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Phish Surpasses $50M In Career Box Office Earnings At MSG Following 2019 New Year’s Run

Phish may not be a famous prizefighter or championship level sports organization, but the rock band from Vermont has grown to become the unofficial kings of New York City’s Madison Square Garden .

On December 30th, 2019, the band celebrated 25 years since their first show at “The World’s Most Famous Arena” in 1994. As they celebrated that milestone, they also crossed the $50 million mark in career box office earnings at the Manhattan venue.

Related: Phish Sends In The Clones As They Float Above MSG, Rescue Squad Saves Trey On NYE [Photos/Videos]

According to a report from  Billboard shared on Tuesday, Phish sold 76,079 total tickets during their four-night New Year’s run late last month on their way to a $6.7 million total in sales figures. That brings the band’s career ticket sales at The Garden up to $52.8 over the span of 64 shows since 1994 with a whopping 849,285 total tickets sold.

The four shows from December 28th–31st, 2019 were also Phish’s highest-grossing New Year’s performances since 1999’s Big Cypress festival when they pulled in $11.6 million in gross ticket sales.

Remarkably, the recent run of Phish shows at Madison Square Garden now pushes the band’s career ticket earnings overall to $507.6 million, with 11.4 million total tickets sold. Not bad for a band that has stood their ground doing things their way against industry norms time and time again over the years…

With the band still pumping out plenty of “Steam” from all four cylinders as they charge into the new decade, there’s no telling on how high these ticket sales numbers will continue to grow in the coming years.

“ The Phish From Vermont ” will be back in action next month when the band heads south of the border for their annual Riviera Maya destination event on February 20th–23rd, 2020. For more information, head here .

[H/T Billboard ]

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Inside the Creative Direction for Phish’s Sphere Residency: ‘Trying to Design the Unpredictable’

The creative team for the band's four-night Las Vegas run, set for April 18-21, explain how to conceptualize an advanced sensory experience for a band whose signature is improvisation.

By Eric Renner Brown

Eric Renner Brown

When Phish takes the stage at Sphere on Thursday to begin its four-night run at the cutting-edge new Las Vegas venue, it’ll do so armed with a bespoke production in keeping with its long history of head-turning concert innovation — which is why co-creative director Abigail Rosen Holmes ‘ sentiment on the eve of the shows initially seems counterintuitive.

Sphere Factor: Inside The Opening of Las Vegas’ Game-Changing Venue

“We’re pushing a lot of technical boundaries, and we’re doing a lot of things that are somewhat new … but never done for its own sake, all done very specifically to achieve what we want to do creatively,” the live music veteran says of her work with Phish, which follows U2 as the second musical act to play Sphere since it opened last fall . “You should just walk in and think that it was amazing, and you had a great time. If you’re sitting there thinking about what it took for us to build it, then that’s probably not right.”

What Holmes wants fans to focus on is Phish “just being the band playing the best Phish music they can.” Phish has an extensive history of intricately produced “gags” — deploying a fleet of clones , turning Madison Square Garden into an underwater world replete with drone-powered whales and dolphins , or even doing a Broadway-caliber staging of its song cycle about the fantasy world of Gamehendge, to name a few — but Holmes says that since she first began conceptualizing the Sphere shows with the band and its frontman Trey Anastasio last July, they’ve eschewed such a creative direction.

“We’re going to use all of the opportunities of this building — the audio, the visuals — and do it while supporting Phish truly playing music the way Phish plays music,” she says. “That became really the guiding star for everything that we thought about creatively. How do we create visuals and use all the technology of this space — and not impede Phish being able to play anything they want any way they want on the night?”

It’s a marked contrast from U2, which kept its show more or less the same for each of the 40 nights it played Sphere, and designed impressive song-specific visuals for several key tracks. That Phish will mix up its show for each gig on a four-night run — not repeating a single song — is a given; what that looks like in a venue with Sphere’s epic visual capabilities is less familiar territory.

Still, in Holmes and the Montreal-based multimedia studio Moment Factory, whose Sphere team is led by the show’s co-creative director Jean-Baptiste Hardoin , Phish has secured a creative crew that’s up to the paradoxical task of orchestrating an advanced, immersive sensory experience to accompany a band whose musical signature is improvisation. Holmes started working with Phish in 2016, when she collaborated with lighting director Chris Kuroda on designs for the band’s touring show, and she conceptualized the live production for Anastasio’s 2019 side project Ghosts of the Forest; her career dates back to lighting work on Talking Heads ‘ Stop Making Sense , and extends far beyond her concert résumé — she’s also worked with Janet Jackson and Roger Waters , among others — to architectural and installation projects, including a stint at Walt Disney Imagineering. “I feel like people often reach out to me for projects that don’t fall neatly into any really easy category,” she says, adding with a laugh, “People call me for their weird stuff.”

Sphere Reports $30M in Revenue From U2 Shows, But Debt Funding Plan Causes Stock Tumble

In Moment Factory, Phish united Holmes with kindred interdisciplinary spirits. The firm has worked with Phish several times dating back to 2015, including on its 2018 and 2021 Halloween gags and on its 2022 Earth Day show at Madison Square Garden — the one where the band turned the venue into an arena-sized aquarium. Like Holmes, Moment Factory’s work extends beyond its music clients — who include Billie Eilish and Halsey — and into airports, malls and more. But even so, Moment Factory producer Daniel Jean explains, “The challenge with Phish [at Sphere] was the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced […] to make sure that we create a show that is flexible and can react in real-time.” As Hardoin puts it, the team has been “trying to design the unpredictable.”

While Holmes and Moment Factory are tight-lipped about specific creative elements of the show, which they began workshopping in earnest last October, they share some broad strokes. Each night will have a loose theme, Holmes says, not unlike those that governed each concert in Phish’s 13-show Madison Square Garden “Baker’s Dozen” run in 2017. That choice “provided a little bit of a framework for a jumping-off point for ideas for the visuals,” she says, though she emphasizes it’s “not rigid in the song choice, it’s not rigid in the visuals.”

Those visuals will be twofold. Kuroda, the band’s longtime lighting designer, known for improvising his work along with the band’s jams, will continue that role at Sphere, utilizing a new version of his intricate rig designed specially for the venue. “The amazing rig that he has on tour was not a good fit into this building,” Holmes says. “It sits in front of the screen, it takes a lot of motors that would be in front of the screen. We realized pretty early on that that would have to change. I’m extremely excited to watch the new rig that’s designed for him in here. It plays a role in tandem with the screens instead of existing on its own.”

Moment Factory contributed to the set design that ensured Kuroda’s lighting rig and Sphere’s screen could live in harmony. And furthermore, Sphere has provided an opportunity for the company to expand its early 2000s roots in multimedia to staggering proportions. “We’re basically VJ’ing on a 16,000-by-16,000-pixel ratio for Sphere,” Jean says.

The exact nature of those visuals remain under wraps until Phish takes the stage on Thursday night – when they’ll be revealed not only to fans in attendance at Sphere, but also to viewers at home, as Phish’s run marks the first time concerts will be livestreamed from the venue – but the creative process Holmes and Moment Factory describe sounds groundbreaking. In a nutshell, the Moment Factory team has created visuals and worked with Holmes to create a playback interface — not unlike the custom programming Kuroda has implemented over the years for his lighting rig — that will allow for real-time manipulation of the visuals that follow Phish’s musical impulses.

“It was a matter of, OK, how can we evolve this universe for eight to 20 minutes, with different parameters, whether it’s the colors, whether it’s the saturation, whatever,” Hardoin says. “[Holmes] has a very good understanding of the music of the band. She’s able to modulate [the visuals] live, as lighting designers do.”

Phish Booked For 2024 Four-Show Sphere Run in Las Vegas

At the shows, Holmes will be executing the visuals, which will integrate generative content and use existing technologies in new ways, like Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, a platform that allows creatives in fields like gaming, television and live events to blend live-action video and CG. (“That’s been pushed very far past what’s been done in other places,” Holmes says of Unreal.)

For months, Holmes and her team have used the vast trove of Phish concert recordings to simulate how the Sphere visuals “might evolve during a jam … being quite careful to use multiple versions, because they’re going to be radically different,” she says. “The visuals go in real-time to support [the band] and follow them musically, not the other way around.”

Phish’s penchant for newness is, in Holmes’ estimation, what will define the band’s Sphere run — and it explains why the booking appealed to the band in the first place. While the band capped off its 40th anniversary year in 2023 with a New Year’s Eve production of its Gamehendge saga, comprised of some of its oldest material, Phish has a new studio album out this summer ( Evolve , due July 12) and continues to introduce fresh material while rethinking its live presentation.

“When we think about this show, it’s today — it’s not referencing the past,” Holmes says. “This is a piece of them taking a huge risk and experimenting and trying something new, because that’s what they like to do.”

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The Business of Phish

Priceonomics.

Over the past four years , the rock band Phish has generated over $120 million in ticket sales, handily surpassing more well known artists like Radiohead, The Black Keys, and One Direction. Since their start 30 years ago, Phish has consistently been one of the most popular and lucrative touring acts in America, generating well over a quarter billion dollars in ticket sales.

Yet, by other measures, the band isn’t popular at all. Only one of their original albums has ever made the Billboard top 10 rankings. None of their 883 songs has ever become a popular hit on the radio. They’ve made only one music video to promote a song, and it was mocked mercilessly by Beavis and Butthead on MTV . 

If the traditional band business model is to generate hype through the media and radio airplay, and then monetize that hype through album sales and tours, Phish doesn’t fit the model at all. For a band of their stature, their album sales are miniscule and radio airplay non-existent. And so when the “music business” cratered in the 1990s because of file-sharing and radio’s importance declined because of the internet, Phish remained unaffected and profitable as ever.

Phish doesn’t make money by selling music. They make money by selling live music , and that, it turns out, is a more durable business model. This wasn’t some brilliant pre-calculated strategy by the band or its managers; it’s the business model that sprung forth from the kind of music the band makes. The band developed the kernel of this musical style during their first five years when they played almost exclusively in bars in Burlington, Vermont, and slowly, but organically, grew their audience.

During this period they maniacally focused on improving the quality of their music through intense practice and frequent gigs at bars. And while at first these gigs were relatively unsuccessful, over time their audiences grew, the band started to make money, and then, after five years of obscurity, they were profitable before anyone in the music industry knew who the hell they were. And with profitability came the freedom to make music on their terms. 

In the parlance of startup language, Phish bootstrapped their business rather than seeking support from institutional players like record labels, talent agencies, and concert promoters. And that’s made all the difference.

10,000 Hours of Jamming

The band Phish got its start in 1983 at the University of Vermont (UVM) where Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, and Mike Gordon were all students. Page McConnell, a student at nearby Goddard College, joined the band two years later. Since then, that’s been the core band – Anastasio on lead vocals and guitar, Gordon on bass guitar, Fishman on the drums, and McConnell on keyboard / piano. 

A popular theory these days for explaining “genius” is Malcolm Gladwell’s theory of 10,000 hours . In his book Outliers , Gladwell posits that natural talent is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for achieving greatness in a given field. What is also required is putting in thousands of hours of “deliberate practice” to achieve virtuoso status in fields ranging from software development (Bill Gates) to physics (Robert Oppenheimer).

The band Phish appears to be another case in support of Gladwell’s theory that deliberate practice at an early age leads to “outlier” performance. Anastasio, the band’s frontman, started playing the guitar at the age of seven and was in serious bands by middle school. Fishman, the drummer, started playing at the age of five. McConnell started playing the piano at the age of four. By the time they entered college, not only were they accomplished musicians, but what united them was their preference for practicing music over attending class. 

From the band’s early days until the late 1990s, they showed a near fanatical obsession with practice. Fishman, the drummer, remembers college :

“Basically I locked myself in a room for three years and played drums and went to band practice.” 

The same level of intensity was brought to band practice. Gordon, the bassist, relates an eight-hour, chemically-assisted, practice session that was not atypical :

“Trey used to take fresh chocolate and vanilla and maple syrup and all these natural ingredients and make four small cups of hot chocolate that had a half-ounce of pot in them. … [So] we started this jam session and it ended up going for eight hours.”

Even as the band became popular a decade later, they practiced together using highly analytical listening exercises. Phish biographer Parke Puterbaugh explains one of these exercises :

The best known was called “Including Your Own Hey.” These exercises, which formed a large part of their practice regimen from 1990 through 1995, are not so easy to explain but important for understanding how Phish could maintain a seemingly telepathic chemistry in concert. “‘Hey’ means we’re locked in,” explained Anastasio. “The idea is don’t play anything complicated; just pick a hole and fill it.” They explored different elements of music—tempo, timbre, dynamics, harmonics—within the “hey” regimen.

While today Phish is well known as a “jam band” that improvises on stage, it wasn’t until 1993, 10 years after their formation, that the band really unveiled this skill according to the band archivist Kevin Shapiro :

“Before 1993, it had seemed to be a very practiced, concise show that flowed real fast and didn’t necessarily have any huge improvisational moments. All of a sudden there were huge improvisational moments everywhere.”

Before Phish achieved any success, they worked hard at their craft. At the peak of their success, they practiced just as hard, if not harder. Later, they would abandon these regular practice sessions, which could either be seen as a cause or a symptom of the problems that lead to the band’s breakup in 2004.

The Slow, Linear Rise of Phish

“Burlington is an excellent womb for a band. It’s relatively easy to get a gig, you get paid decently, and it’s not a cut-throat situation at all.”

– Jon Fishman , Drummer

Phish’s first gig was playing an ROTC Ball in late 1983 before they had even settled on their eventual band name. If you’ve ever heard them play, you already know that their music probably wasn’t the best choice for future army officers and their dates to boogie to. Eventually, the band was drowned out when someone put on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and the evening was resurrected – from the ball attendees’ perspective at least.

After a brief detour when Anastasio was suspended from the UVM for sending a human heart and hand through the US Postal Service as a prank, most of the band transferred to Goddard College where they could pursue a self-directed study of music. During this period, they started to regularly play gigs at local bars.

Phish’s first regular bar gig was weekdays at 5 PM. The few people who came were their friends. After the ROTC dance debacle, they couldn’t even get booked for campus gigs, let alone real music venues. But they stuck with playing bars at off-peak hours and eventually the audience swelled modestly from their friends to their friends and friends of friends. 

Phish biographer Parke Puterbaugh comments :

This all worked to Phish’s advantage, as they weren’t swamped by success but experienced a slow, steady climb, during which they nurtured their craft in an environment where they gained a following one fan at a time. They gradually cultivated a varied audience of college students and hipsters from Burlington and environs.

At this time, Phish started to display the organic growth in their fanbase that would characterize the rest of their careers – they would win over fans one at a time through their live performances and those fans would recruit their friends to come to the next show.

Eventually, Phish was invited to play at a more popular local bar called Nectars. At Nectars they moved from the the upstairs stage to the main stage. Band frontman Anastasio remembers :

“Usually there wouldn’t be that many people at the beginning of the night. People would come and go, and it would just kind of swell. Eventually, it started getting really packed, which is why we had to stop playing there. But for a long time, it wasn’t.”

Eventually they started to get a lot of stage time at the more popular bars in Vermont. During this time, they honed what would become their signature talent – keeping a live audience enthralled, dancing, and having fun all night. Drummer Fishman describes the freedom to experiment they had during this time :

“For five years we had Nectar’s and other places around town to play from nine until two in the morning,” recalled Fishman. “We’d get three-night stands, so we didn’t even have to move our equipment. Basically, the crowd was our guinea pig. We’d have up to five hours to do whatever the hell we wanted.” 

A fan reminisces what it was like to hear Phish in those days :

“They sort of sucked when we first started seeing them,” admitted Tom Baggott, a Phish fan and acquaintance. “They were getting it together. They were sort of sloppy, you know, but that was the fun of it. That was the magic of it. It was like there was a big joke going on and all the early Phish fans knew the punch line—which was that this was gonna be something big.”

These insanely loyal fans not only dragged their friends to shows, but also started taping the shows and passing out the tapes to friends. Rather than squelch this “piracy,” the band encouraged it. Not only did it provide great marketing that lead to larger show attendance, but it helped develop an obsessive fanbase that would later desire to collect everything about the Phish experience: rare tapes, concert experiences, official albums, and merchandise. 

After years of honing their craft on their homecourt of Burlington, Vermont, they got their big break in 1989 . Or rather, they manufactured their big break. The Paradise Night Club, a 650 seat venue in Boston that was a proving ground for rock bands, refused to book the band. By this time, Phish had two buddies serving as their business managers who were responsible for booking gigs. The managers took a gamble and decided to rent out The Paradise and take the risk of selling the tickets themselves.

With the help of their now diehard fans, Phish sold out all 650 seats. Many of their fans trekked down from Burlington. One fan organized two buses from Burlington that brought almost a hundred fans. The rabid fan base that Phish had cultivated from its 5 years of gigging in Burlington paid off big time.

After Phish sold out The Paradise, doors were open to them. Phish biographer Parke Puterbaugh relates the scene in the Boston music industry :

Beth Montuori Rowles recalled the reaction at Don Law’s office the next day: “Jody Goodman, who was the club booker at the time, was like, ‘Does anybody know who this band Phish is? They sold out The Paradise last night. How did that happen? I’ve never even heard of them before. They’re from Vermont. What is this? They sold the place out!’ “All of a sudden it was like the radar’s on them. The next time Phish played in Boston, the Don Law Company promoted it. They wanted a piece of it. End of story.”

Phish started touring in progressively larger venues. Still, the growth was never exponential or Bieber-esque. In an interview with High Times , Anastasio reflects :

“If you look at the whole 17 years of Phish, it was an exact, angular rise. It was at the point where our manager used to be able to predict how many tickets we were going to sell in a given town based on how many times we had played there previously. Every time we played, it got a little bit bigger, and it kept getting a little bit bigger.”

Shortly after selling out The Paradise, despite not a single music label or management company knowing their name, the band was profitable . Rather than rushing to put out a Top 40 hit, the band could focus on doing more of what was already earning them money, making music and touring.

Why Do People Like Phish?

So what exactly is this form of music that Phish learned how to play in Burlington, Vermont, that has inspired such a loyal following?

Among people that don’t frequently listen to Phish, it can be hard to ascertain why the band is so popular. But if you spend any time sampling the YouTube videos of the band’s live performances, you’ll see ample evidence that people love Phish. 

In this relatively  early video , you can get a sense of the effect the band has on its audience. Even as the band plays a slow melody, the audience raucously bounces around, captivated by every note.

So, why do people love Phish? Partly because the band is comprised of immensely skilled musicians. Their years of intense practice means that not only are their individual skills strong, but as a collective entity, they know how to play with each other. They are skilled musicians, but listeners disdain virtuoso musicians every day. The band’s technical skill cannot completely explain their rampant popularity.

The first part of the answer is that Phish’s live performances are built around an interaction between the band and the audience. That’s the product that Phish sells, the interplay between the band and audience. The audience is an integral part of the show. 

When the audience hears the right cue from the guitar, the fans know to chant “Wilson,” and they know that Wilson is the antagonist from Anastasio’s senior thesis, an epic musical composition. When the song “You Enjoy Myself” comes on, the audience roars with delight when the guitarists jam while jumping on trampolines, even though they know it’s coming. As you listen to live recordings of Phish, you notice that for every note the band plays, the audience provides a response that guides the band. It’s the back and forth between the audience and the band that creates the live musical production.

Remember, it took a decade of practice before Phish really started improvising on stage at a grand scale. If going to a U2 concert is like purchasing a mass produced print, a Phish show is like buying a unique painting. The band has never played the same set list twice and you never know when a ten minute song could morph into a thirty minute improvised jam.

Next,  Phish is an immersive world that fans can get lost in, not unlike Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. There is a mythology about the band and its shows and history. Just as a fan of Lord of the Rings may have memorized Frodo’s family tree , a Phish fan knows what  Gamehendge and  Rhombus  are.

Fans don’t merely go see Phish, they collect Phish experiences. They track the number of concerts they’ve gone to, which songs from the band’s catalogue they’ve heard, and which venues they still need to see Phish perform at. Due to the bands improvised and varied sets, Phish fans constantly collect new experiences. Popular shows like Gamehoist, Big Cypress, Clifford  Ball, and Salt Lake City 1998 have taken on near mythological proportions. 

Finally, it seems that Phish puts on a show. The band might be flying through an arena playing on a giant hot dog, playing an eight hour set till sunrise, or pretending that Tom Hanks is on stage with them. There is a whimsy and unpredictability to their shows. The drummer occasionally plays a vacuum cleaner on stage, and almost always wears a woman’s dress while performing (except when he performs naked). At any Phish show, something strange, amazing, or unique could happen. For the diehard fan, the fear of missing out on one of these shows drives them to try to attend every one.

It’s worth noting that all of these reasons why people do like Phish also completely explain why other people don’t like Phish.

Almost none of the experience of watching Phish live translates over to their recorded music. Their studio recorded albums, without the excitement and energy of the audience, sound comparatively sad and lonely; almost like the difference between eating a great meal with a group of friends versus all by yourself. Same food, different experience. And while the music may demonstrate technical prowess, the complicated, layered 30-minute jams performed by the band don’t translate well to the radio.

Some people in this world love Phish more than you can possibly understand. This author’s wife is one of those people. As a compromise, one Phish song was selected to be performed during the dancing portion of this author’s wedding reception. When that song came on, half the dance floor cleared out. They stood to the side and stared with befuddlement as the other half of the attendees danced to a slow, strange, and seemingly undanceable song. The Phish fans were in rapture because their favorite band was blasting through the speakers and they knew that if Tweezer was performed now, that Tweezer Reprise would make an appearance at the after party. 

The Business Model

From 1989 onward, before the band had even been signed to a record label, Phish was profitable from live touring. Keep in mind, they had been at it for 5 years, scraping by on gigs in Burlington’s bars. During that time, they developed their most valuable asset, the ability to enthrall fans through live music.  

Because Phish achieved financial independence before the music industry even recognized them, they more or less could do whatever they wanted . The took their early profits and started their own management company, Dionysian Productions. They hired a staff of 40+ people that handled their elaborate stage productions and back office operations. They built their own merchandise company so that their shirts and other paraphernalia reflected the band’s artistic sensibilities. They even started a mail order ticket company so that fans could send them money orders and buy tickets directly from the band.

In 1991, they signed with a major record label, Elektra (owned by Warner). As they had the leverage in the relationship, Phish never really had a lot of conflict with their label about artistic control. They didn’t need money from album sales because they made money from live shows, so they never had to dilute their artistic vision to get radio airplay and sell albums. Of course, the result of this artistic freedom was that they never sold albums at a rate commensurate with their popularity.

Perhaps more so than any major musical artist today, the Phish business model is derived from having hard core fans of its live music. When Madonna sells out arenas across the country, she’s selling tickets to her various fans that live everywhere. When Phish sells out arenas or festivals across the country, it’s because the same die-hard fans fly across the country to see the band. In the rare instances where fans don’t make the trek and the shows don’t sell out, the band punishes the no-shows by performing a particularly epic set. In a forum where ardent Phish fans compare how much money they had spent on going to see the band, the answers were in the tens of thousands of dollars .

So while Phish undoubtedly has fewer fans than Madonna, the ticket revenue per fan is way higher because fans loyally attend multiple shows. Not since the Grateful Dead has a band built a following as loyal as Phish. And like the Grateful Dead, Phish merchandising is a big business as fans gobble up Phish t-shirts, baby-onesies, and hats.

When file sharing and piracy ravaged the music industry, Phish was insulated because their primary business was selling access to live music, not recorded music. In fact, the band was able to take advantage of the trends of digital downloads and streaming. They bundled digital downloads of live performances with ticket sales so that everyone who attended a show could download its broadcast the next day. And those that can’t attend shows live can pay to stream the performance from Phish’s website. While technological advancements made it harder for some artists to profit from their work, if anything, it made it easier for Phish to do so.

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Phish

In 2004, Phish broke up. There are a lot of reasons given: rampant drug use by the band, the financial pressure of having over 40 people on payroll that needed to be paid whether the band was touring or not, or that after 20+ years of a grueling tour schedule, the band had simply run its course. 

In an interview with Charlie Rose right after the breakup, frontman Anastasio gave a compelling reason for the breakup – the passion for making great music together was no longer there. Anastasio tells Rose, how once felt  about the music :

“You know, it was like — the only thought was about the show. I mean, I used to lock myself in my hotel room, as soon as the concert was over. For years, I would run back to my hotel room and start working on the set for the next night. And even though there wasn`t really a set list, there kind of was. Like I knew what was going on. And I was working and working and working, you know, oh my God, for hours, ripping pieces of papers up, books, you know, and I`d like you to practice them, come on, guys, everybody in the practice room. And then hours before the show, songs we hadn`t played in a while — I mean, it was just like a heavy work ethic until we got on stage. And then it was just a celebration.”

The band that practiced so diligently for most of its tenure stopped practicing together in 1998. By 2004, fans began commenting that the musical quality of the band was declining. What could have been a triumphant final show in Coventry, Vermont, was a disaster. Not only did rain and mud wreak havoc on the weekend, but the band’s music performance was universally panned. The musical geniuses of Phish went out with a whimper.

Phish Inc started to become a more bloated, drug-polluted entity precisely when their desire to make great music together was waning.  And so, it was time to call it quits.

Until, that is, it was time to call it unquits. The band reunited in 2009 for a three-night show in Hampton, Virginia.  The announcement sent a shockwave through the Phish community and an even greater shock wave through the Ticketmaster ordering system. The heavy traffic crashed the site. In the five years they were broken up, the band cleaned up, streamlined their staff, and gradually rebuilt the personal relationships between the band members. And so, in a testament to the strength of the following they built, they reunited and have generated over $120 million in the four subsequent years.

The members of Phish knew they wanted to make music since they were little kids. And they worked at it harder than anyone else. They have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in concert sales, but their roots were humble and their growth was slow. They spent five years in the relative obscurity of Burlington, Vermont, perfecting their craft. And through that process, they learned how to entertain a live audience. That turned out to make all the difference.

Every time Phish played, their audience grew only slightly. But devoted fans evangelized their music and the word spread. Growth was slow, but it compounded until suddenly the band could sell out 650 seat clubs. And then one day they could sell out Madison Square Garden four nights in a row. And some of those fans attended the show all four nights and the the ones who didn’t wished they had.

Phish worked long and hard to become great musicians and performers. This has lead to a durable business model built around live concerts. Could another band replicate their success? Maybe. But how many of them would quit before realizing how good they could be? Or would the band be discovered by the music industry too early and release a major label record that flops?

At a Phish show in 2003, the crowd was greeted by a giant banner proclaiming, “Our Intent Is All for Your Delight.” It’s Phish’s pure devotion to music that makes them beloved of their fans. It’s also what ended up making them gob fulls of money, so that worked out nicely.

This post was written by Rohin Dhar. Follow him on  Twitter here  or  Google . After researching this story and finding out how hard Phish works at their craft, he’s finally agreed to attend one of their shows with his wife this summer. If you want to read more about Phish, this biography is excellent .

Published April 17, 2013 by Priceonomics

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Phish Announce Summer and Fall 2021 Combined Tour

By Claire Shaffer

Claire Shaffer

Phish will be putting on their legendary live shows once again this summer and fall in one gigantic tour, the band announced on Tuesday.

The tour kicks off July 28th with a single show at Walmart AMP in Rogers, Arkansas, followed by a July 30th show at Oak Mountain Amphitheatre in Pelham, Alabama. The band will then play shows — many of them multi-night residencies — in Nashville, San Francisco, and more, concluding with a four-night stint in Las Vegas, Nevada, that ends October 31st. The tour includes Phish’s first show in Sacramento in 25 years, as well as their first show in Arizona since 2003.

The upcoming schedule includes a number of dates rescheduled from 2020; a limited quantity of tickets for these previously announced shows are available now via Phish Tickets as a real-time sale (while supplies last), as well as at public outlets such as Ticketmaster . An abbreviated ticket request period for all newly announced shows is currently underway at  https://tickets.phish.com and will continue through Monday, May 17th at 10:00 a.m. ET. Tickets go on sale to the general public beginning Friday, May 21st at 10:00 a.m. ET. Fans who cannot attend the rescheduled dates are eligible to request a full refund through June 10th.

Phish Summer/Fall 2021 Tour Dates

July 28 – Rogers, AR @ Walmart AMP July 30 – Pelham, AL @ Oak Mountain Amphitheatre July 31 – Alpharetta, GA @ Ameris Bank Amphitheatre August 1 – Alpharetta, GA @ Ameris Bank Amphitheatre August 3 – Nashville, TN @ Ascend Amphitheater August 4 – Nashville, TN @ Ascend Amphitheater August 6 – Noblesville, IN @ Ruoff Music Center August 7 – Noblesville, IN @ Ruoff Music Center August 8 – Noblesville, IN @ Ruoff Music Center August 10 – Hershey, PA @ Hersheypark Stadium August 11 – Hershey, PA @ Hersheypark Stadium August 13 – Atlantic City @ Atlantic City Beach August 14 – Atlantic City @ Atlantic City Beach August 15 – Atlantic City @ Atlantic City Beach August 27 – George, WA @ Gorge Amphitheatre August 28 – George, WA @ Gorge Amphitheatre August 29 – George, WA @ Gorge Amphitheatre August 31 – Stateline, NV @ Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena at Harveys September 1 – Stateline, NV @ Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena at Harveys September 3 – Commerce City, CO @ Dick’s Sporting Goods Park September 4 – Commerce City, CO @ Dick’s Sporting Goods Park September 5 – Commerce City, CO @ Dick’s Sporting Goods Park October 15 – Sacramento, CA @ Golden 1 Center October 16 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center October 17 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center October 19 – Eugene, OR @ Matthew Knight Arena October 20 – Eugene, OR @ Matthew Knight Arena October 22 – Phoenix, AZ @ Ak-Chin Pavilion October 23 – Chula Vista, CA @ North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre October 24 – Inglewood, CA @ The Forum October 26 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl October 28 – Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena October 29 – Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena October 30 – Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena October 31 – Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena

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See full list of dates and find Phish tickets online at Ticketmaster.com .

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In the chart below, a cell is filled in for each category that applies -- Gold for Phish, Red for Solo projects [in appropriate band member(s) columns], Blue for additional attributes [ NYE - a New Year's gig / run,  Festival - performing at a non-Phish festival, Europe - any European tour, Guidance - info about future touring without specifics).

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Phish Plays First Vegas Sphere Show: Photos, Video and Set List

If U2 gave the world a taste of the spectacle that is the Sphere during their recent venue-opening residency , Phish  used every ingredient in the Las Vegas venue’s hi-tech cupboard for an ultimate feast of the senses.

On Thursday night, Phish made its Sphere debut — the first of a four-night stand — in a city where the Vermont quartet has long produced elaborate, highly anticipated shows for Halloween.

You can see photos, the full set list and 40 minutes of the band's own professionally shot video from the show below.

The element of surprise of those Halloween shows is usually what songs — or, rather, full-album covers — the band will perform. But for four hours on Thursday, fans seemed less excited about what Phish would play than what onscreen artistry — often blown up to fill the enormous 160,000-square-foot interior screen — would complement each song.

Make no mistake: Those visuals — as well as the clarity and surround-sound wizardry of the Sphere’s innovative speaker system, as well as the multi-sensory technology and haptic seat vibrations further immersing the 20,000 attendees — were the star of the show.

However, music remained the core of the show given how those aforementioned effects were triggered in real time according to what the band crafted onstage. As the musicians changed tempos, segued from one passage to another, and worked their arrangements up to a climax, the creative masterminds of collaborating multimedia production company Moment Factory — along with longtime band lighting designer Chris Kuroda — adjusted their content accordingly.

The band, for its part, never seemed distracted or tripped up by the bombardment of graphics above them. Guitarist/singer Trey Anastasio even suggested that the overhead displays were so inspiring that the crowd needed to see it from his vantage point onstage.

Phish and U2 used the Sphere bells and whistles in noticeably different ways. For one, the improvisation the Moment Factory pulled off in reaction to Phish’s often-unpredictable jams was not possible for U2, whose arrangements were fixed for the length of its 40-date residency, The Irish band also relied on video and computerized facsimiles of familiar objects for its visual content; Phish used those less so, balancing them with generous incorporation of abstract, impressionistic graphics. And where U2 was very comfortable blowing itself up onto the screen to make its performance much more visible, Phish would tweak, even obfuscate whatever footage of its members it did project.

Most noticeably, U2 didn’t include the venue’s haptic chair technology or atmospheric (see: wind) effects. Phish, on the other hand, occasionally channeled Mike Gordon’s deep bass grooves through those 17,600 seats and changed the temperature of the Sphere as daytime screen vistas transitioned into nighttime ones.

The band has promised to make each Vegas show completely distinct from the others, both in the set lists and on the screen.

As for Thursday’s set list, Phish stuck largely to older material despite a forthcoming new album, Evolve (due July 12). A 90-minute first set felt much like a warm-up, punctuated by two songs Phish has favored during its Halloween-run shows, “Wolfman’s Brother” and “Carini.”

The 100-minute second set, by contrast, was stacked with bangers and fan favorites like “Sand,” “Tweezer,” “Mike’s Song” and “Fluffhead.” The encore closed with “Run Like an Antelope,” where Phish once again pulled out all the stops, onstage and off.

Read More: Top 10 Phish Classic Rock Covers

Dead and Company Will Perform at the Sphere Next

Each of Phish's four Sphere shows will be available to live stream exclusively at LivePhish.com . The band will spend much of the summer performing multiple-night stands at amphitheaters across America. Their latest tour and ticket information can be found at Phish.com .

Dead & Company are set to begin a two-month long residency at the Sphere on May 16. They'll perform three shows each weekend, with the last currently scheduled for July 13. The New York Post reported that Eagles are expected to begin a three-month long residency at the Sphere in September , but the band has not confirmed that news.

Phish at the Sphere: Opening Night Photos

Gallery Credit: Matthew Wilkening

Phish, Las Vegas Sphere, April 18 2024 Set List

1. "Everything's Right" 2. "Back on the Train" 3. "Wolfman's Brother" 4. "Maze" 5. "Leaves" 6. "Live Saving Gun" 7. "Dirt" 8. "Carini" 9. "Sand" 10. "Tweezer" 11. "My Friend, My Friend" 12. "Mike's Song" 13. "Lifeboy" 14. "Weekapaug Groove" 15. "Blaze On" 16. "Fluffhead" 17. "Farmhouse" 18. "Run Like an Antelope"

Mike Prevatt is a producer and writer for Nevada Public Radio in Las Vegas.

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Phish Live at the Sphere: How to Buy Tickets and Stream the Concerts Online

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.

After massive fan turnout and hype throughout U2’s residency last fall followed by a special Grammy performance from the band this past February, The Sphere is getting ready to host rock jam band Phish for a four-night concert event.

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Running Thursday, April 18 through Sunday, April 21, Phish is set to perform an immersive experience for fans at the music and entertainment arena in Las Vegas. Although all four shows are sold out, there are a few options to still attend with last-minute tickets, or watch or listen to the concerts online.

$441 and up

BUY: PHISH TICKETS AT SEATGEEK

Where to Buy Phish Tickets at The Sphere Online

Last-minute tickets to Phish: Live at The Sphere are still available on sites like Vivid Seats and SeatGeek . Both of those sites deliver their tickets digitally, so you’ll get an instant transfer to your phone or email if you’re buying last-minute Phish tickets for the weekend.

$420 and up

Buy: Phish TICKTS at vivid Seats

You can use our exclusive promo code VAR2024 for $20 off at Vivid Seats , or use VARIETY10 at checkout to save $10 off your purchase at SeatGeek.com . Phish: Live at The Sphere tickets are also available at Stubhub and Ticketmaster .

$416 and up

BuY: PHISH TICKETS ON STUBHUB

Where to Watch Phish: Live at The Sphere Online

Want to watch Phish: Live at The Sphere online? All four concerts are available to livestream on the band’s very own webcast site . A number of the jam band’s past concerts are also streamable on nugs.net so fans may eventually be able to stream the Phish Sphere concert on-demand as well.

For now, nugs.net has the best library of Phish concerts and livestreams to watch online outside of The Sphere show. Even better: you can test out the streamer with this 7-day free trial to watch live streams and on-demand concert recordings. Afterwards, plans start at $14.99/month, and come with unlimited catalog streams, on-demand streaming and professional audio mixed performances. Learn more about perks from nugs.net here .

Get NUgs.net 7-day Free Trial

Where to Listen To Phish Live at The Sphere Online

If you want to listen to Phish: Live at The Sphere, concerts are set to air on Phish Radio (Channel 29) on SiriusXM the day-after each show at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT. In addition, the fourth and final concert airs live on SiriusXM on Sunday, April 21 with a start time of 10 p.m. ET/7p.m. PT.

Get SiriusXM DEAL $1

Not a subscriber? You can sign up for SiriusXM for just $1 for 3 months of service, as per its current promotion. Afterwards, plans start at $13.99/month, which come with more than 100 channels (over 80 available in cars), ad-free music, news programming and talk shows. Learn more about SiriusXM’s pricing and plans here .

Buy: Phish Live at the sphere at vivid Seats

Though there are rumors that Phish may extend their Vegas residency, only this weekend’s dates have been announced thus far. Buy tickets to Phish: Live at The Sphere in Las Vegas at the link above.

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‘The working class can’t afford it’: the shocking truth about the money bands make on tour

As Taylor Swift tops $1bn in tour revenue, musicians playing smaller venues are facing pitiful fees and frequent losses. Should the state step in to save our live music scene?

W hen you see a band playing to thousands of fans in a sun-drenched festival field, signing a record deal with a major label or playing endlessly from the airwaves, it’s easy to conjure an image of success that comes with some serious cash to boot – particularly when Taylor Swift has broken $1bn in revenue for her current Eras tour. But looks can be deceiving. “I don’t blame the public for seeing a band playing to 2,000 people and thinking they’re minted,” says artist manager Dan Potts. “But the reality is quite different.”

Post-Covid there has been significant focus on grassroots music venues as they struggle to stay open. There’s been less focus on the actual ability of artists to tour these venues. David Martin, chief executive officer of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), says we’re in a “cost-of-touring crisis”. Pretty much every cost attached to touring – van hire, crew, travel, accommodation, food and drink – has gone up, while fees and audiences often have not. “[Playing] live is becoming financially unsustainable for many artists,” he says. “Artists are seeing [playing] live as a loss leader now. That’s if they can even afford to make it work in the first place.”

Potts, who works at Red Light Management – home to everyone from Sabrina Carpenter to Kaiser Chiefs and Sofia Kourtesis – feels like there is an industry equivalent of the Spider-Man meme in which they are all pointing to one another. “People who work at labels think bands make loads of money touring, while booking agents think they make loads of money on publishing and so on,” he says. “Everyone thinks artists make money from the other side of the industry they’re not involved in.

“Artists are the biggest employers in the industry. They pay for the tour manager, session musicians, agent, manager, crew, insurance, travel, accommodation, equipment, rehearsal space, production. Everything. I don’t think people know this is all the stuff that the artist pays for and does.”

“Greater transparency is needed,” says Lily Fontaine, lead singer of Leeds band English Teacher. On paper, the four-piece appear to have made it. They are signed with a major label, Island, have played on Later With … Jools Holland, get healthy BBC Radio 6Music airplay, their debut album has received five-star reviews and they are about to embark on their biggest tour to date, which includes an 800-capacity home-town show.

“The reality is that it’s normal for all of these achievements to coexist alongside being on Universal Credit, living at home or sofa surfing,” says Fontaine. During the making of their debut album, she and bandmate Lewis Whiting did the latter while unable to afford rent.

In their four years of existence, English Teacher have yet to turn a profit from touring. “We’ve never directly paid ourselves from a gig,” says Whiting. “A headline tour usually comes out with a deficit. The only thing that we ever make any kind of profit on is festivals, because the fees can be higher, but any money left over just goes towards the next outgoings.” A successful show for the group in the past has been defined by whether they can flog enough merch to afford a supermarket food shop.

So how do they survive? “In the world of artists, we’re in a lucky position,” says Whiting. “We try to pay ourselves £500 a month each from the band pot.” However, they’ve been reliant on their advance for this, which is now gone. “We’re now in that stage where we’re gonna have to figure out where that £500 a month is gonna come from,” says Fontaine. “Because the gig fees won’t be able to cover that.” The band estimate that their 16-date UK tour in May will generate roughly £800 profit. But, says Fontaine, “realistically, I don’t think there will be any profit because things always go over budget”.

For many artists, fees aren’t increasing in line with costs. “There’s been no real incline at all,” says Potts. “For support slots, I don’t think the fees have changed in the last 10 years or so that I’ve been managing, whether that’s £50 at the smaller end or £500 quid for some of the biggest shows.” Fees for headline shows can vary enormously for bands, even on the same tour. Playing a 200-capacity club in Newcastle may land you £600, while a 1,500 cap in London may net you £3,000.

And fewer people are coming to shows at the small-to-mid-sized end of things. “In our audience data, we see there is a gap in new audiences coming through post-pandemic,” says the FAC’s Martin. “As well as a bit of a drop-off in some of the older audiences returning to live shows.” However, despite stagnant fees and shrinking audiences, touring activity in the UK is at a peak. Due to the costs of touring Europe (which can be thousands in taxes and carnet alone) 74% fewer UK bands are now touring Europe post-Brexit. “It’s much more difficult to tour in Europe so there are more artists trying to perform domestically,” says Martin. “That creates a saturation problem.”

For this article, the Guardian has seen 12 tour budget sheets for various bands and artists varying from up-and-comers to firmly established and successful acts, all of whom regularly undertake headline tours across the UK in venues ranging from 150 to 2,500 capacity. Almost all of these result in losses. Understandably, most shared their balance sheets on the condition of anonymity. One four-piece indie band, whose last two albums went Top 10 in the UK charts, reported a loss of £2,885 from a six-day UK tour. The only tour that shows anything resembling healthy profit was a 29-date tour for a solo artist who came away with £6,550. Not bad going for a month’s work but, as Martin points out, “that’s then his touring done for the next six months. So it’s not enough money.”

Nubiyan Twist are a nine-piece Afro-jazz outfit who have a loyal following and tens of millions of streams on Spotify, “We pride ourselves on being able to put on a big show, like your Fela Kutis or James Browns, these epic spectacles,” says bandleader Tom Excell. “But it’s getting more difficult, without a shadow of a doubt.” For an upcoming eight-show tour of Europe, they are predicting a loss of £4,931.28. The only way they can justify doing it is because they got funding from the BPI Music Export Growth Scheme. “I would have just pulled the plug if it wasn’t for that,” says Excell. “I’ve got a two-year-old and I can’t be away from home for that long and come back with a loss.”

Even when the band get more lucrative fees for festivals it’s still tough. They will be paid £5,000 for a festival performance this summer but the total profit after band wages (as Excell pays all his band members in full first) expenses and commissions are paid out will be £277.60. “After four albums and 15 years doing this, to still be having to gamble on whether I’m going to make anything, while everyone else gets paid a guaranteed amount, is a struggle,” admits Excell.

Such thin margins leave little wiggle room, as the space-surf band Japanese Television (who headline 100-300 capacity venues) found out when their booking agent reduced their 13-date UK and EU tour to eight shows with a five-day gap in the middle that will add a further loss of around £1,200 to a tour that is already set to lose them around £700. “Records and T-shirts are basically what keeps us going,” says the band’s Tim Jones. “The only way this tour is working for us is because we just put out our second album and we did about 60 presales on the vinyl and that was basically enough to pay for the van. It’s a hobby that just about pays for itself.”

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The question is: who else will be able to afford to pursue music as a hobby? “It depresses me how many middle and upper class people there are in the music industry,” says manager Potts. “Because the working class just can’t afford to fork out £150 a day for van hire. The only artists doing that are people who have deeper pockets and can afford to take the hit.”

Of course, every act is different in terms of what they justify as reasonable outgoings and not everyone has the same costs, but Potts says from his experience, generally speaking, bands with four or five members now need to be playing 2,000+ capacity venues nationwide to “really start to see things tip”. That tipping point is out of reach for the majority. “Most people don’t actually get to that level,” Potts says. “Just look back at any festival lineup from 10-20 years ago and see which names are still on festival bills and how many you’re like: what happened to them?”

The gap between those who are flying and those who are floundering has become even more stark. “It feels like the top 1% have become the top 0.5%,” says Martin. “The level of artists we’re talking about here that are struggling to make things stack up financially would really surprise people.”

In 2022, the Grammy-winning Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab posted on X: “Touring has been amazing. We headlined a ton, had massive turnouts and have proven ourselves in all the markets. Yet still, running tens of thousands in debt from the tour and I’m being told that it’s ‘normal’. Why is this normal? This should not be normalised.”

I’m told that one US artist – who released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2023, which went Top 10 and placed very highly on numerous year-end polls and was nominated for a major award – worked out that the only way she could make her UK tour work was by sub-letting her home.

It’s a far cry from Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras jaunt. “The very high end of the live industry is reporting record profits,” says Martin. “You can’t have a healthy music ecosystem where at one end you’ve got people going ‘we’ve made more money than we’ve ever made’ and at the other end you’ve got relatively successful artists that are sofa-surfing while signed to a major label.”

Is there an answer? “When you’re touring Europe, you realise how much state funding in the arts there is,” says Excell. “It really needs more state funding and support from the top down.”

Martin echoes this. “The government needs to start looking at spending money on the music industry as an investment rather than as a cost,” he says. “But you also need to support a sector in a time of crisis. And this is a time of crisis.”

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Phish fans are famously dedicated. What happens when they enter the Sphere?

The 20,000 fans walking toward the glowing Sphere in Las Vegas last week were there for a band that many visiting the Strip have no idea exists

LAS VEGAS -- Adele, Mariah Carey and Garth Brooks tower over the Las Vegas Strip, peering out from billboards advertising their various casino residencies. But the 20,000 fans marching toward the glowing Sphere last week were there for a band that many Strip visitors have no idea exists.

Over the past 40 years, legions of dedicated Phish fans have followed the Vermont jam band no matter where it goes. This time, it happened to be Las Vegas, for four nights at the $2.3 billion immersive arena. No two Phish shows are the same, and while the band had played Vegas 26 times before, the Sphere offered a game-changing canvas for its signature light shows.

The fans came in sequined, glittery dresses and tie-dye alike, in button-down shirts and overalls printed with the band's red doughnut logo. Once inside, they were greeted with a LED screen the size of a football field.

Over 68 songs over the four nights, co-creative director Abigail Rosen Holmes would use that expanse to drive fans across bold visual worlds inspired by the four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas and plasma. As Phish jammed, the Sphere's screens became an art show, taking the audience through flowing streams of color and simple dots of light, around an enchanted lake and a field of psychedelic trees, and through a car wash (yes, a car wash).

“It gives me hope,” said Sean Marmora, 31, who traveled from New Jersey. “It’s inspiring that they’re pushing boundaries and doing things that they have never done before.”

Some displays were more abstract — during “Sand” and “Chalkdust Torture,” specks of light danced on screen in time to the music — while others were easier to discern: “Bathtub Gin” featured computer-generated people on floats made of donuts, pineapples and pizza slices in a wave pool. During “Maze,” a narrow line of video blew up into bits across the screen. For “Leaves,” hundreds of digital balloons joined the very real balloons flying up inside the Sphere.

“It was a very different Phish show, so special in its own right,” said Tim Urbashich, 38, from Wisconsin. “This is a whole evolutionary experience in what’s happening. They deserve visual representation of their music.”

Phish's light shows are typically driven by Chris Kuroda, whom fans have nicknamed CK5 — as in, the fifth member of the band.

Kuroda was still heavily involved in the shows at the Sphere, albeit with a stripped-down light setup offsetting the screen. Phish frontman Trey Anastasio said Kuroda played a key role in fighting against the “tyranny of the wall” of visuals.

On Saturday night, the screen lit a digital version of the band ablaze during “Fuego,” eventually subsiding into a calm blue. As the real band jumped into “Golden Age,” Kuroda lit them in his signature soft purple and yellow spotlights.

Holmes says the production team learned to be looser over the course of the Vegas run, refining and adopting subtle changes to make the visuals more responsive to the music.

“This is such a new and different environment, where we started trying to make everything perfect. And then being more comfortable, taking chances and pushing things a bit further,” Holmes said. “I think Chris Kuroda and I were able to reach further and mesh better as the nights went on.”

As much as the Sphere shows will be remembered for the visuals, though, it’s the music that ultimately makes Phish.

No song was repeated, and the band took advantage of the ability to isolate sounds across the room’s 167,000 speaker drivers. Anastasio says he was proud the band could still go in without a plan. Most large visual concert experiences include a click track to know when to hit certain marks. Phish insisted on being able to improvise.

“I felt like if we didn’t have that element, it wouldn’t be a Phish concert,” Anastasio said.

At the end of Sunday night’s show, Anastasio vowed to return to the Sphere. Phish was only the second band to play it after U2 opened it with a 40-show run. Dead and Company are scheduled to play there this summer.

Meanwhile, Phish will release its 16th studio album, “Evolve,” in July, when it will also launch a summer tour.

“As long as the four of us are together and walking this planet, I would like to think that Phish exists and that we can keep playing,” McConnell said of the band's stamina and longevity.

So much of the band’s time together is spent thinking about processes and new approaches, he said.

“So we don’t exactly know where it goes and where it’s going. But I have a good feeling that it’s going to go on for a long time,” he said. “I really hope it does.”

As long as Phish keeps going, so too will its community. Both Marmora and Urbashich were among the dozens of artists selling their Phish-inspired work at the PhanArt show that pops up at the band's stops.

“We’re all trying here to find something special,” Urbashich said. “You have to open up your mind to the simplest things. It’s so out there and abstract. If you don’t give it patience you might not think it’s what you’re looking for.”

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Phish Delivers a Killer First Performance at Sphere in Las Vegas

W orld-famous jam band Phish finally performed the first two of their four-night residency at Sphere in Las Vegas! The April 18 and 19 concerts have wrapped, with two left for tonight and tomorrow, April 21.

[Get Last-Minute Tickets to See Phish Live on Tour]

Phish have always been known to invest some time and energy into their live shows’ visuals, but the Sphere shows are like nothing they’ve ever done before. And that’s saying a lot, considering they’ve performed live over 2,000 times in their career; all without repeating the same setlist.

In a way, Sphere is the perfect place to hold a Phish concert. For those who don’t know, Sphere is a giant entertainment arena located near the Las Vegas Strip that is, for lack of better wording, a giant rounded screen.

Sphere has hosted bands like U2 and is already changing the way we view live music and visuals. It’s a very new thing, and Phish have successfully taken advantage of the technology presented to them.

What Happened at Phish’s First Shows at Sphere?

Phish took the 250-foot high LED screen that wraps around the arena and ran with it. They didn’t change much; they were aloof with their setlist as always, and the sound was incredible. With over 160,000 speakers at their disposal, this is a given.

The band’s creative director Abigail Rosen Holmes noted that the visuals used at the two Phish performances were able to be “executed, modified, and manipulated in real time” and followed the band’s performance instead of just playing against it.

The concerts featured huge psychedelic animations, graphics, and images. Guests enjoyed a wide range of visual effects and scenes, including a like-you-are-there depiction of nature and layers of abstract animated art.

If you plan on seeing Phish tonight or tomorrow, you’re in for a treat. No two performances will be the same!

Photo by Alive Coverage, courtesy of Phish’s official Facebook page

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The post Phish Delivers a Killer First Performance at Sphere in Las Vegas appeared first on American Songwriter .

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