Gourmet meals at gas stations, epic Mexican food, and the deli tray at Madison Square Garden, in this Mini- Cast, Fishman and Lamont talk about road trip food.
Kyle:
I’m Kyle Lamont, host of Concert Cast, a podcast about road tripping to America's best music venues, and one of the hardest things about producing each episode is the editing. The solution mini casts bite-size morsels for your ears conversations that didn't make the full length episode. Our first mini cast is with Jon Fishman, the drummer of Phish, who I had the supreme privilege of hanging out with after his radio show in Belfast. Maine.
A helping a phish food, sustenance while on the road.
What kind of spread is in the green room at Madison Square Garden?
Fishman:
In the Green room of Madison Square Garden, Well, to be honest with you, I know you're gonna find this somewhat shocking. We have the band room and in the band room, like there's some almonds and cashews in the juicer and there's some food back there, you know, like sometimes in between sets. Our catering actually will put some hot food back there sometimes, too, but mostly the really nice room, that you would think of like, you know, that would be backstage usually are where like red light management and or the Madison Square Garden peep the owner's box thing area. You know, they have like like when we played the baker's dozen there they had this room that was loaded with all these donuts. There was federal donuts made donuts for their show is actually first 5000 people are walking in the door. We get a donut for each night. But in the sort of owner's box green room thing, they had this really, you know, the catered setup, you know, it's really nice. Like our band room was just the break room, you know? You know, and then I have my own room by family as room backstage. And there's like nothing in there. There there's usually like, you know—
Kyle:
like it just cups of water?
Fishman:
like a couple grapefruits or something like that.You know, like I go get dinner and then there's catering backstage where it's like everybody eats a cafeteria kind of thing. You know, that's usually where all the food is. But mostly I live in the practice room. That's like I walk in. There's a little room with like the instruments backstage is a little mini drum set and everything back there. And that's kind of where I live. I just walk in and go to work and then do soundcheck and go to dinner and then go back to work. So the green room, so to speak, are really for everybody else.
Kyle:
Do you remember sort of the evolution in the early days of fashion, like when you went from nectars to maybe your, like, bigger room? Do you remember like a green room experience where you guys were like maybe looking at each other and you were like, oh, I think this is a little different. This might be where
Fishman:
this deli tray is a little bigger.
What? They got pickles on this one. Wow. We're we're moving up in the world.
No, I got to say, the green rooms. I don't know if you see many green rooms backstage as bands is pretty pretty.
It all depends on the club. I mean, I got to say, in all honesty, in in the early days of fish, right. When we would this probably same for everybody out there. There would be some places you'd show up where, you know, it was a small gig at a small club in a small town. And, you know, there would be like a couple fans there that were just, you know, they bring you like this greatest meal you ever eat, kind of a thing, you know, that be just incredible spread, you know, and you'd be in this, you know, crappy little room back stage, you know, cause all the backstage rooms and clubs are pretty bare bones. You know, there's a couple of chairs and things like that. And, you know, it's like some people, every once and a while you show up and they would've really gone out of their way to, like, make you a really nice meal. I put tablecloths down and make the plate, you know, I mean, I mean, it was it was incredible. We have people on the road now with us. That's part of our crew. Wherever we go, there's a certain uniformity. They kind of set it up backstage and make it look a little homey. You know, it's really nice.
Kyle:
You've traveled quite a bit. I've traveled. And it's safe to say that you fit some miles. I know some miles on your car. But yeah, whatever it is, you as take. That's true. Do you have a go to road trip snack or like a road trip routine or something that you guys all do on tour in specific regions or like must have snacks when you're in Mississippi or driving through a certain town that you just have to stop and eat? Yeah. Or is there like just one thing that you guys all get around every time you're driving back and forth?
Fishman:
You know, I mean, my my go to road snack food, I mean, you know, that was like turkey subs. You know that you'd get in the cooler at the, you know, I'm gonna say truck stops and, you know, Irving Plaza's and all that kind of stuff has come a long way since the 80s and 90s.
I mean, some of these places you can stop in these truckstop areas and you can find halfway decent sushi and stuff. I mean, you know that that was not the case. You can find healthy food. You could actually eat fairly healthy on the road. Now, just at like truck stops. Or you could not do that in the 90s. There was a woman, Dar Williams know Dar Williams.
She's an artist, really great singer songwriter, she’s from the North Hampton area. I think she's still around doing a thing.
Dar put out a book years ago called The Tofu Tollbooth, which she interviewed me for a little bit because I used to do all the driving and I was trying to eat somewhat healthy, you know.
So, you know, she was making a book was like a map for the country, for musicians on the road to find all these like co-ops, you know, like we pull into a town, whereas the local co-op, you know, this great bus driver, Dominic Placa, who showed us a lot of great eating spots, it was this one Mexican restaurant in Houston right on this strip where all the car dealerships are. And he said, you gotta go to this place. You gotta go. It's the greatest thing. Years before that, I'd been in Cheops, the Chavis region of Mexico, and my traveling partner and I had gotten off this bus in San Cristobal was this little tiny town in the cheapest region, the mountains of Mexico. And we arrived, of course, right at Siesta, which we weren't used to, and we were starving. And it was this harrowing ride through the mountains, as you know, crazy bus driver. And we get to this little town, you know, just like you see in a movie, like with the Cliff Roads, and there's no room for two vehicles. And, you know, down below in the ravine, there's wrecked vehicles, you know, and you can see your life flash before you. So you get this thing, we're hungry, our nerves are shot. And this woman took pity on us. So you could see all the windows were shuttered. We're walking down this little narrow street. This one woman and her daughter, they look at us and we're like comer, like we were like two Spanish words. And she kind of looks all right. She lets us in and she brings us these little chicken enchiladas with Molé. So they've never had Molé at that point in my life was just these little chicken enchiladas there were like three or four on a plate to us, two plates and there's a brown sauce on them, right? That is in the top three things I've ever eaten, ever put in my mouth. It was, you know, like and that for like the next the rest of my life, I basically had been pursuing a similar Molé experience. And it's only mildly happened on two occasions, one with shockingly in a restaurant in Burlington, Vermont, that was open for about five minutes and they actually made dark mole sauce there. That was pretty darn good. But the only other time I found in the United States and believe me, I know I was at this one eatery in San Francisco. Wonderful place, nice people, great service. But the mole sauce, it was like tomato. It was like a tomato basing. I don't even know why they even call this mall. That should have been called salsa, you know. But at any rate, this place outside Houston, we did a gig and we were playing in clubs still. And we stopped at this place and it was like 2:00 in the morning. I don't know, maybe his midnight or 1 I don’t know what it was. I mean, he was, you know, you wouldn't think the place would just be opening, right? So he put in a Testino car dealerships, the strip, and we we we put this restaurant.
And it's like in this strip mall type thing. It's no little window in a street, in a little town in Mexico. And this is like a sex strip malls and car dealerships and bright lit me. You know, this little building and we pull in this big, huge parking lot. There's a little building. We get out of the bus. We go walking over and there's like 20 of us. There's a whole entourage. People came to us. And there is this five piece mariachi band standing outside the front. They may well, they weren't right out front. We they they came out and they're, you know, the black and white suits. I mean, they're dressed to kill and they're great. This is like a great legit killer band at 2:00 in the morning or something. And there's no one in there. But there's a full staff, you know, like there's waiters, waitresses and like there's like five or six cooks back. I mean, there's a lot of people and they can we do we just miss the flood or what? So we go in they sit us in this big table. And I asked the woman, how is the Mole? She says, “Ah the mole, sauce here is the best.”
And the way she said it. I was like, yes, yes is good. And it was totally legit. It was great. It was as good as the place and it was like home. I wish I could remember the name of this place now. Anyway, over the course of the next hour, all of these Mexican women and men dressed like they had just come from a wedding, that women were wearing these dresses there and the guys had like, you know, tuxedos on, but they were like the Mexican version with the long Instead, the bow tie and the little long tie thing, you know, and the buckles and the you know, the shoes, everybody shined and. I guess that's the way, you know, the Mexican culture was like that. The restaurant open at like midnight and people come rolling in and they go off sunrise. There was music. Everybody's dancing and drinking. And it was like right in this restaurant. But it looked like they had just come from some place dancing and partying forever. But it was like I think they were starting their night, you know, and we were just there finishing the night, having dinner. But man, oh, man, that was pretty amazing.
Kyle:
Have you stopped there a couple times since then?
Fishman:
No. No, I haven't. I only stopped there once. I want to find that place again. I've got to find out from Dominic, the name of that place again. There's this pie place as you come down Route 1 in California, as you go in through the sequoias and stuff.
And you're right up in that area. If you come in from the south as you're entering to where the redwoods start to, there's several sections, you know, you kind of drive through.
Then it's not redwoods fault and it is again. I think like in that first section or second section, there's some place they just sell pies and it's like incredible pies. And there's a place in Detroit is like an Asian restaurant outside Detroit. That's incredible.But anyway—
Kyle:
Subscribe to Concert Cast the Podcasts on your podcast app of choice to listen to our full length episode where Fishman and I talk about his favorite music venues.
Fishman:
There's this place. Blossom in Ohio. That's just it's like you're on the inside of it, upside down ship that the shell inside is this wooden knee. Looks like the inside of a wood, hull of a ship.
Kyle:
And we even have a late night studio caller.
Fishman:
WBFY I guess I got to answer it first.
Kyle:
This has been a Good To Go Studio's production made in Maine. Tyler Gardner of Digital Lives Audio is our engineer and Mark Tekushan is our resident mastermind. Special thanks to John Fishman. WBFY100.9FM Belfast Community Radio Station. Eric Klausmeyer, Chris Katsaras. And thank you for listening.