Its been 15 years since Phish last played in the Buffalo region, and 30 years since the band performed in the city itself.
Phish fans are certainly not averse to travel. But the fact that Trey Anastasio’s solo acoustic tour stop at Kleinhans Music Hall sold out within minutes of going on sale certainly speaks to the desire among Phish-heads to welcome our guy back to Buffalo proper.
That’s where any comparisons between a full-fledged Phish gig and an Anastasio solo show should end, however. They are in fact birds of a remarkably dissimilar feather.
And last week, Anastasio celebrated those differences with a lengthy single-set show that employed the spectacular acoustic properties of Kleinhans in service of songs selected from every phase of his career as a songwriter, with arrangements that employed the intimate nature of the space to explore the full dynamic range of the material. Along the way, Trey seemed to be relishing the opportunity to tell stories and chat amiably with the crowd.
Don’t get the wrong idea, though – this was no simple stripped-back, ’songwriter sits and strums’ affair. Trey included some of the most complex compositions in his songbook in the setlist for this gig, and though the arrangements were spare – either solo acoustic, or in duo format, with pianist Jeff Tanski – they proved to be no less majestic for that fact.
A little background on pianist Tanski, whose subtle but beautiful accompaniment helped point these performances heavenward at Kleinhans…
A decade back, when Trey needed a top-tier musician to help him learn how to play in the area of 100 songs for a series of shows with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, Tanski – who’d worked with Trey previously, helping with orchestrations for the Hands On A Hardbody musical – got the call.
“The Grateful Dead thing came about because Trey mainly wanted someone to practice with,” Tanski told me in 2015. “He was learning all the songs on his own, but realized that his practicing would be much more effective and fun with another person in the room. So when he asked if I wouldn’t mind learning 90 Grateful Dead songs so we could play them together, I jumped at the chance.”
“The first thing I noticed about Jeff was his positive attitude, combined with his innate musicality,” Trey told me via email around the time of the Dead’s Fare Thee Well shows. “Broadway shows are very tense by nature, and you run into a lot of people who will tell you why something can’t be done. Jeff doesn’t have anything near that outlook and that’s a very attractive quality in a collaborator.”
When it came to the Dead material, the process “took a long time, because, as you can imagine, each song takes quite a while if you really want to learn them well, not just in a cursory way; and I wanted to really inhabit them,” Trey said, recalling the more than 150 hours the pair spent working through the material.
The fruits of that labor were in full evidence during the portions of the Kleinhans show that featured Tanski on piano.
The evening began with Trey in solo format, and an intimate, vibey “Free” set the initial tone. Achugging “Back On the Train” firied things up a bit, and then a chat with the audience recounting a Phish gig at the fabled Allentown club Nietzsche’s, a stone’s throw from Klienhans, sealed a connection with that audience that would remain throughout the show. (Trey told us he’d been out for a “jog” in Allentown earlier in the day. Seeing the venerable and recently rehabilitated Buffalo venue brought back memories of the early days of Phish, including the band’s 1991 Nietzsche’s stop.)
A beautiful “Water in the Sky” and an elegiac “Strange Design” wrapped the first solo set, and then Trey introduced Tanski, letting us know that the last time the pianist had been on the Kleinhans stage, he was receiving his diploma from St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute.
The duo then dug into the meat of the set, with a resplendent run through the multi-sectioned Phish gem “Stash,” an absolutely heavenly take on “The Divided Sky,” and a spotless run through the epic “Fluffhead,” dense compositions whose classical music underpinnings, abundant contrapuntal figures and fugue-like sections truly shone in the stripped down setting. This is incredibly difficult music to play, and these two made it look and sound easy and natural.
Trey followed with another acoustic solo set highlighted by inspired takes on “Cavern,” “Sleep,” “Maze” and “Steam” – all tunes written for Phish, and yet somehow, sounding full and fully formed in the solo setting.
Tanski returned, and the two tore into one of the evening’s highlights – a pretty damn flawless take on the abundantly progressive Phish ‘phan phavorite’ “Reba.” Trey was clearly enjoying himself, perhaps was much as we were.
A healthy encore included “Possum,” “The Squirming Coil, “What’s the Use?,” “Sand” and “Tweezer Reprise,” wrapping an unforgettable show in a gorgeous venue.
It all went by like a beautiful dream…
