Tonight (April 21st), Phish will webcast their July 9th, 2019 performance at Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun Arena as the fifth episode of their ongoing archival webcast/cooking series, Dinner and a Movie. You can tune in below starting at 8:30 p.m. ET and follow along with our initial review of the show here.
Phish – Mohegan Sun – 7/9/19 – Dinner and a Movie Ep. 5
[Video: Phish]
This latest episode of Dinner and a Movie features the most recent performance thus far, following the 8/31/12 “F— You Face” show, the 7/27/14 Merriweather “Tweezerfest”, the 7/25/17’s Baker’s Dozen “Jam-Filled” night, and Magnaball night two (8/22/15).
While 7/9/19 is the most recent show to be included in the series, it’s also unique in that it was not webcast in real-time when it took place—meaning this is the first time that those not in attendance will get the chance to view the performance (aside from the pro-shot video of “Beneath a Sea of Stars Pt. 1” shared later that week).
Phish – “Beneath a Sea of Stars Pt. 1” [Pro-Shot] – Mohegan Sun – 7/9/19
[Video: Phish]
This first of two nights at the home of the WNBA‘s Connecticut Sun marked Phish’s debut at the casino resort on the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut Reservation. While this was the band’s first show at this particular venue, they have a long history in Connecticut dating back to their early days. The only other CT stops since 2009, however, had taken place in the state capital of Hartford. Many of those 3.0 Hartford performances produced notable highlights, like the 6/18/10 show that ended with a double dose of “Tweeprise” after the band had neglected to “Reprise” their “Tweezer” at Hershey Park a few days prior.
With a capacity of just 10,000, Mohegan Sun was also the smallest venue Phish played throughout the 26-date 2019 summer tour. Despite taking place on a Tuesday and Wednesday, the 2019 Mohegan run quickly sold out after going on sale, making these some of the toughest tickets of the summer.
The band hit the stage at Mohegan Sun on Tuesday, July 9th, 2019 coming off two days’ rest after a two-night stand at Fenway Park featuring a rain-delayed, one-long-set performance the preceding Saturday night. Perhaps, the unusual nature of the Fenway closer had Phish thinking creatively, as this performance wound up being notably unusual on several fronts, from bust-outs to debuts to plenty of setlist quirks and well-executed segues.
The excitement started right out of the gate with an “Energy” opener, marking the first Phish rendition of the Apples In Stereo cover since the song’s brief tenure as a summer 2013 setlist staple (a gap of 226 shows). As Trey Anastasio joked before leading the band into the tune, “I just taught him this song, so we’ll see…you know it now, Mike [Gordon]?”
Mike had no trouble picking back up on “Energy” as he helped pilot the song straight into improvisational space. After working through Page McConnell led synth-funk, nimble Trey riffing, and some sonically dark spaces, the jam found its way into a familiar major key progression.
Trey jumped on this intuitive opening, lobbing in the introductory chords to… “Weekapaug Groove”?! The rest of the band followed suit and soon enough, they were moving headfirst into the first-ever two-slot “Weekapaug”.
You could hear Trey laughing as he started to sing the song’s chorus, perhaps imagining the Internet freaking out as they tried to figure out the last time a “Groove” was played without a “Mike’s Song” before it (Note: The only other two instances in which Weekapaug” appeared in a setlist without “Mike’s” came back in 2003, and both made reference to the missing prelude, with 2/22/03‘s version capping a “Mike’s Groove” started the previous night and 12/2/03‘s featuring “Mike’s” lyrics in the “Tweezer Reprise” that followed “Paug”).
Following a relatively standard “Moma Dance”, Jon Fishman settled into the drum intro to “Maze”. Rather than leading straight into the song, however, Fish took a moment to sing, layering a rare reading of “Lengthwise” over the rhythm. Without missing a beat, Gordon entered the fold with his ominous, pounding bass line. “Maze” was now off and running—and what a hot “Maze” it was.
After a pair of Big Boat tunes in “Petrichor” and “Things People Do”, the band hammered the first set home with a rocking “Sample In A Jar” and a lengthy, agile, tempo-shifting ‘Bathtub Gin” that built up and exploded as great “Gins” are known to do.
Set two kicked off with “Soul Planet”, which abruptly shifted into “Moma”-style wobbly funk, followed by a darker vamp driven by Baker’s Dozen-style Page McConnell ambiance. The brief but potent jam slinked and shifted angrily before Jon Fishman locked into the rigid, march-like beat of Ghosts of the Forest‘s “Wider”. Trey picked up on the unexpected cue and led the band into the Phish debut of the tune. As Trey elaborated later, this debut was both unrehearsed and unplanned. When Fishman—who had played the song several times with Trey earlier in the year during the Ghosts of the Forest tour—introduced the “Wider” beat, Anastasio went with the flow, trusting in Gordon and McConnell to learn on the fly. The loose, unencumbered nature of the performance made it one worth revisiting.
The second set continued with a segue into “Undermind” and a run through Kasvot Växt centerpiece, “The Final Hurrah”. The band returned to the Ghosts of the Forest well from there with a stellar, psychedelic reading of “Beneath A Sea of Stars Pt. 1” that served as the focal point jam of the set and featured some delicately inserted “A Love Supreme” teases from Trey and Mike. As the song moved along, the band toyed freely with amelodic tonal texture and fluttery layers of sound—as if a Grateful Dead “Space” jam went out and bought itself a Languedoc. It felt intentionally a little directionless, leaving the crowd audibly thrilled by the experiment in texture by the time it was finished.
Next, after a run of newer songs to open the set, the “Ghost” left the forest and found its old story for a funky trip to the casino. “Birds of a Feather” followed, featuring the now-customary “The Birds” teases by Page (“they attack,” story narration samples) and a few notes of “Third Stone From The Sun” (a nod to the venue?) teases by Trey before the guitarist turned up the sustain for a hair-raising build-up to a soaring peak.
A breather came next with sing-along slacker ballad “Waste” before “Golgi Apparatus” took fans back to the early days to close out set two. As the band took their places for the encore, Trey asked the crowd, “You guys in a rush to get out of here?” As a resounding “no” echoed back from the crowd, the band treated them with the feverishly-sought “Foam”. This “Foam” marked the first-ever encore rendition of the ’80s-vintage Phish classic, as well as its first appearance since 7/22/17 during the Baker’s Dozen (a 79-show gap, the second-longest gap between “Foams” in the song’s history). The “Contact” and “More” that closed out the three-song encore were simply icing on the cake.
Below, you can reference the setlist and check out a gallery of photos from the performance courtesy of photographer Andrew Blackstein.
Tune in at 8:30 as Phish takes us back to last summer with the first-ever airing of 7/9/19 at Mohegan Sun.
Setlist: Phish | Mohegan Sun Arena | Uncasville, CT | 7/9/19
SET 1: Energy -> Weekapaug Groove, The Moma Dance > Maze -> Lengthwise -> Maze, Petrichor, Things People Do > Sample in a Jar, Bathtub Gin
SET 2: Soul Planet -> Wider[1] -> Undermind, The Final Hurrah, Beneath a Sea of Stars Part 1, Ghost -> Birds of a Feather, Waste > Golgi Apparatus
ENCORE: Foam, Contact, More
[1] Phish debut.
This show featured the first Energy since August 4, 2013 (226 shows) and the Phish debut of Wider. Trey and Mike teased A Love Supreme in Beneath a Sea of Stars Part 1. Ghost contained an Under Pressure tease from Trey and a Weekapaug Groove jam with lyrics. Birds of a Feather featured The Birds samples from Page and Third Stone From the Sun teases from Trey.
