How did you plan out almost 240 songs without a repeat?

I sort of live and breathe Phish 24 hours a day and have since I was 18. Months ago, I would get up and start sketching [song lists]. But this is the key part: I try to always keep it in sort of an improv head space. So that the overriding rule, is when you cross the line at the top of the stairs up to the stage — there’s actually physically a line — if I have a paper in my hand, I throw it on the ground. And if I have stuff in my mind, I let go.

It’s like in “The Last Samurai” with Tom Cruise, he’s trying to learn to do this kind of martial arts fighting and they’re all laughing at him, ’cause he’s getting his ass kicked. And they keep saying, “Too many mind, too many mind.” So the whole idea when we walk on stage is to not think. But martial arts is a discipline, with thousands of hours that go into not thinking. You don’t just walk into a ring and start doing judo.

If we’re doing a 13-night run, I live and breathe it for six months, and then I really get to the point where when we walk onstage, I completely forget it. I have no idea what the next song is going to be. So it’s like half and half. I had sketched out sort of a 13-night view. But as soon as Night 1 was over, we changed [our plans].

But you rehearsed the material?

This is what I mean about the discipline thing. A month before the Baker’s Dozen, I went alone to Fish’s house. I flew up to Maine, and I sat in the room with him and played 15 songs [by the band’s side projects] that Phish doesn’t play, so that he’d know them on the drums. Eight of those we didn’t end up doing at the Baker’s Dozen. Then a week later, I went to Burlington and got all four band members together at Page’s house, and we learned all 15 of those songs. Practiced them, recorded them, forgot them.