Fresh off their enormous Tuesday evening Halloween performance in Los Angeles, Trey Anastasio Band rolled into Santa Ana, California to play the intimate Observatory Orange County, a venue so small that Trey and company were nearly stepping off the stage as they boogied about. Lucky enough for the five-hundred fans in attendance, Trey and his compadres busted out a debut cover of Bob Marley’s “Coming In From The Cold.”

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TAB got the night started off in the grandest fashion, jumping straight into a high-energy take of “Sometime After Sunset”, the Paper Wheels track that has gained impressive momentum since its 2014 debut at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City. The instrumental “Mozambique” followed, as Trey got the conga party moving, before a heavily-jammed “The Way I Feel”, marking only its third performance of 2017. Anastasio kept it rolling with rather short but sweet renditions of “Speak To Me”, “Pigtail”, and “Magilla” before throwing the ultimate curveball of the night. The small, intimate, Southern California beach town was the perfect place to whip out Bob Marley’s “Coming In From The Cold”, the 1980 classic of off Bob Marley’s ingenious album, Uprising. TAB absolutely knocked this debut cover out of the park, highlighted by Anastasio taking the lead on vocals, without any mistake in sight.

First set’s soul-shakedown party continued with a bouncy and bubbly “Curlew’s Call,” before Anastasio led the octet through “Sidewalks of San Francisco”, a TAB song that had been recently shelved for fourteen years, until its recent comeback at Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas to open this mini TAB tour last weekend. A beautiful “Shine”, “Frost”, “Last Tube” closed out the first set, marking the first TAB performance of “Frost” in 2017.

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Anastasio and company’s infectious energy could be felt from every inch of the building, as he came back out to open set two with another Paper Wheels favorite, “In Rounds.” A sweet and silky “Sweet Dreams Melinda” followed, as Trey dialed in for the remainder of his red-hot Wednesday night performance. A highlight of the night followed, as the somewhat-rare instrumental “Spin” popped out, before transitioning into a monstrous “Simple Twist Up Dave” with Trey trading off tasty solos with his bulky horn section, consisting of masters James Casey, Jennifer Hartswick, and Natalie Cressman.

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Next up was “Tide Turns”, and old-school favorites “Cayman Review” and “Goodbye Head.” “Rise/Come Together” has developed such a sense of love within the Phish community since its debut last 4/20 in Charlotte with TAB, and putting it in one of the last slots of the night was a spot-on call by Big Red. Set two came to a close, with a horn-heavy coupling of “Ocelot” and “Push On Til The Day”, before surely surprising the boiling venue with an encore of Chuck Berry’s “Back In The USA,” recently debuted this year at TAB’s St. Louis show this past May. “Soul Planet” brought the beachfront party to a close, as James Casey harnessed his vocal range, belting out the lyrics as the venue bounced in unison with the crowd.

Watch the full first set below, courtesy of Z-Man:

Watch the full second set below, courtesy of Z-Man:

Trey heads up to Santa Monica on this “off-day”, for a performance at an event honoring Red Light Management’s Coran Capshaw, followed by two TAB shows at Oakland’s Fox Theater, to close out this short but sweet West Coast fall tour TAB run.

Checkout the photo gallery below from Wednesday night’s show, courtesy of Steve Rose.

Setlist: Trey Anastasio Band | The Observatory | Santa Ana, CA | 11/1/2017

I: Sometime After Sunset > Mozambique, The Way I Feel, Speak To Me, Pigtail, Magilla, Coming In From the Cold, Curlew’s Call, Sidewalks Of San Francisco, Shine, Frost, Last Tube

II: In Rounds, Sweet Dreams Melinda, Spin, Simple Twist Up Dave, Tide Turns, Cayman Review, Goodbye Head, Rise Up/Come Together, Ocelot, Push On Til The Day

E: Back In The USA, Soul Planet