On Friday, Phish opened its eight-show September 2025 tour with a two-set headlining performance at Louisville, KY’s Bourbon & Beyond, the four-day festival touting a wide array of big-name artists from different musical worlds. The jam band’s first Kentucky performance in nearly three decades marked a rare appearance for Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, Mike Gordon, and Page McConnell at someone else’s music festival—the first such gig for Phish since Bonnaroo 2019.

For many of Phish’s fervent followers, “non-Phish festival sets” and “tour openers” carry a similar disclaimer: temper your expectations at the door. Just as the first show of any tour, no matter how solid, will ultimately be outdone as the band heats up on the road, a Phish show wedged in the middle of a multi-genre festival will never feel quite as immersive as one of the Phish-only festivals the band famously throws itself.

On paper, Friday’s Phish tour opener/Bourbon & Beyond debut looks like a classic “festy set” packed with crowd-pleasers and light on rare tunes and big surprises, but the novel setting and circumstances in which it took place ultimately made it a wholly unique and rewarding Phish experience.

Trey Anastasio Gets To Bourbon & Beyond Early To Fanboy Over Waxahatchee & TV On The Radio [Photos/Videos]

At Live For Live Music, we follow Phish’s tours via nightly recaps, and this September tour opener at Bourbon & Beyond surely deserves its own spotlight before the circus heads to Birmingham, AL on Saturday and Sunday night. But on the ground in Louisville, it’s difficult to fully consider Friday’s Phish sets outside the context of Bourbon & Beyond as a whole with two more days of music still to go.

We’ll have more thoughts to share on Bourbon & Beyond 2025—including Phish’s performance—once the weekend is finished, and we’ll have nightly recaps for you on the rest of Phish’s shows this weekend. For now, here are some scattered thoughts on Phish’s festival set/tour opener on Friday night for the fans following along from home:

-Bourbon & Beyond’s two side-by-side main stages are flanked on either side by video screens. Between the two stages is another much larger video wall nearly as big as the stage itself. While Phish opted to turn off the side-stage screens for its performance—a common practice for this band—the video wall at stage right remained active throughout the show.

-With the side screens deactivated, Phish’s headlining performance somehow felt more intimate than any other Bourbon & Beyond main stage set all day. At the same time, the enormous video feed running right next to stage made it feel notably bigger and more expansive than your average Phish show. Have you ever watched enormous Page and regular-sized Page perform “Harry Hood” at the same time without turning your head? I hadn’t until Friday night, either.

-A sentence I never thought I’d say: “In the last hour, I’ve seen Gavin DeGraw, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Khruangbin, and Phish perform live.”

-You gotta love a stage with a high ceiling at a Phish show—really lets the light rig stretch and sprawl in dramatic fashion. CK5 and co. had a field day in Kentucky.

-Fun fact: When Trey says they’re taking a “very, very, very short break,” he means 15 minutes on the dot.

-They may have been playing the “hits,” but they didn’t hold back on the jams that grew out of them. More than a few songs went big, from the peaking “Wolfman’s Brother” in set one to the explosive, ethereal “Chalk Dust Torture” and deep-space “2001” > Radiohead-reminisent “Carini” tangent in set two.

-Genuine question: Was there an existing ASL sign for “lumpy head” or did the interpreter last night just make that up on the fly? Either way, bravo.

-Your friend who goes to Bourbon & Beyond every year but doesn’t really care for Phish will totally stay for the first set with you, but they’ll probably dip out to beat the traffic when “Sand” starts sounding like a mechanical fever dream.

-Even if you saw the “Character Zero” > “First Tube” festival encore coming a mile away, it’s hard to argue against that one-two as the big finale for an atypically uninitiated audience.

Phish – “Character Zero” – 9/12/25

[Video: DocsPicks]

For those following Phish out of Kentucky today, safe travels to Birmingham. For those sticking around… we’ll have plenty to keep us occupied today with sets by Sturgill Simpson, Pixies, Jack White, Ringo Starr, Dawes, Third Eye Blind, and more. See you out there. Wear sunscreen.

Below, view the setlist, a selection of videos, and gallery of photos (via Jake Mulka, Steve Thrasher, and Nathan Zucker) from Friday night’s Phish performance at Bourbon & Beyond 2025.

Phish’s September tour continues on Saturday and Sunday in Birmingham, AL. Find tickets to upcoming Phish tour dates here. If you can’t make it in person, you can watch each of the band’s upcoming shows live from anywhere via nightly LivePhish pay-per-view webcasts, available a la carte or in multi-show bundles here.

Setlist: Phish | Bourbon & Beyond | Louisville, KY | 9/12/25
Set One: 46 Days, The Moma Dance, Free, Wolfman’s Brother, Timber (Jerry the Mule), Evolve, A Day in the Life > Possum
Set Two: Sand > Chalk Dust Torture [1] > Light -> Ya Mar, Also Sprach Zarathustra > Carini > Everything’s Right > Harry Hood
Encore: Character Zero, First Tube
[1] Unfinished.
Notes: This performance was part of Bourbon & Beyond and took place on the Barrel Stage. Trey and Mike teased A Love Supreme in Timber (Jerry the Mule). Trey teased Leaving on a Jet Plane in Sand. Chalk Dust Torture was unfinished. Trey teased The Secret of Life (The Dead Milkmen) in Harry Hood.

Phish – “46 Days” [Pro-Shot] – 9/12/25

Phish – “Sand” [Pro-Shot] – 9/12/25