. Not because they liked Phish.”

“I think actually, after Trey did the Fare Thee Well concerts, I saw a lot of people that very next tour that looked like old Deadheads that were coming to check us out that hadn’t seen us before,” he concluded.

When asked if he went to the Fare Thee Well shows, McConnell noted that he was there and that it was an extremely cool experience. “I went to all three in Chicago. It was so fun,” he explained. “First of all, I had never seen Trey up on a big stage before. Certainly not a big-ass stage like Soldier Field. To see him up there, and for me to be able to go to a concert and see Trey up there playing, jamming on all these songs I know with my friends was an experience I’d never had before. My friends go to see Phish, and they get that experience all the time, but I’d never had it.”

Later in the interview, McConnell admitted that he eats “more Cherry Garcia than Phish Food.”

Finally, McConnell was asked about the state of Phish during the coronavirus outbreak. “Mass gatherings: it’s the thing you can’t do, and it’s the thing that we do. I do my best to try not to look too far forward, and just try and be present with the kids,” he said.

Read the full interview here.