Four years ago, Phish shocked the jam band world by breaking up. While the individual members did their own projects, such as bassist Mike Gordon, Phish leader Trey Anastasio was always the main musician, both with his solo albums and his arrests.
While spending a few days behind bars recently for violating the conditions of his participation in a court ordered drug program, he began to think of Phish once again.
“When Phish broke up,” he recently told Rolling Stone, “I made some comment about how I’m not gonna go around playing ‘You Enjoy Myself’ for the rest of my life. And it’s so funny because Fish and Mike and Page have been talking to each other a lot lately and now — it’s not that I can’t believe that I said that, but its symbolic of how much I lost my mind or how much I lost my bearings or something. Because at this point in time I would give my left nut to play that song five times in a row every day until I die. I certainly thought about that while I was in jail.”
So is Anastasio thinking about a reunion? Rolling Stone was not sure but appeared to be leaning that way. He spoke to the magazine the same day he was sentenced to probation on charges of possessing painkillers without a prescription, which had been reduced to a misdemeanor after he completed a drug treatment program.
There was a reunion of sorts early last month when the quartet received a lifetime achievement award at the Jammys at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York. However, they jammed not as Phish but as individuals with other groups.
