This past Monday marked the anniversary of the first-ever performance by the band we now know as Phish, when the group played a semi-formal ROTC dance at the University of Vermont on December 2nd 1983. The original lineup featured Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, Mike Gordon, and Jeff Holdsworth; that much we can all agree on. For years, fans have maintained that the group was originally billed as Blackwood Convention. However, in a recent interview with SiriusXM Phish Radio‘s Ari Fink, Trey decided that it was time to put that rumor to rest.
“Can I just say something?” Trey said in a joint interview with Fishman. “Is this just like Blackwood Convention? Which everybody like, you look on Wikipedia and everybody is like, ‘oh yeah at their first gig they were called Blackwood Convention. This is complete bullshit. I don’t know where that came from.”
At which point a confused Fish interjected, seeming to coyly believe the myth, “oh, so we were called Blackwood Convention?”
Then Trey laid down the truth in plain English: “We were never fucking called Blackwood Convention.”
Then Fish jumped back in to decry the quality of the name itself, “No. Not for one, even, second…That’s a terrible name. We would never have a name that terrible.” We can’t all think of a band name as clever and nuanced as Pork Tornado.
Afterward, Ari asked how this myth had proliferated for so long, to which Trey retorted, “there’s a lot of stuff like that… it’s called ‘fake news.'”
Watch the Phish members debunk the Blackwood Convention myth below:
On Sunday, Phish will wrap up their eight-date Fall tour with the third of a three-night run at North Charleston Coliseum in North Charleston, SC. Then comes a break of just under three weeks before the annual New Year’s Eve run at Madison Square Garden in New York City. For a full list of upcoming concert dates, click here.