TAB Just Jams
Posted on March 9th, 2015
In 1999 Trey Anastasio played his first shows with the Trey Anastasio Band and as Phish entered its hiatus in October 2000 Trey took TAB out on the road for a 10 show tour in the spring and added a couple members to the core trio of himself, Russ Lawton on drums and Tony Markellis on bass. By the time his 19 show summer tour rolled around Trey had added another couple of members as the group grew from 6 to 8. After a month long fall tour with Oysterhead in 2001 TAB grew again and took the stage again in late May of 2002 as a ten piece.
I always loved this formation of TAB with the core of Trey, Tony and Russ augmented with Ray Paczkowski on keys, Jennifer Hartswick on trumpet, Andy Moroz on trombone, Russell Remington, Dave "The Truth" Grippo and Peter Apfelbaum on sax and flute, and Cyro Baptista on percussion and growls They had the ability to do what prior versions of TAB were not able to do, which was launch into deep exploration at any point in the show. It was common to see a show start with a 25+ min song and have multiple lengthy open jams in the first set or at any point in the show. This version of TAB opened my ears to a number of different styles of music that I then explored more fully on my own. It was also a lot of fun watching them perform as Trey would be dancing on stage and leading the band as they changed direction on a dime.
The ten piece band played a 23 show Summer Tour and a 9 show Fall Tour in 2002 and a 10 show tour in Summer of 2003 before Phish tour. They played a couple of one off shows in 2004 but by 2005 Trey had shifted to the 70 Volt Parade Band and the 10 piece band as we know it never reformed.
2002 and 2003 TAB shows were fantastic and I don't revisit them as often as I should. I decided to make a companion to the Phish Just Jams series that my brother (@soulish on Twitter) and I have compiled with tracks taken from this era of TAB. There are 159 tracks available taken from these 41 shows. Enjoy!