The weekend before last I went to Chicago on that Friday to see Trey Anastasio who was touring with a three piece band. In honor of the 20th anniversary of the original show with the lineup of Trey, Russ, and Tony he decided to tour with that format because of the illness of his keyboard player Ray Paczkowski. While on some songs I missed the full band sound it was unique to hear this Trio sound. Traffic wasn't too bad for a Friday afternoon. I parked in Wicker Park and took the Blue Line to the Thompson Center. I've now seen Trey at the Chicago Theatre in 03, 12, and 18. In my opinion its the nicest venue in the city.
I was surprised by Trey's choice of songs this tour. I'd prefer he would have dug deeper into his solo catalog or brought back the covers the trio played on Spring 1999. Playing Phish songs with Tony and Russ was a little lame. Trey's usage of effects, tone, and overall playing improved over the course of the tour. In Chicago at times it was still a work in progress. The setlists speak for themselves. All songs stayed totally type I. His solo during Dirt was particularly rough. Ocelot might have had the best playing of the first set.
In set two it was cool to hear Soul Planet for the first time. This will be the go to jam vehicle for Phish this summer. Aqui Como Alla is one of the songs from Spring 99 that they regularly played so it was nice to hear that cover. Blaze On and Sand were the biggest songs of the second set. The encore started with Los Lobos' "Circus Comes to Town". The lyrics "the day I burn this whole place down" was cheered by many on this 4/20. Tuesday was somewhat anticlimactic as a closer but you knew they were saving First Tube for the next night. I was happy that I went. It was good to have a show to look forward to. This was the first show I saw with my new tour mobile.
