So while neurotically refreshing ticketmaster’s website and waiting for the NYE ’15 sale (update: got locked out, I’m not surprised but I am disappointed…), I figured I’d revisit my first (and only… so far) New Year’s run. Another of my favorite jams that doesn’t get talked about enough: New Year’s 2013 Chalkdust Torture (set 2, song 1). Time stamps given are from the LivePhish soundboard.

Listen: youtube, phish.in, livephish

2013: the year Phish got extremely experimental again. Things kicked off with a smoking hot summer tour, with the band pretty definitively saying, “we’ve been back for a while, but now it’s time for us to truly blow some jams out of the water.” A solid SPAC run, a goofy Chicago run riddled with rain problems, a Gorge run that brought the Wilson chant home to Seahawks fans and a blistering set 2, the Tahoe Tweezer and Hollywood Hood… the list goes on. Then came fall tour, when the band finally dropped their hesitations and explored the ether that makes up their jams: the spaciest of spacey Hampton runs, solid A+ Twists/Ghosts/Diseases/Tweezers/Drowneds/Rock and Rolls/etc, and a monstrous Halloween run that kept in Phish’s tradition of keeping fans on their toes with a Wingsuit musical costume that nobody saw coming. Which left everybody wondering… how would the New Year’s Eve run at Madison Square Garden pan out? How much higher could they go?

Cue a four-night run at the Garden. 12/28 had ups and downs, but a Wolfman’s Brother in set 1 and a smoking Sand>Piper (complete with Trey’s new toy, an Echoplex tape delay) showed that the band just needed to settle in. And then 12/29 happened, a show that was declared legendary the moment that lights went up after the second set. For me, this show was the first time I saw the band playing at this level, and it was absolutely magical to witness; it was beauty in its purest form. But the jams in this set 2 are for another post, though.

Cue 12/30. Set 1 kept a beautiful vibe going – lots of high energy, with appropriate breathers as necessary. And then set 2 kicked off with this monstrosity of a Chalkdust Torture that is, in my opinion, one of the two jams from this New Year’s run that has potential for being jam of the run.

Intro/Composed Section

Standard fare here, not much to write about. Between-chorus jam hints at nothing special, save for the fact that the band is locked in. Some nice noodling when the jam proper starts; Trey doing his E blues thing starting around 3:44 and the band settling into the groove, just feeling each other out for a beat. Mike is holding down the groove beautifully. Trey starts sustaining tones at 4:30, hinting at what’s to come.

5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Liftoff

At 4:47, Trey starts sustaining notes and going whale call. I know it’s controversial, but I personally love whale call Trey; his bends are extremely musical and help to highlight what the rest of the band is doing. But the band keeps things in E. Page starts hitting some chords around 4:55 that hint at the band wanting to take this somewhere other than normal. Then, at 5:12, Trey hits a high A, hinting where he wants people to follow him. Page switches to G, offering his alternative at 5:13; to be honest, both sound promising. At 5:30, Trey switches fully to A, and Mike follows his lead two seconds later and we’re fully in A mixolydian, with Captain Treyhab on his whailing expedition at the helm.

I’ve spoken about this before with friends, but it’s my opinion that Mike is the guy in the band that decides when and where jams go full type ii; the rest of the band can be doing something totally different, but if Mike is still in whatever song we began in it won’t complete the shift. Likewise, when he decides it’s time to go type ii, the rest of the band follows. Mike is always in the driver’s seat, and I think he does a very good job of it when they go type ii.

At 5:53, Page hits a root-maj2-maj3 progression, and he hits the minor 7th every once in a while (keeping in line with the mixolydian theme) to keep things light and airy. Fish switches to a heavily syncopated drum fill, notifying us to strap on our seatbelts and prepare for the next phase of this jam. At 6:15, Trey begins a lick that helps the rest of the band build around him and allow him to springboard off of them. Cactus is holding down the fort, Fish is giving Page rhythmic ideas left and right, and Page is building around Trey and busting this jam wide open.

Then, at 6:40, Trey starts sustaining notes and climbing…

Breaking the clouds into psychedelic candyland

6:40 signals the first incoming peak. Trey is climbing up and up and up… Mike is still throwing DOWN to remind us that our seatbelts are on and we can just enjoy the adrenaline rush, Fish is locked in to Mike, and Page is climbing with Trey. Page is, as usual in a bliss jam ripping the jam wide open with gorgeous open chords. Then, at 6:55, Trey hits the GLORIOUS high note, and the audience roars with approval.

But at 7:11, Trey lets us know we haven’t achieved maximum velocity just yet. He teases Fuego at 7:19, before beginning another apex at 7:27. He stays there, hanging on that note for as long as his sustain will allow him. Finally at 7:40, he figures the note has given him everything it can, and he begins the first descent. Page switches to a swirly organ tone at 7:42 to accompany the piano, and Mike begins exploring the space left by Trey and Page. Trey starts a loop going for a beat, before turning off his high-gain Tubescreamer and playing around on trills. Page hints at some jazzy accidentals at 8:25, indicating phase two. Trey’s loop is back in the fray, and Page switches to the Wurlitzer to add a subtle psychedelic comedown bliss; he switches between piano and Wurlitzer before finally settling into his position in this jam. Trey switches his Tubescreamer back on around 9:05 to squeeze yet more juice out of this segment. Mike hits a repetition of notes around 9:20 to move things along.

From the psychedelic MSGarden of Eden into space

Fish switches up his drum fills to rely more on cymbals to take us into thicker air. Around 9:47, Mike turns on his Eventide Space (fun fact, I used to intern for them…) and sets it to some super spacey delays. Trey started chopping at some A minor chords around 9:40 to switch modes from bliss, signaling that we’re heading to star destroyer space land. Page is now fully on the Wurlitzer, filling up the high end of the band’s sonic spectrum before going to the Rhodes at 10:00 to complete the switch to space. Then, at 10:20, Page steps up to the Yamaha synth, and we’re in space. Trey does the choppy tremolo thing he loves doing on his Boomerang looper a bit after 10:30, further adding to the “what the hell is going on?!” vibe of this segment.

And now, a quick aside to explain why I prefer audience recordings to the soundboard. Playing back this jam on the soundboard, at this point we hear the audience roaring in approval. It could be from a number of things: Page’s space synth, Trey’s space effects, or just the fact that the band as a whole is locked in, and we’re just happy that we’re witnessing a historical jam in the making. But now, play back the same segment on an audience recording (timings are different, the audience recording here is around 9:55ish on phish.in) and it’s immediately obvious. HELLO MIKE TAURUS PEDAL BOMB! It rattles your eardrums, massages your body, and breaks the careful tension the band has built up here. Then, you listen carefully, and you realize that the audience recording has a sense of the actual venue and vibe of being there, the high end is a bit less harsh, and everything just sits really well in the context of the recording. Yes, things aren’t as crisp and well-localized as on the soundboard, but to me audience recordings are much more enjoyable. You can’t HELP but go nuts at the tension release on the audience recording.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah… this jam. You can’t hear the Mike Taurus bomb on the soundboard, but it’s there. We’re continuing our exploration of space. Trey steps over to his Echoplex and starts getting the tape to feed back around 10:55. I think the Echoplex was one of the best things to happen to Trey’s rig in a while, he uses it very musically. Page steps over to the organ at 11:05, and we’re firmly rooted in a ground straddling A mixolydian and A minor, creating very nice tension. Trey starts playing with the wah to add a bit of funk to this space, at 11:25, and Mike releases the tension with another taurus pedal bomb (the higher harmonics are more obvious on the soundboard here, but it doens’t have the full power that the audience recording has…). Mike’s power drill makes an appearance at 11:45, and at 11:54, Trey indicates a mode shift to D. Page follows on the piano. It sounds like the jam might just float off into space and end here, but Fishman demonstrates his worth to the band and keeps things moving foward. This, in my opinion, is one of the key differences in 3.0 Phish from before 2013, and 2013-today: Fishman keeps the jams going and stops them from dying out.

Back to happy, but this time mellow

Page suggest switching to C first, and Trey responds, but nothing is definitive as Mike is still on the power drill. By 12:07 when Cactus lowers the drill, Page and Trey have switched things up to D major. Trey is rooting things now, with Page building and giving us some gorgeous melodies. Trey tells us this is mixolydian and not major around 12:35 by hitting hte C major chord, but then starts hitting more accidentals around 12:45 and switching things up into byzantine with diminished and augmented accidentals around the fifth. Mike is back to the reverb/echoes on the Space pedal. This is a nice, almost What’s The Use?ish space – I sure as heck wouldn’t mind going there! But not today.

Page is keeping the synth in the background and hops onto the Wurlitzer around 13:45 to push us into mellow space bliss. It’s like we’re floating above the atmosphere, slowly orbiting the moon and taking in as much of the Earth as our eyes will allow us. Fish picks up the drumbeat around 14:25 to start the jam driving again. This could go full on dance party or it could go into space. Page hits the Clavinet at 14:48 to signify it’s FUNKY TIME!

Dance party o’clock

This band is LOCKED IN. There’s nothing else about it. Mike is hitting dorian accidentals, and Trey is in James Brown funk mode, following Page’s lead. Fish is all over the place, finally making his presence known as a jam leader; he’s in charge now. At 15:40, Trey decides he wants some start/stop interplay with the audience; cue the WOOs. Love them or hate them (I’d personally would rather they didn’t but don’t get too angry at wooing), they’re here, the band does it so clearly the boys like it, and they’re part of this jam. Trey hits the Echoplex, insuring it’s not your everyday woo; Fish is TEARING IT UP with his start/stop fills. Trey is subtly changing the chords between 7ths and minor-9ths to keep some dynamic to the jam, until feedback takes over around 16:40 and the band builds energy to another localized peak.

Now this… this is fun. Did we REALLY start at bliss in this jam? Either way, the band is locked in, having fun, and hosing us with IT. Wait… is that a Tweeprise tease from Trey at 17:05? Indeed is. They’re just having fun at this point. Mike shows his approval with the fight bell at 17:25; he’s all over the jam with the envelope filter at this point on bass.

But where are we headed? Will the band try to do more with this monstrosity? Yes they will, take it down into space a bit and mellow out. Mike hits one final Taurus pedal bomb around 19:07, right before… Maybe it’s time for a landing pad? Nope! Right into Mike’s Song – time to keep the dance party going!

For me, either this or the 12/29/13 Disease (another worthy jam that will get a writeup in the future) was the jam of the run. The opening bliss segment and following space elevated me to my happy place at the time, and relistening to these jams consistently takes me back. And on top of that, both were in a NYE run that was A+ from top to bottom, with very few flubs and many memorable moments (JEMP truck set, anyone?). This jam doesn’t get anywhere near the attention or respect it deserves, but I certainly love it for what it is.