SET 1: Theme from the Bottom [1], Evolve[1], Esther[1], Brian and Robert [2], A Little More Time[2], The Inlaw Josie Wales[2], Limb By Limb[2], Bouncing Around the Room[1], Divided Sky[1], Wilson[1], My Friend, My Friend[1], Snowflakes in the Sand[2], Mountains in the Mist[2], Ghost[2], Chalk Dust Torture[2], Lifeboy[2], Sand[1], Shade[1], What's the Use?[1], Slave to the Traffic Light[1], You Enjoy Myself[1]
ENCORE: More[2], The Squirming Coil[1], First Tube[1]
Brian and Robert through Limb By Limb, Snowflakes in the Sand through Lifeboy, and More were performed by Trey solo acoustic. All other songs from this performance featured Trey on acoustic and Jeff Tanski on piano.
SET 1: Guyute [1], Wolfman's Brother[1], Ray Dawn Balloon[1], Taste[1], Lost in the Pack [2], Bathtub Gin[2], Driver[2], Oblivion[2], Back on the Train[2], Pebbles and Marbles[1], If I Could[1], Reba [3], Strange Design[2], Water in the Sky[2], Backwards Down the Number Line[2], Petrichor[1], What's Going Through Your Mind[1], Waste[1], Harry Hood[1]
ENCORE: Dirt[1], Stash[1], Tweezer Reprise[1]
Lost in the Pack through Back on the Train and Strange Design through Backwards Down the Number Line were performed by Trey solo acoustic. All other songs from this performance featured Trey on acoustic and Jeff Tanski on piano. Trey quoted You're Naked Underneath Your Clothes after Wolfman's Brother. Reba did not contain whistling.
SET 1: Ramona [1], Amsterdam[1], Let's Dance[1], Center of Attention / Bouncing Around the Room[1], Coming Home[1], Satellite[1], Don't Dream It's Over[1]
This entire performance featured Adam Gardner on guitar and vocals and Fish on drums and was a stop on Bernie Sanders's "Fight the Oligarchy" tour. Center of Attention / Bouncing Around the Room was a mashup.
SIGNATURE SIT-INS BY STATE
Today's map provides the most common guest at Phish performances, by state. In many states, there's a tie, with as many as 7 guests each having appeared once in that state. But for these states, one guest artist (or group) edged out the others in frequency.
There are some interesting categorical patterns: Family members have been most common, where they live. Friends are most frequent in a few states, including New York and Massachusettes. And for many states east of the Mississippi, the most frequent guests are musicians who (by this author's rough estimation) also seem to sorta be friends of the band, sharing a lot of interaction across the years. Other states (those in blue) have been most frequently sat-in by a range of musicians outside of Phish's circle.
MOCKINGBIRD & WALKAWAYS TEAM UP FOR MUSIC EDUCATION
The Mockingbird Foundation and The Walkaways are teaming up for an all-ages fundraiser this Sunday, May 17, at The Get Down in Portland. Doors open at 5:30 PM, with the show beginning at 7:00 PM. All proceeds benefit music education at Jefferson High School, with the Mockingbird Foundation matching funds raised up to $1000.
2026 DeLucia Nominations Welcomed
The all-volunteer, fan-run Mockingbird Foundation recognizes and rewards music educators who have gone above and beyond in order to create meaningful musical experiences. Befitting the far-reaching impacts that Craig DeLucia’s own interests and innovations have rendered (inc. the foundation, the book, and the album, all his ideas!), recipients of the DeLucia Awards have demonstrated a passion for music education such as by teaching in an exceptional, innovative, or unique manner; impacting their communities in a substantial way; or using unconventional techniques, discourse, or concepts in their roles as music educators.
Nominations for the 2026 DeLucia Awards and Delucia Prize are now open. Information about past recipients can be found at the Mockingbird Foundation website.
ATTENDANCE BIAS PRESENTS: SUMMER 2026 VENUE PREVIEWS
[This post is courtesy of Brian Weinstein, the host of the Attendance Bias Podcast. Thank you, Brian! -Ed.]
Attendance Bias is a podcast that features Phish fans of all stripes telling stories about their most meaningful and special Phish shows. A crucial part of everyone’s story is the venue in which the show was played, so when Phish announced their 2026 summer tour on February 18, my first thought was: “Let’s dig into these venues!”
.jpg)
PRE-TREY EVENT: PHISH STUDIES BOOK LAUNCH
On Tuesday, May 26, Oregon State University is hosting a pre-show event just a few blocks (or clicks!) away from Trey Anastasio’s concert at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.
Phish fans are invited to OSU’s Portland campus for the official launch of Concepts We’ll Ponder: Identity, Improvisation, and Community in the Phish Experience, the volume emerging from the 2019 inaugural Phish Studies Conference at Oregon State University.
MAP: THE SUNDAY STATES
Never miss a CT, MD, or WV show? If conventional wisdom favors Phish performances on Sundays (see, e.g., "Don't Snooze on Sundays" and some of our most complex graphs), those states hold an advantage. Phish shows in each of those states have been on Sunday more than any other weekday, and disproportionately* so - 28% of CT shows, 44% of MD shows, and 100% of the two WV shows.
(Note that these maps include 2026 data through Dick's, and therefore reflect announced summer shows not yet played. Labels indicate not only the state name and most common weekday(s), but the number of shows played in that state. NY, for example, had 48 Sunday shows - but even more Saturday shows, of the 318 shows Phish has played there.)
There are some regional patterns: Saturdays and Fridays dominate the Northeast, Southwest, and Midwest - and are equally represented among shows in CA, FL, and NV. There's a band of states visited most often on Wednesdays (with mid-week filler stops across OK, AR, TN, and NC, as well as in MI and MN), and some mostly infrequent states (ID, NM, and MO) equally played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. There are also some odd sister sates, such as Thursday being most common only in OR and MS, or Tuesday in AZ and NE; CT and MD are Sun, just like WV.
Two other maps peel back the layers further...
DARK PUDDLE
IS CLAUDE A BIGGER HEAD THAN GEMINI? A DARK PUDDLE THEORY
[This post is courtesy of Adam @SeaOfStars, adamsfisch on IG. Also, don't miss the DarkPuddle.com site created by Parker (@TMWSIY). Posts to this blog are authored by volunteers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any of the many contributors to this website. In other words, do not misapprehend posts to this blog as being the views of "Phish.Net," which is not a sentient entity that holds opinions. -Ed.]
As a borderline millennial Deadhead come Phishead (never saw Jerry but caught the tail end of 1.0---first show was the Roseland Ballroom in May 2000), I was always fascinated by the named jams that appeared on tapes that I procured on the earlyish internet, Dick's Picks, and eventually LivePhish. Shoutouts to "Spanish Jam," "Tighten Up" and "Feeling Groovy"!
That is why more than having a dog in the fight, I was drawn in by the "Fuego > Dark Puddle’" controversy from the second week of the recent Sphere run on 4/23/2026. (I was lucky enough to make it to Sphere weekend 1 so whether I had bragging rights to seeing the longest "Fuego" was not in play.)
SPHERE9 RECAP: 9 NIGHTS ONLY! THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
[We would like to thank Dana Slattery (@tweezeher) aka @organic.music.society on Instagram for recapping last night's show. -Ed.]
Written Sleep Deprived & Profoundly Grateful for Round Rooms by Dana Slattery.
I’ve been in Las Vegas too long. I wasn’t planning on attending all 9 nights of Sphere. In fact, I’d recently made a resolution to take less time on the road and spend more time at home in Vermont. I was absolutely certain I was ready to semi-retire; That I could make the informed decision to pivot from seeing ~40 Phish shows a year and make a concerted effort to invest more into my real life at home in Burlington, Vermont..
That is, until my sister announced her wedding on April 3, at a place called The Sure Thing Chapel. A small party of close friends and family gathering to celebrate Isabelle & Alex. (Mazel Tov, Isabelle & Alex) would put me in Las Vegas just two weeks before Phish’s highly anticipated return to The Sphere.
SPHERE8 RECAP: CAN YOU STILL HAVE FUN?
[We would like to thank @GrapeApe for recapping last night's show. -Ed.]
May 1, 2026 was my first Phish show at the Sphere. My best friend treated me to a Dead and Company show in the 400s for my 50th birthday in May 2025, but going to that show didn’t make up for missing Phish’s inaugural Sphere run in spring of 2024, and I vowed to make it happen if they played the Sphere again.
Fast-forward to walking into the Sphere with my cousin with just enough time to buy some merch and get to our craptacular seats in the 100s, just under the overhang, a few minutes after “Sample in a Jar” started. We went into this show with zero expectations. So many of our favorite songs had been played during weekend 1 of this run, that we joked it’d be a night of songs by/from/to Trey’s Soul and Gamehendge. The latter being a fan favorite, and some of my least favorite songs by the band. (My first Phish show was Austin,’97 so save your bullshit.) By the time “Boogie On Reggae Woman” started, any stress from the day evaporated like the sweat on my skin in the desert sun.
The graphics on the sky-reaching screens were bold, colorful, and reminded me of the examples of “seeing” music in the movie “Fantasia”, which really is what Sphere gives you. A rare opportunity to engage in synesthesia without the use of drugs. The band brought the crowd back down to earth with “Heavy Things”, a sweet song to remind us to take things in stride, as rainbow waterfalls began cascading down the screen, I couldn’t help thinking that I did my cousin dirty with our obstructed view seats. I tried to be cavalier about our craptacular seats, but the truth is, obstructed view seat in the Sphere shouldn’t be sold, period.
SPHERE7 RECAP: WISH YOU WERE SPHERE
IT is a venue without peer, the hype all well-deserved: you should experience a show at Sphere, live-in-person-in-the-moment. To be sure, watching video of concerts at Sphere will give you reasonably good expectations of what to expect, but The Real Thing!? Fucken A.
Last night was my first time seeing any band perform at Sphere from a seat I’m extraordinarily grateful for (one without an obstructed view), and I am astonished beyond words by what I experienced. I’m so amazed and beyond words, in fact, that I am—with reckless indifference to your likely aversion to it—utilizing artificial intelligence to “recap” last night’s Phish concert. Although AI has vastly improved in the years since it was last used to recap a show on this blog to the displeasure of countless users, the use of it here will, hopefully, also enrage many of you as well.
.jpeg)
IF YOU WANT TO MAKE YOUR NON-PHISH FAN FRIENDS HATE PHISH MORE THAN THEY ALREADY DO, SEND THEM THIS (FORMERLY ENTITLED, A GUIDE TO THE PHISHNET SETLISTS)
[This guide was authored by Charlie @Icculus and Scott @Bizarchive, the principal editor of the setlists on this site. After considering your suggested revisions or additions, a revised version of this guide will be available from the NavBar.]
How Does A Song Get Listed Formally In A Setlist?
Whether a song gets listed in a setlist of a Phish performance, show, gig, or appearance depends first and foremost on whether “The Song” in question was performed by Phish—the whole band. This sounds easy enough, but because Phish is an improvisational band, it often performs, or one and/or two and/or three of its four members often perform, only a part of a song during a show, and often in the middle of another song’s jam segment or during improvisation.
The integrity of the setlist file depends on getting this right: if a setlist lists a song in it that was not actually performed by Phish, the setlist is not simply misleading (leads a person to believe a song was performed by the band when it wasn’t), it is wrong.
Vegas Tour Grant
The Mockingbird Foundation has announced an unsolicited $6,000 Tour Grant to celebrate Phish's three-weekend residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Opportunity Village provides a range of services to people with disabilities throughout southern Nevada. For adults, the organization provides employment services, as well as employment opportunities ranging from cleaning to shredding and beyond; for teens, they provide a range of fine arts and recreation activities, including music education.
Mockingbird is proud to be working with the Waterwheel Foundation, who will be bringing volunteers to a special event on May 1st working with Opportunity Village to engage clients in a special music education experience. Sign up now to help, and consider making a donation to help fund this tour grant!
QUADROPHONIC TOPPLING
New Jeff Wood Print
The Mockingbird Foundation is thrilled to announce this stunning new print by the inimitable Jeff Wood (@zenmysticstudio). This High Archival Giclee print, in an edition of only 200, measures 18”x24” and is printed on Glitter Jr Foil paper.
Available now online as well as at Phanart - Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas, during Phish's ongoing Sphere residency, as well as online via mbird.org. Each print is only $60, with all proceeds benefiting youth music education programs throughout the United States.
Thank you for your continued support in helping fund many deserving organizations!
2026 Finch Funds Announced
The all-volunteer Mockingbird Foundation has announced 12 new grants, totaling $21,461. Each of the grantees had requested $2,500 or less for instruments and other physical assets, in the foundation's 31st round of competitive grants. The grants will support programs in 10 states, providing funds for violins, cellos, guitars, recorders, ukuleles, cello racks, and more, at elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as a juvenile detention center.
This is the fourth year that Mockingbird has strategically granted such small requests through these special Finch Fund allocations. They include the 780th Mockingbird grant, and increase the foundation's total historical giving to more than $2.9M, thanks to the immense support of Phish fans everywhere.
Help Fund A Vegas Grant!
The Mockingbird Foundation now has a new way to donate, through Zeffy - no costs or fees to the foundation, so zero costs. We're launching it now, with a campaign over the next three weeks, aiming to fund a $6,000 Tour Grant to a nonprofit in Vegas that operates a music program just down the road from the nine upcoming shows at the Sphere.
Please, then, consider donating this month. We're hoping to make a splash in local media about the incredible generosity and community that Phish fans bring to the table. It's tax deductible, and will go directly to a good cause that we're working with Waterwheel to benefit. Mockingbird is already all-volunteer, with no staff, salaries, or office, so that almost all of every donation goes to charity - and here, with no costs, everything raise from this campaign will go into our coming Vegas Tour Grant.
If you're looking at this on a laptop or desktop, the QR code to the right will take your phone right to the landing page. Meanwhile, this thermometer helps track our progress towards the goal so far:
The Mockingbird Foundation