oh kee pah

The most interesting and atypical jam of Saturday, though, was another time when Phish decided to place a bit of improvisation in a spot of a song where there isn’t a jam. Basically, that’s what the outro jam is – they play the end of the song (like usual) and then decide to jam on that (unusual). So the most surprising thing on Saturday was the absolutely smokin’, excellent jam in “Runaway Jim” that came during the instrumental “verse,” that composed-out bit of bluegrassy goodness right before the “by the time he came home he was seventeen” lyric. Usually, Mike is very active here, playing that same old Jim bass line, with sparse (if any) strumming from Trey, nothing really from Page, and a very light version of the drums. Getting creative, they stretched this part out for a good 3 or 4 minutes, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you consider that this part usually lasts at most 30 seconds.