Phish Ends Summer Tour With Patient, Exploratory Dick’s Finale

By Grayson Haver Currin Sep 7, 2026 • 10:57 am PDT

At 7:45 p.m., or 15 minutes after Phish was officially due onstage for the third and final night of their Labor Day run in Denver on Sunday, security guards on the west side of Dick’s Sporting Goods Park threw open an extra gate.

It wasn’t that Phish was actually late. For the prior two nights, they’d gone onstage just minutes before 8 p.m. It was, instead, that every line outside of the soccer stadium seemed a quarter-mile long, doors having been delayed by lightning in the prairie distance. The queues, then, were buzzy but slightly tense, the anticipation of never missing a Sunday show undercut by anxiety about missing the start of the Sunday show. So extra doors were opened. Phish waited. By 8 p.m., the soccer field was finally full.

Phish, though, wasn’t looking to make up for any lost minutes when they ambled onto the stage just after 8:05. They drifted briefly through a little astral prelude, a few pitch-shifted notes and hi-hat flutters becoming the sound of them slowly stirring themselves to life. And that was the mood of the excellent glowstick-free first hour, a four-song block where every tune morphed into extended jams that steadily changed shapes. It was as if Phish understood the anticipation of their summer-ending Labor Day weekend show, their first at Dick’s since 2024, and decided to go the other way: less Sunday Phunday, more deep-listening exercise for 23,000 people.

Opener “Ghost,” for instance, sounded like a full-band game of push-and-pull. Jon Fishman’s circular drumlines offered the rest of Phish repeated exits, but Trey Anastasio kept sliding past them, his bright lead line practically smiling in the rearview. After 14 minutes, they locked into a kind of roadhouse math-rock repartee, aggressive and self-contained. And “Kill Devil Falls” became a four-way game of cat and mouse atop a platform of chutes and ladders, Anastasio and Page McConnell darting around one another as Mike Gordon and Fishman did the same on the low end. It felt a little like the continual motion of Philip Glass’ Music in Twelve Parts, transposed for a rock band in a soccer stadium.

With its ragtag lines about the shiny music that descends from overhead, “Roggae” was first pleasant, free and easy. But seven minutes into it, Anastasio followed a single note down a twisted and dissonant path, the pink-and-celeste lights dancing above the band suddenly darkening into red and deep blue, a brief invocation of Evil Phish. That feeling and its concomitant red returned 10 minutes into “Blaze On,” as Phish pivoted between a jaunty jam that conjured Ghanaian highlife and bursts of slow, snarling noise, then back again. They let it fade through Tangerine Dream synths and fluttering arpeggios, like a spaceship settling back down to earth. It was, it turns out, a slow segue into the very different second half of set one.

The glowsticks finally started to fly 73 minutes into the night, or around the time the band hit the hook of an exuberant “Backwards Down the Number Line.” They glided into a mighty version of “Axilla (Part II),” an apt tantrum about trying to separate body from brain on a hot September night. McConnell’s organ roared, pushing against the limits of the band as if trying to shake off the sweat. Given the late start and the generous opening improvisational block, it seemed possible that “Taste” would cap set one, with its emphatic piano-and-drum exit. Then came the Fishman beat and the Gordon bass strut of “Split Open and Melt,” one of the band’s most direct avenues for getting out. In the second half, it sounded like they were cutting up pieces of an already jagged jigsaw puzzle just to see if the bits might still fit together in their new forms, now rearranged like brains. At 13 minutes, it wasn’t an especially long “Melt,” but it was a particularly challenging one, Fishman and Anastasio pushing against one another like dueling P.S.F. Records alumni. And then, house lights.

Set-break anticipation was high, with an understandable sense that some surprise must be waiting in the wings. After a summer of unexpected setlists, Phish’s run at Dick’s had felt more like a survey of it all, with only one song in the first five sets that hadn’t already been played in 2026. That exception was Los Lobos’ “When the Circus Comes.” What would they unveil, bust out, turn into a game? Turns out, nothing new, exactly, and that was actually great.

“My Friend, My Friend” quickly got dark and twisted, Anastasio’s lead like a wild animal trying to crawl out of a cage and finally succeeding by drifting atop McConnell’s piano into a fantastic and surprising “Fuego.” Since its appearance at the 1995-themed Madison Square Garden show in July, Anastasio’s mini drum kit, a few rototoms and a bell, had been good fodder for the jam memosphere. It was even better fodder for “Fuego.” As he pushed his guitar aside to step to the kit a dozen minutes into the song, McConnell took aim, his electric keyboard line loping but distant, like a harpsichord sailing across the color-smeared horizon. McConnell and Gordon locked into a funky and sophisticated dance, the bass chasing the keys higher and higher. When Anastasio returned to the guitar, it was a scene change within the song, an opening to a new plot.

And then came “Melt the Guns,” a song Phish had revived earlier in the summer at Fenway Park after more than 2,000 shows. Last summer in Boulder, a small plane flew over Folsom Field, wielding a banner that read “Phish Please Play Melt the Guns!” against blue July skies. The relic of early Thatcher England is unabashedly frank in its feelings for the historically apolitical Phish, who delivered its calls to disarm and pay more attention to Nero with clear relish. Maybe this is Phish’s way of acknowledging the American political climate? Maybe they remembered last year’s high flyer? Maybe Boston simply reminded them how good this groove sounds?

The second set ended in a one-two of positive jams. “Light” got deliciously funky and fractured, McConnell’s keyboard and Anastasio’s guitar splashing and slashing against the beat until the quartet snapped into sync for a smart segue into “Everything’s Right.” It maintained the night’s theme: involved improvisation that rewarded careful listening, as when Anastasio stretched a string of glissandi over the rest of the band’s clangor. The heaviness broke just before the 12-minute mark for a final “It’s gonna be all right” hurrah. “Thanks for a great summer,” Anastasio said just before Fishman’s final hit. It felt like a reminder that this was an end-of-summer summation, a way to celebrate the Phish highs of the last several months without necessarily aiming to supersede them. No bust-outs or funny themes, no guests or gimmicks; instead, just a band that’s playing incredibly well right now, arriving in the unexpected places improvisation allows. That can be enough, right?

Of course, there was something very expected ahead. Phish didn’t get around to closing “Tweezer” on Saturday night, so it was the inevitability as they walked back onstage around 11:20 p.m. First there was a gorgeous “Waste,” a perfect little piece of wistfulness that conjured nostalgia for a summer that had yet to end officially, and “First Tube,” Anastasio stepping out front for his Riverdance guitar heroics. And then, of course, there it was: “Tweezer Reprise,” a final burst of absolute energy, an exclamation mark for a night when Phish happily never seemed in a hurry, when a late start didn’t turn into a rush to get anywhere in particular. That is summer forever.

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