Attendance Bias Mini Episode #12: If I Could, 6/2/09, Wantagh, NY
When Phish announced their early summer tour in 2009, the comeback tour, two dates stood out to me: June 4 and 5 at Jones Beach Amphitheater. Like the Nassau Coliseum, Jones Beach has a special place in my life. Though I’ve seen fewer and fewer shows there in recent years, several of my formative musical experiences happened there.
Jones Beach Amphitheater is a beautiful concert venue. It sits on Zach’s Bay as part of Jones Beach State Park, a beachside park built during the Great Depression as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA program. It even has an obelisk once you reach the end of the parkway next to the beach that fits right in with the art deco architecture of the time.
The amphitheater was built a number of years after the park, in the early 1950s. Since then, it’s gone through a number of renovations and updates, the most recent being the mezzanine of dark red seats at the top of the theater. On a nice summer night, it’s one of the best outdoor places in the state or maybe even the country to see a concert. I’ve enjoyed dozens of nights with sunsets behind the monolith, easing into a cool, breezy night watching a performance on its huge stage.
That being said, Jones Beach also has the potential to be one of the worst venues in the country on any given night. A windy or rainy night can absolutely destroy the sound quality for anyone seated outside of the orchestra section. Being on the water also makes the entire area freezing cold on a night that’s doesn’t have optimal weather.
I remember being down low in the orchestra section for this show, Fish side. Although the band played a show at Fenway Park two nights earlier, this felt like the proper tour opener. The band debuted a couple of songs that would become more or less staples in the 3.0 era, and extra loud cheers greeted the more familiar “oldies” like “Runaway Jim” and “Cities.”
While there weren’t too many all-time highlights at the show, this show felt like coming back to a childhood restaurant in your hometown after many years away. All your old favorites are still on the menu (“Foam,” “Reba,” “Mike’s”), some new stuff is there and you’re unsure what you think of it (“Kill Devil Falls,” “Stealing Time”), and even some old items that you forgot about in your time away (“Driver,” “If I Could”). It may add up to less than the sum of its parts, but you’re thrilled to be back.
These three nights at Jones Beach felt more like the start of a proper tour. Most of the first set was thrilling for the simple fact that Phish was back! Not only back, but at a New York area venue that wasn’t Madison Square Garden. There weren’t too many memorable musical highlights from this show, or even from this run as a whole, but it really hit me that things were back for real and a little different when the band closed the first set with the sublime rarity “If I Could.”