Tune In, Turn On
One of the biggest recent beach rock concerts in Atlantic City took place on Aug. 7, 2022, when famed jam band Phish wrapped up a three-night run. The band also played on Atlantic City’s beach from Aug. 13-15, 2021. I remember being bummed at the time that I moved back to Aycee in September 2022, a little more than a month too late to see one of this writer’s favorite jam bands. For a good idea of what they sound like, check out the band’s song “Gotta Jibboo” from its album “Farmhouse,” released in 2000.
Well, as the saying goes, what goes around comes around. Phish is returning to Atlantic City, playing three nights at Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall from Friday, Oct. 2, through Sunday, Oct. 4. The quartet first formed at the University of Vermont in Burlington in 1983, although its members hail from different areas. Guitarist-vocalist Trey Anastasio was raised in Princeton; bassist Mike Gordon is from Sudbury, Massachusetts; drummer-vocalist Jon Fishman hails from Syracuse, New York; and keyboardist-vocalist Page McConnell is also a New Jerseyan, from Basking Ridge.
Phish — often compared to bands such as the Grateful Dead and Umphrey’s McGee because of its long, extended songs — has performed more than 2,000 documented live shows. In recent years, the Phish touring schedule has included gigs in Mexico, a multiday residency at the fabulous Sphere venue in Las Vegas, summer stadium dates and its current early autumn tour.
“There was a seriousness to our music starting in 2009 that was based not on fear but on the acknowledgment of the finite nature of things,” Phish frontman Anastasio said in a 2019 interview with The New York Times. “We’d had a youthful exuberance for so long, and naive youthful exuberance is what makes rock ‘n’ roll great. We were flying high on the wave. Nothing was ever going to stop. Then you wake up in a jail cell.”
Anastasio spent two days in jail in 2008 for missing a scheduled drug counseling session.
“It was a shock to realize how tenuous the whole thing was,” he continued. “And it took until 2013 to find out how to play with risk. Before then I’d been thinking, ‘How do I play music in a risky way when the experience I went through made me a cautious person?’”
If you go, expect two things: You’re going to spend a lot of moolah — three-day passes range from $309 to $908 — and you’re in for a long show, as the average Phish concert lasts 3½ hours.
Tickets and information: eventticketscenter.com/phish-3-day-pass-atlantic-city-10-02-2026/8207632/t.
Phish after-concert parties and shows: An event billed as “A Phish After Party in Outer Space” will take place at the rooftop VÜE Nightclub at the Claridge Hotel beginning at midnight Saturday, Oct. 3. Tickets and information are available at glassmaze.net.
Meanwhile, our favorite live music venue in town, Anchor Rock Club on New York Avenue, will present two Phish after-parties. Friends of Jerry will perform two sets of Grateful Dead tunes beginning at 11 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2. An “Unophiccial AC Sunday Afterparty” featuring DJ Greenie, also known as drummer Mike Greenfield of the Philadelphia-based jam band Lotus, will begin at 11:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 4. Tickets and information are available at anchorrockclub.com.
Any way you look at it, it’s going to be a big, Phish-filled weekend in Atlantic City. It should be a blast!
Doug is the owner/operator of Doug Deutsch Publicity Services, which since 1995 has been servicing nationally touring acts, and working record release campaigns for clients. Doug can be reached at ShoreLocalDoug@gmail.com
