[This post is courtesy of Brian Weinstein, host of the Attendance Bias Podcast. Thank you, Brian! -Ed.]

As the host of the Attendance Bias Podcast, I’ve spoken with literally hundreds of fans who have told personal, meaningful, important, and downright silly stories about Phish. Embedded within those personal tales are descriptions of venues, neighborhoods, cities, and entire regions. Since context is everything, there’s only so much you can understand about a Phish show until you know about the venue and the neighborhood in which it sits. With this in mind, I interviewed someone about every venue Phish is playing on their 2025 summer tour; 23 dates in 10 venues. Each person was able to give a detailed description of his/her hometown venue, and we broke down Phish’s history in that city. The first episode about SHNU Arena in Manchester, NH is available today!

If Attendance Bias episodes are meant to give the listener a first-person perspective on what it was like to be at any given Phish show, then this series is meant to give listeners some background on each venue Phish is playing this summer. Each episode also provides context about the area surrounding each venue, and the band’s history at each stop on the tour. I tried my best to find guests who are native to each city, or who have a history there. By the end of the interviews, I felt like I could jump on tour tomorrow and be fully prepared for what to expect at each stop from New Hampshire through Saratoga Springs.

While there is comfort and fun in stopping at old favorites, like SPAC or The Mann, a big part of summer tour, for me, is going to new locations and new venues. Sure, many of us have seen Phish in New York City, but NONE of us have seen Phish at the Forest Hills Stadium. Thousands of fans treat Dick’s as a family reunion, but do most of us out-of-towners know anything about what it’s like to see a show at 53,000 capacity Folsom Field in Boulder? Sure, Google is there to help but why not hear the inside scoop from a fellow fan? Plus, I’m such a huge Phish nerd that I couldn’t help but do a deep dive into the band’s history in each given city. Put another way, each episode is half-travelogue and half-Pharmer’s Almanac.

As I interviewed many fans for this series, some of whom I’d never met before, a few common motifs popped up, no matter which venue or city we were speaking about. Some topics organically popped up, whether I was speaking to Dianna Hank about The Moody Center in Austin, or to my friend Emily about The Petersen Events Center in Pittsburgh. While each episode is its own conversation, here are 5 takeaways from Phish’s summer tour, before the tour even starts:

School of Phish

Phish will play 10 venues over the course of the summer 2025 tour. By some odd scheduling, the first five are all located on college campuses, or are associated with a nearby university. The first stop at the SNHU Arena is right there in the name: Southern New Hampshire University. From there, the band stops at The Petersen Events Center on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh, then the Moody Center on the campus of UT Austin, to Folsom Field on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder and, finally, the Schottenstein Center on the campus of The Ohio State University.

Is there anything to this coincidence, other than these venues were available due to no college sports on the docket, and school being out for the summer? Probably not, but it does have added benefits when you think about campus amenities: tons of hotels near each venue, lots of breweries and eateries nearby, places that are used to handling large crowds, and tons of venues for late-night shows and afterparties. Now, we just gotta cross our fingers to hear “Alumni Blues” at some point.

Gas Up

This tour routing is cuckoo-bananas. The halcyon days of “touring with” the band by selling waters, beers, and heady grilled cheese in the parking lot to earn enough money for gas and a ticket to the next show have been over for years. But, as a thought experiment, let’s time-travel back to 1993 with the 2025 summer tour itinerary. Sure, there may be small runs that could be conquered with minimal strain (Forest Hills>Saratoga is no sweat, and Austin>Boulder has a couple of days off to cushion that 14+ hour drive), but some of the drives are borderline incomprehensible. Imagine what it would take to go from Pittsburgh to Austin (21+ hours), or Columbus to Charleston (almost 10 hours) in a day, with shows on either night of the drive. It’s not unprecedented, but most of the runs on this tour (especially during the first half) require either a group effort or superhuman stamina.

Folsom Or Dick’s? TBD

We’re Phish fans; we embody the paradox of embracing routine while simultaneously insisting on change. We rely on the band playing the composed section of “YEM” flawlessly and then we break the internet when they unexpectedly insert a 2nd jam at the end of the song. So when rumors began to float that Dick’s would be off the table this summer, and the band would instead play a 4th of July weekend at Folsom Field in Boulder, some people went crazy. Other people were excited about the potential change of scenery. Once it became official, everyone on Phish’s social media had to voice their opinion, whether they had been to one venue, both venues, or neither venue. Bottom line? There are benefits and drawbacks to each, and it’s a fun talking point to debate whether we prefer to see the band at the soccer stadium or the enormous college football field. We won’t know until after the shows are played.

Everyone Gets In

Part of my research for each episode included looking up the capacity for each venue. After a few interviews, I saw a trend develop: Phish is shooting for the moon this summer in terms of ticket sales. Folsom Field in Boulder (3 nights) is the largest non-festival venue the band has ever played. The United Center in Chicago (3 nights) is the largest indoor venue the band has ever played! Lawn tickets are always plentiful at SPAC (3 nights). The Schottenstein Center in Columbus (1 night) has its concert capacity listed as “20,000+.” It’s easy to say that Phish is more popular than they’ve ever been, but this is a tall order if they’re looking for sold-out shows. With a few exceptions (looking at YOU, Forest Hills Stadium), it should be easy to find your way into any Phish show this summer without worrying about being shut out.

Indoor Venues Win the Day

Summer tour: the time to be outside, to dance on the lawn, to see the band close out the first set as the sun goes down…<record scratch> Nope, never mind. Out of the ten venues this summer, six of them are indoors. Nearly every conversation in this series touches on that topic: Indoor Phish vs. Outdoor Phish, and does it feel like a “summer tour” when you’re seeing the band in an arena as opposed to a shed more than half the time? Some fans are mourning the increasing trend of phasing out the beloved sheds of yore (The Mann, SPAC) to the increasing number of summer arena shows. Other fans (including me) are celebrating full-show Kuroda lights and industrial-strength air-conditioning in mid-July.

So, whether you’ll be inside or outside, checking out one show or doing a big run, driving or flying, seeing a new venue or revisiting an old favorite, have a great summer tour! Don’t forget to check out the 2025 Venue Previews on the Attendance Bias Podcast!

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