Features

Trey Anastasio: 40 Is The New 20 (Relix Revisited)

Today’s archival piece comes from May 2005, a moment in time with Trey Anastasio.

The view outside of Vermont’s most famous barn reflects the mood inside the cavernous room. The mountains in the distance glisten with snow, while the birds of spring seem to sing with a renewed optimism. Inside, warm laughter keeps pace with the hard work at hand, as Trey Anastasio and his still unnamed band run through previously unplayed material. Inside and out, it’s a bright and cheerful scene.

“Let’s play ‘Low’,” Anatasio says smilingly to his bandmates, drummer Skeeto Valdez, bassist Peter Chwazik, keyboardists Ray Paczkowski and multi-instrumentalist Les Hall. Valdez counts off the beat as Hall (who is playing guitar for this song) strikes a Pete Townshend-like anthemic chord. Anastasio quickly joins in to lead his crew on the maiden voyage of “Low.”

His mouth is wide with wonder and his eyes full of joy as his band nails the track on the first attempt. The hard-driving rock song is not what people expect from him—and to all of those involved that is a very good thing. Expectations unmet can be poison to the creative process. The Barn is devoid of expectations and the music being made is deeper than the wood it stands on.

“Wow,” says Anastasio. “Did you guys feel that or what?” Everyone in The Barn is beaming.

Joy has returned to all aspects of Trey Anastasio’s life. He’s working, but to see him playing, it doesn’t look like work at all: the music is fun again and his enthusiasm for the new is transcendent. Relix spent time last week in The Barn in Burlington, VT, as Anastasio rehearsed new material with his band. In his first post-Phish interview, the former Phish guitarist graciously took the time out to talk to us over a two-day period about life post-Phish, working without a record label and turning 20 (yes, that’s 20).

DAY ONE

Relix: After Coventry, did you go through a phase of loss and depression, or was it more of a feeling of lightness and freedom?

Anastasio: Honestly, it was an enormous feeling of lightness and freedom, and yet it was hard. I mean, obviously, it was hard. I haven’t really felt a lot of loss because I know it was the right thing to do. No question, absolutely no question in my mind. I actually left from Coventry and left the country; got on a plane with my family that morning and flew away. I knew it would be really hard for a couple of weeks around here. It was a deeply, deeply emotional time, because Phish had become such a family. It was more emotional with people outside of the four band members: It was our office and our crew, and people who were close friends of mine, who were salaried employees, were all basically laid off.

That’s a heavy burden to carry.

Yeah, there were a lot of talks with people and it was hard. I had a lot of emotions. I mean, the stuff that I was writing actually became incredibly therapeutic in that period, as it always has been. Writing it all, writing it out in musical form…

So you had a stretch there where you were pretty prolific…

I was writing like crazy for about a month, September and October. I just put misery up and kind of hid in the music. I was writing and writing and writing. So, I suppose that’s loss to a certain degree. That’s a long time, 21 years. It was kind of scary, but I like scary stuff. So, that’s why, in a certain way, it was liberating.

You know it’s time when you know it’s time.

And I don’t think I could have even verbalized how much it was time until after it was over, and then I really knew it was time. It was the right thing to do.

You haven’t totally shut the door on your past. You say you’re listening to Phish now?

I can listen to Phish now and enjoy it in a sense that things were so confusing [then]. I [had] completely lost my perspective on everything. That’s the most important thing to realize—there was no perspective anymore, being in the middle of this whole thing. I started to almost resent it, because deep in my heart I had other things I wanted to do and I could not get out. It was so hard to get out at the end, based just on all of those things.

There was a thing that had built up around Phish that was safe. Safe and easy. For a lot of people it was comfortable and fun and all that, but at the same time, I was getting completely exhausted and it was almost like trying to live two lives. Which is the way I felt in my heart, and trying to continue to do this thing to maintain the status quo for everyone that wanted it to continue to exist… So I derailed it.