Since co-founding the seminal improv
rock outfit
Phish in 1983, guitarist, composer, and songwriter
Trey Anastasio has explored a wide variety of musical pathways ranging from
atonal fugues and elaborate charts with
Phish to adventurous
free jazz on his first solo project, Surrender to the Air (1996), to collaborations with the likes of Tom Marshall,
Les Claypool,
Philip Glass, Stewart Copeland, and others. After
Phish went on long-term hiatus in late 2000,
Anastasio focused on a myriad of projects, including
Oysterhead and his eight-piece solo band.
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Since co-founding the seminal improv
rock outfit
Phish in 1983, guitarist, composer, and songwriter
Trey Anastasio has explored a wide variety of musical pathways ranging from
atonal fugues and elaborate charts with
Phish to adventurous
free jazz on his first solo project, Surrender to the Air (1996), to collaborations with the likes of Tom Marshall,
Les Claypool,
Philip Glass, Stewart Copeland, and others. After
Phish went on long-term hiatus in late 2000,
Anastasio focused on a myriad of projects, including
Oysterhead and his eight-piece solo band.
Born
Ernest Joseph Anastasio III in 1964,
Anastasio attended Princeton Day School in Princeton, NJ, where he met future songwriting partner Tom Marshall. As a teenager, he helped his mother, Dina, write songs for
children's records.
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At the University of Vermont, he teamed up with bassist
Mike Gordon, drummer Jon Fishman, and guitarist Jeff Holdsworth to form
Phish. After being suspended from the university for a semester for a prank gone awry,
Anastasio transferred to the highly
experimental Goddard College outside of Burlington, where he studied intensely with composer Ernie Stires while writing and rehearsing
Phish's complicated early material. Soon after, Holdsworth was replaced by keyboardist
Page McConnell.
Phish remained
Anastasio's primary musical outlet for the duration of the '80s and the '90s, as his original work progressed from lengthy prog-influenced compositions, such as "You Enjoy Myself" of the mid-'80s, to the more focused (though still complex) songs of
Rift (1993). While
Phish placed more and more emphasis on group improvisation,
Anastasio's charts gradually fell by the wayside. In 1996, he organized and produced Surrender to the Air, a big-band
free jazz excursion with
Sun Ra saxman Marshall Allen, organist
John Medeski,
avant-garde guitarist
Marc Ribot,
experimental drummer Bob Gullotti, and many others. Though
Anastasio was nominally the leader of the project, he played as an equal member of a large group of downtown heavyweights.
The transformation of
Anastasio's work from composition-based to improvisation-based was completed in 1997 and 1998 with
The Story of the Ghost and
The Siket Disc, two
Phish releases chiseled out of hours of collective jamming overseen by producer John Siket.
Anastasio's ongoing collaboration with Tom Marshall also resulted in a bevy of new material, far too much for
Phish to assimilate into their already gigantic live repertoire. Though
Anastasio brought some of the songs to his newly formed side trio, he still felt he was holding back.
Phish performed at a massively successful New Year's celebration in Big Cypress, FL, and in 2000 came the release of
Farmhouse (entirely written and produced by
Anastasio), but given the band's increasingly unfocused live performances,
Phish decided to take a hiatus of an undetermined length beginning in October of that year.
Anastasio went right to work, scoring an arrangement of the
Phish song "Guyute" (one of his last multi-sectioned compositions) for the Vermont Youth Orchestra with mentor Ernie Stires. Following its performance, he hit the road with a horn-bolstered version of his side trio and almost a dozen new songs, many of which returned to the complicated work of years past. Soon after, he wrote and recorded an album with
Oysterhead, a power trio of
Anastasio along with
Primus bassist
Les Claypool and former
Police drummer Stewart Copeland, beginning a new chapter in his musical history. His time spent with
Oysterhead was
experimental, but not permanent. By early 2002,
Anastasio prepped for his proper solo release for Elektra. His groovy cool self-titled album was issued that April and
Anastasio returned to the road for a string of U.S. tour dates.
The live effort Plasma appeared in April 2003, showcasing more than two hours of performances from
Anastasio's 2002 summer/fall trek of North America. Seven brand-new tracks and a few covers were sprinkled into the double-disc set as well. The all-instrumental Seis de Mayo was released in April 2004, followed by
Shine in 2005 and
Bar 17 in 2006. ~ Jesse Jarnow, All Music Guide
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