Phish on Thursday celebrated the release of its 16th studio album, Evolve, with an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. In addition to performing a live rendition of the album’s title track, the band’s members—Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, Mike Gordon, and Page McConnell—joined Fallon and The Roots‘ Questlove and Black Thought for a Phished-out a cappella rendition of Aerosmith‘s “Love in an Elevator”… in an elevator.
Thursday’s Phish appearance came eight years after the band’s last trip to The Tonight Show on October 10th, 2016 in support of Big Boat. While the band wasn’t able to appear on the program in April 2020 to celebrate the release of Sigma Oasis, Trey did make a pandemic-altered appearance in August to promote his quarantine solo album Lonely Trip. Instead of Mike Gordon, Page McConnell, and Jon Fishman, Trey teamed up with The Roots, the show’s house band, for his pandemic rocker “I Never Needed You Like This Before” as the show’s first in-person musical guest amid the slow return to normalcy following quarantine.
Related: Read Questlove’s Review Of Dead & Company At Sphere [Photos]
The brief “Phish in an Elevator” sketch served as the show’s pre-recorded cold open. The clip begins with Fallon, Questlove, and Black Thought in an elevator at 30 Rock. When the doors open at the next floor, Page, Fish, Mike, and Trey pile in. Before long, the septet ditches its aloof facade, looks up at the camera in unison, and breaks into a harmonized rendition of the 1989 Aerosmith smash, substituting the word “love” for “Phish.” While they briefly take an awkward pause when an NBC suit joins them on the elevator, he quickly makes his exit to allow for one final refrain. Watch the clip below.
Phish in an Elevator with Jimmy Fallon, Questlove, & Black Thought – The Tonight Show – 7/11/23
Later in the episode, Phish hit the stage in Studio 6B for a live rendition of the new album’s title track, “Evolve”. [Side note: In what felt a little like conscious fashion adjustment from the band’s last Tonight Show performance in 2016, when Trey’s flashy Gucci shirt became the viral headline of the night, the guitarist opted for an all-white outfit this time around. Page, on the other hand…]. Watch the performance and view a selection of photos from Thursday’s Phish appearance on The Tonight Show below.
Phish – “Evolve” – The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
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The Phish Tonight Show appearance aired just as the band’s latest LP, Evolve, went live on streaming services. Heralded by pre-release singles “Evolve“, “Oblivion“, “Hey Stranger“, and “Life Saving Gun“, Evolve includes many tracks (“Hey Stranger”, “Oblivion”, “Evolve”, “A Wave of Hope”, “Pillow Jets”, “Lonely Trip”, “Life Saving Gun”, “Ether Edge”, “Mercy”) that have already made notable showings during live Phish shows. A number of the songs—including “Oblivion”, “Pillow Jets”, “Monsters”, “Ether Edge”, and “Valdese” (previously listed as “Valdise”)—were initially debuted by Trey Anastasio Trio during a summer 2023 weekend run in Denver. Several first appeared on non-Phish releases like mercy (“Hey Stranger”, “Mercy”), January (“Life Saving Gun”), and Lonely Trip (“Lonely Trip”, “A Wave of Hope”, “Evolve”), while “Human Nature” just saw its live debut last month on Mike Gordon’s solo run of West Coast shows. “The Well”, yet another song first revealed by Trey Anastasio Trio in Denver and later incorporated into late-2023 Phish performances, will also be included as a bonus track on vinyl copies of the album.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Anastasio explained that road-testing the material before taking it to the studio was a crucial part of the album’s recording process. “Some of our better albums,” he reflected, “were albums that were recorded after we had tried the songs out live for a while, because they always get so much better when we play them live. We would make these albums, play the song live, and within two shows, the song was 20 times better than the one on the album. And then, I always wished that we could go back and record it again. So that was kind of goal number one: ‘I want to play these live, at least two or three times.’”
He added, “Before we went in for this album, I made myself a secret, private solo-acoustic version of the album, after having played the songs live. I did that just to look at each song one more time, and make sure that it was in the right key, all the lyrics were great, all the lyrical phrasing was great. And that all the B sections and everything were completed. And then, we went back out, played everything one more time, live. Literally, I think we did them all once, and then we went straight into the studio and recorded the whole thing in two days. So there was an enormous amount of prep work on the material, particularly the vocals, background vocals, songwriting, and song structure.”
The band also approached the recording of the songs in a particular fashion, emulating the process of iconic acts like Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, and The Band. “I like old-fashioned albums where people did takes,” Trey explained to Rolling Stone. “So, Aretha Franklin, the Band, they always did takes. They set up in a circle. The best Beatles albums were like that. ‘We used take seven.’ They played together. And that’s our greatest strength as Phish.”
Listen to Evolve, the new album from Phish, via the Spotify player below. The album is also available on vinyl and as part of various merchandise bundles here.
Phish – Evolve – Full Album
Phish is set to resume road operations in mid-July for a 2024 summer tour featuring multi-night runs in Mansfield, MA (7/19, 7/20, 7/21), Uncasville, CT (7/23, 7/24), East Troy, WI (7/26, 7/27, 7/28), St. Louis, MO (7/30, 7/31), Noblesville, IN (8/2, 8/3, 8/4), Grand Rapids, MI (8/6, 8/7), Bethel, NY (8/9, 8/10, 8/11), and Commerce City, CO (8/29, 8/30, 8/31, 9/1). The band’s 2024 schedule also includes Mondegreen, Phish’s latest curated festival, due to take place at The Woodlands in Dover, DE from August 15th–18th. For ticketing details and more information, head here.
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