It's good to be at Phish shows. This was my first show since 2019, and my first at the venue. To quote Nicky Sobotka from the Wire "It's f***ing picturesque is what is." Any place with an entrance and exit that can be accessed via a boardwalk on the adjacent river is gonna be an improvement over the generic mega venues in Alpharetta and Charlotte. Certainly the smallest outdoor venue I've seen them play at, with gently sloping lawns that are comfy for the barefoot dancers among us. Wilmington was one of the chiller locales that I've been to, lots of parking and nearby places to groove and get more crunchy, albeit with a pretty confined Shakedown Street.

Kuroda has a pretty righteous set up for outdoor shows these days. Very rotate-y and sequential.
On to the music. Speaking from the back of the lawn, I wish it was louder, and that Mike was turned up in the mix [note: I always wish for Mike to be turned up in the mix, so your response to that may vary].

First set started off with the nice Happy Birthday for Jim Pollack, which was pretty sweet. Simple was danceable and is always welcome in the rotation, Camel Walk and Jibboo can bring the funky moves out of the ricketiest. Steam through Divided Sky hit solidly. My first Casual Enlightenment, and not one that I am able to immediately recall anything about ... Shade and Drift combine for a subdued end to a first set of a Phish show.

Timber is a favorite of mine, it's good as a second set opener, it's a crunchy jammy. ASIHTOS was gnarly in the moment and just kept on going, and is gonna be worth a relisten. Dissolve into Light, which continues the dance and jam show and has a tease of Timber in the jam. i will have to relisten to mercy to remember much about it other than that it was kinda slow and not a dance party song, which is fine... 20 is good, and the set closing with numberline bug and SANTOS is not particularly inspiring from an 'all jamming all time' perspective but it's phish playing songs they like to play so /shrug. a Howling//Suzy encore and we're out of here for night one.

It's good to be at phish, it's better than anything i'd rather be doing at that moment of the day. The first half of the second set is the highlight. Since everything is relative to our expectations, I had no expectations this night other than 1)phish will probably play a show, and on that note, they certainly did. More critically, both sets were 'fine', although both could be said to arguably start pretty strong and then fall short of sustaining that level.