Vance Powell Talks Phish Collaborations in New Interview

Producer Vance Powell will co-produce Phish’s next studio project, according to a new interview with Hannah Means-Shannon for Americana Highways. As first reported by Jambase.com, Powell reveals that he is about to “co-produce Phish’s record.”

As he says in the interview, “I just spent most of the year on the road with Phish mixing their pay-per-view livestream. I’m about to co-produce Phish’s record. If I can do Velvet Two Stripes, and Stapleton, and Phish, I can kind of do just about anything. One of my favorite artists, Seasick Steve, is someone I just finished a record with. I think I’m relatively versatile and I get it. There are a few things I don’t really get and those are things I just don’t really do. I don’t understand pop country. I don’t understand why it’s even a thing. That’s fine because I get zero work from music row.”

Powell, who has worked with Chris Stapleton, Jack White, North Mississippi Allstars, The Revivalists, Danger Mouse, Black Prairie and many others, mixed and engineered Trey Anastasio’s 2019 Ghosts of the Forest album. He co-produced Phish’s previous full-length studio album, 2020’s surprise release Sigma Oasis, though the Vermont Quartet did release an album of songs from their 2021 Halloween album, Get More Down, under the alias Sci-Fi Solider in 2022.

Jambase also notes that Powell says, “I’m about to fly to Vermont to record in Vermont. I’ve been there before and I know what they have, so I ended up shipping almost $100,000 worth of gear to the studio. Gear and microphones get moved, and microphones get expensive quick. This studio business becomes your capital and retirement.”

Phish introduced six previously unrecorded songs in 2023, all of which were originally debuted by Trey Anastasio Trio featuring Jon Fishman this spring.