The Well
| Originally Performed By | Trey Anastasio |
| Appears On |
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| Music | Trey Anastasio |
| Lyrics By | Tom Marshall |
| Vocals | Trey (lead), Fish (backing) |
| Phish Debut | 2023-07-16 |
| Last Played | 2025-07-25 |
| Current Gap | 10 |
| Historian | Leo Costello (lionphish) |
| Last Update | 2025-10-25 |
History
Philosophical optimism holds that we occupy the best of all possible universes. Whether this is the result of a divinely ordained plan or merely the happy outcome of some higher order than ourselves, it acknowledges the presence of evil and suffering in the world but, perhaps attempting to answer George Costanza’s timeless question, organizes a system of thought around the idea that in any other cosmos we might occupy, things would be worse, perhaps far worse. Bees may sting us, but in this best of possible worlds the suffering is vastly outweighed by the role that they play pollinating and producing honey. Happily, not only can circumstances and people, except for George, get better but, especially with some effort, they actually often will.
It's perhaps not an inapt system of thought relative to Phish, where things do rather tend to trend upwards in all kinds of ways, and it may apply particularly well, as it were, to “The Well,” one of a number of songs written jointly, or at least mostly jointly, by Trey and Tom Marshall in Annapolis in January 2023. The repeated use of “every” throughout the lyrics is a pretty good giveaway that we are dealing with some larger order, and one that’s based in a sense of plentitude (blue jays, pots of gold, and rainbows are tip-offs as well!). Marshall has basically said as much, indicating that the song, at its core, is about the idea that even in the darkest places, and at the darkest times, there is music. This accords well with Trey’s stated belief that music already exists in the universe and he, they, we simply tap into this energy stream.
The plenitude comes with a downside, to be sure, as “every splinter needs a finger,” but the balance here appears to be massively in our favor. The lyrics, of course, get at this idea in characteristically more oblique fashion, but also pointedly trade material wealth for natural and spiritual abundance. The coin purse is a mere bag of shells, as Ralph Kramden would have it, and has only nickels, while every fountain has nothing more, and nothing less, than a penny in it. Diamonds and pots of gold are pure, as it were, metaphors here, whereas the simplest token is all that it takes to hear the sounds flowing, sometimes even pouring, upwards from below.
The verse riff, sort of a cross between “Weekapaugh” and “Wolfman’s Brother,” is a perfect fit for these themes and an absolute classic of Phish-bouncy-feel-good groove. If there’s a “Franklin’s Tower” vibe here, however, it’s less influence and more like-minded artists drawing from the same well, as Phish did also, in varied form, in a number of songs on Evolve, including the title track, “Ether Edge,” and “Pillow Jets.” We’ve all bopped around happily to this kind of progression at shows, nodded our heads to it while driving in the car, but It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate how just masterfully the band, both collectively and individually, executes the particular mix of looseness and tightness required to make such an apparently simple bop feel so right and good. Listen closely, for instance, to Mike during the verse solos in live performances of 2025, where his rolling, bouncy bass line sacrifices none of its percussive drive while climbing lyrically up the neck.
There’s a twist here, however, as the song takes an abrupt turn from all of this plenitude, into, it would seem, the darkness of an unexpectedly heavy, repeated G-minor lick that amounts to a sort of extended chorus, and roars instead of flows from below. Marshall has revealed that this was Trey’s surprise addition to the song after they had composed it. Does it mark also perhaps an appearance of the elusive Evil Phish? It’s certainly one of the more overtly heavy riffs in their catalog and Trey and Fish trade booming vocals while the latter bashes away gloriously. But in the world of philosophical optimism, Evil Phish is merely an inevitable aspect of the broader plenitude, so Trey’s addition to what might have seemed more of a happy fragment than a song was prescient.
Moreover, live, the band’s evident enjoyment of this heavy section, often marked by smiles and even laughter, makes it clear that tongues are firmly in cheeks here. Unlike, say, “Theme from the Bottom,” with its pointed invocations of depression, loneliness and desperation, things are really not all that bad at the bottom of this well. What’s down there may have a dark side, but at least it’s also got a sense of humor and these days that’s sort of all we can really ask, isn’t it?
“The Well,” along with a number of other new 2023 songs, including “Monsters,” “Ether Edge,” and “Oblivion,” first appeared live with the Trey Anastasio Trio in Colorado on 6/9/23 and then made its Phish debut a little more than a month later in the first set of the Sunday Alpharetta show. It was then performed by TAB once more in 2023 and once in 2024. Phish played it four more times after Alpharetta in 2023, but just once in 2024, before putting it back into fairly regular rotation in 2025.
Video by PhishThe 2023 performances can have a sort of lurchy, sometimes uncertain quality, perhaps leading to its relative absence the next year, although it did get jammed out at length in Philly on 7/25/23, the only time the song has gone into real type II jamming. By 2025, however, “The Well” seemed to have settled into form, with the band clearly comfortable and much more polished throughout the song. Page and Trey both take some space for blissy Mixolydian soloing over the verse chords, with the former now preferring a stadium organ sound to the piano, before the change leads to minor-key hilarity/roaring “from the bottom of the well.”
Going forward, one suspects that “The Well” will stick to this general formula and take its place as a semi-regular inclusion in set lists, perhaps less common than a number of the Evolve songs, but good for the occasional, needed intervention with its peculiar mix of groove, levity and (sorta) darkness.
Last significant update: 10/22/25
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