[We would like to thank Jeremy Levine (@Franklin) for recapping last night’s show. -Ed.]

Good morning from the Days Inn half a mile from the North Charleston Coliseum, where the air conditioners clank mercilessly, the pool is non-operational, the carpet is torn up, the coffee is strong enough to cause cardiac arrest in a wildebeest, and there are mysterious brown spots on the walls. While the premises is better suited to a remake of No Country for Old Men than it is to a slow morning rehashing the previous evening’s improvisational rock engagement, sometimes we have to persevere in the name of content. The sun is shining, the wooks are rising, and a musical odyssey has to be wrangled into narrative form. (I did wake up this morning and say “ooh, can’t wait to read the recap,” and then realized...)

We begin outside the auditorium, approximately twenty minutes before show time. The venue’s exterior was organized like my backpack in eighth grade, i.e. not at all. Entrances were unmarked, security was overwhelmed, corridors were narrow. While I recognize that the city of Charleston proper has urban planning challenges because of its complex history, the preposterous inefficiencies of this far-from-downtown venue seem more like an unforced error, like following “Reba” with “Devotion To A Dream.” Despite my (somewhat reasonable) arrival time, I failed to make it inside and purchase a bottle of water by the time the lights went down. Get there early if you’re going tonight.

Just like the first show I recapped for this blog, I was climbing to my nosebleed seat (second row from the back) when the band fired up the first tune. That time, “The Curtain With.” This time, “Free.” While the former is certainly more “special,” I haven’t been to a Phish show in two years. Getting to settle back in and open a run with “Free,” a reliable tune with meaningful lyrics, was touching.

The performance itself would set the stage for the rest of the set: the peaks weren’t especially high, but the tune featured creative moments of full-band interplay. Trey abandoning his typical chords, and while Mike took his typical lead part, he soon faded into the back to let the new jam evolve. Fishman followed some funk with a little stop-start section, which dropped straight into the traditional turnaround. Was it revolutionary? No. But I remain grateful for a band that will put in that effort on a twenty-nine year old song from which nobody expects much.

“Rift” followed, with Page dropping into his solo with gusto. Then: “Spanish Moon.” (Perhaps for the Spanish Moss that grows in Charleston? Okay, probably not.) The LivePhish recording never does justice to moments like this, but the room erupted. The fourth “Spanish Moon” performance was good fun, with Trey quoting the melody in his solo to prevent the song from slipping into another generic midtempo funk jam.

From my position in the rafters, the sound was occasionally rough — and it was hard to tell whether the acoustics were muddy or Trey blew the fugue section in the following “Reba.” Listening back this morning, it’s the second one. But, there have been iconic versions of the song with botched composed sections, so I braced for a mean recovery in the jam. That didn’t quite come, but the jam offered our second example of subtle improvisation. The band was patient in the quiet section, with one particularly sublime moment. Fishman dropped his usual drum pattern for a few isolated tom hits and the sound teetered on the edge of a cliff of white space, before dropping back into time. It was a special, small moment that made the jam for me.

Now, the guest of honor. There are two kinds of bustouts: songs that should be kept rare, because that makes them special. (If the band played “Spanish Moon” three times per tour, we’d care much less.) Then there are the songs that should just stay on the shelf. “Devotion To A Dream” falls into that category. When it started, the rest of my section did not react act all; perhaps they did not recognize it (why would they?) or perhaps they were as bewildered as I was.

I started laughing, because the idea of playing “Devotion To A Dream” is inherently funny. Then I checked the stats and learned that it has not been played for nine years, most recently at this exact venue, and my giggles were uncontrollable. Perhaps the band believes that North Charleston Coliseum is not suitably devoted to the dream. If the dream in question is efficient venue entry and concourse width, I’d have to agree!

After “Devotion,” I was looking for a pick-me-up and got “The Final Hurrah.” It’s not the strongest Kasvot Växt tune, but I’ll take it. The jam took time to coalesce, but found a smoky Type II space before turning somewhat cheerful and finally getting reigned in by Page flipping the “faceplant into rock” sample back on. A neat little jam.

“My Mind’s Got A Mind Of Its Own” is when I started thinking that Trey should consider writing out setlists. “Hey Stranger,” wasn’t an inspired choice, either, but the jam was intriguing. While the band stuck to the main progression throughout, they introduced enough rhythmic elasticity to keep it out of straight Type I territory. The result was then both tethered to reality and not, with Fish and Trey exhibiting some particularly exciting interplay.

The set continued with a good-but-unremarkable performance of “Taste” (featuring the traditional “What’s the Use?” outro that has been making recent appearances). Set closer “Walls of the Cave” fulfilled its responsibility of raising the energy level on a lower-key first frame. The story of this set is of middling song selection but a few standout, understated improvisational moments.

Enter: Setbreak, where your humble and intrepid narrator braved the crowds with the ambitious agenda of using the bathroom and finding a bottle of water. The first vendor did not have water, but I persevered. This is the kind of high-stakes narrative that drives people to this website, yes? (I’m bringing my Nalgene tonight.)

Slow “Llama” is funny because everyone recognizes the opening riff immediately, but nobody knows what song it is. Still, it was a fun romp, but we all hoped that it was the set-up for something bigger.

Something bigger came.

If the first set was about small moments of full-band interplay that were arrived at spontaneously and then gracefully concluded, this “Down with Disease” was a series of those moments stitched together into one continuous story. The band’s decades of careful listening was the jam’s engine, but Mike became the MVP early on, forcing a change from A major to C# minor. Trey picked up on his cue after a few bars, and the band locked in. Mike then took a lead about nine minutes in, with Trey falling in to match. As that jam started to deteriorate, we dissolved into a little bliss puddle before suddenly hopping into F# major. Why? Why not.

The jam got gnarled again quickly, with Mike and Trey locked together near the seventeen-minute mark. Page jumped in, freeing up Trey to play lead. This is the picking up and sharing of leads that have defined the show so far, and this is the moment it all came together. Near nineteen minutes, Trey started a slow-down, the moment when I thought the jam was about to end. The band entertained some serious space for a minute or so, before Fishman locked into a straight rock groove that sent us flying. There were fourteen minutes left.

At this point, we’d hit E Major and the band was in its simplest moment since the “Disease” solo. Page fired up his tractor beam because he’s the coolest man in the world. Things turned swampy, very Charleston-appropriate. Taste the humidity, indeed.

Around 23 minutes, we dissolved into straight noise from Trey, with Page playing piano on top like a surfer on a wave of magma. The venue threatened to grow arms and legs and to throw palmetto trees at my motel (explaining, perhaps, the holes in the walls). Mike led a key change up to A — the song’s original key, where we haven’t been for eighteen minutes – before the band slowly climbed to an enormous, triumphant peak. We hadn’t had a big moment like this all show, and the release brought the entire venue into a moment of complete, unified, celebration. The kind of thing they say we don’t have these days. Thank you, Phish.

My exuberance, documented in real time:

Trey had the courage (seriously, this looks like it’s really hard) to guide the band back into the “Disease” chorus, and then we hit “Twist.” The venue lost what remained of its sanity. The jam was not massive (and how dare they?) but it had that weird, minimal feel that good Type-I “Twist” jams do, with a nice exchange between Mike and Trey. My notes say “pipe organ from Neptune” and I stand by that.

Then, “The Well.” Sure. I can take or leave most of Evolve, so I wasn’t clamoring to hear this one. Trey played smoothly and Fishman’s screams add some good texture. “Sightless Escape” followed, which I’ll admit to not remembering the name of despite being on the record as a Ghosts of the Forest enjoyer. After the enormous “Disease,” I thought we were just going to cruise to the end of the show, but I was wrong.

The “Sightless Escape” jam won’t get the headline (which I guess is my fault, because I wrote the headline on this recap and chose to spend part of it making fun of “Devotion to a Dream,” a decision I do not regret) but it was another exploratory-yet-tight jam. Rather than endlessly noodling and searching for the next thing, the band relentlessly responded to itself. At times rocking, at times weirdly pulsing, the jam disintegrated and evolved simultaneously. A real treat to hear late in the set on a song that I forgot existed.

After that jam, I thought we would maybe get one quick tune (maybe my first “Cavern,” a song I am still somehow chasing), but a rousing “Chalkdust Torture” brought out venue another roar of approval as “Sightless Escape” wrapped up. “Suzy” followed, the victory lap was concluded, and we all caught our breath.

In the encore break, a crew member brought out the a cappella mic. Speculation ensued. Then they took the mic away. I was briefly disappointed. But, “When The Circus Comes” was a perfect cool-down after an intense set. “First Tube” saw Trey in his finest rock star fashion, and the show went out on a well-earned high note.

On paper, this setlist probably won’t jump out at anyone, and it’s easy to think of this show as “The one with the big ‘Disease.’” I mean, it is. But if Phish is about one thing, it’s understanding that inspired moments of spontaneity often require extreme dedication and thoughtfulness. The band laid the foundation for that enormous jam all night long, settling into a highly-democratic improvisation style that forewent complacency and pushed the norms of even the most established songs. While I’m sure that I’ll listen to that “Disease” jam out of context for years to come, that peak wasn’t just wrapping up one song.

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