Spending a Day at a Phish Festival for GQ

Stories and photos of my adventures at Phish Mondegreen

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A few weeks ago I spent a day with Phish at their Mondegreen festival in Delaware. Or, more accurately, ten hours of the day were spent photographing the scene, while the band gave me five minutes of shooting time. Four for rehearsal, and one minute for a group portrait. This was officially the quickest portrait shoot of my career.

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Right before the rehearsal, the group manager informed me that my assistant cannot come in. I asked if flash wasn’t allowed, but that wasn’t the issue. I couldn’t figure it out, but the band just didn’t want Shane (my assistant/partner) to come into their makeshift studio. Without the off-camera flash he was holding, the shoot wasn’t going to happen, and I insisted on having him with me. In the end, they conceded. It wasn’t until later that we suspected a possible reason why he was unwelcome. Unwittingly, Shane wore a pink Paul Smith rabbit t-shirt that, while completely unrelated to the band, mimicked a pink rabbit symbol of the Phish radio station. Combined with his shoulder-length hair (as is the style of many Phish fans), he was assumed to be an avid fan.

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Why Phish agreed to the article but gave GQ so little time is a question that will remain unanswered. But what I did understand at the end of the day, is how this somewhat marginal band retained a cult status for over 40 years, gathering 45 thousand people at the three-day, all-Phish festival. They were fantastic live.

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I became aware of Phish back in high school through psychedelic T-shirts and bag patches worn by some students. My group of friends sporting Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Pixies insignia weren’t on friendly terms with the Phish crowd – we were punk rock and they were hippies – so I never ended up listening to the band. The first time both Shane and I heard a Phish song was in a car on the way to Mondegreen. A friend once described the band as an amalgamation of the Grateful Dead and Barenaked Ladies, and the random tracks I cycled through on Spotify confirmed that. I turned Phish off, and put on the one Grateful Dead track I love, a sixteen minute orchestral epic, Terrapin Station, to get myself in the shooting mood. Maybe Phish would be much better live?

They definitely were.

In fact, Phish sounded like a completely different band from the country folk vibe of the top songs in their Spotify profile. The vortex of sound they created was fierce, almost metal at times. The show made me realize what I have been wondering since high school: why Phish wasn’t more famous while simultaneously maintaining a huge cult following. To appreciate them, you just HAVE to see them live.

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Phish fans turned out to be a fun, friendly crowd. Not a single person turned away from my camera or gave me an angry look as I flashed them during the show. Everyone was smiling, happy, and mostly, very high. People were making way for me and Shane to pass by through the dense crowd while giving us high fives. Maybe it was the result of them mistaking Shane as their own, or maybe everyone was just having a really, really good time. Compared to the wary treatment of the backstage, the fan crowd was a tsunami of sparkles and good feels.

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Four Days With Phish, America's Greatest Jam Band For Forty Years and Counting by Grayson Haver Currin.

Find me on Instagram @dina_litovsky

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