Hidden Track Staff

Trey Anastasio returns to the road tonight to kick off his first real tour since 2006. We’ll be on the scene with live updates from the Roseland Ballroom in New York City, so keep checking back early and often.

While we wait for the setlist/photos/commentary to start coming in, perhaps you’d like to click around on these old setlists.

Prior Trey/Phish appearances: 3-14-1992 (Phish), 2-5-1993 (Phish), 2-6-1993 (Phish), 5-23-2000 (Phish), 2-23-2001 (The Sextet), 11-13-2001 (Oysterhead), 11-14-2001 (Oysterhead), 2-10-2005 (Tsunami Benefit w/moe.), 11-8-2005 (70 Volt Parade)

READ ON for Hidden Track’s Trey @ Roseland live setlist and blog…

We’re big fans of the Phish-Coventry blog, so it’s with great excitement that we welcome The Joker aboard to review shows in the Denver-area. First up for The Joker was Lotus at the Ogden Theater…

Often times in my life I go to see music for an escape…Friday night in Denver was no exception. Coming off the worst week in Stock Market history I came into Lotus with a body and head full of worry and negativity…as the song goes some dance to remember, I like to dance to forget.

[All Photos by Jeremy Gordon]

The Ogden was not sold out, but there was quite a scene getting in. It was one of the first cold nights of the season in Denver and standing out on Colfax in a complete clusterfuck seemed like the wrong start for me – I had hassles all week and did not need another hassle getting in. We had been outside for about 15 minutes when an underage blonde girl stumbled into us- she had big black X’s on her hand and had been kicked out. Some drunk/spun kids are endearing, but this girl was a complete mess. My friends and I tried to assist her in her quest for re-entry. As a vet of many music experiences with drugs and alcohol sometimes you just have to stand in the corner and come down…but the security and police were watching her so we parted ways at the entrance. Where were her friends? No where. (Wags Finger at Readers) Kids, you have to stick together- seeing music with friends and partying is fun but you have to look out for each other.

Upon entering and taking my first sip of beer I began to calm down. The Ogden was comfortably crowded with plenty of energy and room to move. We secured a place front and center in the balcony. I was surrounded by more music lovers than scenesters, more younger dancers than jaded vets and it felt good. The flat-billed hats and crystals were left at home and the focus was on the music. Lotus opened the show with Juggernaut, an in your face dance party song with the focus on their lights. I could not see the band until mid way through the first set, only outlines of them in front of large blue squares.

READ ON for more of The Joker’s Lotus review…

A new week brings a new contributor. Please welcome Daniel Schneier to the team. Dan recently caught two HT favorites and filed this report…

When Catskills natives, Simone, Ian and James Felice left home to a peddle music for pocket change on the New York City subways, they banded with some dicey local musicians and honed their craft hustling cross-town commuters by the thousands. A group of modern day fly-by-night grifters with a taste for big-band style country-rock and electric circus-folk, The Felice Brothers have surfaced from Manhattan’s underbelly to become a bonafide hot-ticket touring act, easily selling out the house at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, NJ on Saturday September 13.

[All Photos By Jennifer Kirk]

Idling in the crowd and chatting with friends before the show, the hometown Felices have a distinctively laid-back-country demeanor, sporting dusty denims and flannels and growing out just about all the facial hair they can muster. The crowd barely takes notice to the equally unassuming musicians in the audience however, as the opening act, singer-songwriter AA Bondy commands the stage.

The Alabama-born Bondy looks road weary with sunken eyes and a scraggly black beard, though his attitude is as upbeat as it is informal, and he laughs and banters with cat-callers in the crowd in between songs. Strapped with acoustic guitar and harmonica, the throaty folk singer hushed the room as he plucked and crooned on original tunes like Witness Blues, while a gutsy rendition of Springsteen’s I’m on Fire had the crowd hollering, up in arms with applause (no small feat in the Boss’ home state). Bondy holds a branch on the Felice Family Tree (married to sister Clare), and he’d later reemerge to collaborate with his in-laws on a number of songs throughout the headlining set.

READ ON for more about the Felice Brothers’ performance at Maxwell’s…

For the past two years Rob Salzer of U-Melt has been our go-to Mets fan. On the occasion of Shea Stadium’s closing and tonight’s U-Melt show at the Highline Ballroom, we asked the guitarist to share his thoughts on the Metropolitans home from 1964-2008. Take it away, Rob…

Many people say Shea is a dump, and needs to go. That may be true for current stadium standards, but also seems to be a superficial idea seeing as how the money needed to build Citi Field could actually feed an entire third world country.

That said (and I really think it needed to be said), I think more Mets fans loved Shea than otherwise. The very first baseball game I ever attended was in Spring of 1982, when I was all of three years old. Clearly, I can’t remember much about the experience – but I do know the Mets we’re playing the Cardinals and took the game to the tenth inning. Fittingly, they lost one to nothing against the then superior Cardinals.

READ ON for more from Rob about the closing of Shea Stadium…

Just before Hampton came alive again, Phish keyboardist Page McConnell hit the road for a four-night jaunt with Porter, Batiste and Stoltz. On Friday night, the quartet brought the MOODOO to NYC’s B.B. King’s. Andrew DeRosa kindly contributed a full report which we’ve teamed up with Jeremy Gordon’s typically stunning photographs. Let’s take a look…

“Good funk, real funk, is not played by four white guys from Vermont.” However, good real funk comes out the pores of George Porter Jr. and Russell Batiste. George Porter is a living legend. He’s up there with Larry Graham– except George Porter never got cheesy. He left that to Art Neville. With Art Neville out of the line up, the other members of the Funky Meters are unhinged. With the addition of cow-funker Page McConnell we’ve got some shit yo.

The first few tunes the band was warming up and I could barely hear Page in the mix. I wondered if this would be the case all night– a shy Page playing some back-up all night. As Brent Mydland once described his roll in the Grateful Dead, Page was “adding color”. He played a nice version of Jealous Guy, which sounded closer to the Donny Hathaway version with such a solid rhythm section behind him. It was weird hearing Page play clean piano from a Yamaha rather than the Baby Grand. After Jealous Guy, the rest of the set saw the band warmed up, locked in and inspired. Brian Stoltz can really take off on guitar and has the ability to dial in his tone. However, sometimes he just sounds like a talented New Orleans bar band guitarist– good, not great. I can’t say enough good things about Porter and Batiste. They are motherfuckers. The real deal.

READ ON for more from Page McConnell and PBS at B.B. King’s…

We tried to warn you, so hopefully you’ve book your hotel rooms and malnourished your dog. It’s official as of 3:20AM EDT, Phish will play it’s first public show in 4 years, 6 months, 19 days on March 6 at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia as part of a three night stand at the magical venue. Now comes the hard part: securing tickets to be one of the 13,800 standing inside when they hit the stage to kickoff the post-Breakup era.

PHISH HAMPTON 2009 from Phish on Vimeo.

Trey, Mike, Page and Fish are sensitive to the fragile state of the economy and have priced tickets at an incredibly reasonable $49.50 each. Tickets go onsale on October 18 at 10AM via Ticketmaster and “ticket requets” are currently available at this site. The band plans to announce additional touring in 2009 early next year.

So we’ve got roughly 22 weeks. Or 5 Months & 6 Days. 157 days etc. before Phish will play shows 13, 14 and 15 at the Hampton Coliseum.

Most played song at Hampton? Mike’s Song, Harry Hood & Weekapaug Groove share that honor with 5.

Most common songs not yet played at Hampton? Golgi Apparatus, Suzy Greenberg, Reba, The Lizards, Fee, Sample in a Jar, My Sweet One, Uncle Pen and Fluffhead.

READ ON for the setlists and some video footage from every Phish show played at Hampton…

This past Sunday night in Montreal, Vermont’s Grace Potter treated the stunned crowd at Petit Campus to a first-time played cover of My Morning Jacket’s Golden. While her band, The

In preparation for the public debut of Time Turns Elastic tomorrow evening at the Ryman, Trey Anastasio has been making the rounds in Nashville. On Wednesday, Big Red visited Belmont College to hang with the students before heading to Oceanway Studios for yesterday’s dress rehearsal.

[All Photos by Taylor Ivey]

Taylor Ivey was on the scene for both appearances and shares some photos and thoughts with us. Here’s his take on Wednesday’s “hang”…

On Wednesday at 1:00 pm, Mr. Trey pretty much just came and hung out for an hour or so at the Massey Performing Arts Center at Belmont University, here in lovely Nashville, TN. He played an excerpt from the Time Turns Elastic show. All I can say is that I’m very excited to hear the entire piece with a real orchestra (seeing that trey played with a midi backing track that he’d been practicing with). Ol’ Trey looked healthy as a horse and was very enthusiastic. He seemed genuinely happy to be shooting the shit with a bunch of music majors.

There was a little talk of the reunion. A paraphrased quote from Trey: “I can’t tell you the straight up answer, because it’s what everyone wants to hear.” So, he pretty much said it’s a go, but he can’t say so yet. That’s what I got from it at least. Someone also asked a question about Bonnaroo 2009 and Trey immediately looked surprised. He said that there would be a yes or no answer in the next few weeks. Anywho, take that as you will, but it’s straight from the horse’s mouth.

READ ON for more from Trey’s whirlwind week in Nashville…

We’d like to welcome back Sleepy Floyd for this week’s B List…

One of the most degrading jobs in the world, aside from greeter at Best Buy, has got to be the classic rock DJ. Playing a pre-programmed format, day after day – the same Rush songs followed by the same Foreigner songs followed by the same 38 Special songs followed by the same Boston songs.

The only thing more boring than working a tollbooth on the turnpike would have to be manning the controls of a corporate classic rock station. You know those stations: “100.7 KZLX – playing the greatest hits of yesterday and today.” Since when was Jukebox Hero or Shakin’ a greatest hit?

Bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Stones have a plethora of greatest hits. Yet we only hear Black Dog, Another Brick In The Wall, and You Can’t Always Get You Want over and over again. At least those tracks are halfway decent compared to these ten tunes which just need to be stopped from playing…period. Not that in this age of the iPod and satellite radio, anybody listens to classic rock radio anymore, but here it is anyways…

1. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – Blinded by the Light

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6AFCJ1dLdg

Alright, what most people don’t know is this obnoxious tune was actually written originally by Bruce Springsteen and featured on his album – Greetings From Asbury Park. But as the boss explained himself in concert, somehow the words got changed from “revved up like a deuce” to “revved up like a douche.”

READ ON for more tunes we can live without hearing anymore…