In his most in-depth interview since Phish announced its return, Mike Gordon speaks about the possibility of a new studio album, quells rumors of a spring tour and discusses the groups new deal with Red Light Management.

We had one run [of rehearsals] which was great in New York for five days, Gordon recently told the Burlington Free Press. As we had hoped, we got together after these years and people kind of got healthier, everyone did. There’s kind of a humbleness — everyone’s saying, What are you bringing to the table? And the jamming or just sort of playing songs felt good in a way that either I’d forgotten or was sort of fresh.
In addition, Gordon publicly comments on Trey Anastasios recent statements that Phishs massive infrastructure and overhead helped break-up Phish in 2004.
From my perspective I thought that was a scapegoat reason, he admits. The machine, I guess, is part of it, and where people were at health-wise and just getting to this point in our life where we needed to do other stuff. The hiatus (the pre-breakup break from 2000-02) scratched the surface of that a little. At a certain point, even when it’s incredible, by doing different stuff you gain perspective. We’re not going to let it become that, we’re not going to get involved in decisions we don’t need to and delegate more and not get wrapped up mentally on things as much. It’s a different era, too. The era of having John Paluska as our manager — he would plan out the festivals we did with no other bands, just keeping us on our own path. One thing on that is it required an infrastructure. We didn’t want to farm out the merchandise. We had people doing it in-house, designing the T-shirts and selling them. John was a great organizer and controller and wanted more to control. It required extra band meetings to work this infrastructure that was home-grown and in-house. Now it’s a different era in that sense. I still have a great relationship with John Paluska but a few of us are involved with Red Light Management (based in Charlottesville, Va.) and talking about that being the home for Phish and it’s just a whole different model. Now it’s like maybe we don’t have to have our own festival to make great music. We don’t have to do that and maybe we can be even more a part of the music industry than we were before rather than separate from it.’
Gordon also mentions that the group has no plans to tour this spring or enter the studio in the coming months. The bassist will kick off a mini-tour with his solo band at Providence, RIs Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel this Saturday