We can work every day at soundcheck for an hour or two on endings to tighten up, or transitions and arrangement shifts, or places where the groove could change in some way, and all of that work is helpful, but it doesn't compare to work the muse is doing on her own. The gelling that happens when you simply do something a lot is indescribable. But I guess I'll try to talk about it anyway. What I'm really trying to say is that I'm feeling elated from how deep the telepathy got with my band this tour. Finally I've done something outside of Phish for three whole years, enough for mystical connections to occur. Doing a November tour and then another one just a few months later, the latter beginning with fourteen gigs in sixteen days, really ended up greasing our engine well. I said on my hotline I hate to sound like an infomercial, but I'm just feeling so positive about this band and the experiences I have that I can't help but jump up and down a bit verbally, like I have been physically.

So in an attempt to describe what happens "on its own," I'd like to deconstruct one bar of music in the middle of a jam (or even a verse of a song). I'm not talking about a specific measure of music, but it is a distinctive feeling I got many times as the March tour went on. What is it that allows me to decide to play the note on the second beat of that bar a little ahead of the drums or a little behind, for example? I mean, if it's an imitation of what the guitar player (Scott) did on beat one, then it's a conscious decision, but how the groove falls into place is harder to trace. I mean, if I'm frustrated that the song is sounding slower than I would imagine it might be, or too slow to comfortably sing, then I might play slightly ahead of the drummers hit on beat two in order to try to influence a slight speed up, and again that would be conscious. What happens as the tour unfolds becomes unconscious. And I did find a good word that allowed me to philosophize with the other guys about what I was feeling. The word is trust. If I trust that all the decisions about groove are being made well by everyone, and all the other decisions about melody, harmony, tone, timing, etc., are falling into place nicely, then my ingrained feeling of trust allows that second beat to simply fall into place, as if it's simply bouncing off what the others are doing. And if I can do four beats of that - one bar - then I am in a situation that makes the music soar - it is playing itself.

It sounds technical, or philosophical, or perfectionist, or something, but it isn't any of those things ultimately - it's the feeling you get when jumping on a trampoline - you can just trust that the material that thwaps against your feet or sneakers is going to stretch one way and flex the other way, sending you airborne. If you go pretty high you smile, and if you do it in rhythm for a while, it becomes a meditation. Meditation through motion. It takes a gigantic leap of faith for me to trust that the keyboard solo can propel the bass notes, the drum groove can propel the bass notes, the guitar chords... While I trust things cognitively, the thing that happens when that trust infiltrates my soul to the core is pure magic. It doesn't matter whether we're playing a cover song, an original, or a random jam. It won't hurt things if it's faster than last time, or slower, or with a different mood - as long as the trust element is in place. It's so easy to forget the possibilities of music, but when surrender happens, the passing sounds lift you up and remind you - remind you why you're alive. The connection becomes the only important thing - between musicians, and also everyone else in the room. In Asheville, for example, we felt no obligation to put in songs that would "rev people up" more - we felt an unspoken trust from the audience that allowed us to surrender to our own muse as a band. The power came from the audience.

This stuff sounds so idealistic, but it all can be seen in one bar of music. With total acceptance and trust, my bass notes are created by the guitar notes. And the guitar notes by the bass notes, and so on. And thus the creation is ultimately from a higher power, but the feeling starts with trust. A more specific example might be the way we stop after the second chorus of Scott's song "Cruel World." We stop for two bars and then return to accompany the keyboard solo with an anticipated downbeat - a downbeat a little ahead of the one. I used to ferociously count to eight in my head in case what Tom plays is so crazy that I get lost. Then I realized it's better not to count - to simply listen to his piano notes and his unique personality within them unfolding for seven and a half beats, trusting that he will lead me and I will be able to follow. But that is a much more obvious, surface level, example compared to what I mean above - what I mean is that without thinking about it I am letting the music play itself, even within a few beats of a tune, and three years of having the five of us experiment with different kinds of songs and different kinds of gigs has led to this kind of deep catharsis.

Thank you, then, to Craig, Todd, Tom, Scott, and to all of you who came, and to our crew for convening for eighteen nights of this past month to make this all possible!

- Mike