So with maple as the flavor of the day, my immediate thoughts were "I Didn't Know" and perhaps even the triumphant return of "Time Turns Elastic" (after seven long years), both of which mention maple.
What about a Canada angle? They have already played two Neil Young songs, so how about another?
This band is nothing if not full of surprises, so when Trey opened the show, with a spotlight on him and a spotlight on the Canadian flag in the rafters, playing a gorgeous rendition of "O Canada" on guitar (take that, Jimi!), the stage was set for yet another anything-can-happen show in the Baker's Dozen.
"Crowd Control", still a fantastic song to set a rocking mood, was played to perfection. Sadly, "Sugar Shack" (about which I had forgotten when thinking of maple-related songs) was not (as usual). I have always loved "When the Circus Comes", but it might have been too early for it, so when Trey sang the "Whooooaaaaaaaa" intro of "Daniel Saw the Stone", I got extra pumped. It was not the best version, but it was a song that repeatedly said my name and it is a sufficiently rare tune, so who can complain?
Gloria commented, "I love when Page sings" during "Army of One" and, really, so do I; and so do you, I suspect. "The Wedge", "Guelah Papyrus", "McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters" (always VERY welcomed!), and "Limb by Limb" were pretty standard, but "Guelah" gets special recognition due to the brief insertion of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" (get it?!) after a shaky ride through the "Asse Festival" section. The set-ending "Walk Away" out-Joe-Walsh'ed the original James Gang version, with its "Tweezer Reprise"-like closing section - a perfectly huge climax.
Second-set openers have been shaping up to be the monster jams of the shows, and "Golden Age" kept that going with a 20-minute jam that dropped low before picking up in the last few minutes and becoming one of those jams that turns into something incredible and only possible from taking the time to get there. The new "Leaves" followed with some beautiful singing by Trey and Page, though it went on a touch too long. Trey can knock you over with a gorgeous solo over a pretty ballad progression, but at some point, it has got to give. So when it did give way to "Swept Away", more balladry seemed like an odd choice (though Gloria noted that it might have been a nod to the theme, being all "sappy" - not a bad theory!).
Still, the opportunity to hear the new-and-improved 3.0-era "Steep" was exciting, and this one took it to new levels. For a song that used to be about a minute long, the jam that was 12 times that stayed interesting throughout, shocking me that Phish can do 20 minutes of slow jams and mostly pull it off.
After that, it was time to rock, so the ending trio of "46 Days" (with a percussion jam featuring all four guys crowded around Fish's drum set), "Piper" and "Possum", while not the best versions of any of them, brought the house down with raucous thunder, especially the last minute or so of the "Possum" jam. For a silly ditty written by a guy that left the band more than 30 years ago, it still packs a punch when it wants to. Jeff Holdsworth deserves the royalty check from this one.
At 11:12 p.m., the band came back on to encore with a short, unremarkable version of David Bowie's "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide", not played since Phish covered the 'Ziggy Stardust' album on Halloween, and at 11:15, the show was over. This possibly shortest encore ever did not put a damper on the show as a whole, though. It was much different from last Tuesday's show, for sure, but it was special in its own right and the kind of show that works in the context as one thirteenth of the greater arc and as a performance of its own.
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