This has been another big year for renowned guitarist Trey Anastasio. He went out on a solo acoustic tour in March, led his band Phish through a sizzling West Coast spring tour in April, followed by an acclaimed summer tour loaded with monster jams. The Trey Anastasio Band also opened for Dead & Company in Golden Gate Park to help celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead, which included Anastasio sitting in on a glorious 30-minute jam session for one of the year’s peak moments in live music. The group hit the road again in November for a two-week fall tour, before Phish wrap the year with their traditional New Year’s Eve run at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
The fall tour touches down in Akron, Ohio, here on Sunday, 23 November, for a sold-out show at the Akron Civic Theater. Fans flying back home to Northeast Ohio for the Thanksgiving holiday on United Airlines might have had the chance to watch Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning on their flight, billed as the finale in what’s become a three-decade saga. The film features Tom Cruise’s secret-agent character, Ethan Hunt, reflecting on 30 years of thrilling, chilling adventures to save the world, in this case to defeat a rogue artificial intelligence that’s ready to launch nuclear Armageddon to wipe out humanity.
There’s a synergy with Mission Impossible and Phish, who have been rocking arenas for three-plus decades now and are always scheming new ways to blow the minds of their devoted fans. Anastasio‘s music might not be able to save the world per se, but it shines a light that provides ongoing spiritual sustenance for fans as the world descends into fascism and climate chaos. Trey has written many new songs over the past decade with a more overtly positive spiritual message; the music serves as a beacon for a better way.
This year is also the 30th anniversary of Phish’s first New Year’s Eve at Madison Square Garden (with a legendary show for the ages). So there’s more synergy in the air leading up to the Akron show when Cleveland Browns rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders becomes the first Browns rookie QB to win his first NFL start since 1995! Nevermind that the 2-8 Browns merely defeated the 2-8 Las Vegas Raiders. The fact that the athletic Sanders delivered an impressive performance to bring home the road victory has Browns fans fired up for the future, thus infusing an extra triumphant vibe into the air when the Trey Anastasio Band hits the stage with the ever-inspiring instrumental rocker “First Tube”.
It’s instantly clear that the Akron Civic Theater has excellent sound to match its visual beauty. Built in 1929 and renovated in 2002, the gorgeous venue is a treat for patrons. It’s one of only five “atmospheric theaters” left in the country with a ceiling featuring a twinkling star-lit sky and intermittent clouds across the horizon. The dazzling horn section of Kenneth Whalum (sax), Jen Hartswick (trumpet), and Natalie Cressman (trombone) augments the fiery song that originated as a power trio jam in 1999. Sparkling percussion from Cyro Baptista adds another sonic level to the massive groove from bassist Dezron Douglas and drummer Russ Lawton, as do the synths from keyboardist Ray Paczkowski.
The title track from Phish’s 2024 Evolve album is one of the newest additions to the repertoire, a melodic tune with a calypso-style dance groove and whimsical lyrics that offer a broader perspective on the world. The backing harmonies from Cressman and Hartswick add another layer, as does the vibrant sax solo from Whalum and a groovy trombone solo from the very pregnant Cressman.
The cosmic funk of “Wolfman’s Brother” is a Phish classic that takes on a delightfully jazzier vibe with the horn section, completing a sensational opening trifecta. When Trey Anastasio sings, “I might be on a side street or a stairway to the stars,” the song also reveals itself to be an excellent fit for the venue’s starry-sky interior. Dezron Douglas brings a spirited virtuoso approach from the progressive/spiritual jazz world to the song and throughout the night. Douglas had big shoes to fill when he joined the band after original bassist Tony Markellis passed away in 2021, but his playing is like a force of nature, matching Trey’s Jedi skills in the tone sciences.
After a groovy jam on “Cayman Review”, Anastasio comments on what “a beautiful sounding room” the theater is, but says he oddly can’t remember whether he’s played the venue before. A survey of local fans suggests the answer is no and that he may have been confusing it with a theater in Canton, where he played a solo acoustic show. It’s a forgivable lapse considering how many shows “Big Red” has played over the years.
“Heavy Things” is another melodic classic from 1999 that often transports longtime fans back to Phish’s historic new-millennium performance in the Everglades on New Year’s Eve 1999-2000. The song was featured early on in the legendary all-night performance when Trey Anastasio informed the audience that the ABC 2000 broadcast was featuring clips from shows around the world. A joyous rendition of “Heavy Things” followed, infusing the melodic song with an extra festive vibe ever since. It’s a gem here with a great piano solo and the harmony vocals.
The bluesy “Steam” delivers one of the set’s best jams, with mystical psychedelia as Anastasio hits deep notes over a rolling bass line. At the same time, the ladies add vocal accents that sound like alluring sirens.
As is usually the case, the jam factor increases in the second set with the anthemic “No Men in No Man’s Land” as a case in point. Debuted by Phish in 2015, the song earned instant classic status thanks to its funky sound and socially conscious lyrics that seem to speak to how progressives feel stuck in a political no-man’s-land in modern America. The TAB arrangement adds extra vibrancy to the horns and female harmonies, recreating the sound of the studio recording on the underrated Big Boat album from 2016. The track had a bit of a Blues Brothers-style big-band vibe, with Hartswick and Cressman playing on it, along with the late, great sax man and former bandmate James Casey (sadly taken away by cancer in 2023).
Douglas brings a pulsing low end here that provides a radiant platform for Anastasio’s funky wah-wah leads, before Kenneth Whalum is featured for a sensational sax solo that pushes the jam to even groovier heights. Like Douglas stepping in for Markellis, Whalum’s risen to the challenging task of filling in for Casey to help the band keep grooving on.
Trey Anastasio doubles down on the energy level conjured with “No Man’s Land” by moving right into “Sand”, the dark yet fiercely grooving song that’s been another classic fan fave ever since its 1999 debut. It’s a zeitgeisty combo as he sings “Though the lies may bite, The truth has all the teeth” on “No Man’s Land”, then follows with “If you can heal the symptoms but not affect the cause, then you can’t heal the symptoms” in “Sand”. Anastasio rips some of his hottest riffage of the night over the monster groove, as the audience gets down while the heavy groove reinforces the lyrics that speak truth to power.
Hartswick throws down an excellent trumpet solo on the bluesy, funky groove of “Get Back on the Train”, as the set continues to deliver. “Night Speaks to a Woman” has been a staple jam vehicle in the TAB repertoire since 2002, but here it gets a fresh twist, as the exploration of the groove seems to mirror the jam section from Phish’s “Run Like an Antelope”. The gospel reggae vibe on “Love Is What We Are” slows things down for a breather while conjuring feel-good, family vibes all around.
The deep cut of the show follows with “Sightless Escape”, an underplayed gem from Anastasio’s 2019 “Ghosts of the Forest” side project. The upbeat song features hot riffs over an infectious melodic groove for a psychedelic lift-off that soars here under the theater’s starry sky. There’s a spiritual vibe as Anastasio sings, “We’re carried along on an astral tide / The bigger reason I can’t see / But there’s a light that’s guiding me.” Whether the song alludes to a higher power, an inner soul intuition, guardian angels, or some combination is open to interpretation. Either way, the thematic emphasis on that light infuses the hot jam with the horns accenting the guitar leads while Douglas crushes the low end for an uplifting ride.
Another “Ghosts of the Forest” song pops up in the encore slot with “A Life Beyond the Dream”, a heartfelt power ballad that delves into existential territory, with the concept that reality as we collectively view it might actually be the dream. The new “What’s Going Through Your Mind” makes it a double encore with a heady improv exploration, featuring cosmic synths from Paczkowski that resonate as a psychedelic counterpoint to the tight guitar riffage and the horns.
The concept of a guiding light connects with the tour’s conclusion, the following weekend at the Beacon Theater in New York City, for three shows honoring the fifth anniversary of “The Beacon Jams” in the fall of 2020. At a dark time when the Covid-19 pandemic had shut down the live music industry, Anastasio figured out a way to keep the music going with an eight-show residency of free weekly webcasts from the Beacon, experimenting with different band formats and arrangements.
Fans were encouraged to donate to the Divided Sky Foundation, which helped fund the launch of a new drug treatment center in Vermont. Limited edition “Beacon Jams” charity prints from artist Jim Pollock featured Trey Anastasio’s guitar as a sonic lighthouse of sorts, an apt metaphor for how his music has long served as a beacon of light for his faithful fans as the years keep sliding by. 2025 has been another shining year in the journey, with no slowdown in sight thanks to that guiding light.
Greg M. Schwartz
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