by Benjy Eisen

"Peculiar travel arrangements are dancing lessons from God" - Kurt Vonnegut

I've often wondered about names of venues, like why it's called "Madison Square Gardens" when it's not a garden at all, but a cold metal and smoke arena and why call a giant chunk of ancient ruins in Chicago the "Rosemont Horizon?" But "Southpark Meadows" in Austin, TX is about as close to honesty as you can get - it's a stage rising from the bottom of a sloping meadows and it paints a mellow mood. Outside, shakedown was starting to get traffic flowing through it again, and vendors had tents set up and it was the first sign that tour was swinging east coast again. Kickdowns and miracles were scarcer, ghetto kids more present and green crew a little busier. We were at Austin's city limits and I couldn't help but to wish that we had more time to spend in these towns on tour. Less than a week ago I drove straight through Los Angeles, twice, and the only thing I got to see was the freeway. So stupendous, eh?

The show in Austin was good. The first set wasn't so jam-heavy but had the heavy hitters all the same - such sure shots as First Tube, Guyute and Loving Cup. Down With Disease got a walk with a spacey curve ball, but the real runners were in the second set, with the triple hitter of Peaches, Possum and Wolfman's followed by old all-star Lizards. Sand was already in Mark McGuire territory when it slid into Misty Mountain Hop, still airborne. Like I said, it was a good show.

The next day I hopped out of the Red Sterling and into a 1971 Volkswagen bus. We never made it to the next few shows. Part of the experience of being on tour is the "tour" part of things and I'm afraid that in the effort to keep things "musical" people try to overlook that. What? Like hopping rides and checkpoint trials and hotel escapades aren't musical? Where do you think music comes from, baby? What? You thought that maybe Trey, Mike, Page and Fish got all of their inspiration during those three hours inside the show and spent the other twenty-one comatose?

Where do you think music comes from baby? It comes from the other twenty-one! It comes from the pretty mamas stressing burrito ingredients at Sam's Club in the early afternoons and it comes from the kids pouring ice onto cases of Sammy Smiths and Fat Tires in the backs of vans before the show and it comes from the swing kids laying low in the shadows. It comes from trying to sneak ten kids and their sleeping bags into hotel rooms made for two at three in the morning and then trying to sneak in a couple of dogs. It comes from trying to get to a bank, a post office, a grocery store, a beer distributor and a Wal Mart with time left for an oil change and a few phone calls while crossing an average of three hundred some miles and still getting to the lots by three or four, then finding a ticket, work, grab a grilled cheese and take care of some other small details before walking into the show half an hour past ticket time, just a couple of minutes before curtain. After the show it's another hour of work or play before figuring out how long a drive you need to do tonight, where you're going to stay, who's going to get behind the wheel and how you're going to get there.

Think of Fluffhead. Think of YEM. Think of Antelope. We celebrate this music in the three hours we have inside. The rest of the day we're busy making it.

Where do you think music comes from baby? What you thought that maybe lying to your parents and taking class cuts on your Friday afternoon or weekday morning so you could do a mini Phish run back east, while still trying to get that paper in on Tuesday and read 60 pages of Environmental Science textbooks and make that appointment with your advisor and still take an hour out on Wednesday for Dawson's Creek has no music in it? Where do you think music comes from baby? What? You thought that maybe you saved up to fly out to Shoreline for two nights, taking off a couple work days and on the way out there your connecting flight in Denver was delayed and you had to work magic to make it in the show on time the first night and on Monday morning you walk into work with circles around your eyes and if you were to tell your boss that you were at a Phish concert he'd run drug tests on you and your wife's friends think it's odd that you flew 3000 miles to see a band who you already saw a couple times that year and yet you never show interest in the Monday Night Football parties that the rest of their husbands work their week around and you thought the only thing musical about that were the four sets you spent under the big top at Shoreline?

Listen: You can hear Tweezer and Gotta Jiboo and Weekapaug Groove in there. And whether you're a tour kid, college coed, business suit, whatever - all those times that all of us crossed time zones or got to see the Redwoods or the Columbia River Gorge or got to witness first-hand the beauty of the Rockies on our way to the shows, or those times we got to rage Las Vegas or New York or Vancouver...What? That's not musical? C'mon, that's the very heart of the jam. That's the reason music exists.

When we dance, we feel alive. Because we ARE alive.

That's why when the bus broke down 72 miles from Houston and we ended up stranded in Crack-town, USA in the Texas Ghetto for four days, I continued to dance, as best I could, and in the only way I knew how. Sure it was beat that for my birthday, instead of raging Bourbon Street in New Orleans as I had planned to do for months, I was watching some lame movie on television with a slice of Dominos, schwag beer and a dirty t-shirt. And I'm not going to lie to you - my smile that day was not easy. But I still managed to do it, because as tired as you might be, and sore as your muscles may be, and as tried as your soul might be sometimes even, there is still always music playing. Sometimes that music is being played out loud and you can gather together and celebrate and get down like it's your job...but other times that music is silent and it comes quietly from within and you've got to listen really hard to hear it. It's not always easy to pick up on, but you've got to try because it's definitely there and so long as your heart beats, there is always a beat to dance to. And you own your beat. Do you understand me? I said YOU OWN YOUR BEAT. So maybe you are stranded in Texas and missing some shows that you were looking forward to, and maybe for this reason or that reason you can't always make it to whatever or wherever or even whoever - and those times, maybe you can't hear the songs you wish you could, but there are always songs there and you can't dance to any song other than the one that's playing at that particular moment. You can't do it any other way. You'd be out of step.

In the course of a good Phish show there are some songs you can rage to, thrashing your body in every which way all at once. Then there are the slow songs, songs in which you act out little ballets or move slowly back and forth. There are songs you don't want to hear at all but you still dance to, or you choose to sit them out to cut a butt or to watch those around you or whatever it is that you do. There are songs that your heart isn't in to but that you dance to anyway. There are whole songs you space because you're watching that mamma gracefully sacrifice herself to the gods as she moves to the music. There are jams which absolutely entrance you or which putter out and even lose your interest for a couple of seconds. And then they bust out a Halley's Comet or a Camel Walk or an It's Ice and you're back on your feet again, wearing out the soles because thatUs how hard youUre getting down.

For four days I was stranded in a shitty motel in a ghetto of Houston, Texas. I missed the three shows of the tour that I wanted to see more than any other. I missed having any sort of birthday celebration. I missed cascading drunk and mad-like down the French Quarters of New Orleans, staggering around the streets till dawn with Cherise and a painted mandolin. I missed seeing Phish play in a Pyramid in Memphis and staging a tirade on Beale Street afterwards. I missed seeing Phish in the one state that meant more to me than any other, just because of a silly game I had with a silly girl years ago. Before the ordeal was over, my one friend had to bail and caught a Greyhound bus headed for Pennsylvania; my other friend was mugged for $300. And sure, all of that was beat.

Notice I said "beat." It was all part of the music you see. And so some things happened, because things sometimes do, and so what? There's not a whole lot in this world that I'm really all that incredible at, but I can do this - I can dance. Not always well, not often that impressive like. In fact, truth be told, I'm a little bit sloppy and not all that graceful in my movements. But I can open my heart to notes and let my soul run with melody and align my spirit to harmony and I can surrender myself to the beat, to my beat, and maybe that's all I really can do. Maybe that's all we, as human beings, ever really can to do. Or need to do. And so for those four days when I was a prisoner to the Palace Inn (a god awful hotel in Houston that I would discourage anyone from ever giving their business to), I kept my chin up and my smile sincere. And it was sincere. I cracked jokes about acidheads and ate Red Vine licorice. I considered it a blessing that I was stranded with two of my favorite people in the entire world and I savored every second I was around them and I fell asleep in the arms of music and I danced with her in the middle of the night as we playfully entangled ourselves in laughter and whispered sweet everythings to each other as we fell asleep.

In the afternoon, I took a few minutes to sit alone on the steps outside the hotel and it was my birthday. I felt alone. I looked around me. And then I looked outside me. And then I looked inside me. I realized that after all these years, I was still dancing and I smiled to myself when I thought about all the tunes that have come and gone and how there were some pretty damned good tunes that I've lived that past couple of years and here I was stuck in Texas with a strange new funk but a pretty cool two-step.

In a way this fall has been all about learning new moves I guess. But should that come as any surprise, knowing that every second we move, we change, we evolve?

And although I can't always follow motion the way I'd sometimes like to, I've at least got the balance to not fall down anymore. I've learned to laugh it off, not brush it off.

I remember one time when someone close to me was dying of cancer. And I remember how well he handled it, how he told jokes even when he didn't have the physical strength to laugh. But he still managed to laugh, and he managed to let it form from deep inside his stomach and let it burst on out, and I'm sure it must have hurt him so hard, the way his chest was weak with disease and his energy taken by medicine - it must have physically hurt. But still he managed to laugh, and to laugh heartily, and to mean it. He didn't laugh because he was in denial. He laughed because he was in acceptance. It was the greatest laugh in the world. He was a week away from dying and he knew it. He also taught me how to dance.

After Houston, the bus was fixed and we passed through Oklahoma, where in the course of an hour I managed to hook two hearts, and from there it was Iowa and then Minneapolis and then Chicago and I was hopping from ride to ride, sometimes from disaster to disaster, sometimes from magic into light. And I learned that they have buffalo in Missouri and that Minneapolis turns into a jungle at night. And I learned that I have a family a thousand strong in concrete parking lots and inside steel coliseums and a vision of my friends as angels with wings and a gentle touch. And together we dance.

Together, we dance.