I realized the scope of the task I’d agreed to when Matt and I were talking about our upcoming Phish shows in my backyard a week before we left. “5,000 is a lot,” he said, and I confirmed. The box of newspapers that was shipped to me was really big. I had volunteered to distribute 5,000 issues of the 2024 Summer Tour edition of Surrender to the Flow, the Phish newspaper, at the summer shows we were going to—Deer Creek near Indianapolis, as well as Grand Rapids.
That conversation with Matt in my backyard reframed how I thought about the newspaper. Previously, I was all in—proofreading four editions, writing an article for the Summer Tour edition, and agreeing to distribute. While it’s impressive that Surrender uses entirely volunteer assistance, it is led by a woman named Christy who makes all of the editorial and business decisions for the paper and personifies the brand on Facebook.
There’s some critique there. My eager willingness has tamed. But it’s a print newspaper and regardless of its challenges, I’m apt to swoon. Printed media as a method for building community and creating common understanding is powerful. There’s proof in the pudding. After Summer Tour, we all fell right into Phish’s 11th festival, Mondegreen. As part of the official programming of the festival, a print newspaper was released each day Phish played a show, Thursday-Sunday. New writing referenced the shows from the night before in the newspaper produced by Relix Magazine and distributed across festival and camp grounds just past noon each day. It is, and was, impressive. I loved venturing out to find a newspaper and then sitting in the sun while I folded the pages just so, getting newsprint on my fingers, and reading deeper into this collective experience before we went to the show that night.
Especially because Phish’s fanbase is fanatical, having a baseline of information is beneficial: Saturday’s paper didn’t persist conspiracies like the Facebook groups did that the Friday secret set wasn’t performed live. Instead, it clearly detailed with authority how the band, live, paired the fascinating visuals with deep improv jams. It’s a relief to have a factual thread as a foundation from which we can gush. I might argue, it elevates our musings to a higher level rather than getting lost in conspiratorial weeds that diminish our imaginative potential.
I’m fascinated by how Phish manages its official media. What’s produced by Phish is a masterclass in knowing your fans and exploring possibility. Interested in listening to Phish’s live shows? You can find amateur recordings free on Relisten, harkening to the fandom’s origins of passing around live show recordings on tapes, but today Phish also offers LivePhish. For a monthly cost, you can listen to any of the shows professionally produced. If you pay more per show, or at a discounted price per run, you can watch a multi-camera production of the show live that captures the musicians close up plus Kuroda’s magnificent light show. Everything you need to dig deep into what makes Phish addictive is produced and monetized by the band, but not really in an exploitive way. It seems to me it’s more developed with the goal of giving fans what they want and doing it well.
Matt and I talk about this stuff a lot, including the role Twitter has in Phish’s media presence. Phish: From The Road is a source of truth about the set list and offers hints at the length of songs if you look at the distance between Tweets. But then Phish is reliant on the platform, and Twitter shows how fallible the platforms can be for whatever purpose you make. It makes sense that Phish has their own streaming platform with LivePhish; own it yourself, if you can. But where do fans find each other? Wombat Matt, BizArchive, and Highway Jill on Twitter are personas who report from nearly every show—how do they communicate with us when the platform that hosts them descends into fascism?
The things that pop up around the official channels are all earnest and purposeful; Phish fans find a way. At the shows, I saw most people checking the setlist on Phish.net, which is also where I have a profile and can track the shows I’ve been to (I’m up to 23). I dabble in the subreddits. I’m novice in Phish; I can’t even imagine how deep it goes on the internet.
All in service to this band. It seems to me that even the art and information-sharing, the tactical community building, embodies the expansiveness of experiencing Phish—conceptual and vast. The media around it is experimental too.
I had the most success distributing Surrender to the Flows after the Deer Creek shows. We had parked in a far-off lot and once we got back to our car, Matt would pop the trunk and sit on the edge, and I would grab an armload of Surrenders. Fans who weren’t rushing to leave sat chatting with friends in lawn chairs or in their under-trunk. I approached if it didn’t feel too awkward and said, “Interested in a Surrender to the Flow?” I’d offer more explanation if they engaged, I was respectful of the handful of nos, and I also connected with people who knew the magazine and were glad to receive one or asked for more. Some people accepted one with curiosity. It was a fun way to cheers one another after the show and offer a free memento full of earnest writing about what makes Phish great.
I likely will not volunteer to distribute newspapers again. It’s a laborious task and not one that’s comfortable for me. But I’ll keep reading. I’ll read the Phish Substacks and the front-page articles on Phish.net. I want to read these attempts at Phish description. It’s is a vulnerable, maybe impossible act, and I like to see how we try it. What rises to the top?