I listened to the official LivePhish “Hurricane Relief” archival release of this show last night, one of two shows which Phish released to help support recovery efforts for the areas of the southern and southeastern U.S. that were devastated by Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton (two massive hurricanes, which made landfall back-to-back within a couple weeks of each other in late Sep./early Oct. of 2024, and which combined to cause over 280 combined deaths and at least $209 billion USD in damages.)

As a rule, I am generally a fan of the archival releases that Phish puts out into the world - out of the depths of a catalogue as deep as theirs, anything from the vault they decide to publish in an official capacity years later is likely to be excellent - but especially when it’s in support of a great cause like this, I’m all in.

That said, this show took a while to win me over on a musical level. I listened all the way through the show, and up until around midway through the second set, I was honestly still on the fence about it. As a rule, if I judge the show to be 4.5+ (or 9/10+), I round that up to 5. Many if not most archival releases will get there for me. But at the end of the first set, this show was probably a 4.1, maybe getting up to a 4.2. “Antelope” is always a fun time, the early, spooky-sounding “Guyute” was pretty cool, and SOAM had some great energy on the backside piano jam, but - certainly by 1994 standards - it was overall mid, imho.

Granted, ‘94 Phish playing mid is still worth your time, money, and energy, but in comparison to some of the all-time shows that they put on around that same timeframe, it was nothing special.

The fiery, über-energetic “Reba” (measuring even by the crazy-high standards they were setting for that particular number during this era), placed early in Set 2, did help push the show a bit closer to that tipping point of 4.5+ for me. But it wasn’t until they entered into what must be considered one of their all-time YEMs (complete with detours to helpfully explain the Vibration of Life to their audience and to Catapult them forward into a vocal jam conclusion that resolved in a delightfully deranged “Greenpeace Mike!” finale chant) that I felt I’d found the show’s heart (and the raison d’être for the archival release of this show in particular).

The vicious, up-tempo Bowie jam as set closer just affirmed that this was, in fact, a show fully worthy of its noble aims (and five-star rating), achieved with aplomb.

But the moment that became what will be remembered as my favorite part of the show was yet to come.

Emerging for the Encore, Trey told the crowd that he and the other band members had all enjoyed a lovely time during their first time (and, at time of writing, still their only) visiting the small college town (population, c. the 1990 iteration of the U.S. census: 12,915) of Boone, NC, spread out across a patch of slopes and valleys within North Carolina’s stretch of the Blue Ridge Mountain range.

Boone, NC has the highest elevation (3,333 feet, or 1,016 meters, above sea level) of any U.S. town located east of the Mississippi River, “which gives Boone a winter climate more similar to coastal southern New England rather than the Southeast,” per Wikipedia. It is perhaps, then, no surprise that the Phish from Vermont collectively perceived, in Boone, a familiar, homey kind of vibe.

“I don’t know how many of you know this, but we all live in Vermont - that’s where we come from,” Trey says to the audience, before beginning the Encore. “It’s real similar… similar kind of feel, the mountains and everything, and, uh, it’s really nice to be here. Kinda feels like home. So, uh, we’re going to do our best here to play a little bit of mountain music, which originated right around here.”

With that, they launch into an all-acoustic Encore set of “mountain music”, beginning with a hot and spicy “Nellie Kane” that was followed with what was (and remains, as they’ve yet to revisit the number in the 30+ years since) just their fourth-ever run at the bluegrass standard “Beaumont Rag”, an instrumental ditty that has come to be heavily associated with the legendary guitar virtuoso Doc Watson, one of the greatest pickers of the last century (who hailed, as it happens, from the tiny unincorporated community of Deep Gap, NC, located in the same North Carolina county as Boone, “just down the road a stretch” as folks from that region might put it.

Having apparently felt they’d paid sufficient homage to the traditional music of their hosts, the band then launched into a bluegrass (*ahem* …an “asphalt-grass”)-style arrangement of Boston’s technically demanding “Foreplay/Long Time”, for a showpiece which was positively captivating.

They concluded the night with a traditional “mountain music” number of a different kind, performing an a cappella rendition of “Amazing Grace” that was reminiscent of the vocal harmonies one might well have heard in the region two centuries back, emanating through the open windows of some tiny Church of Christ or Primitive Baptist congregation, the sacred melodies borne on mountain breezes alongside the incense of pine and juniper, carried down through the hollers and off into the thin mountain air - reminiscent of such things, even if Phish’s vocal arrangement of the hymn might feel more at home in a Whiffenpoofs recital than in the hardwood pews of an old country church. This particular rendition of “Amazing Grace” - unlike many such closers from this period in the band’s history - was actually mic’d, and can thus be clearly heard over the crowd noice on the soundboard recording.

It takes its time to get there, but this show delivers the goods - it has the heat, the light, and the chance, unpredictable, almost ineffable je ne sais quoi that makes a show really stick in one’s mind. As I said, if they’d just packed it in for the night after the “Bowie”, it would still have been a great show overall, with other highlights being “Antelope” “Reba”, and an all-timer of a YEM. But when, atop all of that, you add in the alchemical concoction of culture, mythos, music, and vibes that are made manifest in the show’s encore, it pushes the end result onto a higher plane, beyond being merely a great show (ha!) and into the realm of something that is even rarer and more special. Don’t miss this one.