Events

[ROCK] At six years old, Mike Gordon kept a filing cabinet. Suffering from an insatiable urge to organize, he tucked in it hundreds of self-typed documents. He couldn’t help it. This compulsion followed him to adulthood even after his band, Phish, had grown into one of America’s highest-grossing touring acts. Today, things are different—at least a little.

Gordon turned 50 last week. He has a six-year-old of his own now, a daughter, Tessa. But in many ways, he’s still the kid with the filing cabinet. “Occasionally I can get caught up in the minutia of planning rather than doing,” he tells me while en route to Tessa’s ballet recital in rural Vermont. “They used to say it’s because I’m a Gemini and have too many interests, but I don’t know. Each decade I feel like I get better at cutting to the chase. You get to a certain age and you’re like, ‘What really counts?’”

The longer we talk, the more evident it becomes: Gordon’s complex mind is a filing cabinet of its own. During our conversation he touches on, among other things: transcendental meditation, Phish—a band in which he’s played bass for more than three decades—the Bhagavad Gita, his solo career, lucid dreams, Oprah, psychedelic drugs, and the songwriting process. His speech pivots on “althoughs” and “then agains”—always considerate of opposing viewpoints. Thoughts cut off mid-sentence, new ones pick up in stride—”If I play a song too many times…I might’ve loved it before…everything is in flux. I guess that’s what Buddhists would tell you: Everything is impermanent.” His ideas wind together like his own knotty bass-lines. Then, without a hint of irony, Gordon pauses to consider the power of simplification. “You carve away your artistry like a sculpture,” he says. “If it seemed like there needed to be this many things in a song—this many chords, this many notes, this many grooves—maybe when you’re older you realize, ‘No, it doesn’t have to be all that.’ Recently I’ve carved away some of the notes—it wasn’t boring, it was just better. If you can love the fewer notes—or fewer anything—there could be a big payoff.” Say, for instance, in life.

Gordon credits his twice-daily transcendental meditation with helping him simplify things. “That’s been huge. It allowed me to take away time-consuming things, like organizing emails into files. I feel better than ever now—I’m doing what I want to be doing.”

This, no doubt, also applies to Gordon’s career. He seems to have found a healthy balance between Phish—the world’s preeminent jam-band—and his solo group, billed simply as “Mike Gordon,” which is slated to appear at Town Ballroom on Tuesday, June 16.

In a sense, he’s simplified his outlook. ”I approach it logistically, and I approach it emotionally,” he says. “My feeling right now is that I need both bands for very different reasons. There’s a lot of good about Phish. The biggest one is musical inspiration. When I get together with guys I’ve been playing with for 32 years, a lot of stuff happens naturally—ways of not stagnating, linking up telepathically, all that—including growth.” And while Gordon admits Phish’s success helps “fund his other stuff,” the relationships and music are “as good as ever—or better.”

Different, to be sure. Phish tours modestly these days. All four band members are fathers now. They cleaned up a drug-addled, vampiric backstage scene. To the surprise of many, Gordon has never tried psychedelic drugs. “A mind-altering experience can happen without them, I’ve been there,” he says. “In my dream-world and musical peak experiences, I’m nothing at all like my normal being. I’m more likely self-actualized and I’m more myself than ever.”

In fact, one of Gordon’s most profound musical experiences came recently at a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance in Massachusetts. He and Tessa were sitting front row as the pianist played Rachmanioff for 45 minutes without sheet music. “It was,” Gordon recalls, “ferocious and breathtaking and scary.” He suggested they leave at set-break. Tessa put her foot down. “No,” she said. “We’re staying right here.” Gordon laughs. “Being in the moment is what makes it so real.”