When the four members of Phish talk about getting back together after spending almost five years apart, the same words keep coming up—“gratitude,” “appreciation,” “inspiring.” There’s an almost tangible sense of relief that surrounds this reunion of one of the most popular touring bands in history, and that same feeling of fulfillment comes across in the album that resulted.
Of course, one look at the title of JOY should tell you all you need to know about how Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, Mike Gordon, and Page McConnell feel to be working as a single unit once again. It’s a simple word, but it’s not a simple emotion—for Phish, which Rolling Stone called “the most important band of the 1990s,” it comes with some hard-earned lessons, and a sense of responsibility about a project that started more than 25 years ago.
It was a long journey from the group’s farewell performance at Coventry, the last of seven Phish festivals, in August of 2004 to the sessions for JOY. The four musicians never fell completely out of touch, and started to discuss working together again a year after the split, but wanted to be sure that they were really ready to get back in the game. They all stayed busy, working on solo projects and various collaborations and dealing with off-stage life. In early 2008, Anastasio began reaching out to the others with a little more urgency, but it wasn’t until September that they all sat down together, for the first time, in a restaurant in upstate New York.
In the middle of dinner, Anastasio says he left the table.
They booked three shows for March of 2009 at Virginia’s Hampton Coliseum (Phish had previously played at the venue a dozen times during its career, and it was the site for 1998’s HAMPTON COMES ALIVE album). There was time for about a month of rehearsal, in New York City and at Anastasio’s barn in Vermont, before that historic weekend—but it quickly became clear that they were working toward something more than just a few concerts.
The Hampton performances were a triumph—the New York Times described the “eruption of exaltation” that greeted the band on stage. (A full-scale tour would follow the JOY sessions, including stops at Bonnaroo, where Phish was joined on stage by Bruce Springsteen, and Fenway Park, set to culminate in the eighth Phish festival, scheduled for Halloween weekend.) Energized by the shows, Phish went straight back into the studio, and hit the ground sprinting.
The eleven-minute mind-melter “Time Turns Elastic” was recorded after the rest of JOY was finished. Anastasio worked on the composition off-and-on for more than a year. “It started off as a solo, finger-picking guitar piece,” he says, “But it just kept growing and growing.” He thought about all the transition in his life and with his band; he envisioned himself on the porch of his old farmhouse in Vermont, and wrote a lyric driven by that sense of change. The song was then painstakingly recorded section-by-section, over the course of more than 260 takes. McConnell points out that “Elastic” captures a specific and unique area of strength for Phish. “We can learn parts and music that might be considered complicated very quickly,” he says.
The road to JOY was full of bumps, delays, and detours, but the results demonstrate just how ready Phish was to work together again. It is also a testament to four men with a life-long bond, who were always careful to protect their personal and creative relationships, even through difficult times.