Today, Phish officially released their 13th studio album, Big Boat, produced by Bob Ezrin. While many fans had heard leaks of the album before today, the official release has come along with a series of interviews with the band members about the album in the Wall Street Journal. Today, WSJ shared a new interview with keyboardist Page McConnell, where he talked about compiling the new album and how the new work will translate to the stage.
Big Boat was Phish’s second album with Ezrin (after 2013’s Fuego), and McConnell talked about the evolution in that relationship from the last album to the new one: “We brought about 40 songs, or at least ideas, to the table for both this and Fuego so they are not going to all get on there. There’s a process to make it on an album. On Fuego, Bob was meeting us for the first time and took control. He rated the songs and said there’s a handful that absolutely have to be on this record and others to discuss or tweak. When we did it for this album, we had the same amount of songs but we edited down more collectively and went from 40 to 22, and there are some really good songs in there! Then we started playing and trying to develop the remaining songs and some don’t quite come together and fall off the table, or we like them but they don’t seem to fit. I imagine we will keep playing a lot of them live.”
In addition to the process of making the new music, Page discussed the reasons and the forces behind their continued studio work, explaining “I think the bigger reason that we continue to make records is it fuels the live shows; it’s fodder for what we do every night. We get excited about playing new material, our fans are always encouraging us to try new things and every time we practice, every soundcheck, we’re working on learning new material and getting excited that we’re stretching and creating. Every new album fuels the live shows. Some of them will end up being staples and others won’t but every time we increase our song list, we’re able to do more different shows and different tours.”
You can read the whole interview in the Wall Street Journal here.