One Last Saturday Night

Woke up with a shit eating grin around noon on Saturday after one of the best days of my life. (Why is it called a shit eating grin? Wouldn't eating shit cause a frown and horrible faces as opposed to a grin? Wouldn't an edible eating grin make more sense? As such, let's start over...)

I woke up with an edible eating grin at noon on Saturday after one of the best days of my life. Wrigley -> Tailgate -> Grateful Dead -> Foundation Room -> moe. While the music of GD50 on Friday didn't blow me away outside of Trey, the overall experience of GD50 did. Everything about it was amazing. The people, the vibe, the energy, the city, the weather, the experience... my pops once asked me why I chase Phish around the country, was it more for the music or everything else? With Phish it is roughly 50% music, 50% everything else. GD50 was probably 75% everything else, but that everything else was just exactly perfect.

JW, Jar and I got ready and walked outside about to Uber to The Purple Pig. We then checked the map and realized it was a 10 minute walk from the Sheraton. JW and Jar still considered taking Uber as they had a crazy night after the show, starting by getting stuck in the crush of people leaving Soldier Field. I had no idea how difficult leaving the stadium was for most people. I got separated from JW and Jar and rather than follow the flow of people down the escalator I walked 50 feet down the hallway to an exit staircase that nobody was using and exited the stadium in under 5 minutes. Luck of the Fink.

When JW and Jar finally exited the stadium, they turned right when they should have gone left. This reminded me of a saying of my moms...."When in doubt, go left." Anytime I ever have to straight up guess on a turn, I always go left because of my mother. It took me years to realize she was also giving me a political message. After finally exiting the stadium, Jar and JW went right leading to a comedy of errors causing them to ultimately walk at least a 10k to the House of Blues on an extreme non-direct path. They were a little bitter and a running joke of the weekend was that I ditched them on Saturday. This did have the effect of two of my best buddies in the world who hadn't really hung out that much until this weekend bonding and becoming life long friends. The Universe gives you what you need.

We walked into the Purple Pig on North Michigan and the place was jumping. It was going to be an hour and half wait but right as we got there 3 seats opened up at the bar. We sat down, ordered some drinks and a bunch of tapas. The food was delicious...pork, meatballs, broccoli, fried pigs ears, beets, burrata, chicken kebabs, etc. We made great conversation with the people around us (fellow heads - the restaurant and city were overtaken by our people) and the service from our bartenders Diana and Ted was awesome. We were telling tales from the night, they were laughing at us and with us, joking with us, serving us....having a real good time.

We went back to the hotel to try and nap for a bit but couldn't really due to the excitement of the day. We then got ready to head down for one last Saturday night. Note it's not really one last Saturday night as they are going to have a fall tour with the core 3 excluding Phil and Trey but including Mike Gordon (maybe?) and John Mayer. While the cash grab aspect of Fare Thee Well wasn't as obvious in Chicago as it was leading up to the event, it still was always lurking in the background. They made way too much money and with even more on the table, brace yourself for a new tour announcement next week according to my sources.

T-shirt selection time: When packing I knew exactly what shirt I was going to wear Saturday... my Grateful Dead USA soccer t-shirt. It's red white and blue, has a soccer ball in the stealie and says USA. While it goes against my general rule of wearing the band shirt I am going to see, I rationalized this by saying this wasn't quite the Grateful Dead. It was also perfect for the Fourth of July. I first wore this shirt in South Africa for the World Cup, so it was also perfect for the match on Sunday (I had a shirt picked out for that occasion but more on this in my next FTW post). I don't wear this shirt enough on phish tour, it is definitely going to become a more frequent staple on t00r. 

We finally headed down to the tailgate spot around 5:00 PM. Huge shout out of gratitude to my man Mike Pingel who got in line in his car early every day in order to secure a dope tailgate spot in the south lot. He hosted a huge crew of people pre-partying every show. It was so clutch to have a meet up spot. I had to do some hustling in the lot (ticket trades, picking up Pink Talking Fish tickets that I was buying like a madman on cash or trade for our crew, etc.) and before long it was time to head into the show.

We had the same stellar seats (Section 209, Row 1 - turns out it was right above where it says Soldier Field) and the crew tonight for the first set included Fink, Jar, JW and Miki who I have had a blast touring with since Santa Clara. Once again we were surrounded by very cool people of all ages and quickly made friends with the people next to us - Tom and Carolyn from Wisconsin, very cool people that before the show I was working to convince to go see Phish at Alpine Valley. All around us the fan love fest continued with passing joints, sharing beer and water runs, hearing tales from the vault, exchanging contact information and making future plans to meet up. Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hands.... one of the things that made FTW so special was the vibe and energy from the community. I imagine this was occurring everywhere in the stadium. Give yourselves a hand.

MUSIC REVIEW

For me, Saturday night was the best show of the 5. I felt like the band was a much more cohesive unit and the soulful and beautiful playing all night, especially by Trey, was the best of the run. 

The boys came on stage to a thunderous ovation. The crowd was amped up and ready to go. During the noodling, I heard and called Shakedown Street. What a great opener for the first set. It went on a little too long (again jamming as a band takes years and years of practice) but it had the energy and got the party started. The obvious holiday call Liberty was nicely placed in the two slot, Bobby was on lyrics and we had a good time given Jar and JW vents of the previous evening with the "Find my own way home" line. It was about this point that Tom turned to me and said he was going to see Phish at Alpine Valley. "Let Trey Sing" - he did a nice take on Standing on the Moon. The night before when JW and Jar were wandering the streets of Chicago, they saw a guy wearing the shirt and said I had to have it. Little did we know Bobby had the same thought for himself. Trey did a nice job on Standing on the Moon and then my favorite run of music started...

JW had said Friday he was expecting the bluesy set and we that's what we got for the rest of Set 1. Me and My Uncle was awesome, we were getting down and Trey was nailing the guitar licks. Cumberland Blues - the first repeat of the tour - was crushed compared to the Santa Clara Version. Trey, the little red rooster (shout out to Ric Hersh for the comment and more importantly a hugely successful weekend culminating in an engagement - mazel tov!) was on point all set. He was absolutely slaying this very bluesy set. Trey was channeling not just Jerry but every great blues guitarist in the world - I especially heard a lot of Clapton. Then Friend of the Devil which unfortunately featured Phil on lyrics. I think a small part of the reason I loved this set and stretch of music so much was the absence of Phil lyrics. He shouldn't even be singing Phil songs at this point, for the real. It's brutal. Jar quickly called Deal and it was the highlight of the run for him. What a beautiful way to end a set of music. It was the first time during any of the FTW shows I thought to myself I can't wait to listen to this set again and again, likely sunday afternoon bbq background/pool music.

For set break once again the Neil Casal music was playing. The music that I will listen to the most from FTW, the most exceptional music from the run, is the stuff produced by Neil and his band Franklins of the World. I will be listening to this stuff for the rest of my life (it's playing now as I type up this review).

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/…/ee2tmg62…/FTW+Casal+Setbreaks.zip

While the extended set break does seem very long, it is nice to have the time to take care of business, run errands, catch up with friends and reload for the second set. Some people were complaining about the length of the break but honestly I didn't mind it too much. 

I had to run a few errands at set break including going up to the 300 level to meet up with a guy on Cash or Trade for Pink Talking Fish tickets. Leaving the friendly confines of club level and venturing out to the hoi polloi was quite an adventure. Lets just say we couldn't wait to get back to the club level. We met the dude from Cash or Trade, got the PTF tickets and then headed down to participation row to meet up with Brittany to bring her up to the club level and rock the second set with us.

We got back up to our seats and settled in right in time for the second set. Opened with Bird Song... YES!!! Phil is on lyrics... NO!!!! After getting through the lyrics the band was locked in again. It appeared that after the bluesy first set, we were going to get a more psychedelic set. Golden Road was awesome and beautiful to hear. Lost sailor -> Saint of Circumstance was another special combination of music, definite highlight. We were all dialed in having a good time. They had teased the West La on Friday so it wasn't a surprise that they dropped it Saturday night, it was just a surprise it was in the second set. As soon as we heard it coming we gave a huge toast to my boy Lance, this is definitely his song, who I have also been on Fare thee Well tour with since Santa Clara. I have known Lance for 25 years yet we have really bonded and become true brothers the last six years during 3.0. I really dug the playing on this (back to the blues) number and was getting the funk down.

Then Trey took the lead on Foolish Heart. Much to my surprise, this might have been the highlight of the weekend for me. Trey absolutely crushed the lyrics and played some of the best guitar work I have ever heard. It was at this point that I thought to myself I was witnessing one of the greatest performances of all time. Trey truly brought IT for Fare the Well. I am blown away by how amazing he was all weekend, especially Saturday night. The feeling and effort and emotion and soul in his playing was some of the best I have ever heard. Thank you Trey for putting in the time and effort and heart and soul and energy into this. Also to my surprise, if I had to let a deal go down and wager on what song was going to make the Phish rotation this summer, the song I would bet on would be Foolish Heart. It sounds like a song that 3.0 Phish and Trey would really enjoy playing. My top musical highlight from FTW, Foolish Heart.

Then we got Drums/Space. I will once again voice my displeasure for Drums/Space. Did we really need it every show? It is such a momentum killer, although it did once again give us the opportunity to catch-up, talk story, re-up on supplies and hit the bathroom. Maybe if I just think of it as an intermission it isn't so bad. Jar had asked on Friday why they didn't just take an intermission, on Saturday I told him that if they did it would be another 2 hours before they got back on stage. Stella Blue came out of space (kind of a slow and boring pay off after making us sit through Drums/Space) but did make me think happy thoughts of the McGs. Didn't love Bobby's lyrics on Stella but Trey, on point all night, nailed the solo. One More Saturday Night got us back up and boogying, it was a perfect way to end a most enjoyable night of music.

US Blues was the obvious encore and a perfect call for a night that featured lots of locations in the US and some incredible Blues playing. Then one of the more kick ass fireworks show I have ever seen went off. Much like Finn, Jake Dog and Jackson, I generally don't like fireworks but this was special. 

After the show we made a quick escape via the exit I found to Pingel's car. We had a crew of a dozen people or so that were heading to the Pink Talking Fish late night show. I had a glow stick USA flag that I held in the air and like the pied piper led our crew to Reggies. For most of the walk it was the same awesome vibe as all weekend but at one point we ended up in a different part of Chicago - the part of Chicago that includes hookers and pimps, the part of Chicago that hosted some of the 47 murders that occurred July 4th weekend. We finally got to Reggies and Pink Talking Fish plays Dead were already on the stage.

Pink Talking Fish was one of the best after shows I have ever seen. These guys absolutely crushed it. Do what you can to go see these guys. We walked in during eyes and they seemlessly went back and forth into Phish, The Talking Heads, Pink Floyd and the Dead. They played YEM and Tweezer - not easy songs for anyone - and nailed them. The even had a sick vocal jam including some Herbie Hancock. The front man (Dave Brunyak) is a total showman in a very good way. He was putting on hats from people in the crowd, waving a flag during the show, getting down. The rest of the band are all tight, 4 guys with chops and tons of talent that are having fun. These guys have serious potential and should follow Phish around the country playing after shows. Such an awesome time, we had a blast. 

After the show we were gathering outside and Dave Brunyak came out with the same American flag and led the crowd in a rendition of God Bless America. It was hilarious and appropriate. We then had some funny conversations with the band...

Me to Zach, the drummer: "Your representation is out of Beverly Hills?"
Zach: "Are you asking me or telling me, because I don't know. I'm just the drummer."

Miki to Ricky, the keyboard player: "You were awesome, sounded just like Bobby."
Ricky: "Um, thanks, I guess. Well I guess it could be worse, at least I didn't sound like Phil."

Ricky was looking for a ticket to Sunday GD50, I worked on lining one up for him and eventually found one at the lots but ultimately was unable to get it to him as he was loading gear after their pre-show and heading over to Soldier Field much later than I wanted to go in. This was one of the few times I kind of dropped the ball this weekend as the dude deserved a ticket but despite our communication couldn't make it work. I really hope he got in.

We got back to the hotel and ordered a pizza that showed up at 5:00 in the morning. Maybe not the best idea but it sure tasted good at the time. Suns out, guns out, time for bed. I will fondly remember July 4th, 2015 for the rest of my life.