By Paul Robicheau

The weekend stand in Boston offered crowd-pleasers, deep cuts, and one of Phish’s most startling bust-outs in decades.

Trey Anastasio of Phish at Fenway Park. Photo: Paul Robicheau

“Just got back from Kill Devil Falls,” Trey Anastasio sang during the early innings of Phish’s Friday concert at Fenway Park, but fans knew better. Phish came to Boston after five nights at Madison Square Garden that brought the jam kings’ stops at that New York mecca to a total of 96 (look out, Billy Joel), celebrating shows 92 through 96 with nightly sets the band might have performed from 1992 to 1996.

That meant MSG only got material from Phish’s ’90s heyday, including rarities from Holy Grail story song “Harpua” to covers of “Highway to Hell” and “Purple Rain,” plus some unexpected tunes (“Bouncing Around the Room!”) recieving their ever longer versions. And, of course, there were no repeats over those five nights.

That left big questions for Phish’s return to Fenway for the first time since 2019. Would the two-night weekend stand yield more standard shows – or even lean away from the band’s vaulted early repertoire to focus on recent decades?

For Friday at least, both scenarios emerged. Shortly after Anastasio lashed into the heavy guitar riff of a leadoff “Carini,” Phish flowed into the kind of crowd-pleasers that typify the band’s first shows for multi-night stands. That opener lapsed into a surprisingly relaxed jam, as did follow-up “Everything’s Right,” though that 2017 positivity tune (“Just hold tight!”) sparked a subtle call-and-response in its instrumental weave. Then came a predictable first-set pairing of cow-funk chugger “Back on the Train,” which got much of the Fenway crowd happily dancing (and cheering when Page McConnell pushed the pace on piano) and a surging “Free,” the night’s first repeat from MSG and a chance for the Sudbury-bred Mike Gordon to dig deep on bass.

“Kill Devil Falls” dropped another good-time groove, adding a joyful, noodling jam that found drummer Jon Fishman dancing around his toms over his hi-hat pulse. The band and crowd were both having fun, even if the setlist lacked that extra level of imagination.

“Just standing here is incredible — I mean, Fenway, please,” Anastasio paused to tell the crowd, musing in wonder at the feat of hitting a baseball over the wall. Then Phish made a home-run call of its own, slipping into the reggae lilt of “Harry Hood” (a slinky old favorite more commonly served late in shows) to cap the first set.

Strobes cut the stage to black as Gordon sang ‘Thank you, Mr. Miner,’ a note lifted from junk mail addressed to a former resident of the Vermont house where the band lived in its college days, overlooking a dairy plant where the lights went out on mascot Harry Hood’s face. The song’s blissful jam (nicely timed to the sunset sky beyond the walls of Fenway) led to serpentine trills by Anastasio as the song reached its climax with the crowd singing along “You can feel good about Hood!”

Mike Gordon of Phish at Fenway Park. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Such a musical (and in this odd case, quintessentially New England) moment still resonates at Phish shows, particularly since the band members are arguably playing as well as ever in recent years, given their growth as musicians.

Nostalgic war-horse numbers were primarily reserved for Saturday, when Phish broke its chest of early ’90s favorites back open for a more slippery, high-energy showcase that tilted into prog-rock roots. Opener “My Friend, My Friend” segued into the signature guitar lick of “Tweezer,” a standard which wound in and out of songs that included “Chalkdust Torture” (both the band and old fans ironically given the chance to chime its line “Can’t I live while I’m young?”) and “Stash” before the first set deposited itself in the expanding groove of “Sand.”

Page McConnell of Phish at Fenway Park. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Yet that “Tweezerfest” wasn’t enough. Saturday’s second set kicked off with a reinvigorated “Mike’s Song,” where Anastasio and Gordon reprised their mini-trampolines bounce that they brought back for their “1992” night at MSG. And from there, the group balanced a few other chestnuts (“Weekapaug Groove,” the set-closing bop “Possum”) with newer jam vehicles such as “Ruby Waves” (which wound into a trance-like loop of guitar effects), “No Men in No Man’s Land,” “Light,” and “Ghost,” spanning their own share of sublime explorations.

However, as the saying goes about Phish’s ilk, it’s not necessarily what they play, but how they play it – and that could apply as well to much of Friday’s show. Old Phish fans aren’t as likely to get excited by “What’s Going Through Your Mind” as “Mike’s Song” to open the second set. But the band took that newer tune for a 20-minute ride, Anastasio hopping back on a percussion rack (resurrected at the MSG 1995-1996 shows) for more cowbell. Lighting designer Chris Kurodo lent mind-popping visuals, with movable, deconstructing rigs that floated and folded like broken DNA strands over the stage. Then came Friday’s most monstrous jam in “Fuego.” Once that 2013 track got past its strange lyrics (“Read a book about Vlad the Impaler”), “Whoaah!” chorus, and too-short breakbeat section with zippy guitar, the musicians slowly and steadily built tension with gliding momentum.

Then came a surprise greater than anything in the MSG run – to the few who even realized it. “Fuego” dissolved into the chiming guitar of “Melt the Guns,” a 1982 anti-gun song by the arty British post-punk band XTC that Phish played a few times in the late ’80s. Not only was this the biggest bust-out in Phish history, spanning more than 2,000 shows since the group last performed it in 1987, but the group took it into an experimental jam. Gordon’s creeping bass line and Fishman’s fading snare hits mimicked XTC’s recording while McConnell lent synthesizer work that took a droning ambient direction before Anastasio returned to the song’s guitar part. The cover also marked one of the rare times since Phish played a Voters for Choice benefit in 1995 that the group dipped into political commentary onstage.

Jon Fishman of Phish at Fenway Park. Photo: Paul Robicheau

“A Wave of Hope” returned to regular programming (if with more ping-ponging improv that got a bit lost) along with TV on the Radio’s “Golden Age,” where Anastasio sang about “The age of miracles.” That cover wasn’t given one of its most compelling versions here, but it lent a sweet segue to Friday’s final Phish classic, “Run Like an Antelope,” where spotlight rings panned the Fenway stands and Anastasio urged fans to “Set the gearshift for the high gear of your soul. You’ve got to run like an antelope, out of control!”

The transition to an encore of the guitarist’s sensitive, thoughtful “A Life Beyond the Dream” (where he implored “Don’t give up hope”) and the goofy “Say It To Me S.A.N.T.O.S” didn’t work as well. “This is what space smells like,” he sang in that last song from one of Phish’s Halloween alter-ego prank bands. “You will always remember where you were.” At least that last point made sense to fans in attendance.

Paul Robicheau served more than 20 years as contributing editor for music at the Improper Bostonian, in addition to writing and photography for The Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He was also the founding arts editor of Boston Metro.