Trey Anastasio

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Trey Anastasio

Ernest Giuseppe "Trey" Anastasio III, born September 30, 1964, is an American guitarist, composer and vocalist most noted for his work with the legendary rock band Phish. He is credited by name as composer of 152 Phish originals, 140 of them as a solo credit, in addition to 41 credits attributed to "Phish" in the generic [1]. He was rated as number 73 on Rolling Stone's List of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Throughout his career Anastasio has participated in various projects outside of Phish (see below), furthering his reputation as a multifaceted composer, instrumentalist, and vocalist.

Life

Anastasio, whose name in Greek means "resurrection," began playing the drums as a youth, turning to guitar while a teenager. His father was an executive with Educational Testing Service (ETS). Anastasio's mother, with whom he wrote songs as a child, was an editor of Sesame Street Magazine. He attended Princeton Day School for junior high school, where he began to write music with some of his classmates. Some of these songs (e.g. "Golgi Apparatus") would find their ways into the Phish repertoire, and many other Anastasio compositions refer to these early experiences. For senior high school, Anastasio attended The Taft School along with The Dude of Life, who helped pen such Phish compositions as "Sanity", "Suzy Greenberg," "Fluffhead," "Skippy the Wondermouse," "Slave to the Traffic Light," and "Dinner and a Movie." At Taft, Anastasio founded his first two bands, Red Tide and Space Antelope.

After Anastasio completed high school, he enrolled in the University of Vermont, attending from fall of 1983 to spring of 1986. It was here that he met Jon Fishman, Mike Gordon, and Jeff Holdsworth, who founded Phish in 1983. Through the University of Vermont, Anastasio also began a lifelong association with composer Ernie Stires, who taught him techniques for composition and arranging. While at the University of Vermont, Anastasio hosted an early morning radio program, Ambient Alarm Clock.

Anastasio was eventually suspended from college for an entire semester after he broke into the science building and stole a human hand and a goat's heart. He sent it to his friend as a prank with a note that said "I've got to hand it to you, you've got heart." During his suspension, Anastasio attended classes at Mercer County Community College while living at home and while there met up with old friend Tom Marshall. Also attending Mercer was Marc Daubert who would later occasionally play percussion with Phish in 1984. After meeting pianist Page McConnell, who soon joined Phish in spring of 1985, Anastasio transferred to Goddard College, which he attended from fall of 1986 to spring of 1988. While at Goddard, Anastasio assembled the song cycle The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday as his senior project. These songs would become mainstays of the Phish catalog. Anastasio graduated from Goddard College in 1988 with a major in philosophy.

Anastasio married Susan Eliza Stateser August 13, 1994 and fathered two daughters, Eliza Jean and Isabella. The family resides in Richmond, Vermont.

Projects

Both before and after the dissolution of Phish in August of 2004, Anastasio has fronted and participated in a variety of different ensembles, including:

1. Bad Hat in 1994, which included fellow Vermonter Jamie Masefield on mandolin, played jazz for a few months. They billed themselves as "the quietest band around."
2. Surrender To The Air in 1995 and 1996: a "colorful exploration" of sound. The group was experimental, including long sections of improvisation all connected by segments conducted by Anastasio. The group released a self-titled album in March of 1996. It featured several members of the late Sun Ra's big band, the Arkestra, which was (among other modes) an archetypical free jazz ensemble.
3. New York! in 1997 was one performance with Anastasio, Mike Gordon of Phish, James Harvey, and a punk band called "The Pants." Several Phish songs were debuted by New York!, including "Dirt" and "Saw It Again", along with covers by Ace Frehley and others.
4. Eight Foot Fluorescent Tubes in 1998 was a local band in Vermont fronted by Anastasio on April 17 of that year at the nightclub Higher Ground, co-owned by his brother in law. The band debuted a number of songs heard in Anastasio's live performances today, including "First Tube", "Last Tube", and "Mozambique."
5. Phil Lesh and Friends (commonly referred to as Phil Lesh and Phriends) in 1999 featured Anastasio, Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh and Donna Jean Godchaux, Phish keyboardist Page McConnell, guitarist Steve Kimock, and drummer John Molo performing three nights of Grateful Dead and Phish material at The Warfield in San Francisco. It was a historic event because it represented the very first time members of both Phish and the Grateful Dead shared the stage together. On February 12, 2006, Trey joined Phil Lesh again for a full show at the Beacon Theater in New York City.
6. The Trio in 1999 was an evolution of Eight Foot Fluorescent Tubes. Anastasio's first solo tour was with the trio, which included himself, Russ Lawton, and Tony Markellis.
7. The Vermont Youth Orchestra has performed with Trey on a number of occasions from the year 2000 until today. Trey's attraction to complex compositions was apparent on his 2004 release, Seis De Mayo, which included some of his work with the Vermont Youth Orchestra, as well as other smaller ensembles.
8. The Sextet in 2000 was an evolution of the trio with three horns added to the band. Some of the music originally performed by the sextet was later seen on his 2002 release, Trey Anastasio.
9. Oysterhead in 2000 was a trio which included Primus bassist Les Claypool and The Police drummer Stewart Copeland. The "supergroup", as it was called, released an album in 2001 named The Grand Pecking Order. The band is set to reunite in 2006 with a performance at the Bonnaroo Music Festival.
10. The Octet in 2001 was an evolved version of the sextet, which added keyboards, a tenor saxophone, and a flute.
11. The Dectet in 2002 through 2004 explored complex arrangements and changes of some songs included on Trey Anastasio, and was an evolved version of the octet, now a ten-piece band.
12. Dave Matthews & Friends beginning in 2003 is a band formed to tour in support of Dave Matthews's solo debut Some Devil. Most of the band, including Anastasio, performed on the album.
13. 70 Volt Parade is Anastasio's current solo project, which is more of a stereotypical-form rock band than his past solo bands. Only six members are included, two of which are backup vocalists. The band was formed in early 2005, and has continued since then.
14. SerialPod is a trio featuring Anastasio, Phish bassist Mike Gordon, and Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann. On December 17, 2005, the band performed at the 14th annual Warren Haynes Christmas Jam in Asheville, North Carolina. The group performed a series of Grateful Dead and Phish classics, plus covers from Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix, and others. Ivan Neville joined the group on keyboards for much of the performance.
15. G.R.A.B. is the unofficial name for a 4 piece, consisting of the Benevento/Russo Duo, Mike Gordon and Trey Anastasio. It has been confirmed to trade opening and closing spots with Phil Lesh & Friends during their co-headlining summer 2006 tour.

Anastasio the guitarist

Trey Anastasio enjoys a reputation as one of the preeminent guitarists working today. He played drums in early youth, but quickly developed a facility for the acoustic guitar and, more notably, the electric guitar.

Anastasio has employed the services of his friend and audio technician Paul Languedoc (Phish's soundman from 1986 - 2004) throughout his career. The highly resonant hollowbody electric guitars built by Paul Languedoc for Anastasio, his Ibanez Tube Screamers, and Ross Compressors are key to his signature tone. Trey has three custom Languedoc hollowbody electric guitars:

1. "Old Reliable" is a white/light blonde colored hollowbody that debuted in 1987. The body was made from a combination of spruce and walnut. It was Trey's main guitar until 1990, and backup until 1996.
2. The second Languedoc hollowbody is a blonde padouk. The headstock inlay featuring Trey's dog Marley was lightly larger than on old reliable. This guitar was Trey's main guitar from 1990-1996, and became the backup in 1997 and remains so.
3. The third Languedoc guitar has a flame koa body and features a bronze nut and saddles instead of bone. According to Languedoc, this guitar has "the most brilliant sound" of the three instruments. This guitar has been used by Trey in virtually all live appearances since 1997. "Trey is a one guitar guy," says Languedoc.

The designs of Trey's Languedoc guitars, inspired in part by the commercially successful Fender Starcaster, are uniquely conceived and handcrafted instruments that make use of set maple necks with 24-fret ebony fretboards, dual Schaller humbuckers, and custom-wired electronics. The first two Languedocs also featured a single coil pickup in the middle (each was removed when it became the backup guitar). Because they are true hollowbodies (as opposed to semi-hollowbody construction), and because Trey typically plays with two Ibanez Tube Screamer overdrives and a compressor through a large PA System, the guitars are prone to excessive audio feedback, requiring a great deal of manual dexterity and control on Trey's part in order to manage the tone. Anastasio has learned to tame this feedback and often used it to his advantage in the creation of psychedelic and other-worldly sounds onstage and in the studio ("The Squirming Coil," "The Divided Sky," and "You Enjoy Myself," to name a few, use this unique feedback in portions of the song).

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Trey Anastasio live with Phish

Anastasio's electric guitar technique is largely conventional; he does not typically make use of tapping techniques and does not play slide guitar. He normally uses a 2.0mm Adamas graphiteguitar pick but does not always do so. Melodically, he often incorporates modes, notably the dorian, mixolydian and pentatonic scales. He is known for his skill in improvisation. In the tradition of bebop players, he often quotes, or "teases" his own music or the music of others in his solos, sometimes subtly and other times directly.

Trey uses barre chords extensively, including open voicings of minor seventh, minor ninth, and minor thirteenth chords in addition to the sharp ninth chords associated with blues-based guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix. He incorporates exotic chord progressions and voicings, chord substitutions, ghost notes, and rhythmic scratching.

While he has concentrated more on funk, jazz, and rock and roll styles in his electric guitar technique (especially since Phish's Remain in Light cover on Halloween 1996), Anastasio is also well-versed in country music and bluegrass modes of playing and has credited Jerry Garcia as an influence in this realm.

Effects processors play a crucial role in Anastasio's guitar technique. He uses effects such as two Ibanez TS-9 TubeScreamers (with analogman's Silver Mod) in sequence, chorus/Univibe-like effects, a Ross compressor (he switched eventually to Analogman's Ross Compressor/Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer clone, the bicompressor) , a wah wah pedal (usually a Real McCoy Custom 3 by Geoffrey Teese), phrase samplers, tremolo, delay, reverb, and pitch shifters, as well as a Leslie rotating speaker horn. For descriptions of some of these effects processes, see this article. While most electric guitarists incorporate effects, a tradition pioneered by Hendrix, Anastasio switches between combinations of effects with a greater degree of facility and creativity than is the norm. He is aided in this by a custom audio controller that allows him to control combinations of electronics efficiently in batch with his feet. His use of delay loops is a signature. Also, Anastasio is known for frequent switching between combinations of guitar pickups and for continually adjusting their tone and volume levels.

Anastasio currently plays an acoustic by Martin, often making use of nontraditional tunings to create ethereal ambiance or to recreate folk styles, as did Jimmy Page.

Anastasio the composer

Anastasio's compositional style is marked by a high degree of versatility. He has written pieces that include elements of classical music, rock and roll, jazz, funk, country music, bluegrass, blues, latin music, trance music, heavy metal, and other various styles.

He often employs the standard verse-chorus form prevalent in popular music, but also has used techniques derived from classical music. In this respect, many of his compositions, or at least portions of them, recall techniques employed by composers such as Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky. Some of these techniques include the use of imitative counterpoint, tonal ambiguity, polyrhythm, irregular meters, and non-linear chord progressions. Anastasio explored at least some of the techniques under the tutelage of Vermont composer and pianist Ernie Stires.

In the early years of Phish, many of Anastasio's compositions were through-composed, intricate and detailed in conception (e.g. "The Divided Sky," "You Enjoy Myself," "The Asse Festival" (within "Guelah Papyrus,") "Fluff's Travels".) Particularly in the music he has written for his touring and recording projects apart from Phish, Anastasio has used improvisation as the driving force behind simplified songwriting. Some commentators have speculated that, in this shift, he could be consciously or unconsciously creating a body of standards upon which future generations of musicians will be able to elaborate.

Tom Marshall, a biologist and friend of Anastasio since his childhood, has been his primary songwriting collaborator, acting as lyricist. Trey has often pulled lyrics for his music from large notebooks of poems and prose kept by Marshall, and the pair have also taken working retreats during which they wrote and/or recorded demos of new material. One such demo, Trampled By Lambs and Pecked by the Dove, has been commercially released, and many of the songs included on this release were reincarnated into Phish's Farmhouse. Anastasio also writes a number of his own lyrics, including all of the lyrics on his first release with Columbia Records, 2005's Shine.

Anastasio has also demonstrated skill at composing chamber music and music for orchestra, most notably on Seis De Mayo, his eponymously titled second album, and in his collaborations with the Vermont Youth Orchestra.

The Barn

"The Barn" is the name given to Anastasio's legendary rehearsal and recording facility in the countryside near Burlington, Vermont. It was reconstructed between 1996 and 1998 from an existing structure, the Alan Irish Barn. The Barn has been used by Phish and most of Anastasio's projects since 1999.

Other artists who have recorded and/ or performed at The Barn include Herbie Hancock, Béla Fleck, John Patitucci, DJ Logic, Toots and the Maytals, Tony Levin, Umphrey's McGee, The Slip, John Medeski, Jerry Douglas, Patty LaBelle, and Addison Groove Project, among others.

Discography

Studio albums

1. One Man's Trash (October 27, 1998)

File:Trampledlambsdoves.jpg 2. Trampled By Lambs and Pecked by the Dove (with Tom Marshall) (November 1, 2000)

3. Trey Anastasio (April 30, 2002)

4. Seis De Mayo (April 6, 2004)

5. Shine (November 1, 2005)

Live albums

1. Plasma (April 29, 2003)

EPs

File:70 Volt Parade.jpg 1. Live In Chicago (November 1, 2005) (as as bonus with Shine)

DVDs

1. Trey Anastasio with Special Guests Carlos Santana (2004, recorded live in San Francisco, CA on May 31, 2003)

External links

• Trey Anastasio's official website
• Phish's official website
• Trey Anastasio on MySpace