Mountain men

"I'm the man from the mountain. Won't you come on up?"

While spending a week exploring the mountains of Utah, I could not help but sing songs that refer to mountains (yes, out loud, to myself), usually Phish songs.

At some point I realized while "Mountains in the Mist" may be the most direct and obvious, several of their songs make passing references to mountains. So many, in fact, that one can not help but wonder if these guys from the Green Mountain state always have mountains on their minds.

Mountains can be found in the Anastasio/Marshall songs, with lyrics presumably written by Tom Marshall - "Two Versions of Me", "Walls of the Cave", "All of These Dreams", "Back on the Train", "End of Session", "The Wedge".

If you count cliffs, there are more - like the "cliffside push"  in "Limb by Limb" and the "unclimbable cliffs" in "Nothing". Even Mike Gordon, whose lyrics seem to be devoid of mountains, mentions a cliff in "Sugar Shack".

Trey Anastasio's own lyrics are chock full of mountains - from the early days of "Runaway Jim" to more recent fare like "Kill Devil Falls" and "Twenty Years Later". Most of the songs in his "Gamehendge" saga mention The Mountain. Even songs that are peripheral to the story refer to mountains or The Mountain - "Llama", Jeff Holsdworth's "Possum", and the liner notes to "The Divided Sky".

Even frequently-played cover songs have mountains - the lyric above comes from the Rolling Stones' "Loving Cup". And "Rocky Top" is, I presume, about a mountain.


Despite the multitude of songs I mentioned, I am sure I missed some.  Mountains are everywhere in Phish's songs.  Let us go on up.