Anastasio seems to be talking to the wall during the show, but he’s actually responding to a screen that posts the internet comments from the live stream.Īs always with Anastasio’s music, the lyrics don’t contain the meaning of the song so much as they point to the message in the instrumental music. Behind the risers supporting Fishman and the three singers, we see not a backdrop but the chandeliers and curving balconies over the now-empty seats. Instead, film director Trey Kerr makes the unusual decision to turn the band around so it faces the back wall of the Beacon. Holmes’ three vertical panels of abstract visuals are gone. And the two gospel-soul female singers (Celisse Henderson and Jennifer Hartswick) are joined by a third: Jo Lampert. But the chamber-music quartet, the Rescue Squad Strings, has doubled in size to play on eight of the 21 songs. The core quartet of Anastasio, a fully recovered Paczkowski, Phish drummer Jon Fishman and Trey Anastasio Band bassist Tony Markellis is the same. There are some differences from the 2019 excursion. Such a beautiful world and such a brief time.” On the 23-minute finale, “Beneath a Sea of Stars,” he concludes that the living and the dead are “all here together and the weather’s fine.” “This place is too quiet without you,” he adds on “Halfway Home.” Finally, on “Brief Time,” he asks himself, “What was I so worried about?. “We’re gone in a heartbeat, fleeting, it’s gone,” he admits on “Drift While You’re Sleeping.”Īnastasio feels as if he’s “About to Run” from his feelings but realizes the ghosts follow him everywhere he goes. The title song of the project’s eponymous album, “Ghosts of the Forest,” is told from the perspective of an elk who accepts his looming death - and the subsequent songs find Anastasio struggling to find a similar acceptance. He wrote a suite of nine songs that seemed to tell a story, beginning with Cottrell hunting elk in the Rocky Mountains, as he so often did. Suddenly death and the threat of death were all around, and Anastasio wanted to respond differently than his standard operating procedure. Soon after, Ray Paczkowski, the original keyboardist in the Trey Anastasio Band, came down with a brain tumor. It began in early 2018, when Anastasio’s best friend Chris Cottrell died of adrenal cancer. But his Ghosts of the Forest project is unlike any other. He’s best known as the lead singer and guitarist for Phish, of course, but he has also worked with Broadway shows, symphony orchestras, avant-garde jazz musicians and roots-rockers. What follows is remarkable as the improvisation itself transitions, Trey picking up Fish's pattern, or call for action, with the version quickly assuming darker over- and undertones.Trey Anastasio has done a lot of different projects over his 38 years as a professional musician. Fish fans would do well to tune in around 6:25. What follows is a wonderful, psychedelic, excursion. While not "Hydrogen," the version functions similarly what has now become familiar, airy play, a welcome transition from "Mike's" strong, driven, punch. Proves once again to be a perfect match for the seaside environs with a jam that grows more spacious and then sucks the listener into a powerful maelstrom of synth waves, crashing percussion, and magnetic lead guitar. A version worthy of the wonderful 7/9/19 "Sea of Stars", with the band building up a torrid and bilious fog on stage reminiscent of a good "Split Open and Melt" and Fishman keeping everything glued together. A good omen for the future of "Beneath a Sea of Stars Part 1"'s improvisational future. Exceptionally deep and must-hear.ĭrifts out of the usual jam into a stark minor key jam at Mike's urging, builds up a thick synth-laden ambient fog like it's 1999 all over again, and then gently returns to the main theme. Back to Jamcharts Feedback/Corrections Jam Chart for Beneath a Sea of Stars Part 1 (5 entries) DateĪn absolutely stunning piece of psychedelic music, almost akin to free jazz at times, that touches on nearly every mood imaginable in Phish's improvisation and a few not imaginable in Phish's improvisation.
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