A Phish Wife Reviews the Trey Anastasio Documentary Between Me and My Mind
I never thought I’d say this, necessarily, but Trey Anastasio and I fundamentally agree when it comes to Phish, the legendarily trippy jam outfit he fronts. “It’s a weird band,” Anastasio says in the new documentary about him, Between Me and My Mind, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Friday night. The line elicited uproarious laughter from the frothing crowd of Phishheads at the Beacon Theatre in New York, a crew so passionate they could put the Avengers: Endgame fans to shame. It was funny because it’s true: Phish is a quartet known for 13-minute jams and psychedelic laser light shows; a drummer, Jon Fishman, who wears a donut-print dress to every concert just because; and onstage theatrics that have included the appearance of Abe Vigoda in a wombat costume.
My husband of seven years’ musical soul is stirred by all of this; meanwhile, I’m over here listening to Lemonade for the millionth time. As I previously wrote at Vogue, this is my plight as a Phish wife, and occasional Phish widow, because another thing Phish is known for is its touring prowess, siren-calling my husband and his fellow “phans” to shows all over the country. Inconveniently (for me), they are often timed to major holidays like New Year’s Eve at Madison Square Garden, Halloween in Vegas (not exactly friendly for our 2- and 5-year-old children), and Fourth of July at SPAC (the Saratoga Performing Arts Center). Though we’ve largely come to a happy, thoughtfully negotiated place with my husband’s Phish show attendance, it’s fair to say I nestled into my seat at the world premiere of Between Me and My Mind as something of a skeptic—even if I was sort of proud that I knew the title derived from the song “Light” and the lyric: “I can see the light between me and my mind.”
I’m not sure what came over me, but in the ensuing 100-minute, deeply heartfelt documentary directed by Steven Cantor, I did, actually, see the light—not so much about Phish’s music but in Anastasio himself. I saw him as a guy who wakes up at 6:15 a.m., makes his coffee, pets his cat, and tinkers around on the piano in his New York living room, which includes a basket teeming with Broadway Playbills (at last, my kind of show!); a guy who played the guitar beside his dying best friend, whose loss he attempts to process throughout the film; a goofy dad who cracks corny jokes with his two daughters, Eliza and Bella, who recall him gutting their old TV to make an under-the-sea diorama; a creative with multiple side hustles (Trey Anastasio Band and a new solo album, Ghosts of the Forest) who gets really, really excited about meticulously planning Phish’s annual New Year’s Eve “gag.” In the film, it’s the 2018 stunt of turning the MSG stage into a pirate ship sailing over a sea of fans to the sounds of a new song: “Soul Planet,” the title of which is repeated on a loop and may be stuck in my head until the end of time.
Yes, Phish is a weird band, but Between Me and My Mind showed me, up close, that it’s a weird band fronted by a good man and his true friends, the kind of guys who remind you of your favorite uncles. The joy and laughter are contagious when Anastasio visits each member of Phish at their rustic, though very well-appointed, New England homes/studios to hash out the plan for the big “Soul Planet” performance. After three decades as bandmates in one of the longest-running and most successful touring bands ever, it’s nice to see they’re not jaded, cocky, or otherwise over it. In fact, keyboardist Page McConnell tells Anastasio that he’s having as much fun now as he did when they first started playing together at the University of Vermont, at the Burlington bar Nectar’s in the ’80s. Anastasio reminisces that Sue—the woman who would become his wife—lived in an apartment nearby. Thirty-five years later, he says with a smile, and they’re still together. Maybe I’m biased because my husband and I also met in college 18 years ago, but the nostalgic moments in Between Me and My Mind moved me deeply: They seemed to say that friends, loves, and the dreams you have when you’re young can actually last.
Of course, jam god though he may be, Anastasio isn’t perfect, and the film acknowledges as much in its own way—that he was arrested in 2006 for possession of heroin and other drugs and driving while intoxicated; Phish broke up from 2004 to 2009. Between Me and My Mind never spells that out for the viewer in text on the screen like other rockumentaries might; it assumes you already know the backstory and, in lighter scenes, are in on all of the jokes. It is a film made primarily for phans (and well-informed, open-minded wives of). But the lack of traditional, overt explanation also makes the narrative feel more intimate and personal—like when Trey and Sue Anastasio walk hand in hand on the boardwalk of the Jersey Shore, and she tells him that, when he was using, she was scared he would die. When the phone rang on the night of his arrest, in fact, she thought someone was calling to tell her that he had. But when he asks if she ever regretted marrying him, she shakes her head no.
Between Me and My Mind also hinted at the question of when, if ever, Phish will retire—perhaps return my husband to me for cozy New Year’s Eves at home with Champagne and takeout, like regular people? It wasn’t the answer a Phish wife dreams of: Anastasio references Martin Scorsese’s the Band documentary, The Last Waltz, in which lead guitarist Robbie Robertson says he can’t bear the thought of 20 years on the road. Anastasio, on the other hand, disagrees, saying something like, “I’m going to be doing this forever.” The crowd went wild, my husband rejoiced, and after seeing this movie, I can’t exactly blame him. Anastasio is the furthest thing from a megalomaniacal rock star; if my husband must go to Vegas and MSG and SPAC, at least it’s for a worthy person.
