#orebolo

[geekynerfherder]

'Orebolo at The Capitol Theatre, Portchester NY' by AJ Masthay.

18" x 24" fine art linoleum block print, in signed, numbered and embossed Regular Artist edition of 100 for $65; a signed and numbered giclee print in a Kaboom Holo Foil Artist edition of 50 for $100; a signed watercolour 1/1 original for $500; a signed 18.5" x 25" graphite on paper 1/1 original for $1500; and a 18.5" x 25" signed charcoal and pastel on paper 1/1 original for $3500.

On sale Tuesday February 13 at 12pm ET through Bottleneck Gallery.

[theghostpinesmusic]

Okay, it's Sunday, I'm having fun, and I've had a lot of coffee, so I'm going to do one more of these. This one will be a little different than usual, and likely shorter, though, because I'm covering an Orebolo video for the first time!

For anyone not in the know, Orebolo is an acoustic side-project-y thing that features three of the members of Goose: Rick and Peter (who both sing and play guitar in Goose already) and Jeff (who plays percussion and occasionally sings in Goose, but plays the upright bass and sings in Orebolo). They play mostly Goose songs and cover a few of the songs Goose covers, but they also have a bit of their repertoire (both originals and covers). Long story short, though it's a little reductive, I like to think of them as acoustic Goose: a side project that provides a different take on the band's songbook that allows the lyrics, melodies, and harmonies of the songs to shine through more due to the acoustic instruments and (relative) lack of long-form jamming. As a good example of them Doing Their Thing, you can check out this take on Radiohead rarity "True Love Waits" from the 2/10/24 Capitol Theatre show.

Even Orebolo jams from time to time, though, and while those jams aren't the twenty-plus minute behemoths that are the tentpoles of most Goose shows these days, the more these three guys play together in this configuration, the more interesting their improvisation gets. Personally, I think some of the charm of an Orebolo show is that you get to hear a bunch of songs, and I certainly don't tune in hoping to hear a twenty-minute "Madhuvan" or anything like that; however, during their most recent three-show run this February, there were a few songs that featured some really compelling improvisation, and wouldn't you know it: one of them got posted to their YouTube channel!

This is Orebolo's take on "Thatch" from 2/10/24, a song that is so groove-based, and so funky when Goose plays it that I was surprised to hear Orebolo not only make it their own, but also create a jam out of it that is one of my favorites by anyone in 2024 so far.

Again, there just physically aren't as many instruments going here as you'd hear during a Goose (or Phish, etc.) show, and the jamming isn't quite as complex in a technical sense, so I'm not sure how much I'll have to say about it, but I wanted to share this in the spirit of thinking/writing about something a little different than the usual.

Before I get going, if you're interested in a comparison of "Thatch" as it's played by both bands, here's a video/write-up I did awhile back of the Amsterdam "Thatch" from Goose.

So, this Orebolo version might not have the full-rock-band groove of Goose's take, but Jeff's early hammering on the upright bass (and the crowd's appreciative reaction) are more than "good enough" as an alternative.

It's not part of the jam, per se, but the little instrumental break in the middle of the song proper is great, and a good example of the "usual" extent of an Orebolo jam.

Fortunately for us, they ultimately decide to take "Thatch" for a full-on (acoustic) ride, starting at 5:53 with a quiet breakdown. At first, Peter and Rick hold down the fort rhythmically as Jeff goes nuts on the bass, moving the melody forward. I like Rick's little nod here, as if to say "Yeah man, go for it."

Soon, Peter adds in a repeating little blues figure, and then he and Jeff are trading the melody back and forth while Rick plays some ridiculous rhythm guitar to keep things chugging along. There's a brief moment of tension and then a release at 6:48 that moves things along to the next portion of the jam, which features Peter playing rhythm while Jeff and Rick both improvise some melodic content.

I feel gross for having written "melodic content" as a way to describe music, but I'm leaving it in to self-flagellate publicly.

Jeff moves to the bow, which rules, and Rick responds by arpeggiating at a speed that frankly makes me jealous. If there can be such a thing as an ambient jam with only acoustic instruments, I think we're approaching that here.

Completely ignorant of context, I have no idea why Rick says "Yeah!" into his mic here, but I like to think he was just really into it.

This section of the jam builds until about 8:40, when the tension breaks, much to the joy of the audience. The jam actually continues in a similar vein after this, albeit with Rick and Peter playing interlocking melodies while Jeff takes a more traditional rhythm-bass role, but it feels like a sort of "outro" to the previous build, at least initially.

Around 9:30, the energy starts to build again, in large part thanks to Jeff just ripping the bass. Rick lays down some amazing melodic playing at 10:00, and that slowly brings the jam back down to a simmer...until Rick signals moving to the conclusion of "Thatch" proper at 11:00.

Again, maybe it's not the multi-stage intergalactic exploration that I usually cover here, but I like this jam a lot for the fact that it doesn't rely on straight-up shredding at really any point, there's a lot of wonderful interplay between all three players, and, frankly, these three Orebolo shows have been the main thing I've found myself going back and listening to a bunch over the last couple of months even with all the new Goose content that's come down the pipe lately. They're that good.

MAYBE I SHOULD JUST WRITE ABOUT OREBOLO ONLY FROM NOW ON IF I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

[5280customframing]

‘Orebolo’ print by Jane Demarest custom framed using acid-free matting, UV glass and metal frame!

[beenwaytoolongatsea]

Orebolo - Tennessee Jed

[krispyweiss]

Dead Ahead to Mexico

- Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, et. al to join most of Dead & Company to “celebrate the Grateful Dead songbook” Jan. 12-15, 2024

Dead Ahead invites Dead Heads to Mexico.

The event, slated for Jan. 12-15, 2024, in Mexico, will pair all of Dead & Company - sans John Mayer - with Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Don Was, Rick Mitarotonda, Margo Price and Sturgill Simpson for Dead sets.

This Frankenstein band will play two nights of “curated collaborations;” Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros Featuring the Wolf Pack will headline one night; and Oteil & Friends and Lettuce will celebrate the Jerry Garcia Band on the other. Mickey Hart’s Noche de Ondas will play a late-night set.

Orebolo, LP Giobbi, Sierra Hull, Brittney Spencer and Jaime Wyatt will support.

Ain’t no time to wait; tickets go on sale Sept. 15.

9/11/23

[itunestopalbums]

The Chateau - Orebolo

The Chateau Orebolo Genre: Indie Rock Price: $8.99 Release Date: June 7, 2024 © ℗ 2024 Orebolo, in association with No Coincidence Records http://dlvr.it/T80JKv

[concerthopperblog]

Gearing Up for Goose's Capitol Theatre Run & Summer Tour 2024!

Goose, a jam/psychedelic rock band from Wilton, CT., is getting ready for an eventful year in 2024 that all starts with a highly anticipated four-night run at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, N.Y. A little over a month after this four-night run, Goose’s Summer Tour 2024 kicks off by headlining the inaugural Solshine Music & Arts Revue at Three Sisters Park in Chillicothe, IL. (May 24-25). FYI – Orebolo (featuring Rick, Pete, and Jeffrey of Goose) is also on this stacked lineup. ICYMI: Orebolo and the legendary Sturgill Simpson made some very happy music fans at this year’s Dead Ahead Music Festival in Rivera Cancun, Mexico when they performed “Breakers Roar”, a song from Sturgill’s Grammy Award-winning 2016 album, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth. Seeing this kind of creative collaboration with some of my favorite artists solidifies the reasons why I love music so much. For those who know me personally, anytime that I get to bring up Sturgill Simpson in any shape or form, I am taking that shot 10 out of 10 times. But I digress.

So far, the Summer Tour 2024 will conclude on June 30th at Westville Music Bowl in New Haven, CT. Along the way, Goose will complete some epic multiple-night runs: a two-night run at The Factory in St. Louis, MO., a two-night run at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre in Greenwood Village, CO., a three-night run at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta, GA., and a two-night run at Thompson’s Point in Portland, ME. Tickets for the Summer Tour 2024 are still on sale with some good seats available at various locations. In addition, one dollar for each ticket sold for the Summer Tour 2024 will be donated to Greenpeace. Sadly, The Capitol Theatre run has long been sold out, but you can still find some tickets for sale through verified resale markets like cashortrade.org.

Goose consists of Rick Mitarotonda (guitar/vocals), Trevor Weeks (bass), Peter Anspach (keyboards/guitar/vocals), Jeff Arevalo (percussion/vocals), and newly added Cotter Ellis (drums). Last year was an extensive year of touring for Goose, although Goose and founding member Ben Atkind (drummer) mutually parted ways after their annual Goosemas celebration in Hampton, VA. After a few months of speculation between the fans as to who would be chosen to sit behind the drum kit, Goose announced the addition of ex-Swimmer drummer Cotter Ellis. And to the fan’s surprise, Goose also released Ted Tapes II on multiple streaming platforms. This jam session would be the first with Cotter on the drums and let me tell you this jam session is something special right here. So, knowing that information, this tour is a DO NOT MISS! Which tour date will you see Goose during the Summer Tour 2024?

So far here are the announced tour dates for Goose in 2024:

APR 7, 2024

The Capitol Theatre

Port Chester, NY

cashortrade

sold out

 APR 8, 2024

The Capitol Theatre

Port Chester, NY

cashortrade

sold out

 APR 9, 2024

The Capitol Theatre

Port Chester, NY

cashortrade

sold out

 APR 10, 2024

The Capitol Theatre

Port Chester, NY

cashortrade

sold out

  MAY 24, 2024 - MAY 26, 2024

Solshine: A Music & Arts Reverie

Chillicothe, IL

tickets

 JUN 4, 2024

The Factory

St. Louis, Mo

vip

tickets

 JUN 5, 2024

The Factory

St. Louis, Mo

vip

tickets

 JUN 7, 2024

Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre

Greenwood Village, CO

vip + travel

tickets

 JUN 8, 2024

Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre

Greenwood Village, CO

vip + travel

tickets

JUN 10, 2024

Steelhouse

Omaha, NE

vip

tickets

 JUN 11, 2024

The Midland Theatre

Kansas City, Mo

vip

tickets

 JUN 12, 2024

Everwise Amphitheater at White River State Park

Indianapolis, IN

vip

tickets

 JUN 14, 2024

Northlands Music & Arts Festival

Swanszey, NH

tickets

 JUN 15, 2024

CMAC

Canandaigua, NY

vip

tickets

 JUN 16, 2024

Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica

Cleveland, OH

vip

tickets

 JUN 18, 2024

Red Hat Amphitheater

Raleigh, NC

vip

tickets

 JUN 20, 2024

Fox Theatre

Atlanta, GA

vip + travel

tickets

 JUN 21, 2024

Fox Theatre

Atlanta, GA

vip + travel

tickets

 JUN 22, 2024

Fox Theatre

Atlanta, GA

vip + travel

cashortrade

 JUN 23, 2024

Skyla Credit Union Amphitheatre

Charlotte, NC

vip

cashortrade

 JUN 25, 2024

Thompson’s Point

Portland, ME

vip + travel

tickets

 JUN 26, 2024

Thompson’s Point

Portland, ME

vip + travel

tickets

 JUN 28, 2024

Mann Center for the Performing Arts

Philadelphia, PA

vip + travel

tickets

 JUN 29, 2024

Forest Hills Stadium

Forest Hills, NY

vip + travel

tickets

 JUN 30, 2024

Westville Music Bowl

New Haven, CT

tickets

vip

If you have followed Concerthopper and my blog in the past, then you may have read some of the previous reviews of the band Goose: Goose: Sold Out at The Eastern (Night 1) (2021), Goose: Two Nights at Pullman Hall! (2022), and Spring Tour 2023: Goose Live @ Georgia Theatre (2023). Get your Goose fix at Concerthopper.com!

Curious about Concerthopper? You can find more music-related articles, interviews, various photo galleries, indie music reviews, our ‘Bars & Bites’ section, our exclusive “She Said, She Said” column, or become a Concerthopper at www.concerthopper.com. Sign up for our monthly newsletter by following this link: The Setlist! Please ‘Like’ our page on Facebook and follow us on Instagram to stay up to date in 2023, on all music-related events/festivals such as High on Fire: Live at The Senate (Columbia), Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol w/ NAW & Pretty Please @ The Earl, SESSANTA: Primus, Puscifer, & A Perfect Circle: Live at Ameris Bank Amphitheatre (Atlanta),  Earthless w/ Minami Deutsch at The Earl, Shoot For The Moon Tour: Sierra Ferrell Live at The Eastern, Seasons World Tour 2024: Thirty Seconds to Mars & AFI Live at MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre, Mr. Bungle: Live at The Tabernacle, Ashes of Leviathan Tour: Mastodon & Lamb of God @ Ameris Bank Amphitheatre, An Evening with Goose (Night 3) @ The Fox Theatre (Atlanta), The Deathless Tour: Set It Off w/ Crown the Empire, Caskets, and Death By Choice Live at Water Street Music Hall (Rochester), Least Anticipated Album Tour: A Day To Remember @ Outer Harbor Live at Terminal B, S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival w/ SLASH, Larkin Poe, ZZ Ward, and Robert Randolph – Live @ The Orion Amphitheater (Huntsville), Doyle & Otep Live at The Ranch (Ft. Myers), Leftover Salmon, The Infamous Stringdusters, & The Kitchen Dwellers: Live at The Eastern (Atlanta), Weedeater w/ Telekinetic Yeti & Restless Spirit: Live @ Grantski Records, Blackout Tour Pt. 2: From Ashes to New Live @ Water Street Music Hall (Rochester), RUCKUS! Tour 2024: Movements Live at Water Street Music Hall, We Legalized It 2024: Cypress Hill Live at Tabernacle, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: Live at The Fox Theatre (Atlanta), The Godmode Tour: In This Moment Live @ Landmark Theatre (Syracuse), Pallbearer w/ Rwake & The Keening @ The Masquerade (Atlanta), and King Dunn Tour: Live at The Masquerade by following us on all social media formats: Concerthopper on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  You can also follow my concert hopping on Facebook and Instagram.

[posterdrops]

Reposted from @oreboloband Fresh prints for tonight’s show in Westport, CT by @thegrassspot !! 🌻 Paper + Foil variants available at the merch table along with a fresh tie dye tee design 🫠 Doors open at 6, two sets starting at 7pm. See you tonight!! #orebolo #oreboloband (at Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts, Westport) https://www.instagram.com/p/CiOc0-gub2T/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[pgoeltz]

___

01/30/2022

The Regency Ballroom

San Francisco, CA

**Set 1**: Labyrinth, I’m Writing a Novel {1}, Tumble {2}, Wysteria Lane, Me & Julio Down By the Schoolyard {3}, So Ready

**Set 2**: Arise {4}, Elizabeth, Into the Myst > Rock the Casbah {5}, Elmeg the Wise

**Encore**: Hot Tea

{1} Father John Misty

{2} Slow, Mellow Yellow

{3} Paul Simon, Goedde joined for whistling

{4}Orebolo, FTP?

{5} The Clash

[theghostpinesmusic]

The Internet was out for most of Sunday. A great excuse to shovel snow and chill out to a whole Orebolo show.

[theghostpinesmusic]

This was a fun set to play: a little less jammy than usual, but lots of first plays, both originals and covers. I'm going to be traveling for a few weeks, so I'm sharing two highlights from the set while I take a break from livestreams until later in March.

This was my first time playing "Country Disappeared" by Wilco. It's one of my favorite songs of theirs, but it took a conversation with a friend of mine last week to remind me of that. I learned the song quick and this is my first time playing it all the way through. It made sense to segue into a jammed-out version of "Invocation" at the end, so I did.

Enjoy, and thanks for listening!

Setlist and notes below:

Back To Ohio *! California Stars (Wilco/Billy Bragg) ! She and Me Hey Sue (Do You Miss Me Now?) ! Bruised Orange (Chain Of Sorrow) (John Prine) ! Jezebel Jam -> Albuquerque (Neil Young) Fear Ride Trains Ways To Fly -> Ways To Fly, Pt. II ? Please Don't Let Me Go Bright Girl (Hey There) ? Country Disappeared (Wilco) -> ? Invocation Machine Of The Universe It Burns Within (Orebolo) ? * Fast version ! w/ harmonica ? First time played

[theghostpinesmusic]

This was a fun set to play: a little less jammy than usual, but lots of first plays, both originals and covers. I'm going to be traveling for a few weeks, so I'm sharing two highlights from the set while I take a break from livestreams until later in March.

This is an original tune I wrote years ago and is on my Ride album, but I've just never gotten around to playing it during a livestream. This isn't a perfect version by any means, but you get the idea, and the short outro jam bit was fun.

Enjoy, and thanks for listening!

Setlist and notes below:

Back To Ohio *! California Stars (Wilco/Billy Bragg) ! She and Me Hey Sue (Do You Miss Me Now?) ! Bruised Orange (Chain Of Sorrow) (John Prine) ! Jezebel Jam -> Albuquerque (Neil Young) Fear Ride Trains Ways To Fly -> Ways To Fly, Pt. II ? Please Don't Let Me Go Bright Girl (Hey There) ? Country Disappeared (Wilco) -> ? Invocation Machine Of The Universe It Burns Within (Orebolo) ? * Fast version ! w/ harmonica ? First time played

[theghostpinesmusic]

So while I was off enjoying the acoustic stylings of Orebolo and the depths of psychedelic madness plumbed by Phish, Goose released video of a second jam with their new drummer. This one is in the style of the last one, and in all likelihood was recorded on the same day, or at least during the same sessions. I wrote a bit about my New Drummer Thoughts and weighed in on what's now labelled on YouTube as "Gemini I" previously, so I'll skip all of the usual run-up for now and jump right into the music from this "Gemini II" clip.

Like the "Gemini I" clip, this one starts off mid-jam. With Peter on the xylo tone and the rest of the band laying down a sort of dark blues groove, I could almost see this being a continuation on from the end of the previous video...but everyone's wearing different clothes, so I'm going to assume it's not. Jeff's shirt game here is only like a 3/10, but I'll bump him up to 5/10 for the ponytail.

This initial foray continues for a few minutes as-is, and I'm loving Rick's tone here, as it's extra crunchy. We don't get a lot of direct looks at Cotter early on, but he sounds just as busy as in the last video (again, in a good way) and is still meshing with Jeff in a way I really dig.

At 2:18, Rick starts repeating a phrase, and this seems to push the band out of the blues space into something a little more driving. It's a subtle change initially, but then they start dropping the volume at 3:18 and Peter brings in the synth. For a bit here, I feel like Trevor is taking the lead in the jam, with Rick and Peter playing off of him, and that's pretty much always a good sign.

One of the drummers (it seems like it's Cotter, but I can't see) changes up the beat at 3:51, and that takes us in the jam's new direction. Peter sets the tone for this section with a repeating xylo riff while Rick lays back a bit and colors in the edges.

Now, this is my second listen to this jam, and to be honest on the first playthrough, I found this whole section pretty unremarkable and, at points, sort of boring. On second listen, though, I can hear all five members throwing ideas out there and playing off of each other, and while it's still not necessarily the most dynamic Goose jam I've ever heard, I'm enjoying it a lot more after listening for these details. It's certainly a mellower bit of music than anything from "Gemini I," but it's not a bad performance by any means.

The build that starts at 6:00 is especially cool, and sounds a bit like the chords to "Hollywood Nights," which the band covers from time to time. Over the next two minutes or so, en route to a great peak section, I feel like the drums (Cotter and Jeff both) do an excellent job of helping add tension and then release it at the appropriate moment, which is a thing that either a) didn't happen as much with Goose previously or b) I only noticed now because I'm hyper-fixated on the drums due to the purpose of this particular video. Regardless, the moment at 9:00 when the drums switch up the beat to accommodate Rick's guitar peak is a great moment of band synergy. Somewhere in there, too, Peter moves from the xylo patch to playing the xylo with one hand and the Rhodes with the other. Fun!

We land in a spacey synthesizer wash that pretty quickly turns into a sparse minor key (I think) section. Everyone sounds locked in here again, and Cotter's jazzy style of playing really shines in this kind of space. Peter's reverb-y piano makes things sound just the right amount of haunted.

I absolutely love what Cotter starts playing at 11:10, and where it drives the band to next. Again, I never want to belabor the Phish comparisons, but this definitely gives me Jon Fishman vibes. Rick's tone gets absolutely filthy here, too, but this section is Cotter's and Trevor's show.

Cotter switches out of the backbeat at 13:40 or so, and the pace picks up again. I'm not sure if it's the mix or my speakers, but here Peter and Trevor are both way more audible than Rick is. I really like what he (Rick) is playing, but it seems to get lost in the mix a bit...which, honestly, is fine because the others are also more than pulling their weight.

Around 15:30, Rick starts throwing some dissonant licks out there and the rest of the band picks up on it. It's apparently disorienting enough that the camera person gets lost behind the drum kits and can't find their way out. This leads to a huge release into a Rick solo at 16:11 (interspersed with a few more moments of tension, for fun). Hopefully the cameraperson made it out alive.

This super-tinny tone is maybe my least favorite sound Rick makes with his guitar on a regular basis, but I can't argue with the results here. There's some truly unhinged moments of spacey tension coupled with some huge peaks here, and while this is sort of Goose's bread-and-butter, they're pulling it off flawlessly here after playing with this new guy for...maybe a few weeks? The bit of chaos that starts at 17:45 made me laugh out loud. More octave shifter from Rick, please!

At 19:23, the band backs off a bit and we end up in another interstitial space. Again, Cotter is great here while the rest of the band is figuring out where to go next. At 20:00 or so, they seem to settle on a vaguely Latin groove, something I felt like they started doing a lot more often starting during the fall Euro tour. This incarnation is a really delicate, restrained piece of improv that really emphasizes all three rhythm players (as well as Rick's and Peter's abilities to lay back and accent well).

Eventually, Peter starts taking a bigger role in the developing jam, and he sounds great here on piano. I've always enjoyed him as the keys player for the band despite his relatively small amount of experience with the instrument, and I felt that he took a huge step forward skills-wise late last year. With that in mind, it's nice to see him get a chance to shine here for a bit, before Rick takes over with a solo at 23:55.

I don't mean to say that like it's a bad thing: there actually isn't a ton of Rick straight-up ripping it during this whole jam, so it feels appropriate for him to crush a solo here to bring things home. Cotter switches up the beat one last time at 26:00 to really put an exclamation point on things, and we get a nice, slowed-down "landing" with a Peter outro.

As I said above, I liked this a lot more and (obviously, based on word count) found a lot more to listen to in it on the second playthrough. Thanks for reading!

I'm looking forward to new Goose shows, but in the meantime, I've got a few Phish jams in the queue that I'll likely get to in the next few days.

[theghostpinesmusic]

Wow, so I fell a little bit out of doing these jam posts for a few weeks...but it was for a good reason. Basically, the reason is that I haven't been watching as many jam shows as usual. Orebolo, which is Goose's three-man acoustic side project, played three shows at the Capitol Theater leading up to and over the Super Bowl weekend, and I decided to watch all three of them live.

I love Orebolo a lot, but they tend not to "jam" songs out, per se, because it doesn't fit the acoustic format quite as well, so there weren't any real "highlights" from those shows to share in the way I normally share here. If you're interested in what an acoustic Goose-adjacent trio sounds like, though, this might be a good start for you. I will not be writing 5,000 words about it.

After watching three nights of Orebolo in a row, I took most of last week off, though I did take my first step into Phish's summer 2023 tour, on the heels of rekindling my romance with their music earlier this year by watching their recent New Year's Eve run. I decided to start mid-tour, at the beginning of a seven-night run at Madison Square Garden (because the only places you can see Phish these days are New York City and Mexico, but I digress), with 7/28/23. And it was glorious. This was almost certainly the best Phish show I've ever seen via webcast (i.e., not in person at the venue). It totally blew me away for pretty much the entire show, and the only reason I'm focusing on the "Split Open and Melt" from the second set is because that's all the official YouTube channel shared from the show.

Let me geek out on a macro level briefly, though, before we zoom in to the micro level.

The show (and run) opens with "Evening Song," a short, weird little ditty from the band's most recent album, Sigma Oasis. While most "people" (by which I mean terminally-online fans of the band) have shat on this song since the first time it was played, I love it for what it is and, for a band that has had to continually reinvent their ability to surprise their fans for forty years without the effort to surprise itself becoming a parody, this is a neat, subversive opener call.

The following version of "A Wave Of Hope" is twenty of my favorite minutes of Phish improvisation since COVID. The following jam, out of a great cover of The Talking Heads' "Cities," is a perfect sister piece. We're not even halfway through the first set at this point and I could go home happy. The bluegrass of rare cover "The Old Home Place" segues neatly into a bombasstic (see what I did there?) version of "Free," then we finally get a breather, if a poignant one, with a gorgeous rendition of "Brian and Robert." "Stash" comes next, and even though it stays within the box, it's a really well-played version, with the band gelling wonderfully even if they aren't launching for deep space. "My Soul," a song I feel like I haven't heard in at least ten years, ends the set.

"More," a catchy, hopeful, Beta-Band-ish tune that also catches a ton of hate from "fans" for being any and all of those things, opens the second set. I'll be honest and say that this, like "Evening Song," really only works as a song choice with the right context, but man, that context is present on 7/28, as the brief pop-ish tune leads into a head-spinning near-hour of music that goes: "Ruby Waves" -> "Plasma" > "Simple" > "Mountains In The Mist." I won't weigh in on each of these individually, as the point of this post is ostensibly to talk about what happens after, but suffice to say that the jamming during each of the first three tunes gets more and more jaw-dropping weird and deep until, at one point in the "Simple," I reached that state of jam-listening bliss that I only really manage to get to via Phish shows: where I am simultaneously having the absolute best time listening and can no longer follow the beat of the song. That this suite of tunes lands in "Mist," which is hands-down my favorite Phish ballad, is just perfect setlist-building.

As a fan who loves this band to death but has also found their setlist-building a bit suspect since, uh, 2009, I fully expected this amazing set to end with a few short, tossed-off, supposedly celebratory tunes that nonetheless served more to kill the glorious vibe than anything else. This has, in my opinion, often been the band's way at least up through 2019. They've broken this habit a bit since COVID, though, and fortunately this set ended up serving as a great example of this improvement: post "Mist," instead of "Number Line" or "Show of Life," they immediately launch into "Split Open and Melt," a song whose composition has basically demanded that it be a consistently good, crazy, evil jam vehicle for the band since...1993?

And now we arrive at the point where, admittedly with the help of some mind-altering substances, music melted my entire skeleton and shot it into space.

I've written a lot already, so I'll spare you the song history and blow-by-blow regarding the composed part of the song. Suffice to say it is, to my mind, one of Phish's Phishiest compositions: it includes a little of everything that makes their original songs both great and so weird you might just give up partway through, and knowing that in all likelihood they are going to Summon The Aliens in a few minutes makes listening through it even more fun.

The improv starts at 4:35, and was also the point that, in the moment, I thought to myself "If I'd have known they were going to play 'Split Open and Melt,' I would have taken slightly fewer drugs tonight."

Mike and Fishman continue the rhythm of the song's outro for a bit early on, but Trey and Page immediately depart from it, both playing interlocking but dissonant-sounding melody lines. At 5:05, we are thirty seconds in and there are already multiple, incompatible rhythms happening. I lack the musical knowledge to really describe what's happening here in a technical sense, but Trey is using loops, Page's organ playing gets downright evil, and it feels like my brain is being pulled in two directions at once, but I like it, it makes going insane seem fun.

The laser light rods do not help.

I have a recurring note I sometimes include in my setlists when I'm watching shows as a fun little inside joke (just for myself, because I don't know how to make friends and this is how I cope), and it's to note times when Fishman is particularly bonkers on the drums. The note is "What the fuck is Fishman." The section of this jam that starts at 6:40, when the camera starts zooming in on him, was one of those moments. This is one of those times that, if it was still the 2010s, I would shout "I can't even!"

By 7:20, we have realized that the aliens aren't coming down to Earth because they've been here all along.

Trey asserts himself a bit more directly shortly after this, but only to scare us even more. I'm amazed at the crowd shot at 8:50: these people still look like they're having fun. I'm not sure if my psyche could survive experiencing this from the front row.

By 9:30, one of Trey's droning, heavy, looped riffs has come to dominate the space for me, making this whole thing into a demented mantra, a siren song that melts the wax in your ears and transfixes you while it eats you. Trey decides to play with the octave shifter here because why the fuck not.

Between Page's synths and Trey's completely distorted guitar, there's almost a glimpse of a melody at 10:10, something that almost sounds like "What's The Use?", but it's swallowed quickly by the whirlpool of sonic mayhem and crushed.

You have the sense of an eternal, ageless eye opening and looking at you, incomprehensibly. Are those ghosts wailing? Are you dead?

Nah, it's just a Phish show.

I will say that I honestly worried for anyone in the audience and on psychedelics at 11:20. The combination of the lights and the music are the stuff of nightmares, and I'm watching this with a relatively intact grip on reality.

Now, I of course love Phish jams, and the weirder the better, but I'll admit that when I was watching this for the first time "live," the moment at 12:35 when Fishman returns to the "Split Open and Melt" outro beat, I felt the relief of a man who'd been tossed overboard in a storm and had just found a life preserver to grab onto.

Shortly, everyone follows Fishman's lead and heads back into the song proper, but I love how some of the loops and distortion continue in the background for a bit, a reminder of our narrow escape from The Darkness.

The song's goofy ending, at 13:52, seems especially incongruous here, and made me laugh a lot.

Well, I hope you survived that listen. I had a lot more fun writing a bit more creatively about it and less technically than I usually do, but it felt appropriate for this particular jam.

While I've been off doing other stuff, Goose put out a second jam with their new drummer, so I'll probably cover that next. Maybe tomorrow! Cheers!