Mike Gordon: Cactus Comes Clean

The members of Phish have been very quiet about their upcoming reunion until today. Brent Hallenbeck of the Burlington Free Press scored an interview with bassist Mike Gordon and asked all the questions we’ve been dying to ask. Gordon gave candid answers on everything from this weekend’s Mike Gordon Band run to the rumored Steve Lillywhite project to Phish’s plans past Hampton to Red Light Management’s role in his career.

According to Cactus, Phish isn’t planning a Spring tour…

BFP: How about other Phish shows beyond Hampton?

MG: There’s definitely some talk about that. My feeling is we’ll probably do stuff in the summer, maybe not right after Hampton.

The bassist also discussed what Coran Capshaw’s Red Light Management brings to the table versus what John Paluska did for them as a manager…

BFP: How will you keep the Phish machine from getting too big again?

MG: There’s different ways. One is that we say we’re not going to let it become that, we’re not going to get involved in decisions we don’t need to and delegate more and not get wrapped up mentally on things as much. It’s a different era, too. The era of having John Paluska as our manager — he would plan out the festivals we did with no other bands, just keeping us on our own path. One thing on that is it required an infrastructure. We didn’t want to farm out the merchandise. We had people doing it in-house, designing the T-shirts and selling them. John was a great organizer and controller and wanted more to control. It required extra band meetings to work this infrastructure that was home-grown and in-house. Now it’s a different era in that sense. I still have a great relationship with John Paluska but a few of us are involved with Red Light Management (based in Charlottesville, Va.) and talking about that being the home for Phish and it’s just a whole different model. Now it’s like maybe we don’t have to have our own festival to make great music. We don’t have to do that and maybe we can be even more a part of the music industry than we were before rather than separate from it.

For me, as long as they make good music for a reasonable price I don’t care who’s managing them. If they want to delegate business decisions to concentrate on practicing, go for it. Be sure to read the whole article for more from Mike on his solo band and Phish. The level of speculation about Phish’s plans has been ridiculous lately. I think I’ve heard rumors about tour dates involving every month and city at this point. It’s nice to hear facts straight from the horse’s mouth. What do you think about Phish’s plans to embrace the rest of the music industry?