It's been a strong fall tour so far and this cool Saturday night in north Georgia was no exception. Its pleasures may have tended more toward strong setlist calls than deep and transcendent jamming, but so what, really. When the big jam finally came, it came with a hurricane-force fourth-quarter "Simple" that ranks with the best Phish music of 2016.

There is no original riff in the Trey Anastasio songbook that detonates a live audience like the elementary major-chord fingering exercise that begins "Simple." A versatile song that the band has been comfortable taking very far out since its infancy, when "Simple" shows up in the second set, especially late, it's usually a call for exploration. Last night, with its great future still unwritten, Mike sustained the patient with some high-end color until Trey found a little phrase he liked. You might recognize it from the "Down with Disease" this year at Dick's. He repeated it persistently until the troops fell in line. Page added some classic-rock backbeat behind it, and then somebody in the control room smashed the JAM button.

At first it sounded a little like "Satisfaction." After working up a little lather to convey the urgency of circumstances, Trey backed off and began a patient solo, wandering in circles around a basic I-IV progression. Page moved to the Wurlitzer, locked into a rhythm with Mike, and fuck if it didn't sound a lot like "Playing in the Band." The jam stayed in 4/4, of course, never dropping into "Playing"s signature 10/4, but you could've dropped the chord sequence and the hits and the melody right onto the first side of Ace. Someone hit the gas pedal; instead of a glorious drive at a reasonable pace along a clear mountain lake, now we were challenging the land-speed record under a glaring sun on salt flats. The band took a breath, looked up and around, and got back to business again. Pushing the tempo, this time the crescendo hinted at "Down with Disease," Trey wiggling sideways around the melody. When Trey finally got spent and ready to move on, first Page on clavinet and then Fish took their turns at the front of the peloton, and we shifted from the speedway to the swamp. By this point Fish was the most active driver of the jam, and he tried on a couple of different outfits before unaccountably appearing to settle on the distinctive beat for "Saw It Again." Trey, having none of it, dropped into "46 Days."

The ensuing "46 Days" didn't even make the two-minute mark, Trey snapping it off for the opening riff of "Sneaking Sally Through the Alley" just seconds into his solo. He started the vocals right away too, without even giving the rest of the band time to lock in. Two thoughts: First, this cruel truncation brought back memories of the fabled UIC "Ghost" and less-fabled Greek Theater "Seven Below," shortest-ever versions of great jamming vehicles strangled in the crib due to time constraints. But second, the transition was so abrupt that one figured Trey might want to take the band back into "46 Days" to close the set. "Sally" slowed to an almost comical degree as it went, like a metronome losing battery power, or HAL singing "Daisy" after his unplugging. After a slinky vocal jam, sure enough: Trey hiccupped the band back into "46 Days" to rock the set to a climax. Maybe neither "Sally" nor "46 Days" brought the payload it has in other stand-alone versions, but the smoothness of this quarter-hour pairing was a sound to behold and something the band ought to revisit.

There was plenty of other good stuff in this show. Like I said earlier, for starters, you can't fault the setlist. With a "Mike's Groove" show opener, you're already playing with house money no matter what happens. As the filling in the sandwich, "Ass Handed" served up head cheese, muenster, anchovies, and pickled onions. Both the "Bathtub Gin" and the "Stash" delivered good value, the latter especially sounding angry and determined, Trey taking out his irritation after a poor effort at the composed section. "Funky Bitch" and "Character Zero" were more patient, funkier, deeper than usual. After kicking off the show with a beloved old-school warhorse, Phish repeated the trick after halftime with "Run Like an Antelope," the second "Antelope" second-set opener of the year and another aggressive, positive setlist call. Trey sliced his way to the heart of the jam with the precision of a sushi chef deboning a salmon filet. Admittedly, when it comes to third-quarter "Antelope"s, Sugarbush isn't walking through that door, Olympia isn't walking through that door, and Tinley Park isn't walking through that door; this didn't stretch out any more than your typical set-closer. "Fuego" did little, as "Fuego" does, but "Runaway Jim" instantly had attendees and webcasters alike harkening back to 2011 with its plinko middle. And before the epic "Simple" you got 100 ccs of Page McConnell straight 2 tha dome with "No Quarter," a cover that suits Phish as well as anything in their repertoire.

We hardly remember what Phish was like in the days before Trey sang "Playing in the Band" while Bob Weir played rhythm guitar next to him, but this has been a good tour, guys! The first three shows of the tour were all worth a listen, the first night in Charleston and Jacksonville especially. The Weir show was an outlier and maybe not to everyone's tastes but I sure wish I had been there. And before Saturday, the two previous shows had featured humongous six-song second sets with big tentpole jams−the "Tweezer" into "No Man's" and "Harry Hood" from Nashville and then last night's "Down with Disease." These are shows that rival Sunday night at Dick's for the 2016 Heavyweight Title. And now more than ever in the 3.0 era, Phish is stamping out one good first set after another. You could argue that the best jam of the year happened in a first set with the "No Man's" the first night of Dick's. The jams don't usually go that deep, but the band is exploiting its huge catalog and offering up the occasional fun-size first-set "Ghost" or "Sand"−or even a show-opening "Mike's Groove."

If we're honest with ourselves, Summer 2016 was not strong; it was Phish's weakest outing in six years. The band was drooping in a low-T torpor, nobody inspired to take the wheel, the new material not quite knocking them dead. But of course it picked up at the end. Despite mostly keeping to themselves amid the band-swapping at Lock'n, they played two good shows, and the three-night stand at Dick's delivered three unambiguous wins. The band currently on the road is cooking with as much gas as they were during their great 2015 season. We've seen higher highs, but Phish is delivering two full sets full of great playing every night. Of course, we all know what's coming next week. We're excited and it sounds like the band is too.

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