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Set One: Only A Dream, Can't Stand Still, Pretend* > Can't Stand Still > Pretend, 15 Step > Midnight**, Where The Soul Of Man Never Dies**, Middle Of The Road, Cruel World, Soul Food Man

Set Two: Dig Further Down, Hap Nappy, Meat, She Said She Said, Crumblin' Bones > Morphing Again, Another Door

Encore: Country Boy**

Show Notes:

** with Danny Barnes on banjo

Read Scott Murawski's Blog for his thoughts on the Sherman Theatre show:

Anyway, the show was lots of fun. It was an intimate crowd and the band was in kind of a humorous frame of mind. I wouldn’t call it the tightest show of the tour, but the looseness opened some doors to places we wouldn’t normally go.

Probably the best example of it was in Morphing Again. There’s an intricate little warp in the middle of the song that’s supposed to be a call and answer between the drums and percussion while Mike, Tom and I support it, but we never really fell into it totally, and at the end of it there’s supposed to be a cue into this counting thing that takes us to the jam part. Well, we missed the counting thing pretty seriously. We did recover and get there, but by then the door was open and the jam was off the hook. We went to some unexplored places. The jam is supposed to start in 4/4 and work it’s way back to 3/4 and at the same time start in D and work it’s way back to G. This rendition was going every which way. We’d head to 3/4 and then back to 4/4 and we’d insinuate G but never quite get there. It was all very playful and teasing.

We also broke out Hap Nappy, a Mike tune we’ve been rehearsing for a while but haven’t played yet. That’s a fun one that I think will develop into something big over time.

Mike Gordon opened a brief tour with his solo group Friday night at Troy, NY’s Revolution Hall. In addition to the Phish bassist, the group features Scott Murawski (guitar), Todd Isler (drums), Tom Cleary (keyboards) and Craig Myers (percussion). The five musicians’ opening night featured a mix of Gordon solo cuts (“Andelmans’ Yard,” “Dig Further Down”), Phish songs (“Only a Dream,” “Sugar Shack,” “Meat”), Leo Kottke songs (“Middle of the Road,” from his work with Gordon) and covers (Peter Rowan/Bill Monroe’s “Walls of Time”). The group also debuted a new Gordon original, “Fire From a Stick,” at the start of its first set.