Phish has a rich history of Sunday shows at 12880 E 146th St, Noblesville, IN. The band’s previous Sunday appearance at the venue known now as Ruoff Music Center on June 5th, 2022 witnessed a 34-minute “Sand”, and the year prior the band punctuated another weekend run with mashup mayhem as Phish fired off enough quotes and reprises to give setlist notaters an aneurysm. Looking back to the 1.0 era when the venue was still known as Deer Creek (a name it changed 23 years ago, but to which fans still desperately cling) Phish delivered a stellar half-hour pairing of “Possum” > “Ghost” on August 2nd, 1998 and, at the band’s first-ever Sunday show in Noblesville on August 10th, 1997, Phish staged the ridiculous “Rotation Jam” where Trey Anastasio, Mike Gordon, Page McConnell, and Jon Fishman repeatedly switched instrument with one another.
So, of course, there’s that saying. That saying that jam band fans repeat ad nauseam about not missing a show on the final night of the weekend. While that may or may not be a clandestine marketing strategy by Big Jam Band, historical evidence supports the phrase: Never Miss A Sunday Noblesville Show.
“We were just talking backstage,” Trey said ahead of Sunday’s encore, “We’ve been coming here for many years, and it sort of means more and more as the years go by to share these three nights with you like this. … So thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts for taking part in this with us, bearing with the heat and stuff, and it just feels really magical to still be coming back to this beautiful place with all of you. We’re all here!”
For this latest entry in that storied lineage, Phish wrapped its 2024 Noblesville run with a half-hour “Ghost” that was one of just four songs played in the 79-minute second set.
Phish opened its 35th career appearance at the Noblesville amphitheater with a first set loaded with tour debuts. Of the 11 songs played across an impressive 88 minutes, only two had been performed this year (“46 Days” and the set-closing “Antelope”). While Saturday’s show featured two callbacks to Phish’s musical Halloween costumes with covers of Talking Heads and The Velvet Underground, on Sunday the band highlighted its original work from three different Halloween shows.
“The Final Hurrah” followed the jovial opening “Party Time”, the Kasvot Växt number eliciting cheers from the sweaty audience bogged down in the Midwest mugginess with the line, “Taste the humidity.” Sci-Fi Soldier‘s “Knuckle Bone Broth Avenue” immediately followed, making its third-ever appearance and first since June 1st, 2022. The simplistic funky vamp seems like it could be a consummate first-set song, one that spurs some brief, fun jamming but isn’t the kind of vehicle to springboard into deep improvisation (though never say never). Then, following “Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan”, Phish unleashed “The Dogs” from 2014’s Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House for just the third time this decade.
Phish — “Party Time” [Pro-Shot] — 8/4/24
Speaking of “The Dogs”, Phish also loaded the first set with animalistic influences. The band’s update to Disney‘s 1964 sound effects album began a few beastly ballads, as the faithful fleet hound “McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters” appeared following a pairing of “Destiny Unbound” and “46 Days”. After taking flight with “Wingsuit”, Phish led the crowd in the “Meatstick” before a climactic “Run Like an Antelope” capped off a thrilling first set.
Phish bit straight into the meat of set two by opening up with the Noblesville “Ghost” that puts this show on the map. Despite the absence of much notable improvisation in the first set, the band was poised and ready to jump into the deep end like an Olympic gold medal was at stake. The blissful first few minutes began to take a relaxed, ambient tone as Fishman dialed back the intensity and Page’s Rhodes shaped a soft texture.
Finding his place in the space, Trey locked into blissful recurring phrases of notes high up his guitar neck, as Fishman throttled the speed up and down from relaxed to frantic in a way that kept his bandmates and the audience on their toes. This “Ghost” jam never stayed in one place very long, constantly evolving tone and tempo for the kind of extended improvisation that can keep a listener locked in for an entire half hour, all through the pandemonious noise-rock ending—a harbinger of things to come.
Phish — “Ghost” [Pro-Shot] — 8/4/24
As opposed to the band’s 2024 Noblesville closer with the 34-minute “Sand” that was one-and-done on big jams, Phish got right back into the ring following “Ghost” with a 26-minute “Soul Planet”. After again locking in with repetitious patterns, Trey began experimenting with robotic atonal notes while Mike, Page, and Fish kept things steady enough to allow such disorder. The “Soul Planet” jam followed a similar evolutionary timeline as the “Ghost” jam with its rises, falls, and breakdowns, but even though “Ghost” was a longer performance, that improvisation seemed to develop and continue to change at a faster rate than the shorter “Soul Planet”.
After nearly an hour of deep jamming, what better breather than “Billy Breathes”? The title track to Phish’s 1996 studio album had not appeared since October 15th, 2021, a gap of 129 shows per Phish.net. The sanguine composition lulled the audience into a sense of security and safety that was immediately shattered by the set-closing cacophony of “Split Open and Melt”. Trey’s previous atonal explorations served him well on a SOAM that sent a diaspora of notes and beats in every direction, reaching feedback-laden ecstasy before returning to the central riff and scooping thousands of brains back up. Finally, a climactic “Slave to the Traffic Light” encore capped off a weekend among the cornfields of central Indiana.
Up next for Phish on Tuesday is the band’s first trip to Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, MI since 1998. For a full list of the band’s upcoming tour dates, head here. Fans can follow along with the tour from home with nightly video webcasts via LivePhish. To order your webcasts for any of the band’s upcoming summer shows or purchase a discounted full-tour webcast package, head here. [Note: Live For Live Music is a LivePhish affiliate. Ordering your webcast via the links on this page helps support our work covering Phish and the world of live music as a whole. Thanks for reading!]
Phish — “The Dogs” — 8/4/24
[Video: Gregory M]
Phish — “Meatstick” — 8/4/24
[Video: Curty kobashiy]
Phish — “Billy Breathes” — 8/4/24
[Video: Curty kobashiy]
Phish — “Slave To The Traffic Light” — 8/4/24
[Video: Corey M]
Setlist [via phish.net]: Phish | Ruoff Music Center | Noblesville, IN | 8/4/24
Set One: Party Time, The Final Hurrah, Knuckle Bone Broth Avenue, Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan, The Dogs, Destiny Unbound > 46 Days, McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters, Wingsuit, Meatstick > Run Like an Antelope
Set Two: Ghost, Soul Planet > Billy Breathes, Split Open and Melt
Encore: Slave to the Traffic Light
Knuckle Bone Broth Avenue was played for the first time since June 1, 2022 (103 shows). Trey teased the Theme to the Mary Tyler Moore Show during Antelope. Billy Breathes was played for the first time since October 15, 2021 (129 shows).
The post Phish Closes Noblesville Run With 4-Song Second Set, 31-Minute “Ghost” [Videos] appeared first on L4LM.
