Phish – Trey Anastasio (guitar, vocals), Jon Fishman (drums, vocals), Mike Gordon (bass, vocals), and Page McConnell (keyboards, vocals) – has earned one of music’s most dedicated fan communities for its blend of idiosyncratic songcraft, extended improvisation, and immersive live performances, all fusing a variety of genres into their own freewheeling sound and vision.
Formed in 1983 in Burlington, VT, Phish has released 15 studio albums, beginning with 1989’s Junta and continuing through 2020’s Sigma Oasis, released on the band’s own JEMP Records. In 2002, the band launched LivePhish, which offers high-quality soundboard recordings of every show, regular releases from Phish’s substantial archive, and 4k live webcasts. LivePhish+, the band’s streaming service, is the most successful artist-driven service of its kind, offering unlimited on-demand access to the entire LivePhish catalog.
Widely recognized among live music’s most beloved and inventive artists, Phish has played over 2,000 shows since their formation, regularly selling out multiple nights at arenas, amphitheaters, and stadiums across North America including such annual traditions as sold-out Labor Day weekend runs at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park soccer stadium outside of Denver, Halloween extravaganzas, and four-night New Year’s Eve celebrations at NYC’s world-famous Madison Square Garden. To date, Phish have performed 83 sold-out shows at The Garden since their debut performance there in 1994. In 2017, Phish performed The Bakers’ Dozen, a 13-night concert series that saw the band play 237 unique songs, repeating none during the entire run. The 13 shows concluded with Phish being presented with a banner commemorating the unprecedented series, which hangs in The Garden’s rafters.
In 1996, Phish presented The Clifford Ball, the first of 10 self-produced festivals, held on the decommissioned Plattsburgh Air Force Base in upstate New York, and influenced a new generation of American rock festivals including Bonnaroo among others. Phish marked the turn of the millennium with a New Year’s Eve festival at Florida’s Big Cypress Indian Reservation, drawing a record-setting attendance of 80,000 people, playing an historic seven-hour set, culminating at dawn on New Year’s Day.
In 1997, Phish founded The WaterWheel Foundation to oversee the band’s various charitable activities, harnessing the kindness of the Phish fan community to create positive change. WaterWheel fulfills this mission by collecting donations for local nonprofit organizations in association with Phish tour dates via WaterWheel’s Touring Division. WaterWheel also supports non-profits based in Phish’s home state of Vermont, especially those focused on cleaning up the Lake Champlain watershed. WaterWheel chooses beneficiaries from a wide sphere of causes including those working to protect the environment, promote social justice, fight food insecurity, provide music education, register voters, and those that help women and children, the homeless, and others in need. Phish recently performed two benefit concerts at Saratoga Springs, NY’s Broadview Stage at SPAC, raising over $3.5M for flood recovery efforts in Vermont and Upstate New York. For more information or to donate, please see www.waterwheelfoundation.org.