[We would like to thank Oliver Pierson (phish.net user VermontCowFunk) for this recap. -Ed.]

Phish summer tour is arguably the second most wonderful time of the year. Everything feels right when you set off to a summer show, ticket in hand, a musical adventure in store, friends by your side. I hadn’t seen the band since 12/29/23, and I was excited to hear where their very busy seven months had led them. It’s been a productive time for the band, with an epic Gamehendge NYE show, a stellar Mexico run, a short but incredible visit to the Sphere, and then all the chatter around the new album Evolve.

Phish has even felt, by their typical media coverage standards, a bit overexposed lately. This month, we’ve seen Trey and the band in Rolling Stone, WTF with Marc Maron, NPR's Tiny Desk Concert, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Vulture, etc. So, they are not “Travis Kelce – Taylor Swift – Fall 2023” overexposed, but somehow it is slightly jarring to have them in the public eye so much. I had to wonder how all that attention jives with one of Trey’s comments in the Rolling Stone article, i.e. that the lack of mainstream success is the band’s incredibly liberating “superpower.” Could all the recent media coverage be the kryptonite that diminishes their superpower? Fortunately, an installment of Massachusetts Phish was only hours away to help me answer that question.

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