after spending three lovely nights in telluride, 2 of them with phish, i was wondering how i would adjust to the lawn at deer creek. well, once the boys cranked into runaway jim, i knew i would have no problems. we had a great seat low in the lawn between fishman and trey. jim was pretty standard, with good playing by all. punch got the party in high gear. i still have not seen trey nail "the landlady" portion of punch since they have been back, but what the hey, it's a fun tune two songs in. roggae was the first surprise of the night. once again, there were a few rough spots, but they tacked on a beautiful little jam on the back end of this one. ctb was not even on my radar. great tune and page lit this one up. i'm not a big sample fan, but i must say, this one was played pretty solid. nicu and horn were both good but straight forward. i'm not a huge sugar shack fan, so i have not listened to this one extensively. have they rearranged it? it sounded pretty good here. they kicked it back in high gear with a typically funky wolfman's brother. page had some hot licks on this one as gordo directed them through a nice jam. time turns elastic seemed to be played with a touch more vigor than the other versions i've seen.

drowned pulled people right back in. right after they hit the "rocking section," they moved into a much more ambient jam. they moved nicely through this one before trey and gordon navigated into jibboo. llike twist later in the set, i am not a huge fan of this one, but they played it really, really well. the jamming was nice and focused with a good exploration. gordo started to take this jam in a different direction and soon enough, we land right into bathtub gin. this was a great transition, especially compared to some of the rockier ones played this summer. gin blew up, but as it does these days, did not go quite as far out as some of my beloved gins. the boys did play this one well as a unit before letting it taper off. mfmf was an awesome second set surprise. it was pretty much right on. buffalo bill was another nice surprise, as this is another tune that, luckily, seems to follow me around a bit. it worked nicely into a fine version of twist. the horse>silent was a fun breather before melt kicked the energy back up. they did some fun stuff with the time signature before moving into a quasi rare dfb. page sounded great on a pretty inspired take of harry hood. i though hood at telluride was as good as a done deal, but they held for the creek. no complaints here. golgi doesn't really do it for me, especially in the second set closing slot. when trey brough the megaphone out, i figured it would be a quick and easy fee>frankenstein or fee>anything classic rock. well, i was partly right. fee was played well and they slipped into ambient land before moving into n20>kung. i sure didn't see that coming! as they moved out of kung, they slammed into a nice take of hendrix's fire. gordo took a nice quick solo after the "let cactus take over" line. the boys really played well on this evening. i would say, i have never been to a show where they played more songs that i'm not all that into, but still thought they played killer versions of each one. of course, it is always good to be back at the creek!

highlights:
set 1:
roggae, ctb

set 2:
drowned>jibboo>bt gin, bill>twist, melt