Slade Sohmer

Ace Cowboy’s Phish Hampton Review: Trey-Rod and the Three Jeters

[Originally Published: March 10, 2009]

In honor of today’s anniversary of the Phish reunion shows, we wanted to reprint Hidden Track founder Ace Cowboy’s thoughts Hampton.

To accurately describe what it’s like having the popular rock band Phish back on the Hampton Coliseum stage, let me steal a quip from that lovable ol’ drunkard Arthur when he tells Linda about owning a yacht: “It doesn’t suck.”

[All Photos By Dave Vann]

This weekend was absolutely top-drawer, a once-in-a-lifetime gala event. This weekend was all about energy, and not in that typical hippie bullshit geodes and quartz kind of way; not “energy, brah.” This weekend was about everyone’s stories being interwoven with their own, connected by being part of something bigger, a participatory séance, the resurrection of a lost world. This weekend was about thousands of people at the exact same time falling collectively back in love with something they once adored so much.

Page is getting most of the accolades, and deservedly so. I’m not sure if he’s louder in the mix than ever before, but he played magnificently this weekend. Fishman and Gordon, as well. I made a joke on my Twitter page that Trey is now the worst player in the band, though I really don’t believe that. Page, Mike and Fishman clearly all had better weekends than Big Red, but there’s an unfair burden on Trey – no matter how well or poorly Page and Mike and Fish play, all eyes will always be on Crimson Dago. Everything he does on stage is magnified and parsed and agonized over.

Trey’s got the unenviable task of playing the hero or the goat every single night. It’s like he’s the A-Rod on a team full of Jeters. He’s become Trey-Rod. Let’s take him out from under the microscope for a while. He fucking nailed every single melodic, chirpy jam on the run; he just needs to find his sea legs on the so-called Type II jams. And he will. Anyone really want to go on record and doubt him? Just say so.

READ ON for the rest of Ace Cowboy’s thoughts on the Hampton run…

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