Night Speaks to a Woman

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Originally Performed By	Trey Anastasio
Original Album	Trey Anastasio (2003)
Appears On
Music/Lyrics	Anastasio/Marshall
Vocals	Trey
Historian	John Michael DiResta jmdirexodus
Last Update	2026-02-14

History

First there was silly Trey, singing three different songs about nipple slicing and rhyming ‘bereft of oar’ with ‘find Lenore.’ Then there was ethereal Trey, awoke last night to the sound of the storm, afloat upon the waves. Then there was grateful Trey, who wants you to be happy, because everything’s right.

But somewhere between ethereal and grateful Trey, there was a moment we don’t talk about much, best described with an unexpected word pairing:

Horny Trey.

When Trey first released “Night Speaks to a Woman” on his self-titled debut solo album in 2002, Phish had just spent two years insisting that we “Gotta Jibboo.” On the album and the tour that followed, we saw a precursor to grateful Trey in more heartfelt songs like “Drifting” “Flock of Words” and “Ether Sunday.”  Perhaps feeling free to let loose without his longtime friends and bandmates around him, Trey also became even more than earnest as soon as “Night Speaks” opening guitar lick rang out: this Trey was hungry and wanting.

The night of “Night Speaks” isn’t threatening; it’s a playground, a hidden space for Trey’s bluesy opening guitar hook to set a scene of debauchery and intrigue. This tone set, Trey quickly fills the night space with an entity who oscillates from princess to queen to girl to the titular woman to whom the night speaks. 

As we get to know this feminine phantasm, Trey’s guitar lines hover and shimmer, circling the melody instead of overtaking it, flirting with this delicious creature he can’t stop describing. The lyrics and the guitar set us up for Jennifer Hartswick’s powerful “Night Speaks!” vocal that could only come from, of course, a woman. And by the time we hit 2:27 on the studio cut, is Trey softly moaning? We may be used to this sort of lust from most of Rock and Roll’s leading men, but it’s still a bit jarring to come face to face with horny Trey!

“Night Speaks” ultimately erupts with Hartswick’s belting vocal refrain of “like water on the breeze.” The three times Trey played the song with his all-male trio in 2018, it felt empty without that force, which may explain why the song has never jumped the pond to the Phish rotation or to Trey’s solo acoustic shows. (On recordings of the Trey Trio April 2018 performances of the song, you can hear audience members adding Jennifer’s critical vocal lines.) Even today, more than two decades after its debut, lawlessness abounds every time TAB busts out this lusty paean.

Video by pheelinphine1

Last significant update: 2/5/26

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