After much anticipation, Phish has announced a reworked Summer and Fall tour beginning in Arkansas and ending with a four night run in Vegas. Some shows are onsale now, and a request period has opened for others. If you already have tickets, they will be transferred to the new dates unless you ask for a refund in the next month. See the announcement on phish.com for details.

A few weeks ago, we announced an approaching milestone, and promised a Mockingbird t-shirt and sticker to the 4,000th unique donor to the Mockingbird Foundation. That milestone's been passed, and we'd like to thank user @wharfrat1, to whom we'll be sending those thank yous this week.

This is a year full of milestones for Mockingbird. The 10,000th donation came on January 1st, and disbursements will surprass 500 grants and $2M total distributed sometime this summer. We appreciate everyone's ongoing support for music education. Grants for the 26th competitive round will be announced this June.

The Mockingbird Foundation is proud to announce the continuation of the DeLucia Awards, recognizing outstanding examples in music education. Established in 2004, and previously awarded in 2010, 2015, 2017, and 2019, the DeLucia Awards honor Mockingbird founder Craig DeLucia, and seek to recognize demonstrated passion for teaching music through the use of unconventional genres, methods, instruments, environments, and/or other aspects of music education.

The awards are administered by educator, saxophonist, recreational cellist, and Mockingbird board member Matt Sexauer, assisted by a fantastic panel of musicians and educators. The process begins with an online form, which opens today, April 1st. Nominations close this year on April 25, at 5 p.m. EDT. Announcement is anticipated for mid-May.

As in previous instances, there may be up to five DeLucia Award recipients in a given year, with the first place recipient awarded the DeLucia Prize, a monetary complement of $1,000. This year for the first time, four runners up will be awarded $250. The recipient(s) will have demonstrated a passion for music education such as by teaching in an exceptional, innovative, or unique manner; impacting their communities in a substantial way; or using unconventional techniques, discourse, or concepts in their roles as music educators.

The Mockingbird Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit run entirely by volunteers, supports music education for children by fundraising through Phish-related projects. Organized by Phish fans in 1996, formally incorporated in 1997, and celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the Foundation has since distributed over $1,800,000 through 492 grants in all 50 states.

The Foundation is also the leading provider of historical information about Phish and its music, having cultivated intellectual property through www.phish.net since 1994 and having published three editions of the popular books The Phish Companion: A Guide to the Band and Their Music.

We've made massive updates to the Phish.net Timeline, not only catching up on the four years it was behind, but backfilling scores of earlier events and milestones for Phish.net, the Mockingbird Foundation, and related efforts. We've also added historical links to almost every entry, emoji to help navigate the ~220 entries, and prospective entries for 2021, which is shaping up to be quite a year...

Popular music concert website JamBase has announced a surprise covers compilation aimed at reimagining Phish’s 2000 album, "Farmhouse."  "A true reimagining of Farmhouse, the songs on Cluster Flies are presented in an entirely new sequence with five bonus tracks alongside the 12 others on the original album, all expertly mastered by engineer Joe Lambert." reads the website, clusterflies.com.  

Spanning 17 Farmhouse-era songs, the limited-edition 3LP release features custom artwork and a poster designed by Phish collaborator Jim Pollock. Phish covers were recorded by Umphrey’s McGee’s Brendan Bayliss, Club d’Elf, Daniel Donato, Chris Forsyth, Neal Francis, Jennifer Hartswick, Amy Helm, Lindsay Lou, Reed Mathis, White Denim’s James Petralli, Strand Of Oaks, Sylvan Esso, William Tyler, Sadler Vaden, Vetiver, Ryley Walker, and a supergroup led by Tim Palmieri. 

You can purchase Cluster Flies and see the entire track listing at clusterflies.com. By purchasing a copy, you'll also be supporting JamBase, who has been faithfully following and reporting on the music community throughout this pandemic.  You can check out "Sand," the first of the tracks to be released, below. 

The entirely volunteer Mockingbird Foundation, started and run entirely by fans, has announced sixteen new grants totalling $111,771 in its 25th round of competitive funding for music education for children. Two of these grants were 50% funded by the band's own Waterwheel Foundation, and a third was 50% funded by the Kristy Anastasio Memorial Fund. Mockingbird has now made 491 grants totalling more than $1.8M.

There is still time to make a tax-deductible donation to Mockingbird this year - and we'll start reviewing inquiries for Round 26 in less than three weeks. We hope to celebrate the Foundation's 25th birthday in 2021 with our 500th grant, and several other landmark achievements - help us get there!

YouTube user "Nosmo King" has uploaded for the first time footage of Phish playing with Santana, captured on July 31, 1992 at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, OH. The setlist has been added to phish.net and you can watch the video here:

The entire band sat in for "Elmore's Blues," and Trey stayed on for "Blues for Salvador." At one point, Santana comically introduces Mike as "Mark." Thank a taper!

The Fifth Annual Runaway Open (5RO) will be a single-round, 18-hole, virtual tournament played at your leisure over Labor Day weekend (Friday the 4th through Monday the 7th), at the course of your choosing, from over 35,000 listed worldwide.

We want to keep alive our tradition of a charity golf tournament for Phish fans over Labor Day weekend, enjoying golf and remembering the cause of music education for children, while still keeping everyone safe. So, while the offering comes at the 11th hour, we trust that some of you are planning to hit some balls this weekend, anyway. You might as well register your play with other Phish fans, and join in the weekend of remembering Dick's gone by and celebrating the interests that we continue to share. We'll even provide a private feed for tournament registrants, so that you can follow how other fans are doing, worldwide and all weekend.

Registration is free, and participation is donation-suggested, since you will be responsible for your greens and cart fees. (And we're obviously not serving coffee, lunch, or beverages this year, though encourage you to employ all three.)  We also won't have sponsors or contests this year. However, participants who donate $50 or more (per player, if in a group) as part of their registration will be sent a gift bag of limited-edition commemorative items branded with the Runaway Open logo and only available to those who register and donate prior to midnight on Tuesday the 8th, including a performance-quality comfort-fit visor, a two-ply (comfort cotton inside, resistant poly outside) face mask, and a sleeve of Calloway Warbird 2.0 golf balls.

For tournament rules and registration, visit the event page now!

From Phish's Dinner and a Movie Ep. 23 announcement:

The next episode of Dinner and A Movie will not be taking place next Tuesday. But good news: we’re excited to announce a triple-feature over Labor Day weekend, three nights of archival shows from Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, CO to commemorate Phish’s end-of-summer celebrations. Next Friday, we’ll air Phish’s set from 9/1/17. On Saturday, we’ll air 9/1/12. And then on Sunday, on the show’s 5-year anniversary, we’ll air 9/6/15.

The beneficiary for the full weekend is The Mockingbird Foundation,  a non-profit organization dedicated to improving access to music education for America’s youth. You can make a donation now via The Waterwheel Foundation at phish.com/waterwheel. Each year, the Foundation awards grants to dozens of music education programs, and funds those grants through a combination of fundraising, publishing, and the curation of Phish.net, one of the earliest Internet fan communities.  The Mockingbird Foundation has no salaries, paid staff, office space, or endowment — thus distributing all possible funds to charity. The Foundation’s primary purpose is charitable, with more than $1.6M in grants to 450 grantees covering all 50 states. For more information, visit mbird.org.