Trey Anastasio & Classic TAB, the slimmed-down, four-piece version of Trey Anastasio Band featuring Anastasio (guitar), Russ Lawton (drums), Ray Paczkowski (keys), and Dezron Douglas (bass), launched their 2024 spring tour on Thursday night with a sold-out performance at Chicago, IL’s The Salt Shed featuring the debuts of three new songs: “What’s Going Through Your Mind”, “Outside The Lines”, and “Poppyhead”.
While the tour was initially due to kick off at last weekend’s BeachLife Festival in Redondo Beach, CA, Trey Anastasio & Classic TAB’s Sunday evening set was called off at the eleventh hour due to high winds. Anastasio and company brought that pent-up energy to Chicago on Thursday, where they finally dug in with a first set featuring renditions of TAB/Phish crossover favorites “The Moma Dance”, “A Wave of Hope”, “Ocelot”, “46 Days”, “Wolfman’s Brother”, and “Sand”.
After launching set two with a patient, funky “Oblivion” and a nimble, extended “No Men In No Man’s Land”, Anastasio led the quartet through a run of three debuts in four songs. First up was “What’s Going Through Your Mind”, a lyrically dense, electric piano-driven tune that presents a surrealistic narrative featuring various “characters” (Jennifer, Mikey, Penny, Ken, Chester, etc.) and a moody chorus motif (“If looks could kill, we’d both be broken”). Those high notes may have given Trey some trouble, but the song seems to have potential (see: the shuffling blues-rock groove that grew out of the composition’s tail end).
A watery Douglas bassline ushered in 2023 TAB debut “Outside The Lines”, which began in sonic territory similar to “The Moma Dance” before taking the title literally and floating out into abstract, dissonant space. Anastasio, Douglas, Lawton, and Paczkowski added the second of three new tunes to the evening’s setlist, the reggae-seasoned “Poppyhead“.
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“Thanks, everybody, we’re having such a good time up here,” Anastasio noted after the song. “Thank you so much for inviting us here, letting us be here, being here with us. We’re all here. Everybody’s here. … We’re gonna do a song now that’s a true story. True story. It’s called ‘Demons’. Thank you, thank you. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.” With that, the band began the upbeat song with a bouncy step and characteristically quirky lyrics (who else but Trey Anastasio rhymes “couldn’t spot her” with “medulla oblongata?”). This rendition was rough around the edges, to be sure—Trey spent most of the song laughing with Dezron—but its sound fits quite nicely with the love-and-light fare of recent years, and its “already too late, now / ready too late, now” refrain is destined to be stuck in my head all week.
With that, Trey Anastasio & Classic TAB served up an extended “Everything’s Right” and an emphatic “First Tube” ahead of a “Cayman Review”/”Ghost” encore to cap their first spring 2024 performance.
Subscribe to LivePhish+ to listen to a full soundboard recording of the Trey Anastasio & Classic TAB spring 2024 tour opener at Chicago, IL’s The Salt Shed featuring the debuts of “What’s Going Through Your Mind”, “Poppyhead”, and “Demons”. In addition to this show and the rest of the upcoming Classic TAB tour, a LivePhish+ subscription gets you streaming access to every Phish show since 2003 and much more. For more information, head here. [Editor’s Note: Live For Live Music is a LivePhish affiliate. Ordering your LivePhish+ subscription via the links on this page helps support our coverage of Trey, Phish, and the world of live music as a whole. Thank you for reading!]
Click below to view a full list of upcoming Trey Anastasio & Classic TAB tour dates. For ticketing details and more information, head here. Scroll down to view the Chicago setlist and check out a few video clips from the tour-opening performance.
Setlist [via Phish.net]: Trey Anastasio & Classic TAB | The Salt Shed | Chicago, IL | 5/9/24
Set One: Back on the Train, The Moma Dance, A Wave of Hope, Ocelot, 46 Days, Wolfman’s Brother, Sand
Set Two: Oblivion, No Men In No Man’s Land, What’s Going Through Your Mind [1], Outside the Lines, Poppyhead[1], Demons[1], Everything’s Right > First Tube
Encore: Cayman Review, Ghost
Notes: [1] Debut.
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