Maybe you’ve heard, Phish Summer Tour kicks off tonight in Bethel, NY and the venue is situated extremely close to Max Yasgur’s 600 acre farm, the site of the original Woodstock concert in 1969. Over the years Phish has covered a lot of classic rock artists, a number of which were at Woodstock, and looking through the setlists of everything played at Woodstock I thought this theme would be a nice way to close out the week: Songs Phish has covered that were played at Woodstock.
While a recording doesn’t circulate of Phish playing Proud Mary in 1983, we do have this a capella performance from Greensboro 2003 that emerged out of the vocal jam of You Enjoy Myself. The encore of the Europe ’97 tour opener included two songs that were covered at Woodstock: Sly & The Family Stone’s Stand! and Izabella by Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix’s Fire is a staple in the Phish cover repertoire and they have once performed it with Hendrix bass player Noel Redding, though Redding did not play at Woodstock, Billy Cox did. I Shall Be Released was played twice at Woodstock on different days by Joan Baez and Joe Cocker. Phish played it with help from Sarah McLachlan, Kevin Hearn and Neil Young (who was at Woodstock) at the Bridge School Benefit in 1998. Phish has played three songs by The Who that were part of their set at Woodstock: Sparks, My Generation (as an acoustic encore after their full performance of Quadrophenia after which they blew up a drum set) and We’re Not Gonna Take It with guest vocalist Tom Marshall.
For the first of our two-song bonus encore we have the song Woodstock by Joni Mitchell that Phish pretty much butchered at Deer Creek ’99. And while Phish has never given a full performance of any of the five songs that The Grateful Dead played at their Woodstock set, Trey Anastasio has recreated that set in its entirety at Bethel Woods as a guest of Phil Lesh & Friends in 2006, so we take a listen to Merle Haggard’s Mama Tried.
