Sunset Days

• Performances
• History
• Lyrics
• Artist
  • Phish
  • Fish
  • Mike
  • Page
  • Trey
  • All

History

Our days of seeing the sun slip below the horizon are finite. Sunsets are the perfect metaphor for the bittersweet reality of life and our relatively short time in this form, at least. We all may have different beliefs about what happens next, but for now, we are grateful for the members of Phish who have been here to light up our days.

In a 2018 “Ask Trey” interview on Sirius Jam On, Trey expressed how fortunate and thankful he felt to still be making music with his longtime bandmates. Just being alive each day felt like a dream to him, and he acknowledged how quickly that could all disappear. That moment offered a glimpse into where Trey was headed creatively, as he quietly began shaping what would become Ghosts of the Forest. “Sunset Days” gave us a preview before we even knew about the band, the album, the tour, or the documentary he was building in the background. Sadly, within a few years, Trey would lose two bandmates and Page one of his own.

Trey debuted “Sunset Days” on 12/15/18, at the last show of his winter acoustic tour in Boulder. After a brief false start before “Talk,” the song appeared a few tracks later. The next time it surfaced was during the closing scene of Between Me and My Mind, listed as a Ghosts of the Forest track. It was likely written for that project, though it was not played on the Ghosts tour or included on the studio album. Phish has never performed it live, but it’s a recurring presence in Trey’s solo acoustic concerts.

Video by Trey Anastasio

Trey released a studio version of “Sunset Days” on August 23, 2019, with swirling cover art by Robert Beatty. Though there is no official soundtrack for the film, the artwork brands it as being from Between Me and My Mind. This marked the first time in years that Trey or Phish had released a song as part of a film project. The last was the inclusion of “What’s the Use?” in Condo Painting, a documentary about painter George Condo, whose artwork also appears on The Story of the Ghost and Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

Musically, “Sunset Days” feels right alongside mellow late-’90s Phish ballads like “Sleep,” “Driver,” or “Mountains in the Mist,” built on gentle strumming and soft, intimate vocals. But lyrically, it is more in the lineage of “Summer of ‘89” or “Miss You”—songs that find Trey reaching toward something more direct and personal. The latter, of course, was written about the loss of his sister, Kristy Anastasio Manning.

This emotional honesty carries into Ghosts of the Forest songs like “A Life Beyond The Dream” and “Friend,” a body of work that grew out of the loss of Trey’s best friend Chris “C-Cott” Cottrell. These songs help process grief. They are meditations, invitations, even quiet celebrations of life and memory.

In “Sunset Days,” Trey addresses someone directly. It might be Chris. It might be Kristy. It might be someone else. Or maybe it is meant for all of us—listeners who have been walking beside him on this winding path. Even if the song was not written for us, Trey has made it clear he intends to keep playing for as long as he can. In Between Me and My Mind, he even shares how put off he is by the idea of other musicians retiring.

Trey backed that up the following year, playing with Phish, Ghosts of the Forest, TAB, and continuing his solo acoustic tour. He guested with Mike Gordon, Soule Monde, Jennifer Hartwswick, Khruangbin, Tedeschi Trucks Band, and even performed with Chris Eldridge and Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as part of the Live From Here at The Town Hall in New York. By the Fall of 2019, it was announced that Oysterhead would reunite in 2020 in Broomfield, Colorado, after a 14-year hiatus. All of this momentum, however, was soon brought to a halt by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Sunset Days” says exactly what so many fans feel about Trey, and what he seems to feel toward us:

“There is nothing that I would rather do
Then spend my sunset days with you.”

Last significant update: 7/24/25

 

Submit notes/corrections