THE PORTAL OPENS

For forty years, Phish has jammed—for those with ears to hear.

- BY AMANDA PETRUSICH

Last August, Phish hosted a four-day music festival at a racetrack in Dover, Delaware. It was called Mondegreen—the word for a misheard lyric or phrase—and it was the band’s first festival since 2015. Phish—the singer and guitarist Trey Anastasio, the key-boardist Page McConnell, the bassist Mike Gordon, and the drummer Jon Fishman—was scheduled to play at least two sets a night for four nights in a row. No other bands were on the bill.

Mondegreen kicked off on a Thursday. That afternoon, I joined a long line of cars inching through cornfields that surrounded the motorway. The horizon was wavy with exhaust. The sun was fluorescent. I gazed at the stalks, fantasizing about a “Field of Dreams”-type scenario in which a ballplayer would emerge from the corn and offer me a sweating bottle of water. Eventually, I texted a friend who was already at the campground. He expressed his sympathies, then volunteered to deliver edible marijuana to my car. I demurred, but it nonetheless felt like an appropriate welcome. I would soon come to understand these two impulses—fellowship and oblivion—as central to the Phish experience.