Tom Archives

This song was written by Trey and myself, and eventually released by Phish on Undermind.  But long before that, I released it featuring singing by a great band called The Saras.  Check it out -- it also features a COMPLETE set of lyrics (AHEM Trey!...somehow a verse was overlooked by Phish!)

Nothing

From my band's Amfibian album with the same name, here's Skip the Goodbyes featuring Trey on guitar!

Skip the Goodbyes

Mike and Trey in the studio create an awesome version of a song that Trey and I wrote a long time ago...this came out on an unofficial leaked project called "Flotsam Five" -- this wasn't a Phish release or anything, and no one knows anything about it -- but it had a compilation of interesting songs.

Backwards Food For Backwards Folks

The ORIGINAL "I am Hydrogen". Me on keys, Marc Daubert on acoustic and Trey on his Ibanez...and a Fender amp I think.Recorded on a stereo recording Walkman (cassette). In this configuration we called the band Bivouac.I think in 1984


I Am Hydrogen

This song, "Silent in the Morning" was eventually released on Rift, and split into two songs: Horse and Silent in the Morning, for some reason I never was made aware of.Anyway -- this is the very first version, and it was recorded in late 1991 in my house in Princeton NJ on a Fostex 4-Track cassette machine in my "studio" -- a room that would be eventually occupied by my (then nonexistent) daughter.  Trey's on acoustic.  Singing along with Trey and myself are Marc Daubert, and our late good friend Amanda Lake.


Silent in the Morning

This one was the one that reunited Trey and me again after a long silence in September 2007.Trey was in Saratoga Springs, NY, working very hard in his Drug Court program -- helping himself, helping others...but not communicating with anyone...on purpose.His dad was key to breaking the silence and said I could email Trey a Happy Birthday and he "might answer".At first I thought he was joking, because until that moment, Trey NEVER used email!So I sent off a birthday poem...these lyrics.2 hours later I received an "Oh My God, Tom" email.Then soon after, a phone call where he played me this song.Our writing conquered the chasm...the rift.The thing we did best and did forever, songwriting, reignited our friendship.


Backwards Down the Numberline

This one holds a great deal of significance for Trey and myself.  It was a dark period in both our lives.  It was a dark period for the country.  I wrote this poem for my son...it read almost like an epitaph for my own grave.  It was depressing.  Trey and I also (due to my work situation which was dire) were holed up in a dark, miserable NJ hotel right near Newark airport.  But one thing we knew how to do was write and record songs.  Trey liked these lyrics, and with me essentially on the sidelines, he created this entire song...piece by piece.  The most impressive to me was his piano intro.  He's quite a good pianist, and he uses it as a compositional tool very effectively.  Those chords just kept building and building...heck, the song has FOUR intros if you count them like I do...until finally a bed for the lyrics appeared.  And he sang them...I didn't get involved, he was on a mission from god.  I just handed the lyrics to the song-machine and my job was done.  Later I found that people thought this was a tribute to the World Trade Center...WTC = Walls of The Cave=World Trade Center.  So is it?  Trey says yes.  I say probably...but unintentionally on purpose.  [this continues in COMMENTS below]

Walls of the Cave

Sometime in late 1992 I handed Trey these lyrics inspired by the rhythm of the song Pocahontas by Neil Young.  Trey wrote this one completely by himself soon thereafter in his home studio in Vermont, and the first time I heard it was over the phone and we both flipped out over how cool it was.  Trey's interesting overdubbed solo carried through to the studio version as well to my delight.  Phish started playing it in early 1993 when it came out on Rift.  One of my live favorites, I always think back to this first version when I hear it...

The Wedge

okay -- here's the first one from "The Dungeon" -- a recording that never became a Phish or TAB song, and wouldn't otherwise ever see the light of day.  I'm releasing it to you now...fly away little starling...fly fly fly... Sorry, that was my inner Hannibal talking.  So "Lever Boy" was recorded on 12/10/2008 in a sweet New York hotel that Trey got for us, and had it loaded with recording equipment and instruments.  2 Tascam 8-track machines and a Mackie mixer are the core of Trey's awesome mobile studio...but there are also some gorgeous preamps and AtoD's and beautiful mics as well.  There was a Kurzweil keyboard there, a Languedoc bass and a Languedoc electric, and a Martin acoustic.  Roland V-drums too.  The reason we were there was to write songs for a new Phish album...the one that eventually became "Joy".  During this session we also wrote Kill Devil Falls and Ocelot, but before we got really into it, we played around with our studio-away-from-studio and came up with this unusual song.  Trey and I both love it, but feel it might never transcend its current version.  For those of you playing along at home, this one (possibly) completes the "-Boy" series of songs...Lawn, Life and Dog Faced being the first three.

Lever Boy

A very old song from the Dungeon, this was done in 1984 on a cassette deck meant for dictation and not music -- which explains the horrible quality.  Pretty silly, you can see why it didn't get very far (alongside the SERIOUS music we were intending to create), but you can hear the fun we're having.  Trey on acoustic -- he, I and Marc Daubert sing when we're not laughing too hard.

Mathilda

October 2003.  Trey and I had a very productive 2003 with two great writing sessions.  This was post-hiatus, and post Round Room, but pre-break up.  4 of these 8 songs we wrote at this session (back in a Stowe, Vermont farmhouse) would wind up on Undermind.  Some Undermind tracks also came from an earlier writing session in Nantucket which Trey and I plan to release as well -- in fact we mixed and created an album called Men From Nantucket which may have leaked, but no matter -- we're going to release it when we agree upon the best way to do so.  Anyway -- the party was ON...these songs are raw tequila-fueled energy...mixed with a hint of the looming breakup later in 2004...which although neither of us specifically knew about yet, seemed to pervade the mood of Undermind...and thus this session.  Stay tuned -- I want to release most of the songs from this session -- while we're on the topic.  I am changing mediums though...moving to a different way of presenting the music...soon...

A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing

This is a song we wrote twice.  We have a few of those actually...where we have an idea and revisit it later, sometimes years later.  This first time was the same session as A Song I Heard the Ocean Sing, Oct 2003 in Vermont.  This was a poem of quiet desperation that my friend Scott Herman and I emailed to each other when we were deep in work-misery.  Trey turned it into a cool jam, and then later (the next time we rearranged it in 2009 in New York for the album Joy) a rock anthem.  I love this version -- it jams at the end...the "band" remember is Trey on drums, Trey on guitar(s), Trey on bass, Trey on keys, Trey on vocals...etc... Multi-tracking heaven.  Maybe I'm singing somewhere in there...

Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan

This is the same October 2003 pre-Undermind recording session.  Trey attacks the drums in a Keith Moon style fit of energy, which was fortunately also felt by Fishman when the Phish version was recorded.  I love this song for a lot of reasons.  The harmony, the upbeat song Trey crafted, and the lyrics.  Believe it or not, these weren't meant to be political lyrics...but they work so well in the Occupy Wall Street video that maybe I'm wrong?

Crowd Control

"Reach" -- also from the 10/11/2003 Vermont songwriting session that I've been focusing on lately.  This one is FROM THE DUNGEON.  That is...no one but Trey and I have this one.  (Actually...Trey played this on his Sirius radio show, BUT his version had a big error in the middle...about 6 seconds of silence with the intro repeated...this one is the correct version.)  This was fun -- Trey hand-drummed a percussion part (on the Roland Handsonic) to my simple piano plinking.  Trey then added the guitar accompaniment and we sang.  Lyrically, this is about as close to a love-song as I go?  ...maybe Waste still wins.  Pebbles & Marbles?  Stash?  Merry Christmas all -- see you at MSG!!!

Reach

This song...where to begin? We were in a Vermont Farmhouse near Stowe in March 1997.  Just Trey and myself.  Paul and Carini had left us there with a bunch of recording equipment, beer and Flatbread pizzas.  It was the end of skiing season so not bitterly cold, but it wasn't warm either.  This session yielded Ghost, Velvet Sea and Piper among several others.  We had 3 days together and we were writing machines.  Trey had brought this incredible drumbeat with him.  I have to explain this better.  The drumbeat that eventually became Limb by Limb arrived with Trey on a drum machine.  But it's not like he just created a random beat.  Trey had listened to a National Geographic Music of the World cassette with street drumming from a festival in Rio de Janeiro and painstakingly assembled a beat using that street fair as an influence.  Trey also loved to create beats that would challenge Fishman.  Other songs where he created challenging beats for Jon were Wedge, Bouncing and Twist.  Jon ALWAYS stepped up to the plate and learned the almost unplayable beats perfectly.  He is incredible that way.  Another special mention should be the song Demand.  Trey wrote every single note of that drum part down musically.  Jon read and learned the entire part flawlessly.  The last thing to say about Limb by Limb is that apart from all the lyrics to Chalkdust, Trey's favorite lyrics of mine are in this song:  "And I am taken far away...Lingering slowly melting away, tossed with the salad and baled with the hay, pooling like water that drips from above, trampled by lambs and pecked by the dove."  I remember Trey telling me that "he got the joke" in the song.  I had no idea what he meant.  The "joke" it turns out is that violence is done to the narrator by the two gentlest members of the animal kingdom.  I know the feeling...I once got mugged in the most peaceful city in the world:  Burlington Vermont.  Maybe that influenced this song...I don't know.  Note:  this song (and others I will occasionally re-release) are from the album Trampled by Lambs and Pecked by the Dove which is available on LivePhish.com.

Limb By Limb

Here is another from a Stowe, VT farmhouse -- this time it was May 1997.  We wrote Dirt, Water in the Sky, Vultures and another six songs that never became Phish songs...but possibly my favorite from this session was:  Twist.  I normally fly to Vermont (from my home state NJ), but this time I drove.  I remember arriving after dark, and Trey was already putting down tracks on the Tascam DA-88 machines.  I arrived in time to have a nice meal, sing a few tracks and then I was just so beat I went to bed.  Trey on the other hand stayed up, and I have just a wonderful vision burned into my head of walking downstairs the next morning, finding Trey with his guitar still strapped-on, and a huge smile, putting final touches on the song Twist which we had started the previous night.  He never went to sleep!  And thank god he didn't, because he came up with that incredible "twist" to the song where the pattern builds and repeats beautifully -- like the song says.  This is really one of the best examples of Trey writing a song TO the lyrics (which he does more than you might know).  It's funny because you can hear the "daytime" part of the song until the 1-minute mark when Trey's night-muse came to him and drew forth that rocking ending.  There's a lot to it...and this early version captures the layers of the song very well.  From Trey's vocal bass line, to the awesome drum part with the double snare hits that don't quite come when expected, to the guitar layers!!!  You can hear our breathless laughing at the very end as we were singing the "WOO!" parts.  I could go on and on, but this was Trey's masterpiece of that session -- the one I listened to over and over for 5 hours on my drive home!  Enjoy.  (My standard disclaimer:  Some of the songs I'm posting, this one included, were released in 2000 on a CD of 25 demos that Trey and I recorded in 1997 called Trampled by Lambs and Pecked by the Dove which is available on LivePhish.com.)

Twist

Hi everyone,
I know Tom is writing these blurbs, but I wanted to write one. Tom and I have been writing and four-tracking together for over thirty years now, and I have so many incredible memories of our adventures: I could probably fill a book writing about them. One of my favorites is about the songs Farmhouse and Bug.
In the nineties Tom and I began renting houses in the Stowe area of Vermont and disappearing for long weekends to hang out together and write. To be perfectly honest, the hanging out part was even more important to me than the writing. With Phish's exponential growth in the mid nineties came a whirlwind of confusion and frantic energy that I don't think any of us in the band were completely prepared for. Our quiet little scene in Burlington and on the road exploded. Suddenly the idea of hiding out alone for three days and nights on a farm with one of my oldest friends became a precious idea that I anxiously looked forward to for weeks in advance of our trips. At that time I had neither a cell phone nor a computer, so when we disappeared, we really disappeared.
Farmhouse was written and recorded in the first five minutes of one of those trips. I picked up Tom at the airport in this cool old 1970's RV that I had bought that had an eight track player in it, and we drove to the farmhouse we had rented. It was kind of late since Tom had left from work, and we pulled over for a second and jumped out next to a field. When we looked up at the sky, it was exploding with these deep greenish colors that we soon realized were the northern lights. We stood there and just stared in awe. We continued on, and found our house down a long secluded dirt road. We walked in and I ran over to the gear and picked up a guitar while Tom plugged in a Mic. there were some sliding glass doors that we opened, and though it wasn't as intense as it had been when we pulled over, we could still see traces of the northern lights thru the door. Mostly, we were both buzzing from that magical feeling of being completely alone, and knowing that we didn't have to talk to or see a single soul for three whole days and nights, which to both of us was heaven.
I started strumming and Tom started singing, and since he didn't have any lyrics, he reached over and grabbed the note that the owner of the house had left for us and began reading it, verbatim.
"Welcome! This is a farmhouse, we have cluster flies, alas, and this time of year is bad..."
And on it went from there. I love the chorus,  "I never ever saw the northern lights, I never really heard of cluster flies!"
After that I quickly constructed all the instruments. I will always to this day believe that this version of Farmhouse is the perennial version, mostly because of the genuine joy in Tom's inspired and spontaneous vocal. Also, for the record, of course we immediately recognized that it sounded similar to "No woman no cry", and sort of threw that "be all right" thing in specifically for that reason, amidst the frenzy of laughing and singing. It felt like the perfect sentiment for our escape. "in the farmhouse things will be alright".
I don't think Tom and I have ever written a single song for any reason other than to entertain ourselves. We don't really think about the fact that anyone will ever hear this stuff. It's in the moment. If we took the time to think about it more, we would probably edit ourselves into submission, and take a lot of the joy and spontaneity out of the songs. I know for a fact that if Tom had his way, "Yanked on my tunic and dangled my stash" would not be in the public consciousness. Personally, I happen to love that line.  -Trey.
[TOM'S note:  I added the "alas", that wasn't on the note.  No one has written "alas" -- and meant it -- since the 19th century. Some of the songs I'm posting, this one included, were released in 2000 on a CD of 25 demos that Trey and I recorded in 1997 called "Trampled by Lambs and Pecked by the Dove" which is available on LivePhish.com.  Also...Trey didn't write much about Bug, so I'll release that if/when he writes another "blurb"...or I'll write one...soon!]

Farmhouse

Here's one from our 4/2003 songwriting session in Nantucket.  Trey played this on Sirius Radio once -- but apart from that, it's never been heard before.  This is another one (see below) which is on "Men From Nantucket" -- an album Trey and I put together, but never released.  It will come out someday...we hope.  "Alabaster salmon and a long-lost friend."

Adam and Eve

I get asked about the meaning of this one a lot.  This was written in October 1997...the same session as Farmhouse (see below).  In fact, I believe we plowed right into this one after the success of Farmhouse...a very quickly put-together song, but still with a good amount of soul and happiness.  With our confidence up, we quickly got BOGged down...this one took forever.  It started with that little piano riff, and got pretty thick pretty fast.  We were experimenting with a lot of different techniques...like singing every-other syllable in alternate speakers.  In other words for the line "there've been times that I wonder and times that I don't" -- we only sang "There've...times...I...der...times...I..." on the left track and then the alternating syllables: "...been...that...won...and...that...don't" on the right track.  it came out strangely...and eventually we sang the whole thing correctly on top of it, but you can hear it in this recording if you listen carefully.  This recording broke one of our unspoken rules:  record carefully and QUICKLY...to maximize our productivity.  Our previous two Vermont Farmhouse sessions had yielded about 5 or 6 songs per day.  We were deeply into the morning of the second day and our tally was only 1.5 songs.  Eventually we took advice from the lyrics and realized that it doesn't matter and finished Bug after a few hours of sleep the next day.  Despite being the "slow" song...it's one of our favorites because it answered a lot of important questions for us as writers.  It does leave an important one unanswered however.  So what does it mean?  {this track, like several others that appear on my SoundCloud, is part of a compilation of 25 original recordings that Trey and I released in 2000 called "Trampled by Lambs and Pecked by the Dove" which is now available on LivePhish.com.)

Here's another from the "Twist" session in Stowe, VT in May 1997.  Vultures was Trey's from the start -- he asked me to push the buttons on the tape deck while he composed the intro on piano...which I remember being very excited about.  His jazzy drum beat made me realize he had a vision and was on auto-pilot.  Then he added guitar and vocals.  Scott Herman helped me write the lyrics.  When I think about it, I didn't do a whole lot on this song!!  :)  In any case, I love this original version (from Trampled by Lambs and Pecked by the Dove).  A couple things -- no one has ever gotten all these lyrics right:  
"Timing is everything  
that much I know 
Sometimes I'm faster  
and sometimes I'm slow 
I exceed expectations 
but sometimes I'm told 
To go to the end of the line 
But when I don't meet 
what's expected of me 
they look at their clocks  
and they say "this can't be" 
Watching it pass 
without reason or rhyme 
I find myself drifting in time" 
Also...Why did they occasionally say "Potato to the throat" instead of "razor to the throat"? -- I don't know how that originated.  I asked Trey, he doesn't remember exactly but says "a razor is so violent" -- so that's the official answer to that mystery.
As I write this I'm reminded that we constructed the intro to Walls of the Cave in a very similar fashion -- Trey on piano with me engineering. I see the vultures moving in!
Enjoy.  (ps -- Trey's hiccup at 51 seconds!)

Tom Archives

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