{"id":495670,"date":"2020-05-28T09:05:39","date_gmt":"2020-05-28T15:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=1006145"},"modified":"2020-05-28T09:05:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-28T15:05:39","slug":"flashback-neil-young-and-phish-play-an-epic-weed-fueled-down-by-the-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/flashback-neil-young-and-phish-play-an-epic-weed-fueled-down-by-the-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Neil Young and Phish Play an Epic, Weed-Fueled \u2018Down by the River\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Phish<\/a> have been dropping Neil Young<\/a> covers into their live set ever since they first played \u201cCinnamon Girl\u201d at Gallagher\u2019s Bar & Grill in their native Vermont back in 1989. Over the years, they added \u201cAlbuquerque\u201d and \u201cCome On Baby Let\u2019s Go Downtown\u201d into the mix, but they never got a chance to hang with him until they showed up at the New World Music Theatre in Tinley Park, Illinois, for Farm Aid on October 3rd, 1998.<\/p>\n

It was an overwhelming day for Trey Anastasio that\u2019s forever burned in his brain. It began when he got the chance to go onto Willie Nelson\u2019s bus where they got \u201cobliterated\u201d on weed and made plans to perform \u201cMoonlight in Vermont\u201d together. \u201cI\u2019m like, crippled,\u201d he told the crowd at a Nashville concert in 2019,<\/a> \u201ctrying to get off the bus, trying to find the door. \u2018Ok. \u2018Moonlight In Vermont \u2026\u2019 I gotta learn this song, learn the chords.’\u201d<\/p>\n

He then walked over to Neil Young\u2019s bus and found that Woody Harrelson was there too. \u201cSo there I get high on Neil\u2019s bus,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m getting more crippled.\u201d But despite being stoned out of his mind, he managed to make plans to bring Young out during Phish\u2019s set later in the day so they could play \u201cPowderfinger\u201d together. \u201cI start walking off the bus,\u201d Anastasio says, \u201cand just as I\u2019m walking off, Neil says, \u2018You know, I don\u2019t like to \u2026 I\u2019m not that good at plannin\u2019 stuff.’\u201d<\/p>\n

They learned what he meant when they watched his set from the side of the stage and he closed it out with \u201cPowderfinger.\u201d Anastasio took that as a sign that Young had changed his mind about a jam, but midway through Phish\u2019s set he heard someone else start playing guitar.<\/p>\n

\u201cI turn around, and Neil had heard this jam and was kinda really into it and was like, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s a cool jam,’\u201d he said. \u201cHe just walked out onstage behind me and picked up my spare guitar and plugged it into the amp and just started rocking out on whatever we were doing. And I think we went into \u2018Down by the River,\u2019 or something; we just made something up.\u201d<\/p>\n

They not only went into \u201cDown by the River,\u201d but they played it for nearly 20 minutes. Phish had never played the song before and the entire show was airing live on CMT. \u201cEverybody\u2019s standing over at the side, and he started kinda getting mad because this was going on for a long time,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were supposed to stop. This is, like, a TV show, you know? Anyway, what did I learn from that? Never plan anything.\u201d (Check out the entire glorious performance right here.)<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, Phish played Young\u2019s Bridge School Benefit where they teamed up for \u201cHarry Hood\u201d<\/a> and \u201cHelpless.\u201d<\/a> Once again, it was a perfect merging of jam worlds. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they have not shared the stage since that night. But in 2017, Phish finally found a chance to play \u201cPowderfinger\u201d when it was \u201cpowdered donut\u201d night during their Madison Square Garden Baker\u2019s Dozen residency<\/a>. Better late than never.<\/p>\n

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Phish have been dropping Neil Young covers into their live set ever since they first played \u201cCinnamon Girl\u201d at Gallagher\u2019s Bar & Grill in their native Vermont back in 1989. Over the years, they added \u201cAlbuquerque\u201d and \u201cCome On Baby Let\u2019s Go Downtown\u201d into the mix, but they never got a chance to hang with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-495670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 00:14:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}