Talk about opposite extremes.

Phish’s Trey Anastasio gave a sublime performance with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall last night, wowing the crowd from the first notes of the “First Tube” opener to the last moments of a 14-minute orchestral “You Enjoy Myself” finale (the heavy brass in place of the vocal “Boy/Man/God/Shit” drew audible groans of glee from the audience). The fact that most fans were sporting blazers and button-down shirts gave it a touch of class befitting of the nation’s oldest symphony orchestra in the Western Hemisphere’s most revered concert hall. It was a memorable evening for a very special cause – the memorial fund for Trey’s sister Kristy who passed away of cancer earlier this year.

So what was it like outside? A raging nitrous scene. It began well before the show and popped up again right after, continuing unabated for at least 45 minutes after the “If I Could” encore. This wasn’t the sort of back alley, slightly down-low nitrous scene we’re used to. It was completely out in the open, with hawkers walking around with 4 balloons in each, right on the corner of W 57th and 7th Ave.

There was no shortage of Phish fans in sport jackets sucking it all up.

Nitrous started to hit hard in New York City last summer, and there’s seemingly been no attempt by the NYPD to stop it. The hippie crack dealers must read JamBase – because they can be found at any show likely to attract a heady crowd. Even ones at Carnegie Hall.

Parke Puterbaugh and I have at least a couple of things in common. We’ve both covered music for some of the same magazines, and we’ve both written books either with or for or at least tolerated by Phish.

The Phish Book, published in 1998 and, ahem, currently out of print, was a collaboration with the band, who kindly submitted to long hours of interviews in order to let the band tell their its story in their own words amid a lot of stunning photographs.

Parke, on the other hand, went the biography route, having previously worked as Phish’s unofficial in-house writer for album-release biographies, press releases, and festival playbills. His new book Phish: The Biography, covers the band’s earliest days through its breakup and subsequent reunion last year. Where I caught the band at what many still consider to be the peak of its career, Parke carried through the trials, tribulations, and unexpected redemption. It’s a terrific tale, almost a love story, about a band, its community, and the forces that draw them together and/or tear them asunder.

We two helping, friendly chroniclers spoke recently about our respective tomes and the ever-evolving nature of all things Phish.

Richard Gehr: You write in Phish: The Biography that Rolling Stone didn’t run the Phish feature that they’d assigned you for nearly two years, which must have been frustrating. Why do you think the mainstream music press resisted reporting on the band for so long, despite their obvious popularity?

Parke Puterbaugh: I got the assignment in 1995, at which point they were ready to do something big on the band. Between assignment and delivery, however, there was a shakeup in the music department and the new guys who came in – Keith Moerer and Jim DeRogatis – their orientation was much more indie-rock. I think Phish were somewhat of a victim of indie-rock snobbery. Even so, they realized they had to run something on them, and every half-year or so Moerer would call up and say, “Hey, I think we’re going to run that Phish feature after all. Can you freshen it up for us?” And I’d be sent off to some big event of theirs, like a New Year’s Eve concert, and totally redo the story and bring it up to date.

It was a blessing in disguise, as it turned out, because I really got to know them and it laid the groundwork for doing the book by giving me the opportunity to write for them. Every so often their management would call me to write an album bio or “Phishbill” or something along those lines. I did that two or three times a year starting in ’96, and basically continued through the breakup and even afterward with some of the solo projects. So I have no complaints about how that Rolling Stone episode turned out, because when the piece ran, it was an enormous story. It may have been one of the last huge rock ‘n’ roll features in the magazine. It all worked out, oddly enough.

Gehr: I always felt that few bands were as indie as Phish were during the nineties. I wrote a piece about the Grateful Dead for the Village Voice in the eighties, and my take was that the Dead were unfashionable for all the wrong reasons, because no band is more indie or do-it-yourself than the Dead had been when they had their own label. And I always felt the same way about Phish even though they were on Elektra. You can tell that their relationship with Elektra was almost completely on their terms – and practically invisible except for Elektra distributing their albums. They did their own tour support, didn’t make videos, and existed in their own cave within the Warner Records empire.

You also write books about wetlands and beaches. How does that overlap with your music writing?

Puterbaugh: I double-majored in English and sociology as an undergraduate, but I’d always been interested in the environment. So I got a Masters degree in environmental science, which was an outgrowth of some travel books I’d been writing about beaches. I was fascinated with the notion of development at the beach, about why it’s a bad idea. I didn’t really understand the science of it, so that propelled me to get my grad-school degree in environmental science with a concentration on coastal-zone management, coastal geology, barrier island formation, that kind of thing. It was wonderful; I really loved studying that stuff. I was starting from scratch and had to take two years of undergraduate science courses just so I could qualify to enter grad school.

So I was writing books on the California and Florida coastlines concurrent with music writing. In fact, I was in grad school when the whole Phish assignment started. I’ll never forget coming back from seeing them at Red Rocks, going to a class and the professor saying, “Parke, I understand you write about rock ‘n’ roll. Have you ever heard about this band called Phish, but it’s not spelled with an ‘F’?” and I said, “Yes, coincidentally I’m writing a story on them at the moment and I just got back from seeing them play. Why do you ask?” And he said, “One of my students is the sister of somebody in the band.” And it turned out to be Kristy Manning, Trey’s sister. So he got us together for lunch and I got to know Kristy independently of this Phish assignment. These strange coincidences happen all the time with Phish.

Gehr: That’s so true. Just like the way fans travel thousands of miles with no money and still end up inside the shows they want to see. That never ceases to amaze me. What was the first show you went to?

Puterbaugh: Red Rocks in June ’95 was my first experience of live Phish. It was summer but cold as heck. It was drizzling and made the most amazing backdrop for Chris’s lights. As much as I enjoyed getting to know Phish through their records, I was totally captured after these two shows.

Gehr: Did you have any adventures writing the book that didn’t make it into the final manuscript? I remember driving up once to talk to the band and coming back into Burlington late at night only to find that my hotel room had been given away – and there was a convention in town so nothing else was available. I ended up spending the night in Burlington’s single no-tell motel, a really creepy place that reminded me of a haunted bunker.

Puterbaugh: There was this one day in Vermont where I was driving all over to talk to people. I went to Paul Languedoc’s house. Chris Kuroda came over and Paul fixed us this wonderful lunch. He’s a good cook, who knew? And we had a heavy, lengthy conversation that went on for most of the afternoon. From there I drove way north of Burlington where this guy named Tom Baggott lives and hung with him. His wife fixed us dinner. We drank a lot of wine and had a great interview. Then I came back into town and talked with someone else in the Phish orbit. By the end of the day I almost had no voice left, because none of the interviews I did about the band was ever just, like, forty-five minutes. They were more like four or five hours, and we never stopped talking about them. The all-time winner in that category was meeting [Phish archivist] Kevin Shapiro for the first time. That was a six-hour interview. And there were lots of others after that.
Which brings up a question I’d like to ask you, Richard. When you wrote The Phish Book, you didn’t have to write about certain areas I had to write about, which is everything that happened from ’97 onwards – the dark side, in a way. Do you think you were fortunate to not have to go there?

Gehr: I don’t know if The Phish Book would’ve been written after ’97. I think the band members became more private or reclusive and more inward-turning in various ways after that. I posted something here about a month ago correlating Phish’s rise and fall and rise to the last three presidential administrations: There was the peaceful and prosperous Clinton years, the dark and destructive Bush era, and then the indeterminate Obama era, and who knows what’s going to happen next? I feel fortunate to have worked with Phish during their nineties golden age, before anything was particularly tarnished. How did you negotiate the latter days? Did anyone ever tell you they’d appreciate it if you backed away from certain topics, such as substance abuse?

Puterbaugh: No, not at all. They never did. I didn’t actually talk a lot about that subject with the band members per se; it would come up incidentally. I guess I talked about it with Trey without even realizing it. It took me a while to catch on to the fact that they were having these kinds of problems. Like you said, they were turning inward when that stuff was happening in their world. I remember a statement Trey made to the effect that, “I thought everybody knew what was going on in our world; I thought the scene was so transparent.” But I don’t think that was necessarily the case.

Gehr: It wasn’t so much the people as the music that seemed to be changing and becoming sloppier and less assured. Their recording process seemed to be getting convoluted and overly angsty. I particularly enjoyed your accounts of their later albums, especially Story of the Ghost, which I still find beguiling, although that could be the point.

Puterbaugh: It’s a real moody one, and it has a weird vibe to it. You can tell something isn’t quite right, and it’s an oddly constructed record. There were other issues at play that went beyond drugs – interpersonal things. For many years they had those marathon rehearsals, practice sessions that they approached like a job, lasting five hours a day, but that started going away.

Gehr: I always assumed they’d stopped rehearsing at a certain point, perhaps around the time in ’97 when they made the rule about no post-show critiquing.

Puterbaugh: A lot of people really loved that year. Brad Sands made the point that that was when the dark side started to creep in.

Gehr: One of the things that always came through the Grateful Dead’s music was a profound acquaintance with mortality, going back at least to the death of Pigpen. And I think that depth of emotion was something hardcore Dead fans didn’t hear as Phish started to replace the Dead on the road. Phish was obviously a smart and interesting band from ’91 or ’92 on, but in a way it seemed all fun and games. When I first heard them in ’94 I though, “Here are four very privileged white boys who’ve experienced relatively few traumas in their lives, and it’s going to be real interesting to see how they deal with it once life kicks them in the ass.” Which it inevitably did, in one way or another.

Puterbaugh: The music was good because their friendship was so strong. It was when they started to pull apart from each other that things began to get tricky.

Gehr: I was a little shocked to read in your bio that Trey and Page didn’t speak to one another for a year after Coventry. That sort of rift certainly couldn’t have happened overnight, or even after a bad weekend.

Puterbaugh: It did get very dramatic. When I originally started writing the book, there was no talk of a reunion. I signed the contract a week or two before Trey got busted. Fortunately, they got back together and I was able to end it on a positive note. As a writer, I think musicians are entitled to a certain amount of privacy. And so I chose to talk about the drug issues in general terms, or as explicitly as they wanted to talk about it, but I didn’t see it as my job to track down dealers or depict grotesque scenes. I wanted to put all that in the context of an entire career and not just have it become an exercise in sensationalism. The larger story, to me, was much more fascinating.

Gehr: Did you catch any shows last year?

Puterbaugh: I went to two of the three Hampton shows in March, to a show in Asheville, and to Festival 8 in Indio, California. How about you?

Gehr: I caught a show at Jones Beach and the Madison Square Garden run. My initial response was that they were really good fun and solid rock shows, but something was missing. And what was missing for me was a sense of recklessness, that anything-can-happen feeling that used to come with every gig. But now I’m revising that opinion because I just downloaded a big file of somebody’s idea of the year’s highlights. And there’s hours of music there as good as anything they’ve ever played. But overall I think 2010 sounds more Apollonian than Dionysian, as it were.

Puterbaugh: Yes, the era of Dionysian productions – pun intended – is over. Trey’s shortly going on tour with the Classic Trey Anastasio Band. Well, I thought a good part of the 2009 tours was classic Phish. It was a statement of regained strength, and at the Hampton shows, it felt like they were throwing down the gauntlet. Maybe you didn’t get the most adventurous jams in the world, but you got solidity, a recovered group dynamic, and you had them giving good, accurate, and detailed readings of their repertoire. I saw it as a demonstration of passion that they wanted to sound so good, that they were all clean and sober and on the same page. And the level of musicianship was just really high. They seemed to be starting to find a fresh approach to jamming as the tour rolled on, too.

Gehr: I agree. The harder I listened to them the more I began to get out of what they were doing. Trey almost always sounds good, but Mike, Fish, and Page all seem to be playing with more gusto and subtlety than ever. But I still wish they’d stretch out more. And play “Harpua,” of course.

Puterbaugh: They were all on their game at Hampton, but Page seemed to be even a step further, putting 110 percent of what he had into it. They all raised the level of each other’s game. It struck me that they’re still able to pose these challenges and rise to them. It was good to see in a band that’s been around for almost thirty years.

Gehr: That was always the transcendent balance they displayed – on the one hand to be able to do really well-arranged material and in the next moment to do stuff that was completely left-field and spontaneous.

Puterbaugh: One of the questions I asked Trey in the book is, “Can you differentiate between musical risk-taking and personal risk- taking?” He had a pretty good answer, I thought. They’re bright guys. I think they can figure their way around corners and still come up with fresh approaches. Musically I think the sky is still the limit for them.

Gehr: Looking back, I’ve been listening to Undermind recently, which I think is the most underappreciated Phish album. Both title and music seem to allude to their creative spontaneity while falling apart at the seams. Plus they had a real producer – Tchad Blake – for the first time in a while.

Puterbaugh: I would put Round Room in that underrated category. It doesn’t get a lot of credit, does it? Yet there was never a studio Phish album with so many long jams on it as that record. That part of it works for me, actually, and in that sense I think it’s underrated.

Gehr: My feelings about it have changed, but only slightly. I thought it was odd to release an album of what were essentially demos after being away for so long and sell it to your fans at full price. That seemed slightly insulting to me at the time.

Puterbaugh: Their take on it was they wanted to document the sound of them in a room together making music for the first time in two years. I thought the short songs, as opposed to the jam songs, could’ve used some work. But I do like the wildness of the longer jams.

Gehr: And now they’re back again for the very second time. Thanks for chatting with us, Parke.

Trey Anastasio. The Disco Biscuits. Umphrey’s McGee. Phil Lesh. Drive-By Truckers. STS9. The Allman Brothers Band. Heck, you could easily add yourself to this list.

I’m talking about artists who’ve recently streamed shows live over the Internet, whether for a fee, free, or through a paid subscription.

Is this a trend ready to take off on an even larger scale?

This is a big question for bands and concert venues alike. As for fans, let’s be honest: Why wouldn’t we want more shows streamed live into our living rooms? (I don’t know about you, but I was flipping out when a kid last year began streaming Phish shows straight from his iPhone – even if the quality wasn’t so hot!)

One person working to stream more music into people’s homes is Nate Parienti, founder and CEO of iClips.net. He launched the site in January 2007 and says demand has grown exponentially.

“Just in terms of the technology and available bandwidth in people’s homes having dramatically increased, that makes a big difference,” he says. “Now the technology is really starting to catch up, so the broadcasts are becoming high-definition, broadcast-quality live events.”

Unlike some other streaming sites – such as USTREAM, Livestream and Stickam – iClips doesn’t allow users to create their own custom channels. Instead, iClips more closely resembles a production company, shooting and editing its own high-quality content at events such as Jam Cruise and the Rothbury Music Festival. One of its more popular streams was a recent Trey Anastasio concert in St. Louis, which attracted roughly 100,000 unique viewers for the free broadcast.

Not all iClips shows are free, however. Some streams must be ordered through a pay-per-view system, whereas others may be broadcast for free as a live event and then command a fee once they’ve been archived.

Production costs are covered by the company up-front, and profits are split with the artists. Encouragingly, iClips has partnered with MySpace, Hulu, and CBS Interactive Music Group, among others.

“We try to cover costs and provide a new revenue stream for artists,” Parienti says. “Fans sometimes gripe about having to pay for content, but you have to pay to see a concert anyway and there’s a lot of costs involved.”

Few cases show the potential power of live streaming more than that of the newly formed band Kung Fu.

The band’s first show was only four months ago, but it has already secured coveted spots at summer festivals – which the band credits entirely to live streaming of their initial shows.

“We rehearsed once and then started a Monday-night thing at a brand new club in New Haven,” says Todd Stoops, keyboardist for Kung Fu and RAQ. “All expectations were that we would get together, play some music, have a few beers, and maybe play for 20 people. But the live stream blew it out of the water.”

Set up by a group of fansthrough USTREAM, Kung Fu’s Monday nights at Stella Blues were transmitted to fans all across the country. At first viewers worried about whether the venue would want the broadcasts to continue, for fear they might keep people home instead of at the club. But the band’s popularity grew as more people stumbled across the shows online, thereby bringing more people to the club each week. Their final show sold out.

“It’s all about the webcast,” Stoops says. “If I had a crystal ball, I’d say Stella Blues will webcast a lot of shows because it’s gained them a clientele. It’s established them as the hip and cool place to view music.”

Obviously there’s still a long way to go before live streaming is the norm. How do rabid fans like yourselves feel? Would you like to see more bands stream live shows? Would you be willing to pay for them? Would you be opposed to advertisements during the shows? Where do you see this trend heading?

(Photo by J. C. Juanis)

Brooklyn’s Pavilion Cinema stunk like a skunk farm during last night’s premiere of Phish 3D. Even the friendly ushers were complaining. Didn’t they realize it was 4/20, our national day of marijuana abuse? (Tell it to the nitrous dealers defiling my local park across the street.) And if you thought you could avoid the annoyance of glow sticks and balloons in a theater setting, think again.

Dudes abounded and abided at this sneak preview in anticipation of the film’s April 30 opening. I was psyched in large part due to my obsession with new performance technologies like simulcasts and such. Phish 3D contains some great performances from Festival 8, which it cherry picks and distills into two hours. The “Tweezer” and “Mike’s” are keepers, as are every frame with Sharon Jones. (During a nifty rehearsal sequence, Trey A. modestly describes “Suzy Greenberg” to her as “a song about a girl.”) The four Exile on Main Street are solid, and the “Suzy” encore is one of the song’s best versions evuh.

The 3D part was kind of meh, however. And talk about squandered opportunities: The trombonist didn’t even poke our eyes out! Umphrey’s McGee lighting director and Jambands.com writer Jeffrey Waful reviews it in more detail, and more or less speaks for me, here.

Phish 3D opens officially on April 30. Find out where it’s playing here.

The chance to make a difference sometimes comes in unexpected packages. Huka Entertainment, a popular concert promoter in Mobile, AL, set out to produce a large-scale concert festival on the beach in nearby Gulf Shores. With the white sands and emerald green water of the region as a primary selling point, they garnered a healthy bankroll from investors and signed on powerhouse acts like John Legend, The Zac Brown Band, The Roots and Phish’s Trey Anastasio to play the three-day event.

The festival was dubbed “The Hangout,” a nod to the laidback lifestyle and mellow hospitality of the gulf coast, as well as a local beachside restaurant. Then, three weeks before the first act would hit the stage, the BP Deepwater Horizon exploded at sea, and oil started oozing toward the shores. Although still miles away from land, the oil spill blotted out the festival’s prime ticket sales period, and instantly changed the very identity of the event.

The Hangout would become “The Concert for the Coast.”

This week, Huka Entertainment announced that all of the proceeds from the festival would support environmental groups. Moreover, volunteers who receive training for beach cleanup will be admitted free (tickets are $160). There will be extra latenight concerts on-site with $5 admission fees, with all the money directed to charities. Multiple organizations will be on hand staging a joint letter writing campaign about off-shore drilling. Environmentalists and musicians will appear side-by-side in panel discussions to talk about the spill. And all the performers will be donating signed memorabilia to support coastal recovery efforts.

The good will present at all music festivals is a great backdrop for marrying the best parts of a giant beach party and a political rally. Already, the Hangout is proving to be a microcosm of the teamwork and ingenuity a crisis can produce.

About 10 days ago, the festival’s lead promoter AJ Niland put out an urgent call to various nonprofits that were associated with the festival. He sounded shell-shocked, but resolute. To paraphrase, he said “This isn’t about making or losing money anymore, this is about celebrating this beautiful region of the country, and protecting it.”

He asked our organization, the voter registration and civic engagement non-profit HeadCount, to come up with ideas on how make the festival live up to its re-stated mission. Similar conversations happened with organizations like Reverb, an environmental nonprofit founded by the guitarist from Guster, a band performing at the festival. Calls went out to multiple conservation groups as well. Within a few days, the skeleton of a plan emerged. Here’s what we came up with:

• HeadCount will host the Sierra Club and the Gulf Coast Alliance at our booth. Together we’ll stage a massive letter-writing drive on issues like offshore drilling and recently-introduced Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act, which would cap oil companies’ liabilities from $75 million to $10 billion in the case of spills like this one. Letters written by fans will be sent to their respective congressional representatives.
• To give the letter-writing drive an extra push, artists performing at the festival will all sign a poster commemorating the event. Anyone who writes a letter at the HeadCount table will be entered into a drawing to win the poster.
• Festival goers will be asked in advance to bring items useful in beach cleanup, to be collected at the HeadCount booth. They include:

Baby blankets

Towels

Heating pads

Large rubbermaid containers

Heating lamps

Rubbermaid troughs

Large backyard portable pools

Free admission will be given to anyone who can present proof that they completed a volunteer training for beach cleanup or protection.

• To raise additional funds for relief efforts, two latenight benefit shows were added to the festival: one featuring Alex B, Gift of Gab (Blackalicious), Big Gigantic as well as Keller Williams’ Electronic Experiment. Tickets are available in advance only, with information at hangoutmusicfest.com.
• A panel discussion featuring Gardner, other artists and representatives of other environmental groups will be staged on the festival grounds at 1 PM on Sunday.
• All of this will be documented on video by CauseCast, creating a lasting imprint of the activity and a showpiece to maintain any momentum it all creates.

There may never again be a music event on this scale that plays out right on the front lines of an environmental and economic tragedy. It promises to be unique, poignant, and cathartic – the sort of combination that inspires great performances and unforgettable experiences.

I hope there is not another need to turn a well-planned festival into an improvised three-day benefit. But it’s also fortunate, in a way, that this event was timed and located where it is. Music is a much-heralded catalyst for change. It also has the power to help keep an endangered coastline just the way it is.

This blog entry originally appeared on The Huffington Post.

“Excuse our appearance while we throw the biggest beach party ever!”

This was the text from a lone sign that hung on one of the fences at the Hangout Music Festival in Gulf Shores, AL this past weekend. They weren’t kidding.

Hangout pulled off a festival on the beach just about as well as anybody could. Built around a local restaurant called “The Hangout” and 2 main stages on either end, the festival spanned about a mile of beautiful Gulf Shores white sandy beach. Except for some serious rain on Sunday the festival was a success.

HeadCount’s mission at a festival is always to engage fans and encourage them to be more active in democracy. At Hangout, we had a more specific mission: to raise awareness around the oil spill disaster, encourage fans to write a letter to their Senators about the issue, and raise money for local nonprofit groups working on oil spill recovery.

Several artists including Zac Brown Band, The Black Crowes, John Legend and Trey Anastasio signed donated Peavey guitars and Hangout posters which will be auctioned with the profits donated to local relief groups. HeadCount also teamed up with CauseCast to interview artists and get their perspective on the oil spill.

“We never should have been drilling that deep,” said Ben Harper when we asked for his thoughts on the situation, right before he plugged his new website fuckBP.net which urges people to boycott BP gas stations. Shortly after, during his set he told the crowd about the site and successfully started a “Fuck BP” chant from about 5,000 fans.

Warren Haynes and Grace Potter both stated while BP is at fault for this spill, it’s up to the people to take responsibility and end our dependence on oil.

Over 250 fans wrote a letter to their Senator at the HeadCount booth. Michael Franti mentioned the oil spill several times during his set on Sunday and at one point encouraged the crowd to visit the HeadCount booth and write a letter about it.

Trey Anastasio and his band closed the festival with a 2.5 hour set including a song he specifically wrote for Hangout Festival titled “Sailboat Man.” Like most festivals Hangout closed each night with a massive fireworks display during the headliner’s closing song and it looked a little like this

Look out for interview videos to come…

Trey Anastasio of Phish will be a featured speaker at the 2011 Drug Court Conference taking place in Washington, D.C. next weekend. Back in 2009, Anastasio spoke at a press conference for the 20th anniversary of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) following his successful completion of a drug court program after he was arrested in NY for drug possession and DUI. Anastasio claims that without drug courts, he wouldn’t have been able to become sober and he’s sharing his story in the hopes of helping others.

Drug courts aim to treat drug abuse as more of a public health issue than a criminal justice issue. It’s pretty simple, they send drug addicted people to treatment programs rather than simply locking them up. The NADCP states that nationwide, for every dollar invested in Drug Court the programs save taxpayers up to $3.36 in criminal justice costs. They also claim that 75% of drug court graduates remain arrest free for up to two years.

In comparison to the cost of the “war on drugs” approach, the drug court program clearly has some appeal. But are drug courts really the way to go?

Surprisingly, some of the largest organizations working to treat drug abuse as a public health issue are saying no. The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) issued a report titled “Drug Courts are Not the Answer: Toward a Health-Centered Approach to Drug Use” earlier this year. DPA alleges that drug courts aren’t actually saving money or reducing incarceration rates because the courts (1) still rely heavily on the criminal justice system and (2) do not distinguish between drug use and abuse. Their report recommends that drug courts be reserved for serious offenses and that criminal penalties for drug possession be removed. The report also cites Portugal’s success with reducing drug addiction and abuse and by decriminalizing the use/possession of all drugs and focusing on harm reduction and treatment.

You could say that Trey’s experience with the drug courts may even prove DPA’s point. He said:

I can tell you that behind bars there was rampant drug use. What’s more, the people I met there spent their time blaming judges and lawyers for their circumstances. Not in drug court. In drug court, full responsibility rest with you and you alone.

The point being – drug courts still send people who may have a drug problem into prison. And if prisons are full of people using drugs (says quite a bit about the drug war when we can’t even keep drugs out of our prisons, doesn’t it?) then what’s the point? On the other hand, for those who embrace the “tough-love” theory of treating drug use and abuse, the courts give offenders a clear choice: stay clean or go to jail.

Trey is not the only rock star supporting the NADCP and drug courts. Check out this video featuring Steven Tyler, Slash, Fred Durst (yes, Limp Bizkit), and Jerry Cantrell.

Trey Anastasio speaking at the NADCP conference on Wednesday (Larry French/ Associated Press)

Trey Anastasio headed to Washington, D.C. this week for a scheduled appearance at the National Association of Drug Court Professionals Conference. The event featured celebrity speakers like Martin Sheen and Matthew Perry but from what we hear, Trey stole the show. He was even presented with the All Rise Ambassador award by the NADCP for his public support of Drug Courts programs, and received a standing ovation from the 3,000 attendees when he delivered the event’s closing remarks.

As the Washington Post recounts:

It was Anastasio, a graduate of drug court in New York state, who really put it out there. The musician, 46, was an addict in 2006 when he was arrested and charged with seven felonies. Given the choice of jail or drug court, he chose the later. “I am here today to tell you that that was the most important decision of my life,” he said.

For 14 months, he lived near the court and kept a rigorous schedule of treatment and community service. “I’m gonna tell you how great it is,” he said with grin. “But it’s important to say that when I was in it, it was very hard and I was not a huge fan.” Today’s Anastasio is clean and goes to AA meetings almost every day. “What started off as a nightmare — it was just crazy that I ended up in this program — over time I’ve been able to see what an incredible blessing it is.”

It’s no wonder the NADCP gave Trey an award. He appears to single-handedly be putting the organization and it’s cause into the cultural psyche.

I spoke with NADCP’s Director of Communications, Christopher Deutsch, about the impact Phish frontman is having.

“Trey is exposing thousands to Drug Courts,” Deutsch said. He added that Trey’s “ability to inspire” through “charisma, talent, and exuberance” translates naturally to effective public advocacy.

This issue – the only one that Trey has publiclly embraced in this manner – boils down to how the state should treat addicts and non-violent offenders like him. And it’s a key time for this debate, as drug courts really sit at the fulcrum of changing attitudes about the drug war. Philosophically equidistant from “Legalize It” and “Lock ‘em up and throw away the key,” drug courts stress rehabilitation over incarceration but with the structure that comes from knowing prison is only one relapse away. If Trey’s experience is any indication, these courts are a path back to life and vitality.

Trey first made an appearance at an NACDP event in 2009, when he told his deeply personal tale to a small gathering. Few in the room probably really knew who he was, but a clip made the rounds on YouTube and has since been viewed over 30,000 times.

This year, Anastasio found himself more front and center. On Tuesday he spoke at a rally on Capiotal Hill in front of hundreds of drug court professionals and a few U.S. Senators. Thankfully, no one shouted “Fluffhead”, but one phan did capture it on video.

In suit and tie, he thanked the attendees and said “I am a huge supporter of Drug Court and huge supporter of everything you do.” He went on to thank his Drug Court case manager Melanie by name, whom he now calls one of his best friends. And then – in his only prepared remarks – he gave a shoutout to Senator Robert Menendez (D) of his home state of New Jersey, thanking him for being one of Drug Court’s most reliable advocates on the Hill.

Trey’s itinerary also included a hearing on Drug Courts with the Senate Judiciary Committee that he attended. Later, he delivered the final keynote address during the NADCP Convention’s closing ceremony.

Simply telling his story with the blunt honestly of a proudly recovering addict, he crystallized the argument for Drug Courts in a way that no position paper or social science study ever could.

Phish fans are certainly familiar with how Trey can silence a room with a few words. Imagine how he blew the minds of 3,000 drug court professionals. The standing ovation they gave is one of countless Trey has received in his life. But you have to figure, this one probably meant a little more to “Red”.

Here’s the video of the rally. Video from his keynote and the standing ‘O’ is expected to be released in a few days.

There’s never a dull moment in the world of liberty and I’m once again here to give you the low down. Read on to find out how the NRA plans to expand Second Amendment rights, why the Feds have been selling assault rifles to Mexican drug cartels, and why Phish front-man Trey Anastasio was given an award for his work on promoting drug courts.

• The National Rifle Association is again lobbying congress to loosen gun laws throughout the country. This time, they’re pushing for the passage of the National Right to Carry Reciprocity Act, which would require all states to allow out-of-state visitors to conceal and carry firearms as long as the visitors are permitted to do so in their home states. Despite criticism from many law enforcement groups who say the law will make police work more dangerous, the bill is already sponsored by a majority of the House of Representatives.
• And speaking of guns – you won’t believe this. The U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has admitted to selling more than 2,000 weapons to Mexican drug cartels, including AK-47 assault rifles and powerful .50 caliber rifles as part of a drug war operation. Their brilliant plan, called “Operation Fast and Furious,” was to install sensors on the guns and use that to lead them to criminals. The only problem was that the sensors quickly ran out of batteries – they bought them at Radio Shack! Well, they did find 122 of the weapons at crime scenes in Mexico – including one where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was murdered. You can’t make this stuff up!
• Phish front-man Trey Anastasio received a standing ovation and an award at the National Association of Drug Courts annual conference in Washington, D.C. last month. A graduate of drug court after being arrested for seven felony drug offenses, Anastasio has now become one of the program’s main champions. He recounted his own tale in a heartfelt acceptance speech that was lauded by the Washington Post, and he made an equally stirring appearance at a rally that was caught on VIDEO. You can read a full account of Trey’s visit to DC on the HeadCount blog.
• While Democratic Senators Robert Menendez (NJ) and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) are considered two of drug court’s biggest proponents, check out these words from Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. He has said, “We need to treat drug addiction as a medical condition and reserve space in our prisons for those who are violent.”Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has said, “We need to treat drug addiction as a medical condition and reserve space in our prisons for those who are violent.”
• Here’s one that tests the limits of free speech and how far public schools should go in controlling the action of students.  Students at a mostly white Minnesota high school organized an annual “Wigger” day – a reference to whites who dress and speak in ways that imitate African-Americans. An African-American student has filed a lawsuit, alleging that the school violated anti-discrimination laws because it “failed to take adequate steps to address the conduct.” What do you think of that?

I’m sad to say that this will be my last update as your Personal Liberties issue editor! I’m moving on to lead HeadCount’s San Francisco team and will be replaced by Lizzy Kinnard who will keep you up to date on the latest liberty issues.

Trey Anastasio, Bob Weir, The Roots, Warren Haynes, Grace Potter and Bobby Keys all on the same stage. No, this was not a fantasy. It was the most recent HeadCount benefit concert, at the newly re-opened Capitol Theatre.

The evening was a celebration of democracy, the Theatre, and HeadCount board member Pete Shapiro’s 40th birthday (Shapiro is the force behind the Theatre’s reopening).

Weir had not played the Capitol Theatre in 40 years, following a legendary run of Grateful Dead shows there. Anastasio had not been there in 20. For many, it was their first time at the hallowed hall.

For many Phish fans in attendance, the highlight was Anastasio’s unique performance of Phish classics “First Tube” and “Bathtub Gin” while backed by The Roots and the pounding percussion of Questlove.

The setlist featured classic after classic.

Here, courtesy of a review from Hidden Track, is the setlist:

Set 1 (Bob Weir, solo acoustic): The Music Never Stopped -> Me & My Uncle -> Friend of the Devil, Loose Lucy, Lost Sailor -> Saint of Circumstance, Peggy-O, Easy to Slip -> Dear Prudence, Bird Song*, Jack Straw**, Jailhouse Rock*

Warren Haynes and Grace Potter: Wild Horses, Gold Dust Woman

Set 2 (The Roots): Paul Revere, Proceed, The Fire, Quills, Swept Away, Next Movement, Dynamite, Mellow My Man, Break You Off, You Got Me, Get Busy, Thought @ Work, How I Got Over

Encore (All Star Jam): First Tube^, Bathtub Gin^, Pigtail&, Dancing in the Street@, Thrill is Gone@, Whipping Post@

*w/ Warren Haynes, Grace Potter, and Bobby Keys ** w/ Warren Haynes and Grace Potter ^ The Roots with Trey Anastasio & The Roots, Trey Anastasio, and Grace Potter @ The Roots, Trey Anastasio, Grace Potter, Bob Weir, Warren Haynes, and Bobby Keys

If you missed this historic event, there’ll be another series of HeadCount benefits coming soon… The Magic Hat Participation Tour. Tickets and more information are available here.

When the promoters of Lockn’ asked HeadCount to organize the entire non-profit area at the festival, we were pretty excited to host fellow NPOs and test out some new ideas. But we had no idea how much fun it would be. We called it “Participation Row,” and brought in a sponsor, Qello, to help pull it off.

By the time it was all done, we helped generate 5,752 separate actions and generated $49,800 to be split among the 16 non-profits in attendance. How? Well, it helped that Bob Weir, Trey Anastasio, Widespread Panic and almost every performer at the festival signed some guitars. We raffled one off for free – attendees just had take action at four non-profits to enter the drawing. Anyone who entered the drawing also got a free 30-day subscription to Qello. Then to raise some dough, we auctioned a couple of guitars and signed posters to the highest bidders. Each non-profit will get an equal cut.

The other way we pulled it off is with awesome volunteers. Here is the account of Lockn’ written by two of our amazing team members.

Our adventure began with the surreal experience of arriving 3 days early for the first annual Lockn’ Music Festival on Oak Ridge Farm in Arrington, VA. We watched the festival being built from the ground up, against a backdrop of breathtaking mountain views. Exploring the farm, watching the sunset behind the stages, and setting up the Qello Lounge and HeadCount booth eased us into festival life. But Thursday came quickly, and cars began lining up, signaling the start of Lockn’.

We were doing more than just our usual HeadCount work (registering voters, #SoundingOff). This time, we were running Participation Row, a collective of national and local non-profit organizations. With the largest HeadCount team to ever work a festival, we got down to business registering, pledging and driving participation in the non-profits’ work. Qello, our Participation Row sponsor, provided us not only with some awesome tunes for the weekend, but also cool new friends. Festival-goers loved learning about the different non-profits and being rewarded with a chance to win a beautiful guitar signed by just about everyone playing the festival – Bob Weir, Trey Anastasio, Zac Brown, Widespread Panic, Grace Potter, Jimmy Cliff, to name just a few.

We canvassed hard throughout the festival grounds all weekend, making sure that everyone had the opportunity to register to vote. I took the opportunity to ask every Virginian I could why “Virginia is for Lovers” and got some very interesting answers. The best answer I received? Virginia is so spectacular that it encompasses mountain lovers, beach lovers, forest lovers — the list goes on. The same could be said about Lockn’, which, like its host state, offered a thousand things to love.

The short list? In no particular order: The food vendors at Lockn’ were a pleasant change from the usual festival fare of quesadillas and fried dough. Here, those staples were exchanged for shark tacos and Australian pies. Our personal favorite, gypsy juice — tea-infused lemonades — was key to surviving the hot Virginia days.

Next on the list would have to come the combination of golf cart rides, Team Leader JR Wotring’s woopie cushion costume, and ridiculously fun HeadCount team shenanigans, making up their own category of things to love.

But, above all, we lived for the music and the good work we were doing. When the sun went down, we were treated to amazing collaborative (“interlocking”) sets from Grace Potter and Warren Haynes, Widespread Panic and John Fogerty, and Trey Anastasio and Furthur. Sets for the history books.

Our silent auction, with proceeds to be divided among the non-profits in Participation Row, offered up a gorgeous Epiphone guitar, signed by most of the Lockn’ artists, as well as a signed poster. The turnout for the auction was incredible, leading to a nail-biting popcorn bid auction to determine a winner. Festival-goers were so fired up, at the end of the day, the auction had raised almost $50,000 for all of the non-profits who poured their hard work into Lockn’. On top of that, festival-goers took 5,752 actions at Participation Row booths, 183 voters were registered, more than 450 pledged to vote. Not to mention the 1,500 lbs. of food collected and $10,000 donated to Conscious Alliance and the Nelson County Pantry. All in all, a beautiful weekend, where HeadCount, Qello, and Lockn’ made a real difference in the world — and once-in-a-lifetime musical history. That’s what I’d call true harmony.

For a little while now, HeadCount has been sitting on the MOTHERLOAD of signed posters and items from various festivals. So this year, we decided to hold a little fundraiser by auctioning them off for the holidays.

Check it out here:  http://bit.ly/1fW3GtJ

Then we asked some of our friends if they’d donate additional items – and boy did they come through! Phish, Pearl Jam, Jam Cruise and My Morning Jacket sent us signed posters.

We got a Denver Nuggets jersey signed by Dave Matthews Band. We also have a conga signed by Bob Weir and percussionist Jay Lane, who used the instrument at a private 2008 performance that was featured in Rolling Stone. Other items include a guitar signed by the The Black Keys, a limited-edition Jim Pollock print, a Grain Audio speaker signed by The Black Crowes, a CD signed by Wilco, and multiple items autographed by Warren Haynes.

All the items can be viewed at: http://bit.ly/1fW3GtJ

The best item of all is probably a poster from the inaugural Lockn’ festival, signed by just about everyone who performed – Widespread Panic, Grace Potter, Zac Brown, Trey Anastasio, Keller Williams, Jimmy Cliff, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, and of course our good friends Bob Weir and Warren Haynes. It’s a true collector’s item if there ever was one.

The funds from this holiday auction will support HeadCount’s ongoing efforts to register voters and promote participation in democracy.

In 2012, we registered more voters than any organization in the U.S. with a budget of less than $1 million. This year, we ran the “Participation Row” non-profit village at Lockn’, and launched the SoundOff technology for tweeting at Congress.

We thank everyone for their support, and hope you find a perfect holiday gift in this auction.

For the first few years, HeadCount was run entirely by volunteers, spread throughout the country. No office. No one with experience. Just a ragtag group with a vision for what was possible.

That worked pretty well, all considering. But it was clear that to build HeadCount to last would require at least some full-time staff, and a full-time staff required money.

“We knew that to pull of what we wanted to pull off, we had to raise anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million dollars,” recalls Executive Director/co-founder Andy Bernstein. “And to me, a middle class kid who had never done non-profit fundraising, it felt like staring up the face of a mountain. It was a very intimidating thing to take on. But one by one, things started falling into place. That all began in 2007.”

HeadCount’s first big move was to start working on a project that would raise awareness about the organization and its goals. The group headed down to Florida for the (now defunct) Langerado Music Festival, where they interviewed some of the biggest names on the scene for a documentary that they hoped would generate excitement about HeadCount and the 2008 election within the music community.

“We had been approached by these guys from a non-profit called Concerts4Charity, and they wanted to make this documentary,” remembers Bernstein. “It was really exciting.”

Artists like Trey Anastasio, Bob Weir, Al Schnier, Michael Franti, Bela Fleck, O.A.R., STS9, Luther Dickinson and Galactic contributed their time and their thoughts to the film, as did various other industry professionals. The Rex Foundation gave HeadCount a $5,000 grant which covered at least some of the production costs.

Bigger things were to come.

“I went and had lunch with Bob Weir earlier that year, which was pretty exciting in and of itself,” says Bernstein. “I asked him if he’d play a show for us and he agreed. He’s that kind of guy. Then a few weeks later, his old manager Cameron Sears called me and laid it out. It would be right before Bonnaroo, in New York City. It was real. It was on.

Bernstein enlisted his old friends Dan Berkowitz (who would later go on to found CID Entertainment) and Jacey Anderson to help put the show together.

Finally, on June 14, hundreds of fans packed into the Canal Room in New York City’s TriBeca neighborhood for an exciting night of top-notch music. Warren Haynes even joined Weir & RatDog for covers of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man.” More importantly, the benefit raised enough money for HeadCount to finally hire the full-time staff it needed.

“It was so amazing to see the passion of everyone involved in the show,” says Berkowitz. “The signed poster is still hanging in my office as a testament to how  important this night was for the attendees, and in my career and life. Every time I go by the corner of Canal and W. Broadway, I smile.”

HeadCount rolled into Bonnaroo a couple of days later with a hefty supply of funds and an unbridled sense of optimism. A few months after that, the organization hired its first full-time staff — Executive Director Virginia McEnerney and Director of Operations Jacey Anderson.

“I can’t understate the impact of that show, ,” says Bernstein. “We had these big dreams and we needed a head start, and that show took us from having essentially nothing in the back to like over $70,000. It really changed everything.”

Bob Weir photo taken by Alison Murphy

HeadCount is a non-partisan organization that works with musicians to promote participation in democracy and social consciousness. Visit HeadCount.org to learn more, or volunteer to register voters at concerts.

Get ready. On Election Day, more than 300 entertainers will go on social media and post photos of themselves urging their fans to “#GoVote.”

Check out the album here.

HeadCount organized this because – let’s face it – the candidates aren’t very inspiring this year. Midterm elections will have a huge impact on policy and our everyday lives, and they’re predicting record-low turnout. So we’re doing our part and calling on every American to do their part. And we enlisted some famous friends to get the message out there.

We’ve got some amazing TV personalities in the campaign – Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Conan O’Brien and Andy Richter. There are more funny people – Sarah Silverman, Lewis Black, “Weird Al Yankovic,” George Lopez, TJ Sweeney and Margaret Cho. And of course, musicians. Lots of them. Our old friends like Dave Matthews, Trey Anastasio, Jack Johnson, Dave Schools of Widespread Panic, Jeff Tweedy (along side his son Spencer and Nick Offerman), Jason Mraz, and Warren Haynes. Every member of the Grateful Dead including our board member Bob Weir. Our founder and co-chair Marc Brownstein of the Disco Biscuits, and board member John McCrea of CAKE.

There are some iconic names like Chaka Khan, Gregg Allman, Ben & Jerry, Perez Hilton, Russell Simmons, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Bonnie Raitt, Mavis Staples and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Some huge arena rock stars like Linkin Park and Fergie. There’s John Legend, and Moby, and T.I., Chance the Rapper, Esperanza Spalding  and Ms. Lauryn Hill, Norah Jones and Chanel West Coast.

Crazy list, huh?

Each post on Twitter and Facebook will include a link to www.headcount.org/govote where voters can find the most comprehensive election information hub on the internet – including a polling place finder, ID requirements, and what’s on each ballot.

The campaign also includes many of the artists who are with us night in and night out across America, like STS9, Neko Case, The Head and the Heart, Galactic, Rise Against, Big Gigantic, moe., Michael Kang from String Cheese Incident, Dispatch, O.A.R., Tedeschi Trucks, Les Claypool, Umphrey’s McGee, Michael Franti, Andrew Bird, The Antlers, Drive-By-Truckers, Revivalists, The Indigo Girls, Lotus, Cornmeal, The Antlers, The Wood Brothers, Local Natives, Dr. Dog, Lettuce, Trampled by Turtles, Beats Antique, Portugal. The Man, Bassnectar, Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeroes, G. Love,  and Greensky Bluegrass (all bands we worked with this year to register voters at their concerts).

The campaign is part of a broader #GoVote effort that includes multiple organizations and hundreds of works by visual artists, featured on the partner website www.govote.org. HeadCount curated art from several top rock poster artists for the musicians and entertainers to pose with.

Big thanks on that front to artists Jim Pollock, Luke Wessman, Tripp Shealy, Gwen AP, David Welker, AJ Masthay, Jamie Huntsman, Anthem Branding, Kyle Griffis and Hannah Snider, whose work appears in the musicians’ hands.

Props as well to The Culture Group (especially Yosi Sergant and Erin Potts), which came up with the whole idea for the #GoVote art series, long before HeadCount got involved. Definitely check out GoVote.org and some of the awesome artwork.

And a huge thanks to Witstream, Cause-Effect Agency, Niche, Bart Coleman,  Christein Aromando, Michael Skolnik, iCitizen, everyone at FitzGibbon Media, as well as all the festival promoters who allowed us to shoot photos backstage, photographers (especially Dave Vann, Dino Perucci and Jay Blakesberg). More big props to our board of directors including Don Strasburg, Peter Shapiro, Jonathan Levine and Patrick Jordan, as well as HeadCounters Jane Henderson, Macy Nix, Abby Brazina, Chris Reed, Jaime Moreland,  and Jarid Blumenthal, and all our volunteers, interns and staff.

The participants in this campaign have over 350 million social media followers in total. If we can just get a few more of them out to vote, we really can make a difference – and maybe even be THE difference in some close elections.

The post Announcing the #GoVote Photo Campaign appeared first on HeadCount.