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Due to my life on the road managing a band the Phil & Friends/moe. show at Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto on July 9th, 2002 would be one of just two concerts I would see over the course of that entire summer, and the only reason I was afforded the opportunity to attend this show was because I had booked nero into the Comfort Zone for an aftershow, ensuring that we’d be in town for Phil Lesh and (significantly) that we wouldn’t have to start until after Phil’s concert was over.
Load-in and soundcheck meant we missed Soulive, who were also on the bill for this one, but we caught all of moe.’s set, which I really liked. It didn’t hurt that Warren Haynes sat in for a couple of tunes.
Unfortunately I didn’t think very much of Phil’s show, which surprised and disappointed me. He was one of my favourite bass players in the world and I would always keep coming back to see him, but with a rotating backup band he didn’t have the luxury of playing with long-standing bandmates that have his back before he needed it. Which is to say: the psychic connection just wasn’t always there. So “& Friends” shows were bound to be a little hit-or-miss and for me this one was a bit of a miss.
That said, I’m honoured to have been in the presence of Phil Lesh (1940-2024) and his astounding musicality for the evening.
Of course the last note of Phil’s encore (Liberty) was the starting bell for our evening as we raced from the highfalutin Amphitheatre back to the smelly sticky Comfort Zone. As nero busied themselves inside tuning up and throwing back their ritualistic preshow Jäger shots a prodigious line was forming outside, as the shuttle bus that I had booked kept dumping load after load of drunken hippies at the door. The kid running door security came to me almost in tears.
“I think they’re trying to kill me,” he whimpered. I assured him that the crowd might be weird but they were all the very definition of harmless. Then I kicked him in the ass, told him to get ahold of himself and sent him back out to gatekeep the psychedelic post-show walking nightmare that was gathered outside caterwauling for more of everything that they were already full of.
Of course once they got in the sold-out, totally primed in-all-directions crowd kicked the band into high gear and we all had a night that just couldn’t be beat. Everyone was hoping Warren Haynes would show up and he didn’t but who cares? A good, sweaty time was had by all and once it ended we got things started at a series of after-afterparties that kept me at it until 10:30am.
If you don’t have many shows on the calendar it’s important to make them count.
Todd Man Out 