B List: 10 Things You Might Not Remember About Trey Anastasio’s First Solo Tour
In May of 1999, Trey Anastasio hit the road for his first solo tour. For this 12-show tour, Trey kicked things off with an acoustic set before welcoming drummer Russ Lawton and bassist Tony Markellis for an electric second set. The debut TAB tour contained plenty of standout moments, but there are a few highlights that generally get forgotten about in Trio Tour discussions.
This week’s B List continues “Trey Week” by detailing 10 Things You Might Not Remember About Anastasio’s First Solo Tour. As the Phish front man sets off to embark on a tour tomorrow with the same number of shows and same format as the 1999 TAB tour, let’s take a look back at that initial run…
10) Type THAT into The Internet
“Golden Banter” as they say. It was 1999 and none of us were nearly as familiar with The Internet as we are now. After reading that his band had covered Voodoo Child when they had not Trey accurately pointed out, “There’s all this information but half of it is wrong!”. Then, there was also Trey’s reneged promise that the first person to type a song title into The Internet for his new acoustic ditty would have naming rights. Turns out that both the Internet’s pick of Minestrone and Trey’s pick of Purple Hugh didn’t stick and Page ultimately named the song The Inlaw Josie Wales. In this audio montage we hear all of this banter plus Trey’s hilarious take on his song’s “duologies.”
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UPDATE: The nice thing about online publishing is that we can do things like this. So after being reminded by my good friend Brett aka “This guy here in the front row is yelling” reminds me of another chapter in Instrumental Internet Namegate. So here is the audio from Asheville that didn’t make it into the above montage.
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READ ON for more of this week’s Trey Week B List…
9) “People really like to see someone struggling on stage”
Trey got some sound advice from Neil Young before embarking on his first solo tour. Listen as he tells the story after a swing-and-a-miss on his first take of Billy Breathes on the Piano.
1999-05-08 Oscar Mayer Theatre, Madison, WI
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8) Fucking Aftermath
In a moment that many Phish geeks had dreamed about, the instrumental Aftermath found on The White Tape was finally performed live with a little help from co-author Roger Holloway. Hear about Roger’s history with the venue in the audio below.
1999-05-07 American Theatre, St. Louis MO
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7) Andre The Giant/Summer Of ’89
Well it took a really long time, over ten years, but the instrumental Andre The Giant that Trey played twice on the ’99 tour got words and became the Phish tune Summer Of ’89.
1999-05-07 American Theatre, St. Louis MO
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6) Bug was a TAB song first
We’ve been taking a trip down memory lane as we revisited all of the audio from the Trey ’99 tour and one constant I found was that while everyone knows that Sand, First Tube, Gotta Jibboo etc. came from this tour, a lot of people forget that there were two electric performances of Bug in ’99 before it hit the Phish stage. Hear the first one and Trey describing the songwriting experience with Tom.
1999-05-08 Oscar Mayer Theatre, Madison, WI
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5) SBD of 9:30 Club
The audience recordings from this tour are great, especially from the nice sounding theaters, but there is one leaked soundboard. It’s a partial – six tunes from the 9:30 Club, but damn does it sound good. Hear the I Can See Clearly Now > Aqui Como Alla below.
1999-05-11 9:30 Club, Washington DC
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4) “Drunken Mayhem”
Performing a solo acoustic set of music can be a struggle. While most Hidden Track readers will likely subscribe to the, “You paid money to get in, why would you talk over the music?” philosophy, the truth of the matter is that sometimes you just get a chatty crowd.
The attentiveness of the Trey ’99 crowds were a little hit or miss. Sometimes Anastasio was psyched about how attentive the crowd was (Binghamton for example.) But the club shows (9:30 Club for example) can be a tougher crowd to tame. Trey had one theme he liked repeating when discussing this and that was Drunken Mayhem. He mentioned it on more than one occasion and often paired his mayhem banter with his “New Country Song” – Name. The best was in Portland when his discussions of the mayhem led to a brief performance of Feel Like Making Love and then Name. Listen to that below. And we wish Trey luck on some quiet crowds this coming tour as he returns to this ’99 format.
1999-05-14 State Theatre, Portland, ME
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3) Trey Teases Crosseyed and Six People Notice
As incredible as a number of the performances of Sand are from the ’99 tour, there is some seriously good shit in a couple of the O-o-h Child jams. The first electric song played of the tour – not including the one gig played in February – was the O-o-h Child 2nd set opener in Ann Arbor and it gets funky. Other versions get beautifully ambient, and this version from Chicago contains some Crosseyed & Painless teases that barely gets picked up by the crowd.
1999-05-06 The Riviera Theater, Chicago, IL
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2) Horn Section in Burlington
At the penultimate gig of the tour The Trio was joined briefly by Dave Grippo and the Frederick Tuttle Middle School “Jazz Allstars”. Perhaps this was the motivation for adding a three-piece horn section the next time Trey, Tony & Russ toured. Phish also joined in for some Taj Mahal and Hendrix in the encore. Listen to Trey’s cover of Dionne Warwick’s Then Came You with help from the horn section below.
1999-05-17 Flynn Theater, Burlington VT
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1) First-ever show at the Denver Fillmore.
A late addition to the tour schedule, Trey had the honor of playing the first-ever notes inside this brand new venue in Denver. Always aware of the importance of a good opener, Trey chose this moment to perform the first – and thus far the only – acoustic version of Taste. Listen below to Trey telling the crowd about the significance of being at a venue’s first show.
1999-05-19 Fillmore Auditorium, Denver, CO
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All the audio courtesy of all the great recordings included in Trey Anastasio 1999 Project.
The only acoustic TMWSITY @ Thomas Wolfe Aud. Asheville ’99…spectacular.
@Frinkazoid Totally. In fact, Entry #8 originally was going to be about that but I switched it to Aftermath. Both choice instrumentals.
Fantastic list, that ’99 tour was such a great run of shows. Was at the gig in Albany, and had most of these shows on tape, this is bringing back all the memories of listening to those.
HT, I heart you for putting together posts like this.
I’m excited for the triumphant return to the State tomorrow night. 1st place I saw Trey. BDTNL.
The first Trey solo/TAB show i attended was that Binghamton show on 5/13/99.
Trey was right about the crowd energy! it was through the roof.
NOt only did we get Billy Preston’s “We’ll Go Round in Circles” in the 2nd set,
but we also got a hitlist of great Phish songs and Tom Marshall joining Trey on stage to close out the first set w “Sleep”, “Blue & Shiny” and “Waste”.
I had completely forgotten about this show and because Phish hadnt gone into hibernation yet (10/7/00) phans hadnt really, fully hopped on the Trey/TAB bandwagon yet.
thanks again HT for helping to recall some great memories from these clogged synapses.
Great work as always my friend. Very enjoyable. Cant wait for part II of the interview tomorrow where he will hopefully say he’s opening Portland w/ Javier Cinakowski.
Man thanks so much for posting all of these songs. SOme of these Im just now hearing for the first time and cant stop listening to them ie Silicone Fairy. Those covers were incredible too. I sure do miss TAB ’99-’03 era.. Keep up da good work!
5/13/99 was in B-I-N-G-H-A-M-T-O-N (there is no place in new york state calling binghampton)
HA. Thanks, upstate New York spelling has been corrected.
first off. amazing list. thanks!
but why can’t i find the C&P tease in O-o-h Child?
Love the Drunken Mayhem clip! Awesome post!!
I was at that Fillmore show and, Taste being my favorite Phish tune, it was pretty special.
Love the ’99 Tour – so many great covers, a great-sounding band, and Trey having a lot of fun. I wish LivePhish would release some of these shows so we’d have more than the six-song SBDs.
I was @ St. Louis….! Listening to my tapes now….Have Summer of ’89/Andre the Giant labeled as “Jam.” It was the encore before “will it go round in circles.” Hell ya! Glad I still have all my tapes and a ghetto blaster! I have access to the DAT’s of this show. Smokin’ show…wish I would have been sober..can hear my dumbass screaming on the tapes…ahhh 1999.
@tela’smuff – crosseyed tease at 8:02 in Ooh Child. BTW that 9:30 SBD sounds really incredible. If they released the whole tour in that quality I would lose my shit.
Thanks, DaveO….That brought back some early Trey tour memories.
Thanks Dave!!
so many memories i listened to the flynn theater show on my tape player in my 1989 Chevy cavilier so many times it literally just stoped working. Both the tape and the tape deck. Hope to see everyone at the palace on Saturday night. Hoping for some great stage banter during the first set!
good info about Andre the Giant…it’s a quite a bit jazzier than summer of ’89.
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