“Over the course of the three shows, if we threw out five people, that would have been it,” Tesone said. “Once they were inside, it was fine. They were some of the easiest crowds we did. They are a very easy crowd to deal with. They do what you tell them to do. If you say, ‘Hey, don’t sit on this,’ they get down.”

Phish is moving up from Boardwalk Hall to Bader Field, a venue that can hold ten of thousands more people because the Dave Matthews Band showed last summer that a multi-day, outdoor concerts could be successfully staged at the 142-acre former municipal airfield.

Morgan Sweeney, 35, attended all three Phish shows in 2010 in Boardwalk Hall. Sweeney will be at all the Bader Field shows.

When Sweeney is not checking out Phish concerts, he is raising his two children - son, Liam, 7, and daughter, Kyla, 2 - and working in the IT department for AtlantiCare.

“I was hearing rumors that they were supposed to come back last fall, but that never panned out,” said Sweeney, of Margate, who has seen the group 95 times since 1996. “Now, they’re back again. This is great. I’m very excited. I think it’s a good thing for the town also, for local businesses. It definitely could help out. Everybody needs money around here, especially with this economy.”