On Thursday (7.11,) Phish visited The Tonight Show where they performed the title track from their new album Evolve.
In addition to their formal musical number, the group participated in the talk show’s cold open with Jimmy Fallon and the Roots’ Questlove and Black Thought where quasi comedic bit witnessed Phish get into an elevator with the host and musicians and broke into a full a cappella parody cover of Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” with lyrics rewritten as “Phish in an Elevator.”
Later in the show Phish performed “Evolve,” slipping in a few jammy solos where Trey Anastasio and company sang, “First came the light, then came the sound,” “Then came the worlds that can never slow down/Then came the people with problems and hope/That don’t mean a thing, if they just knew the scope.”
Evolve arrived today, (7.12) and marks Phish’s first studio album since 2020’s Sigma Oasis. Including “Evolve,” “Lonely Trip,” and “A Wave of Hope,” the album features three songs that Anastasio originally wrote and recorded for his 2020 solo album Lonely Trip,
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, the band’s front man and chief songwriter talked about writing the songs and testing them out live during Phish shows, Trey Anastasio Band shows, and even some of his own solo acoustic performances.
“I learned that if a song is a good song, it always works solo acoustic.” “So, before we went in for this album, I made myself a secret, private solo-acoustic version of the album, after having played the songs live. I did that just to look at each song one more time, and make sure that it was in the right key, all the lyrics were great, all the lyrical phrasing was great. And that all the B sections and everything were completed. And then, we went back out, played everything one more time, live. Literally, I think we did them all once, and then we went straight into the studio and recorded the whole thing in two day,” said Trey.
Effective July 19 Phish will start their summer tour at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts and will wrap up with four nights at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, Colorado, from August 29 through September 1.
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Author: Saul Goode
Photo: Heather Katsoulis from Western Mass