Annabel Lukins
Artist Programming Director - Cloud 9 Adventures
Phish is home. Phish is the place where I have found my closest friends. It’s where my favorite community is. It’s where my “Phamily” is. It's the place that loves me as much as I love it. Phish is the place where I will travel anywhere to see beautiful places around the country. Phish makes me feel alive and whole. The songs, the jams, the lights…it’s truly the highest vibration and most fun music I've ever heard. It feeds a place in my soul that was born when I started seeing them thirty-two years ago. My father walked me down the aisle at my wedding to the song “Waste” in 2007. Beforehand, I turned to him and said, “I’m so sorry Phish has taken up so much of my life, I truly love that band.” He gently said, “I know.” It was at that moment that I felt truly understood by him.
First Show Attended: Tower Theater in Philly 5/1/93
Number of Shows Attended: I have seen 232 Phish shows!
Favorite “Live Phish” Memory: It was at Telluride 8/10/10 - There’s always one song that Phishheads chase. For me, it was “Destiny Unbound”. The band had played it many times in 90-91. As soon as I heard it on some cassette tape, I knew I had to see it live. But they shelved it for over a decade. I moved to Boulder from New York City in January 2003. In March 2003, Phish played Nassau Coliseum. Everyone knew I was chasing it. I’m out to dinner in the sleepy ski town of Keystone when I get a call from a friend who I knew was at the show. All I heard was the crowd cheering. Then another call came in, the same crowd cheering. I knew exactly what was happening. I excused myself from the dinner table, went outside, and screamed at the top of my lungs, “NOOOOOOOOO!” I listened to it 10 times the next day in total disbelief. They shelved it again till ’09 and played it twice then and once in ’10 until Telluride. Fishman (Phish drummer) is my dear friend and after it had been played four times, I said, “look, I’m over this.” He laughed, “I promise you that we don’t sit backstage and say, ‘Is Annabel here? No, ok let’s play it.” And then it happened in the second set. All of a sudden, my knees buckled, I fell to the ground. It was real. It was my time to hear the song I had been chasing for decades. And it was perfect. Afterwards, Jon texted me, “Now you can’t ever say you haven’t heard Destiny Unbound live.” That moment will go down as one of my all-time favorites in my Phish history.
Andy Sklawer
Artist - Artie Sandstone
Phish, to me, is all about community. For the past twenty-plus years, their music has brought together (and helped create) some of my closest friendships—old and new—all to celebrate life, connection, and creativity. What continues to inspire me is how the band never stops evolving. No two shows are ever the same. As an artist myself, I’m constantly in awe of the way they approach each night like a blank canvas, creating something totally unique through pure improvisation. Their blend of musical exploration, humor, and visual experience is unmatched. Phish isn’t just a band—they represent peace, love, strength through adversity, and togetherness. It’s positive and raw energy, in full technicolor, every time.
First Show Attended: July 25, 2003 — Charlotte, NC
Number Of Shows Attended: I've seen over 100 shows (stopped counting a while ago)! The better question is how much money was spent?
Favorite “Live Phish” Memory: Coventry, Vermont, August 14-15, 2004. Easily one of the messiest, most chaotic weekends imaginable. After twenty-four hours of standstill traffic, Phish told fans to turn around—but most didn’t. We parked on the side of a Vermont highway, hiked in with whatever we could carry, and embraced the mud, madness, and music. The playing was rough, but the spirit of the weekend still lives on. The guys I went with are still some of my closest friends, and we still laugh about that wild, unforgettable “farewell” festival. Maybe seeing them in Boulder, the city I worked so hard to move to nine years ago, will become my new favorite Phish memory. Who knows?
Andrea Rossin
Teacher - Boulder High School
Phish to me means freedom, joy, play, mirth, dancing and laughter, being with friends. Phish means exploration, brave forays, attentive listening and nuanced, impulsed response. Phish is whatever happens from the time the lights go down to when they come up at the end of the encore: new and improved dance moves, a way of both hearing and listening for when the music breaks free from its form, the journey of the unknown (hopefully), and the suspension of time.
Phish means silly times with friends and the self. Phish means hopping into the time machine on a ride back to the roots of who I was once, when I wanted to be who I have become. Phish is a band; it means nothing and everything.
First Show Attended: My first show was Halloween 1994 in Glens Falls, New York. I was 16, a junior in high school. They played three sets of music that night, the second set a full rendition of The Beatles' White Album, which was, oddly enough, the soundtrack to that summer prior when all my friends and I were obsessed with it, and everyone had the tape in their cars. I knew that album inside and out like the back of my hand, and at that first show, it couldn't have been a more cosmically aligned night for music and me.
Number of Shows Attended: As of this interview, I have seen Phish 197 times.
Favorite Live Phish Memory: I've been to a lot of amazing Phish shows when the stars are aligned just right and the weird/best stuff happens, like the Tahoe “Tweezer”, or that one time at Madison Square Garden when the whales and dolphins got out into the crowd. I loved Alpine Valley last summer when “Simple” broke free of its bounds for a good 40 minutes, or the epic “Birds” > “Axilla” in Mexico on the beach that preceded a huge “Chalkdust Torture” that went all the places. The 1994 hotdog in Boston comes to mind, as does the year we all sang Happy Birthday to Trey in Vegas 2000, or maybe it was “Purple Rain” in the rain at Red Rocks in 1996. What about when Phish brought the hotdog back again for “The Meatstick” New Year's gag, whatever year that was? Then again, being at Sphere last year as the screens turned into a golden ode to Jim Pollack, and I saw the cover of my first show roll by. But likely my favorite live Phish memory has to be anytime I completely forgot that I am in a body and dancing so hard because my mind has traveled far far away into the ethers of my own imagination, and when I return back to find my feet on the ground, I can't remember a thing. That's probably my favorite memory, I can't really fully recall, and the most meaningful of the bunch.
Kevin Daly
Proprietor - Mountain Sun Pubs
Phish is about music, community, dance, and incredible jams! I love the crowd and firmly believe Phish continues the Grateful culture and ethos. The meaning of Phish goes beyond just the music; it represents a sense of community and shared experience. It’s very tribal and restorative. My favorite thing about Phish is the friends and community.
First Show Attended: October 12, 1991, in Portland, Oregon, at the Roseland Theater. I was in law school at Lewis and Clark, and my best friend Ian Blackford (we cofounded Mountain Sun together) was an early fan and insisted that I see Phish.
Number of Shows Attended: I don’t know exactly, but over 150 shows.
Favorite Live Phish Memory: I have so many memories of incredible experiences at Phish shows. I love to travel to new cities and explore on bikes before and after the shows, checking out new restaurants, arts, and culture. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Phish at first, but I finally “got it” during a “Sand” in Las Vegas in 2000, right before their five-year hiatus. Terrible timing!
Catch Phish at Folsom Field July 3-5. For tickets and more information, please visit Phish.com.