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On September 13th, 2023 I woke up in a surprisingly clean but otherwise overtly dingy Days Inn where I thoroughly did not enjoy the worst tin-tray scrambled eggs and always-weird sausage I’ve thus far discovered in my long history of hot-breakfast-included budget hotel stays. I tossed the uneaten slop in the garbage can and instead overflowed myself with much of a loaf of twice-toasted bread, each slice lathered with its own tiny square of Kraft peanut butter.
The location was Fredericton; the occasion was the Harvest Music Festival. In a feat of convenience I had managed to couple a couple of festival concerts with a family visit to Moncton, a happenstance that also allowed me the further convenience of free access to my mom’s car, which I had driven to the aforementioned Inn the day before in time for a sublime opening-night concert starring Daniel Lanois.
This second day would be significantly more packed. With my belly full of bread and nutty bears I spent the bulk of the morning wandering through Fredericton’s very fantastic Beaverbrook Art Gallery with my jaw fully agape* before heading to the Fredericton airport to meet my friend Dave, who was flying in from Ottawa. His flight was about a half-hour late and I wanted to be extra sure to be on time so I swallowed my pride and let the car’s GPS guide me to the airport. I had only used the GPS once before and it had gotten me lost trying to find the hotel when I’d arrived in Fredericton just twenty hours earlier. Well, the thing remained consistent, leading me to a total of three consecutive dead-ends** (one road turned into a paved walking path before vanishing altogether in a field of tall grass) before delivering me to YFC a full half-hour late for Dave’s half-hour late flight. He had his arms crossed and was shaking his head in semi-mock disgust as I pulled up.
“Dammit Snelgrove, get a damn cellphone already!”
By the time we got back to the hotel all was forgiven. Dave even bought me lunch (supper? Sunch) at a restaurant across the street and after a few beers back at the room we accidentally split an uber down to the fest with a couple from Moncton and their two teenagers. (They were a family of massive Phish heads; they had even named their youngest son Trey and while he was the biggest fan of them all, he wasn’t there. The Harvest Festival tent is strictly 19+ and young Trey was strictly only sixteen years old.)
Our friend Chris was slated to arrive from PEI at some point during the evening, after detouring through Halifax where he was picking up his brand-spanking new Tesla Model S. He had sprung for Dave’s festival pass and he had sent Dave a message explaining that he had an extra Ultimate Pass for me too if I wanted it. I figured a pass with such a fancypants name would come with some perks so I took it. Dave and I walked to a nearby mall where we found Will Call inside the festival’s popup office. We picked up all of Chris’ tickets and headed to the big tent where the show was slated to take place.
Turns out the Ultimate Pass is just what they call the regular full-festival pass, but regardless I stood out front for a half-hour trying to sell my original ticket for any amount of beer money I could get. But I couldn’t; it was too early in a long night for anyone to be showing up without a ticket. However, while I was waiting I ran into a handful of old jamband acquaintances who, like me, had crawled out of the geographical woodwork for the show. I watched a tide of good people walk through the turnstiles and as soon as the first act started up I ate my extra ticket and went inside, bee-lining it straight to the beer ticket kiosk. Tickets in hand, I then found a contingent of old and new PEI friends bellied up to the beer-laden tables. I delivered a mile of high-fives, filled my mitts with beerses and went to find Dave pressed up against the stage, grooving to the opening act.
We had listened to a bit of Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country over those hotel beers earlier and every time I shrugged my shoulders in indifference Dave stuck both his thumbs up and cast a look of shamed astonishment at me. I mean, sure, Donato was a pretty solid player who led a band that kinda sorta lived up to its lame-ish name, but it all seemed so pedestrian.
Here, let me look that up. pə-‘de-strē-ən (adj) commonplace; unimaginative. Thank-you, Merriam.
The band helped the festy beers go down pretty good, so in addition to not being very exciting they were costing me a bunch of money, so I stepped back outside to see if I could even give away my extra ticket. I found an old member of the Ottawa jamband crew and his just-turned thirteen-year-old sitting in lawnchairs listening to the show. I offered up my ticket but the kid was much too young-looking to even think about getting past the steadily vigilant 19+ security crew, though when Dave poked his head out to see what I was up to he insisted that we try. The kid was smart enough to chicken out.
I was back inside when the second act of the evening, Neal Francis, started up. If I had to guess, I suppose I would have to join the cliché-clinching crowd and assume that the flailing keyboard player/lead vocalist was Neal but really, it could have been the astoundingly solid drummer (who turned out being the best drummer of the evening) and should have been the gum-chewing guitar player who stood tall and stoic on stage left with his head permanently cocked and his eyes rolled sideways towards some invisible television screen flickering in the corner. After a few songs of close scrutiny from a nearby vantage point it was clear that this guy was the band-leader. He was cueing changes with quick glances, directing jams with a turn of his head, and setting tempos with short nods at the top of every song. And always with the gum chewing. Damn good guitar player too.
I never thought that the bass player was Neal Francis. Sure he was good, but he was the bass player in a three-chord high-energy rock band. Unless he was stepping up to the mic there was no way it was his name on the poster.
Great band. They even did an encore. Like, how often does an opening band get away with playing an encore? I would definitely go see Neal Francis again, whoever he is.
I certainly know who Trey Anastasio is though, and I suspect that you do too. I’ve been to a heck of a lot of Phish concerts and I had pretty good-slash-great seats at plenty of them, but when he emerged onto the small stage in the Coors Light Blues Tent (I kid you not) I had to marvel…It had been a loooong time since I had been this close to Trey at a show, if ever. By this point I had backed a couple of bodies off of the rail but I was still no more than a dozen feet from one of my favourite living rock guitar players. And my hands full of beerses no less!
The band opened with a one-two of standard Phish tunes in Blaze On and Back on the Train. It was awesome. Blissful even. Aside from three or four Trey songs the whole show was Phish Phish Phish. Wolfman’s Brother, Shade, 46 Days, Gotta Jibboo…my gawd, it was all so great. I didn’t recognize the drummer and with the 2021 passing of longtime TAB bassist Tony Markellis Trey had a new, young bass player whom I had never seen before. With the even more recent death of sax player James Casey there were no horns in the band at all (Casey died at the age of forty after an extended battle with cancer just two weeks before this show). I did, however, recognize the keyboard player from Trey’s weekly run of online covid concerts from the Beacon Theatre. His name is Ray Paczkowski and he’s fan-freakin’-tastic.
Late in the show I noticed something rather cool that I had never noticed before. I think it might have been during Sand that I noticed Trey soloing along with himself. I believe it was after an extended bass solo, during which time Trey had been silently soloing along into his looper pedal. When it was his time to solo he brought the volume up on his hitherto unheard riffing and spent the whole solo trading riffs with himself. To be honest, if I had been farther back in the crowd I probably wouldn’t have caught what he was doing, which makes me wonder how many times I’ve probably heard Trey do this before.
After a killer set top-to-bottom the band encored with recent Phish fan-favourite Everything’s Right. It was long and tasty and a nice sentiment to end what had been a great night of music, vibes, and old friends.
But wait! There’s more!
Yes, after the shortest of waits an aftershow featuring Texas quartet White Denim started up right there on the same stage. And though they were really good and totally rockin’ and worthy of much attention and many good words, by the time they got their set rolling I was as drunk as this post is long. Which is: much. So while I stuck with White Denim to the bitter end from my spot near the front with my fists still full of bottomless beerses I can really only say with much accuracy or good conscience:
Good band, and good night.
*You can read about it here.
**When I returned to Moncton I went straight to the hospital to visit my mother, where she was slowly recovering from a brain injury. I mentioned to her that the GPS in her car kept getting me lost when I was in Fredericton. “It was like it didn’t recognize that there was a highway right behind my hotel,” I said. “Maybe the software is old and it’s a new highway or something?”
“No…no…” she started, shaking her finger and staring at me in an effort to remember. “Oh right…I have it set to ’No Highways’!”
“B-b-but…why would you do that?!?!?” I cried.
“Well, as you know we were supposed to be going to Europe next week and in Europe I never drive on the highways, “ she said, as if that explained it.
“But you were flying to Europe!”
Todd Man Out 