Phish’s Jon Fishman spoke to SiriusXM Phish Radio and gave his early-tour assessment of the band’s playing so far on their Summer Tour 2021. Host Ari Fink chatted with the drummer about his recent use of digital samples, preparing for tour after not playing in over a year and much more (the interview can replayed on the SiriusXM app via the Phish Radio interviews tab.)
Fish explained the use of the drum pad that houses the samples that have been showing up throughout the current tour began with the 2019 Ghosts Of The Forest tour. Fish needed to trigger certain sounds for that tour as each night was a similar production. Fish’s drum tech Lee “Scotty” Scott planted the seed that the drum pad could hold more samples beyond the ones used for GOTF.
Without revealing the source of the samples, Fish told Fink:
Scotty, my drum tech was like, “you know, when you [have] this thing up there you can put anything you want, you can sample farts.” And so it was over there on the left side aisle or in the outfield for a while …
Scotty just started putting things like the voices, the different laughs and the voices and all that. I was like, ‘oh my god.’ So I went through this whole library of stuff. I just marked the ones that I liked and had him load up page after page that I’ve sort of boiled down to — I’ve got that voices page, and I took a couple of the laughs out of there, and I put these two long effects on the same page. There’s like this wobbly sheet metal sound, which I really like.
I saw some memes some people sent me that were kind of complaining about the thing. I’m like, well, that’s just going to get you more of it. You understand that? Now it’s like the troll button.
Phish’s performance of “Slave To The Traffic” at the tour opener in Arkansas was one instance when Fish employed his collection of samples. He told Fink about leaning into the approach he took after triggering one of the sounds during the Phish classic.
“It couldn’t have been a more tasteless placement of something,” Fish said laughingly. “And then I just couldn’t not do it again.”
The drummer revealed he practiced extensively in preparation for Summer Tour 2021. Fish told Fink his pre-tour regime was more involved than what he did to get ready when the band came back from a five-year hiatus in 2009.
“You can practice a lot, but gigs are just different,” Fish noted. “Because it’s three hours of a certain type of energy and flow and there’s no way to re-enact what a set is, or a whole gig.”
The interview also touched on Fish’s thoughts about lightning director Chris Kuroda’s new rig. While noting his bandmates have mentioned being driven by Kuroda’s improvised lighting, Fish said he does not often share that experience, calling out a differently lit vocal jam within a recent performance of “You Enjoy Myself” as an exception.
The pair also discussed the so-called “4.0” era of Phish, which led to Fish talking about the evolution of the band. He mentioned that despite having 300 original songs, he still gets excited to play new material like “Thread” and “Evolve” as well as the classics. Regarding one of Phish’s classics, Fish told an interesting story about “Chalk Dust Torture”:
Every one of our tunes has been my favorite song at one point or another. All you gotta do is have a really peak experience with any one of them. And then you’re like, “oh, OK.” What actually is a funny story — for the longest time “Chalk Dust Torture” was the song I had a hard time wrapping my head around. And Trey used to always say, “you know, that’s like our best song.”
I was like, “I don’t know, man …” It was funny because back when you’re younger and you’re making that album and we were almost like the anti-hit band, you had that thing.
And then the record company is like, “well, now go out and play that a million times.” So whenever there was pressure like that, we always kind of would just pull away from that. And then my ex-wife, when she was in labor with our first child, she goes, “I want to hear the Camden 99 “Chalk Dust.” I was just like, really?
And we put it on and it blew my head off — that jam, it reaches this place where — and I remembered it happening, and I had forgotten about it, until that moment. It was at that gig where I remember coming off stage and feeling like, OK “Chalk Dust” is my favorite song now.
And now it’s the kind of thing, if I was going to try to turn someone on to Phish, I’d be like, “here, this is all you need to know about us, this is some of our best work.”
Phish tour continues tonight with the second of two shows at Deer Creek. SiriusXM Phish Radio replays each show the day after they happen. Get the latest Phish tour news via JamBase’s new Phish: The Skinny Hub featuring recaps, setlists and more.
