Trey Anastasio returned to New York’s hallowed Carnegie Hall on Wednesday for the second straight night to close out his fall 2019 solo acoustic tour.
Trey kicked off Wednesday’s Carnegie Hall show with “Free” and “Set Your Soul Free”. As he started into the next song, “Sleep”, Trey welcomed the crowd and explained that he “just feel[s] really good” and joked that after 36 years of not asking the crowd, “How you feelin’?!”, he’d now done so three times on this tour. “Really,” he continued, “I’m more fascinated that we’re all here.” He went on to talk about how he would take the train into the city from New Jersey as a 14-year-old just two blocks from the theater, joking about how fascinated he always was by walking from Penn Station through the relatively lawless 1978 Times Square to get to this neighborhood. “I kinda liked [Times Square] that way,” he laughed. “It was a pretty neat place.”
As Trey concluded about his trip down memory lane, “I think about the number of concerts I’ve seen and just so many memories within, you know, a mile of the building that we’re in right now. And what dawns on me is that… I don’t know if you’re the same way, but live music is like the antidote to my perpetual discontent [crowd cheers]. … I just think a gathering of people and a live music concert is such a magical thing. So, I’m glad you all are here…”
After working through “Sleep”, Trey continued with a number of Phish favorites in “Dog Faced Boy”, “Waste”, “46 Days”, and the newer “Miss You”. Just the second rendition of “NICU” this tour followed, the crowd offering the obligatory cheers for the “life was a haze” lyrics before quickly and amusingly hushing up to respect the intimate magic of this historic room. A run through the beautiful instrumental “If Again” followed before Trey moved into “Ruby Waves”.
Next, Anastasio opted for “My Problem Right There”, a song from his Broadway musical, Hands on a Hardbody, that’s started to work its way back into his solo repertoire this year. After the song, Trey recognized that his Hands on a Hardbody co-writer Amanda Green was in attendance and launched into some amusing banter about the process of putting the show together and “coveting” his choreographer’s pants.
“Farmhouse”, “Joy”, “Lifeboy”, and “Kill Devil Falls” followed before Trey worked his way into a jammed-out “Twist” complete with enthusiastic “woos” from the audience. Keeping the momentum, Anastasio continued with a fantastic take on “Pebbles and Marbles”, “A Life Beyond The Dream”, and “Bouncing Around The Room” before closing his set with “Bathtub Gin”, prompting the crowd to continue singing along with the song’s guitar melody as he took a bow and exited the stage.
When Anastasio returned for his encore, the crowd was still singing, so he met that enthusiasm with a quick “Gin” reprise before executing a beautiful rendition of “Billy Breathes”. The encore kept moving with an emotional “Brief Time” that left the guitarist bleary-eyed as he pivoted into “Sleeping Monkey”. Trey took noticeable pleasure in performing such a silly song in such an iconic room as the crowd helped him out on the song’s harmony parts (Trey: “This is what they were waiting for when they built this room”). Finally, an energetic “Possum” and a sing-along “More” brought the show, and the fall solo tour, to a close.
You can watch a full, crowd-shot video of the show below:
Trey Anastasio – Carnegie Hall – 10/30/19 – Full Video
[Video: rdeal1999]
With his acoustic tour in the rearview, Trey Anastasio will now shift his focus to the upcoming Phish fall tour. For a full list of upcoming Phish tour dates, head here.
Setlist: Trey Anastasio (Solo Acoustic) | Carnegie Hall | New York, NY | 10/30/19
Set: Free, Set Your Soul Free, Sleep, Dog Faced Boy, Waste, 46 Days, Miss You, NICU, If Again, Ruby Waves, My Problem Right There, Farmhouse, Joy, Lifeboy, Kill Devil Falls, Twist, Pebbles and Marbles, A Life Beyond The Dream, Bouncing Around The Room, Bathtub Gin
Encore: Billy Breathes, Brief Time, Sleeping Monkey, Possum, More