Photo TR: Coventry: The Last Phish Show August 15th 2004

[PhishyBrewer]

The Last Phish Show August 14th & 15th, 2004 in Coventry Vermont

 

So as most of you know, I’m a huge Phish fan. So it probably wouldn’t surprise you that I would go to great lengths to see them perform. On August 14th, my will was tested.

 

The remnants of Hurricane Charlie dumped water all over the state of Vermont the week of the last Phish. The conditions were so bad, that cars were no longer being let into the site do to safety reasons. Every farmer that lived within 100 miles of the show and owned a tractor was there to tow cars out of the mud. And even though cars where not aloud on to the site, that didn’t stop the over 60,000 die hard fans making it into show.

 

I was sitting in the traffic about 15 miles from the site when the news came over the radio. When I first heard that they were not letting people in, I thought the show was completely canceled. That was not the case. The show would go on. And I had to be there. So I and everyone else that was sitting in traffic, packed up our stuff, locked up the cars, and started hiking. And just left the cars sitting there on the highway. I could tell you I hiked 15 miles to the show, but I won’t. About a half a mile into the hike, a nice local picked me up and dropped me off at the front gates. Only locals were aloud access to certain roads. Everyone else was turned away.

 

So I made it to the last Phish show. Not worrying about my rental car at all. It was all about the music and my family. My family of Phriends!

 

 

See all the pictures on my website http://www.phishybrewer.com

The Last Glow Stick War

Over 60,000 Fans Showed Up

I don't have these shoes anymore.

[PhishyBrewer]

Available at http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050814/NEWS01/508140310/1009&theme=

 

Phish Stories: Memories of mud and kindnesses linger a year later

 

Published: Sunday, August 14, 2005

 

By Terri Hallenbeck

Free Press Staff Writer

 

COVENTRY -- Donald Poutre Jr. remembers the couple who sneaked into the Phish concert without tickets. They made it, he said, but not without getting stuck in a swamp for six hours, mud up to their necks.

 

Poutre and his father, Donald Sr., have plenty of Phish stories to tell. From their perch along Vermont 14 outside Coventry, they learned that Phish fans will eat hot dogs any time of the day or night; will travel to a concert with two Dobermans, no food and no money; will leave behind brand-new boots because they don't need them anymore.

 

Poutre Sr. laughs and shakes his head at the improbable scene he watched unfold in front of his home.

 

"It's going to be a long time coming before we see anything like that again," said Poutre Sr., whose focus has long since shifted back from selling roadside frankfurters to his wooden fencing business.

 

One year ago, some 80,000 people trekked to this Northeast Kingdom farm town for the last performances of the Vermont-grown jam band Phish. Last summer's torrent of rain mixed with massive numbers of people and cars to turn the fields along Airport Road into mud pits. Tow trucks pulled cars out of the mud, only to have them become stuck 15 feet away. Vermont State Police decided against canceling the show -- thousands of fans and the band itself were already in place. Instead, they cut off the flow of cars going into the grounds that Saturday morning.

 

When he made that decision, Col. Thomas Powlovich, director of the state police, never expected what happened next. Fans who were still waiting in stalled traffic on their way to Coventry ignored Phish bassist Mike Gordon's instructions over the radio to turn around and go home. Instead, they parked their cars -- in nearby driveways and along Interstate 91 -- and hiked in like a stream of refugees.

 

Parking along the interstate never would have been part of planning a large event, Powlovich said, but the circumstances called for creativity. "You could probably hold a hundred concerts and not face the same circumstances," he said.

 

Without those unlikely events, the Phish concert might never have touched many local residents quite the way it did. Phish fans went from strangers many local residents watched warily to people who were welcomed in to use the bathroom.

 

The 2004 Phish concert left an indelible mark on Coventry. Some of the marks are still visible -- upside-down trees sticking out of a farm field, cases of bottled water and deeply discounted concert shirts for sale at the local diner. Mostly, though, what happened during the summer of 2004 lingers as a highly unusual event in the photo albums and memories of people who lived it.

 

When Coventry records the year 2004 of its history, "I'm sure the Phish concert is going to take up a few pages," Selectboard Chairman Mike Marcotte said.

'People were so nice'

 

The Poutre family, who normally run Yesteryear Fencing, sold food and sundries to passing Phish fans that weekend: $2 hot dogs with organic relish, plastic tarps, homemade whoopie pies. They took turns keeping coffee pots going. They met a stream of interesting characters.

 

There was the couple who trekked back from the concert site, covered in mud, to retrieve their car. If they'd asked to use his shower, Poutre Sr. would have let them, he said. Instead, they poured jugs of water over themselves, got in their car and split, leaving behind clothes and a virtually new pair of boots. He held them up proudly, "I wear them every day."

 

As the crowd thinned out after the last concert, Poutre Sr. was giving food away. A man stopped and gave him $20 as thanks. Not much later, along came a threesome -- lost, hungry and out of money, with two equally hungry Dobermans. They fed the dogs whoopie pies. As they left without enough gas to make it home, Poutre Sr. gave them the $20.

 

"We didn't make a ton of money," Donald Sr. said, "but we had a super good time."

 

Farther down Vermont 14 in Irasburg, Wendy Burkewitz watched from her farmhouse as the line of cars headed to Coventry barely moved. She admits she was leery of the people in those cars at first.

 

"We had heard they were going to be wild," she said. "Then they started getting out, talking to the neighbors on the road, and I said, 'I guess they're OK.'"

 

It wasn't long before the people in those cars were camping on Burkewitz's and her neighbors' lawns.

 

"It was kinda fun," Burkewitz said. "All the people were so nice."

 

Up and down the roads leading into Coventry, impromptu campgrounds arose. Residents made a few bucks for the camping and for ferrying fans toward Airport Road. It was just the kind of infusion of cash local residents needed, Burkewitz said.

 

If only Korena Poirier's campground had been open. Tree Corners Family Campground sits at the corner of Vermont 14 and 58, at the spot where Phish fans were being turned back by police. Poirier's business was still in the making then, so the empty land quickly became a resting ground for scores of Phish fans.

 

"They parked all over the roads and they started walking," she recalled. "There was a guy going by with a wagon giving rides."

 

"We would have been full that weekend," she said, adding wistfully: "We've never been full."

Some lasting legacies

 

Dan Gauvin's airport was a tad full that weekend, too. The normally quiet Newport State Airport was closed to air traffic for the Phish concert, transformed into a festival ground. When the fields turned to deep mud, the asphalt runways became parking lots for RVs.

 

Gauvin, who ran a beer store on the grounds during the Phish weekend, collected 1,100 digital photos chronicling the event -- before, during and after, from the ground and the air. He's made a few CDs for people to share the memories.

 

More than memories remain at the airport. Shoes that were sucked off feet by last year's mud are still being picked out of the fields surrounding the airport, where corn grows now. "We couldn't believe what was out there," Gauvin said, shaking his head as he recalled a full-sized refrigerator, tents, chairs.

 

The large wooden wagon that was used for performances on the festival grounds remains, too, sitting near the entrance to the airport. The wagon was supposed to be pulled around the grounds for a sort of traveling road show, but the mud kept it pretty much firmly planted. These days, the wagon serves as a mecca for visiting Phish fans. People take wedding pictures there, Gauvin said.

 

The concert's most lasting legacy to the Newport State Airport hasn't been built yet. Proceeds from the concert will pay for a fence around the airport grounds, Gauvin said. It's designed to keep out all-terrain vehicles and animals that occasionally amble onto the runway.

 

Across the road from the airport at the Maxwell Family Farm, the mud has firmed up. Grass grows where fans danced and drank, crisscrossed by gravel roads built for the concert. The upside-down trees that Phish promoters stuck in the ground remain -- oddly alone.

 

People come by occasionally to look at the trees -- recent visitors marched right through freshly spread manure to take a look, Brad Maxwell said, chuckling. "They were oblivious," he said.

 

The Maxwells have collected a relatively small pile of flip-flops, shoes and other items from the fields where the actual concert took place. The number of spent glow sticks they found was remarkable, Maxwell said.

 

A drier summer of 2005 means the fields would have been better able to withstand concert traffic than they were last year, Maxwell said. This year, the heat is affecting the farm -- the herd isn't producing as much as last year, when late-night jam-band riffs had no impact on milk production.

 

Maxwell, who's also a member of the three-person Coventry Selectboard, said the Phish concert is still a topic wherever he goes. In town, he acknowledges not everybody was happy to host the Phish concert, but he notes the subject didn't even come up at town meeting in March.

 

"I think everybody really feels Phish -- that was a one-time deal," he said. "I'm glad it happened one time."

Taking control

 

 

If Coventry residents were unhappy about the Phish concert, they didn't hold it against Marcotte, the Selectboard chairman. In November, he was elected to the Vermont House. Residents expressed much gloom and doom as the concert approached, he said, but that dissipated.

 

"It was a good experience overall, except for the rain," Marcotte said.

 

Afterward, there was no push among residents for Coventry to require permits, Marcotte said, but the Phish experience might have put the seed in some people's minds. The Selectboard next month will consider forming a committee to see whether Coventry should have a mass-gathering ordinance to give more control over large events, Marcotte said.

 

The concern is not so much an event like Phish's finale -- which, because it drew more than 2,000 people, required a state permit but nothing from the town -- but smaller events such as this weekend's Reggae Roots Festival, being held on Mike Rogers' farm just over the hill from Maxwell's.

 

Rogers said there's nothing to worry about. About 1,200 Phish fans stayed at his farm last year with no problems.

 

Whatever comes of the reggae festival or other events, residents expect they'll never see anything like last year's Phish show.

 

"I don't think we'll ever see so many people again in our lives, said Lori Royea, a clerk at Royer's Service Station on U.S. 5 just outside Coventry, where the "Welcome Phish fans" sign still hangs.

 

That's OK with Royea. She enjoyed meeting people from all over the world as they bought beer, gas and other goods that weekend, but said, "It was tiring. I don't wish it on anybody."

 

And no, the Phish sign is not for sale, although people have asked.

 

Contact Terri Hallenbeck at 229-9141 or thallenb@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

[PhishyBrewer]

Full of pictures and stories! 8)

 

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