The jam scene has been abuzz with confirmation of the long-awaited appearance of Trey Anastasio on WTF with Marc Maron, announced last week in a post by the comedian/podcast host simply captioned, “Ok, it happened. Now you’ll have to wait for it.” As audiences eagerly “wait for it,” Maron briefly previewed the episode during a recent Instagram live chat on Sunday.
While Maron’s Sunday livestreams are often the place to see him play guitar or check in with his cats (Boomer lives!), this most recent session revealed some informational nuggets and background on the upcoming Trey episode. Marc fully understands the significance of the interview, saying, “It seems like the Phish people are pretty excited,” (Well, here we are, Marc).
The Phish community has been badgering Maron for years to talk to the guitarist, something the comedian acknowledged. As he explained, his hesitance to speak with Trey came from a place of mutual artistic respect, saying, “I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t even really listened to Phish until a couple weeks ago.”
“A lot of people have been DMing me like, ‘You gotta talk to Trey. You gotta talk to Trey. You’d have so much to talk about,’” Maron explained. “Out of a fundamental respect for the guy’s work, if I’m not locked in with it or I don’t know about it, and it’s been going on for 40 years or something, I always felt it was a little rude [to talk to him].”
Those worries were ultimately assuaged when Anastasio recently surfaced in Maron’s neck of the woods in L.A. and—through his people—asked about coming on the show. Marc was upfront and explained he doesn’t know much about Phish, to which they allegedly retorted, “He’s game!” As for the actual content of the interview, Maron briefly said, “A lot of recovery talk, a lot of history talk in terms of Phish. It was good.”
While Maron admittedly isn’t a Phish guy, he does have jam band bona fides going back to seeing Jerry Garcia Band (and having a memorable mushroom trip). He has also performed the Grateful Dead‘s “Brokedown Palace” and railed against kids hating on the Dead in one of his classic tirades. Maron even discussed his hesitance to take the plunge on Phish in a bit from his 2017 Netflix special, Too Real.
“I don’t know how much time I’ve got left. And what if I like [Phish]? That’s like the rest of my life, right? I’ve got no more room in my heart or my mind for another jam band, man,” Maron joked. “I’ve got half the Grateful Dead catalog in there and three or four Allman Brothers songs. I’m maxed out.”
During Sunday’s Instagram video, Maron elaborated on the reason he never got into Phish in the first place.
“When they were really coming on the scene, when they were building their thing, it was the late ’80s, and I was building my thing. … All I did was comedy,” Maron said. “I didn’t know what the f–k was happening. I missed a lot of music between 1988, 1989, and like 2000. I listened to music but it wasn’t my thing to keep on top of it. … I just didn’t give a f–k. And now I gotta do catch-up.”
Maron has not shared a release date for the WTF interview with Trey Anastasio. In the meantime, revisit Marc’s recent interview with jamgrass wunderkind Billy Strings and an amusing 2023 chat with Primus’ Les Claypool.
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