The Silver Light History

The Silver Light

Originally Performed By	Trey Anastasio
Original Album	Lonely Trip (2020)
Appears On
Music	Anastasio
Lyrics By	Herman/Marshall
Vocals	Trey
Historian	Parker Harrington (tmwsiy)
Last Update	2026-01-07

History

A year earlier, the idea would have sounded like a setup to an upcoming gag. Toilet paper and Purell as percussion? If you’d suggested that Trey Anastasio would debut a song this way, home alone, improvising with household items during a global shutdown, it would have been met with disbelief. Yet in the spring of 2020, that kind of preposterousness was our daily reality. When plans to record “The Silver Light" with TAB were abruptly canceled, Trey did what musicians everywhere were doing at the time: he adapted.

Video by Trey Anastasio

He posted the lo-fi, quarantined performance saying on Instagram,

“I hope that you, your Families and loved ones are safe today. I woke up early to the sound of [sic] sirens, as I usually do here in the City lately. Like everyone else, I can’t stop thinking about the doctors and nurses who are heading into the hospital. How do they do this? What is it really like?.....The Silver Light isn’t officially a new song. TAB was booked to record it for an album starting Mid March. Sadly, we had to cancel, so here is an acoustic guitar, mouth drum, Toilet Paper and Purell version. New School quarantine style, making music from TP and Purell!”

Trey wasn’t presenting “The Silver Light” as a proper debut, but like other quarantine songs, was sharing a moment. Unfinished and rough around the edges, it was still typical of Trey’s genuine sincerity and his understanding that music is a powerful connection. That same intimacy would later define Lonely Trip, with “The Silver Light” included as an album track shaped by isolation and reflection

The silver light that falls at night
Reminds me what it's like to be
Ever flowing, never knowing
In a sense it's only me

The first, and alternating verses, ends with “In a sense it’s only me” framing visions unseen by others, sounds unheard, and feelings unshared. It lands on a familiar Lonely Trip realization: stuck alone with your own thoughts and made heavier by the awareness that millions of others were doing the exact same thing at the same time.

The song made its proper debut at the storied Capitol Theatre on January 11, 2020, surfacing midway through the first set of a Trey Anastasio Band show. Harmonies from Natalie Cressman and Jennifer Hartswick immediately set the tone, carried by an unhurried groove from Russ Lawton and Cyro Baptista. Like many “Lonely Trip” songs it made an appearance during one of the Beacon Jams shows on November 13, 2020. Since then, it has surfaced sporadically in Trey’s performances, always retaining the emotional weight of its origin.

Video by Story

Phish itself has played the song just once, on October 26, 2021, at the Santa Barbara Bowl. It emerged beautifully out of a sublime segue from a particularly enjoyable “Sample in a Jar.” Like “I Never Left Home” that had debuted the previous week in Eugene, it instantly brought fans back to memories of the Beacon Jams era and songs born in lonely isolation.

“The Silver Light” will always carry the timestamp of where it came from. A song from a time when solitude was oddly universal and ordinary household objects could briefly become instruments (and, for a while, even strangely scarce). Whether it is ever performed again by Phish, only time will tell.

Last significant update: 1/4/26