Deliberateness
On Trey & Beef Stew
Back when I lived in Portland, OR I spent a year cooking in fine dining. After dabbling in corporate banality for the previous eight months, I decided I wanted to work with my hands, learn something of a time-honored craft, and gain the ability to wow my friends and family with badass, home-cooked meals. Whatever personal niceties I anticipated receiving from the job came in due time, but along with these personal rewards, the job also provided me with a number of brutally honest lessons that have yet to retreat from my mind.
I was a hard worker, I was passionate, I loved the food I cooked, I was eager to learn, and being green as could be, was a true gift to my chef who had to waste enough of her time managing the drug-addled, hungover, egomaniacal dimwits that make up much of the restaurant industry. Yet for whatever I provided in a sense of accountability and hunger was sorely overshadowed by a fatal flaw of deliberateness.
See, when you’re working on the line — especially on a harrowing Friday night, or Sunday Morning Brunch shift — hunched over, sweating, listening to a ticket machine recite an unyielding death-knell, multi-tasking in your mind how many steaks you have on the grill, how many you have waiting to hit the grill, how many are warming in the sally, what temps each of them are, while setting a timer on six orders of fried chicken, and making sure you keep an eye on your sauté pan so you can toss your broccolini and radicchio in before the oil starts to smoke, all the while stealing glances down line to the guy on Fish and the weeded newbie on Apps in hopes you’ll be able to match each of your very different, and very complicated orders, so they can hit the pass at the exact same moment so as to ensure the entire six-top out on 43, the couple celebrating their anniversary in the booth at 10, the VIP and his friends from Wieden+Kennedy, and the lubricated mimbo’s at the bar will get their very expensive dinners at the exact same moment, before you crank out the next block of tickets (and don’t forget how hot, thirsty, hungry, and hungover you are, or how much your fucking legs just fucking kill) it’s important to waste no movements on external interferences.
It takes time, but in order to consistently succeed on the line, one must build up the required muscle memory and experience so as not to think. At its root cooking on the line is mastering chaos and overcoming certain failure through precise movements that require little-to-no thought to succeed.
I’ve always felt that there was a parallel between consistent cooking and consistently powerful improvisational music. Each requires countless hours tolling away learning a craft. Each are dependent upon both an elevated sense of communication between those doing the craft, and a trust between artist/cook and the audience/customers in order to function properly. Each are reliant on multiple in-the-moment decisions that affect the entirety of why someone would choose to engage in music or food.
Further, the best improvisation works in the same way as one builds a stew. Phish — at their best — has always understood this.
To properly make a stew you must first proper make a stock, and to properly make stock you must first properly cook your mirepoix (onions, carrots, and celery), properly roast your bones, and properly temp your stock so as not to burn any of the flavors. Once you have your stock, to make your stew you must be certain to add the right ingredients at precise intervals, layer your seasonings, and know (sense) the exact moment when your stew is ready to come off the stove. You can’t simply add a shit-load of salt at the end and hope it fuses in with your onions, carrots and beef. You can’t boil your stew or your stock. You can’t add raw meat to your stew and expect it to a) cook right, or b) add the proper flavors to your overall stew. You can’t not add wine or beer and expect the robustness that one expects from stew to be there. In short, you must take your time, you must layer, you must be deliberate, and you must listen to your stew, care for your stew, lest you come up with shit.
Improvisational music works in this same way. You can’t just jam and expect it to sound good. You also can’t just blindly follow the will of one singular musician and expect it to sound like anything other than three musicians following the whim’s of one singular musician. To truly jam, to truly improvise on the level that Phish has at their best takes trust, communication, patience, and deliberate actions that work to build and layer their jams rather than simply deliver a chaotic mess of sound.
Throughout this Fall Tour we’ve heard a Phish that we knew was still in there, lurking, trying to will itself back into existence. There were too many high points between 03/06/2009 and 09/01/2013 for the band to not be consciously ironing out their kinks, and rebuilding themselves towards yet another lofty peak. In many ways, the Fall 2013 Tour is the reward we have all, as fans, reaped for the commitment we displayed during the dark, lost years of 2000 — 2008, and the rebuilding years of 2009 — 2012.
Few could make a logical argument that this wasn’t the best tour the band has been on since the 90's. So many different jams just leap out as some of the most creative, hooked-up, and emotionally-rewarding improvisational journeys the band has ever embarked on.
Based on however harshly you judge a Phish show, at least half the tour (and to my count 8 of the 12 shows) features complete show masterpieces, the likes of which we haven’t seen with this kind of consistency in years. Much of the success on this tour can be directly drawn back to Trey Anastasio’s recommitment and re-ability to play in a deliberate manner.
For however stimulating these last five years of 3.0 have been — and trust me, there are more than enough highlights from 2009 through 2012 to make me happy — the one element of Phish that has consistently been inconsistent has been the production of one Trey Anastasio. For a man who used to strut around stage, mouth agape, head bobbing to some internal beat, carelessly engaged in elevated communication, before tearing into a Hendrix-laced solo just to prove his cred — his guitar-driven badassery — Anastasio has spent much of the past thirteen years successively being humbled. Between the drugs, the sloppy play, the demons, the rehab, the toilet scrubbing, the Sand>Horses, the inability to play YEM twice, the Coventry, etc, Trey has had to fully rebuild his personality, his relationships, and his approach to playing live improvisatory music. Throughout all of this, the man has taken a lot of flak — much of which has been deserved — all the while continuously diving into the unknown night after night in search of musical answers to his struggles.
Few could deny that Trey has struggled with deliberateness, layering, communication, and patience over the past five years, but even fewer could deny that all of his work to rebuild was fully redeemed during Phish’s 2013 Fall Tour. From the bouncy funk of the opening night’s “Carini,” to the Yo La Tengo-esque fury of the Hampton “Tweezer,” from the melodic brilliance of the Glens Falls “Twist” and “Harry Hood,” to the soaring heights found on the Worcester “Ghost,” it was clear some six shows into the tour that Trey was locked into another level of guitar playing.
Yet, to my ears, where Trey really turned a corner in both the tour, and in terms of the bigger picture of Phish as a whole, was in the last four minutes of the 10/26 “Drowned.” After building a foundation based around rhythmic groove with the rest of the band — thanks in large part to his renewed drive to playing rhythmically throughout the entire year — Trey discovers one of the simplest and most beautiful passages of music he’s ever uncovered. His playing is elementary, it’s initially coy, but soon it becomes clear that he’s playing without thought. Trey’s always spoken about the musician being little more than a filter for capturing an elevated sense of music and delivering it to the audience, to that point, he sounds less like a musician during this segment, and more as a spiritual channel. Devoid of any need to distort or camouflage his intentions, he plays one of the most naked passages of music he’s played all year, a testament to deliberate musical decisions.
Throughout the back half of the tour we hear this approach from Trey in some of the other clear standouts, be it the Reading “Down With Disease,” the 10/31 “Carini,” or the 11/01 “Twist,” among others.
A barrier that once stood in the way of Anastasio’s ability to transcend himself in the face of linear musical communication, and improvisational conversation, has been broken. Rather than forcing ideas, rather than forcing shifts in songs, Phish’s jams now embody a perfectly layered stew, one wherein which each member understands their role, and understands what ingredient to toss into the mix at what time. It’s because of this full-band understand that they’re now able to expand upon their improvisational journeys and not feel as though their wasting precious show time. No wonder their jams are now regularly stretching past the twenty-minute mark.
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When Phish returned in 2009 it was clear there was a personal shift from Trey as the leader to that of Mike and Page. The two were far more polished as a result of their years spent exploring their own solo material, and thus they instinctively led Phish to whatever musical heights they were to initially discover. Fishman caught up with them sometime in 2012, no longer holding jams back with his inability to infuse polyrhythmic mutations in various segments. Trey, always the key, always the loudest, most upfront member, has made strides throughout each tour, and each year of 3.0. Yet, it wasn’t until this Fall that the Trey we all knew and loved — the mind behind Phish, the driver of Phish’s greatest successes — returned. Thanks to his dedication to simplifying his playing, and his renewed understanding of the importance of listening to his band members, communicating, and properly layering through deliberate playing, Phish was able to play one of the greatest tours of their thirty-year career.
