On Monday, Osiris Media announced that it will combine three of its top Phish podcasts—Under the Scales, Helping Friendly Podcast, and Beyond the Pond—into one super program called Undermine. Premiering in February 2021, this weekly-podcast will mine Phish’s deep history with interviews, in-depth analysis of the band’s music, and examinations of broader musical themes and influences.
Undermine will feature hosts of other Phish podcasts Tom Marshall (Under The Scales), David Goldstein (Beyond the Pond), and RJ Bee, Matt Dwyer, Jonathon Hart, and Brad TenBrook (HF Podcast). The show will also host original music from Amar Sastry, who is well known on Phish Twitter as @brahmin_noodles for his solo acoustic renderings of Phish songs.
Season one of Undermine will focus on “The Early Years” of Phish’s foundational period through the 1980s. Together, this roundtable of Phish scholars as well as Marshall—who experienced the ride first hand as Trey Anastasio‘s writing partner—will mine the group’s early influences that manifested themselves in their songwriting, the developing rabid fanbase surrounding the Vermont quartet, the band’s biggest shows of the era, festival-like concerts, and the band’s initial pilgrimages outside Vermont. The first season will also look outside the realm of Phish to examine the broader trends in both popular and counter-culture music throughout the decade that helped shape the environment that the band would come to inhabit.
“Osiris exists because Tom Marshall and I came together around our passion for telling the story of Phish through the Helping Friendly Podcast and Under the Scales,” Bee, CEO of Osiris, said in a statement. “We are taking another step in the evolution of Osiris with the creation of Undermine. The teams of all three podcasts are thrilled to create the most complete picture of the early world Phish was conceived in and simultaneously built.”
Delivered weekly, Undermine will take on a narrative structure in its thorough examination of the Phish from Vermont. Marshall will serve as the narrator, while all three podcasting teams will provide interviews, analysis, context, and more. All past episodes of Under The Scales, Beyond the Pond, and Helping Friendly Podcast will still be available through their respective feeds.
“Creatively, I work best in collaboration with others. I’ve done Under the Scales for four years now and am so excited for the potential of the team we’ve formed,” Marshall, Osiris’s Creative Director. “I’ll be the guide on this journey to weave together the story of the early years of Phish, and the work of all three podcast teams will create a must-listen show for both serious Phish fans and music fans who want to learn about Phish’s place in modern music history.”
Marshall announced the launch of Undermine in a special episode of Under the Scales released on Monday. In it, he goes into detail about how the idea for the show came about and what fans can expect from the first season. Listen to it via the player below or on the Osiris Media website.
Under the Scales — 078: A Special Announcement