Columns

With Furthur having just wrapped its own festival and heading out for plenty of summer fun, here’s an appraisal of the past 15-or-so years of Phil Lesh-anchored bands: some justifiably great, others a real stretch for decency. Marvel at this: player-by-player, there are technically more than 50 alumni for bands called Phil Lesh & Friends, and given the various combinations these artists created for Phil over the years, a constellation of different ensembles and different flavors.

[Photo by Stephen Dorian Miner]

Here’s a look at 15 of them for the memory books, and a few players scraped from the “what if” section of the Dead-addled brain. Feel free to argue. We can take it.

5 Greatest Post-Jerry Phil Lesh Bands

1. The Q (Sept. 2000-Sept. 2003): Some of my fondest music-going memories from the past decade, and definitely – unimpeachably – the most accomplished of the individual Phil bands. What fun they were, and transcendent on their best nights, with those guitar tangles, blazing blues rockers, gooey psychedelics, killer rhythms (Molo – the man!) and gorgeous harmonies. Miss ‘em. Still.

Phil Lesh, Warren Haynes, John Molo, Jimmy Herring & Rob Barraco

2. The Jackie Band (July 2007 – Dec. 2008): A band of twang and finesse, and helpful in that it introduced the talented Jackie Greene to a much wider audience. There were some fine, though not always consistent shows from this crew, and it especially clicked whenever Barry Sless was in the mix, as it freed Larry “The Master” Campbell up to play more things with strings.

Phil Lesh, John Molo, Jackie Greene, Larry Campbell, Steve Molitz, Barry Sless

READ ON for the best and worst Phil-led lineups…

This week’s videos feature bands you should check out at Bonnaroo… In April, recent Blips artist Truth & Salvage Co. released a video for the radio-friendly track Call Back off

It’s hard to believe but tomorrow Phish will take the road to launch their massive 29-date summer tour in Chicago. Summer tour has always been an important time for Phish and this year is no exception. In 2009 the band played a mostly successful run of summer shows, in two legs, after an inspired but mostly sloppy return at Hampton in March.

Phish on Jimmy Fallon – Kill Devil Falls [via theaudioperv.com]

Last summer the band conquered their usual sheds but also returned to some unique venues in St. Louis’s tiny Fox Theater and Red Rocks, a venue that finally welcomed the band back after a 13-year banishment.

This summer’s venues are mostly the standard sheds but the exceptions are glorious. The 6,500 seat, waterside Ntelos Pavilion in Norfolk, VA is a major upgrade over the Verizon Amphitheater in Virginia Beach. The Greek Theater in Berkeley is one of those venues that fans have been fantasizing about for years and Telluride Town Park is perhaps the quaintest place the band has visited since they were touring the country in a van.

While we’re on the subject of venues, I think the time has come for Phish to forsake an entirely outdoors summer tour and start working in some smaller theater and smaller arena dates as they did last summer when they played the Fox and smaller arenas in Knoxville and Asheville. The same approach needs to come to the Northeast, where chances to see this band in an intimate setting have been few and far between. There are very few people who actually enjoy sitting on the lawn at these giant venues and there just aren’t enough pavilion tickets to go around. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for the band to play more places like Radio City Music Hall or Hampton Coliseum or even NBA/NHL arenas like Madison Square Garden or The Wachovia Center in the summer, and forsake a few amphitheater dates.

READ ON for more from Luke on the coming Phish tour…

HT contributor Wade “Wyllys” Wilby has been given the royal sendoff from tour of duty with Umphrey’s McGee as he heads off to focus on his DJ career. Here’s the

Rich Pagano + the SugarCane cups @ City Winery – April 30

After years of watching Rich Pagano cover other people’s songs with quintessential Beatles cover band The Fab Faux and Fillmore East-era Tribute act Prisoners of 2nd Avenue, the singing/songwriting drummer showed he’s quite capable of lighting up a room while performing his own songs with the SugarCane cups at City Winery in New York City on April 30.

[All photos by Adam Kaufman]

The evening started with a 20-minute set of country-tinged originals by Natalie Mishell, an artist whose debut album is currently being produced by Pagano. Mishell has a voice that gets to your core pretty quickly, quivering with emotion and wide-ranging as she moves from the high register of her voice to the low within a few measures. It doesn’t hurt that she’s got a beautiful smile and seemed at ease with an audience filled with people who had probably never heard of her before.

Pagano and the SugarCane cups came on exactly at showtime and immediately got down to business with the opening track from their self-titled release, Everything’s Alright. Pretty quickly it was clear Pagano had put together an impressive group of talented musicians to bring his songs to life on stage. Besides Rich on drums, the five-piece features Andy York and Rob Bailey on guitars, John Conte on bass and Kevin Bentz on keys. Each player has honed their skills in the studio and on the road for decades backing a legendary roster of artists including Roseanne Cash, John Mellencamp and Donald Fagen. READ ON for more of Scotty’s thoughts on this show…

In June 2000, Phish played their only headlining tour through Japan. A few dozen American travelers joined several hundred newly initiated Japanese phans on a phenomenal seven-night run of intimate venues, resulting in a series of fiery shows, unique cultural exchanges and the birth of the Japanese Meatstick. Longtime fan Stanch had been living and teaching English in Japan for a year when Phish arrived. In honor of the 10-year anniversary of the tour, and with help from a detailed journal and inputs from his traveling companions, he recounts his memories of the tour’s first four shows.

06/09/00 On Air East, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo (Pt. 2)

As the crowd began to pack (and I mean pack) the room, the atmosphere seemed to combine the anticipation of a typical Phish show with the feeling that we were all at some private party. There may have only been 500 people there, but they were 500 of the most jazzed people I’ve ever been around. Even the other shows in Japan paled when it came to the buzz that rippled through the crowd in the moments before the band came out that first night.

[Photo via FrankZappa.org]

Phish took the stage and unleashed a strong first set. Extremely well played, high energy, and exemplary of their many styles and moods, they introduced themselves to the crowd with an iron-clad grip. In response, a friend acknowledged their Axilla opener with a hello of his own: A few rows in front of Trey, he danced with a toy he had purchased on a whim in Shibuya earlier that day swaying high above his head – Captain Pecker the Party Wrecker – a four foot, inflatable penis with the word MEATSTICK written in large marker on its side. I have had a few people ask me along the way if I thought Trey had seen the Captain. Let me be clear: everybody saw Captain Pecker the Party Wrecker, including Brad Sands, who rushed over to tell my friend that yes, they were videotaping the show for Japanese TV, and – while hilarious – there was no room in the video for the Captain, because the cameras “couldn’t see the band.” Brad retired the rubber Captain to the side of the stage, but the Meatstick request had been delivered.

• 10 Years Later: Phish in Japan Pt. 1

The first set continued on with solid versions of Taste, Billy Breathes, Poor Heart and a Golgi that almost blew the roof off the place. As I looked at the Japanese on all sides of me between songs, I kept seeing people with this look in their eyes. And it wasn’t the normal, “Phish rocks” look. It bordered on more of an “I just escaped Shawshank” look. These fans weren’t just having a good time. Some of them were having a transcendent time.

READ ON for more from Stanch about the first show…