Surrender to the Flow, the Phish fan magazine that is available free on lot at every show on every tour, is setting up a ‘Phish Fan Business & Service Directory’ and is seeking participants to be included in this one of a kind publication. This new directory aims to encourage fans to patronize fan-owned/staffed businesses, both locally and nationally, thereby further strengthening the Phish community. The directory will be available free to the public, online, in electronic form in a few months, and will be updated yearly. The business listings are also free to businesses and individuals.

Because Phish fans can be found in every walk of life and in every corner of this country, fans from all fields and areas are encouraged to participate. The directory will be organized both by state and by category.

Categories will likely be quite diverse: financial services, event planning, legal services, health and fitness services, crafts, and entertainers are just a few of the anticipated groupings.

Fans who would like to participate should visit this form to submit their information via short online form.

Surrender to the Flow hopes that this directory will encourage fans to do business with other fans and perhaps inspire new connections and build professional networks. Additionally, it will help fans to shop locally while helping others in the Phish community succeed in their chosen fields, wherever they may reside.

If you have any questions, contact Christy at sttflow (at) gmail.com

Visit Surrender to the Flow on Facebook

 

Here is the latest cover to Surrender to the Flow, the Phish fan magazine found on tour since 1998. Published by Christy Articola and compiled by a group of dedicated fans, this issue is available free outside MSG.

Great work once again by Drew Suto with his Gamehendge meets The Hobbit theme.

If you can’t make the shows this run and want a copy of this issue, you can order one by sending $5* (addt’l copies are $2) via PayPal to STTFlowMerch (at) gmail. Orders will ship by December 22nd. While it will ALWAYS be free on lot, its always a bonus to be able to get a copy and keep your collection solid.

I’ll admit, I’m a little nostalgic. Hitting 100 shows is an achievement for Phish fans, a centennial celebration to mark a long journey over many years of seeing Phish. Very few jump on tour and don’t miss a show for 3 or 4 years, netting 100 shows in one quick succession of years. Rather, the journey takes many years. There are some who have seen the band since the late 1980s have yet to crack 100 while a few who started in 2004 are soon to break the barrier sometime this summer. The longevity adds to who you are and says where you have been.

My 100th show was 12/28/11 (as was Dan McKnight’s) and going in, I left all expectations at the door for once. A Ya Mar opener, just like my first show (12/13/97) was my only request and the first ever Free opener erased the thought from my head and gladly so. The New Years Run was devoid of expectations thereafter and my enjoyment of the shows was great, as it started off with an achievement. I looked forward to it and my friends who are soon to crack 100 themselves talked it up.

Think about it – have you ever done 100 of anything and kept count? Beyond kid stuff, anything as an adult? Been to 100 countries? Ran 100 miles? Biked 100 miles? (that one is possible on a long day…) Seen any other band 100 times? Sure, there are Grateful Dead, Panic, Cheese and Umphrey’s fans who might have hit this milestone but outside of this realm of music, achieving a 100 even on a test is tough to do. When it happens, its rare, and worth celebrating

I recall two other friend’s 100th shows in the 3.0 era. Holly hit 100 on NYE in Miami in 2009 while Amy celebrated in her hometown of Utica on 10/20/10. To mark the occasion, stickers and shirts, respectively, were made to commemorate the occasion.

When my 100th show was approaching, I thought it to be a novel idea to follow suit and make a sticker up. I knew the exact date and thanks to the Essex flood relief show falling on 9/14/11, 12/28/11 would be my 100th show. I contacted my friend Jeffery, who also designed his wife Holly’s 100th sticker, and asked him to design a sticker incorporating all my other 99 shows. The resulting sticker was awesome and brought the sports of Madison Square Garden and the beauty of seeing Phish together very nicely.

What I did with these stickers over those 4 days in NYC was sell them, but not for profit. Likewise with Holly’s sticker and Amy’s shirt, it was more to make ends meet than make profit. With stickers being cheaper to make, usually around $1 after shipping, it made sense that these stickers would be a better investment and to make money back in the end.

As a bonus to this, if you can manage to sell your stickers for a Buck or more, why not take that profit and donate it to The Mockingbird Foundation. Having your 100th show be a reason for celebration is one thing, but to make a feel-good donation it, all it takes is a little effort, no matter how many stickers you buy. Through 123stickers.com or Customstickermakers.com (two sites used frequently and are recommended) you can get stickers in smaller quantities for cheaper, or go for 100 to commemorate the day. Either way, you can make a nice donation to Mockingbird and enjoy a nice way to commemorate a milestone in your history – your phanneversary.

Four simple steps:

1) Design sticker

2) Make sticker (see links above)

3) Sell sticker on lot, or on PhanArt

4) Donate to Mockingbird (if you made any extra $$)

You can collect these stickers or shirts from among your friends. It works out to be a nice way to see where you’ve been. Got a group of 10 friends who have seen 100 shows each? 1000 Phish shows seen is a bit mind-blowing and a cool design makes for great art and a nice piece of nostalgia. As fans approach their 100th show, consider commemorating it with a piece of art and possibly helping out Mockingbird in the process. The group effort would be an enormous one over time if this catches on.

Now, I can’t comment on 200 shows personally, but at Dick’s this past September, I ran into my friends on lot and was handed a sticker to commemorate Holly’s 200th show – about 3 years after the last notable milestone, she hit 200. Pretty remarkable, and creative too. Her husband Jeffery designed this one as well.

Then you have those folks who have made it to milestones some may think of as unreachable and unfathomable. Noah Phence hit 300 shows on the third night of Hampton in 2009. Pretty good timing huh? Noah recalled what he thought of when he made a small postcard to give out to friends: “I instantly thought of the movie 300 and the scene where he bellows “Tonight, we dine in hell!” and simply changed it to “Tonight we dance in Hampton!”

Last but not least, Christy Articola, the editor of Surrender to the Flow had a nice surprise treat in St. Louis this summer. She knew in advance that this show would be #365 for her, meaning a YEAR of Phish! Run that one through your head for a second. Mind-blowing, isn’t it? While Christy was taking the show in like no other, a group of her friends worked together to make the small mock-STTF issue (#365) to commemorate the event, they also worked together to raise money to buy the band-signed show poster from The Waterwheel Foundation, even scoring poster #365 in the process! This was a group effort to commemorate a rare milestone for a friend who does tons for others (not to mention publish the best, and only, fan magazine out there) and do some good for others with the effort in the process.

So there you have it. The 100 show milestone, whether you are hitting it for the first time, the second, third or 3.65th time, it’s well worth noting and commemorating with a little art of your own, and possibly a little something for The Mockingbird Foundation. When you hit that mark, share your art with PhanArt and we’ll keep them cataloged for future editions of PhanArt: The Art of the Fans of Phish.

Drew Suto, Senior Artist for Surrender to the Flow has designed another great cover of the popular fan magazine. You can pick this up at ALL shows on tour this summer for free on lot.

 

Surrender to the Flow published their first issue in the Fall of 1998 for Phish tour and has continued to be a staple of tour ever since. From the tours of 1.0, Oysterhead in 2001 and a whopping SIX issues in 2009, totaling 14 issues total in 3.0 and 33 issues over the past 14 years, Surrender to the Flow is the best information you can get on lot, with great articles, stories and info that fans need while on the road.
STTF has grown to publishing 8,000+ copies per tour and is run masterfully by Christy Articola as editor, working with an all volunteer staff made up of members from the Phish community. Christy plans to keep publishing Surrender as long as the band keeps playing!

In an effort to digitize all past copies of Surrender to the Flow, Christy has found a fantastic digital magazine software called 3D Issue. Through a onetime purchase of the software, Surrender to the Flow will be able to feature pdf’s of all issues, including new issues as well. A hosting site is already secured so the next step is raising the money for the cost of 3D Issue.

A Kickstarter campaign has started so that Phish fans can support Surrender to the Flow’s digitizing effort and like with all Kickstarter drives, you can get some great benefits in return!

The newest edition of Fanzine Surrender to the Flow will be available at Madison Square Garden and features cover art by Senior Artist Drew Suto. A free publication for all, Christy Articola has produced Surrender to the Flow since 1998 and continues to add to the Phish community with a compilation of venue info, area info and driving directions for fans on tour, as well as articles, essays, reviews and much more from a collaboration of fans from across the country and stretching as far as Japan! Pick up a copy of this great fanzine and have a memento of the upcoming New Years Eve run.

From Senior STTF artist Drew Suto comes the cover art for the next issue of Surrender to the Flow, due out when the band plays at The Gorge August 5th

This article was originally published in the Early Summer 2011 issue of Surrender to the Flow Magazine, #29.

Phish Tour as Vacation

What constitutes a vacation is different for each person and each family with variables based on cost, class and the intrinsic need for adventure. Those of means are able to travel throughout the country and across the globe in style, dining on exotic meals in locations both exclusive and secluded and broadening their views of the world from a safe distance. Many in the middle class including those with families are relegated to the once or twice a year typical vacation spots – Orlando, Myrtle Beach, National Parks, State Parks, beaches and other destinations that are economically feasible and work into the busy calendar of life. There are those who are unable to plan for, let alone set the time aside for, a vacation and make do with brief local escapes to see family and friends, forgoing leaving town for the ‘staycation’. Although that’s a lame word, many have no other way to escape reality for the important rejuvenation a vacation can bring..

For those who see Phish, vacation is a different beat altogether. While we might fit one of the aforementioned vacations into our yearly lives, Phish tour is the vacation of choice for many fans. Our love of Phish is the driving force behind our choice on where and when we take a break from the real world and focus on getting together with friends and rejuvenating our spirit through a most unique vacation that is not available through any travel website, travel agent or vacation club.

Most people take vacations with their family, but with us it’s our Phamily. How we get there and where we go depends on who we are, where we live and how far we can afford to travel on a given tour. Our travel styles vary yet we all arrive and we all get in. The single rider travels to meet with friends and head into the show. Couples ride together and bond over the trip to and from each show, adding to their story another chapter or ending the journey because it just wasn’t right. Families are starting to appear more on tour as our fan base ages and taking kids to a show isn’t something to be surprised at anymore whether we embrace it or not. By moving from town to town, going on an entire tour or a leg or run of shows or doing whatever is local and convenient, it becomes our vacation. More importantly, our vacation comes to us and can be taken 2-3 times a year in some cases, especially if you live in the Northeast or Midwest.

As my friend Emilie Goldenberg reminded me, “Tour is like summer camp for adults.” Many of us went to summer camp and enjoyed the activities, the bonds among friends, seeing old friends again each summer. Finding the joy of tour that is unseen anywhere else – THAT is our vacation and the heart of Phish tour. Before camp as a kid and tour as an adult, there are the jitters of excited nervousness, the potential to see old friends, the excitement of what might happen, what might change, where we might go on a side trip and what debacles may befall the group on our trip this time around. During camp/tour, expectations are pushed aside for the reality of the shows we see, the adventures we go on with our friends and the stories made through the unpredictability of tour. When it ends, we long for more but instead find our way back home, exhausted and hungry for ‘real’ food, a good shower and our own bed. We spend the next week or so developing/uploading pictures and videos, sorting through clothes clean and dirty, sorting out our souvenirs and tangible memories, putting them away for safe keeping until we look at them again before heading back on the road to camp or a show and starting the cycle anew again.

For Phish fans, it can be difficult to take a ‘real’ vacation, one that involves not going directly to a Phish show and not collecting another Mike’s Groove for the memory bank. Booking a flight, taking off to a Caribbean locale or elsewhere throughout the world and spending a week or more with someone special or a group of friends – all that takes effort and planning in order to pull off and its not easy. The average person can plan that trip to Costa Rica a year in advance but for Phish fans, many cannot simply due to the fact that Phish might be playing a year from now and most of the time, Phish takes priority. Weddings are acceptable reasons to skip Phish, simply because that event doesn’t repeat itself and there are hundreds of more Phish shows; weddings, not so much. So we wait and see when Phish is playing and make plans accordingly. With no fall shows for Phish this year, fans can rest assured that plans can be made and vacations taken with a relative degree of planning involved in order to make the vacation less harried and more enjoyable. Taking away the fear of going on vacation and missing something epic like a hometown show, a three night run or even worse, a festival, allows for trips to be planned and vacations to be enjoyed without the fear of missing out on something special.

Then again, some folks plan in advance and wind up missing out on the few shows that they were set on going to, simply because life (family, significant other, lack of time) got in the way. Having to plan well in advance for a tour knowing that accurate tour dates are a crapshoot until announced adds to the pressure of planning and hoping Phish and ‘real’ vacations don’t overlap. With some luck, you can get in both vacations; you gotta squeeze as much out of a vacation as you can when you know that Phish tour will probably postpone the next one!

Even with family vacations coming up more often as we get older, the need to take a Phamily vacation is ever-present so as to bring us back to where we were, remind us of the feeling we forgot and bridge the gap between the youthful exuberance that Phish tour secretes and the docility aging brings to our lives. It becomes a struggle between getting older and seeking to hold on to the things we grew up with and a balance is needed even when it seems like it might not be in our best interest. Your soul knows best and finding your way back on tour, even if just for a show or four is what you can fit in, you know it will be worth it. It always is. With friends by our side we get back feeling alive from out latest Phish vacation.

New from PhanArt in 2011 is our weekly Friday Feature: This Week in PhanArt History. Each piece of art we share is from days of Phish in the past, typically from the 1.0 and 2.0 eras, something of note that fans of all ages can appreciate that is featured in the book PhanArt: The Art of the Fans of Phish, with some commentary on the piece by PhanArt Pete. If there is a piece of art or genre of PhanArt you would like to see, leave a suggestion in the comments below.

Winter 2003 was all about the rebirth and renewal of Phish. After 4 shows to ring in 2003, the band went coast to coast in just over 2 weeks, taking some fortunate fans on a whirlwind tour around the country before wrapping up things until July. Fans who were artists or creative enough to make something Phish related found themselves in Disneyland, with 9 separate stops to incorporate into their art.

Ryan Kerrigan’s collection of show posters from 2003 is long sold-out, but his Nassau 2003 was just one example of the great art made for each of the venues. In an edition of 100 prints, its classic Kerrigan.

This shirt was submitted to PhanArt: The Art of the Fans of Phish by Christine and Frank Cortazzo. Their collection was one of the major contributors to the creation of PhanArt: The Art of the Fans of Phish and the PhanArt Archives.

This last piece was drawn by Drew Suto for the Winter 2003 edition of Surrender to the Flow. Drew’s drawings capture neatly the regional personality of venue stops with ease.