Hello! Welcome to the first edition of ‘Conference on the Mound,’ a semi-regular newsletter in which I’ll share my lukewarm takes on baseball, Phish, and, sometimes, the fun, crazy places where the two overlap. Feel free to send any feedback and questions and, if you like this, please spread the word!
Soundtrack for reading: June 25, 2016, Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL, Set 2.
A song that, for me, sits square in the middle of the strange intersection of baseball and Phish is the song “The Lizards,” a central piece of The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday, Phish frontman/guitarist Trey Anastasio’s senior project at Goddard College form *checks Wikipedia* 1987.
If you’re a Phish fan, you almost surely know everything about TMWSIY. If you’re not, the best way to explain it is thus: an hour-long song cycle that recounts the adventures of the characters and creatures in a magical land called Gamehendge (which is also occasionally used as short-hand for the collection of songs). You can probably smell that late-80’s Vermont weed from here. All you really need to know for this here post is that “The Lizards” is a song from this project and it remains a staple of the band’s shows even now. And it’s good. Just hang with me here.
It’s not so much the song — which is great! — as is it the iconography of the lizards and their role in Phish lore. And, especially, how David Welker leveraged these key figures of the Phish mythology to create some terrific art.
So. Welker.
Welker is a phenomenal artist in his own right, but he’s got a close association with Phish on account of his art adorning the cover of the band’s 1993 album Rift and for drawing numerous show posters. His most celebrated Phish posters — like his 2015 Philadelphia work and his 2017 Bakers Dozen print — are visual feasts, trippy, psychedelic worlds that are detailed works of genius, the smallest, meticulous details important to the larger whole. You can stare at these prints for hours and still not catch everything going on.
Cut to June 2016.
For part of their summer 2016 tour, Phish played a pair of shows at Wrigley Field, their first shows ever at the stadium (more on those in a future post). I was there and the shows were a hell of a lot of fun.
At the time, my wife and I were living in the Bay Area but we were both former long-time Chicagoans and my love of the Cubs can be traced back to my Alabama childhood, watching all those day games on the superstation WGN like so many other fans around the country. Wrigley is hallowed ground to me for both its good and bad, from the ivy and Old Style to the obstructed views and those awful urinal troughs. The chance to see one of my favorite bands play in one of the holiest of venues in my religion was worth the cross-country flight.
(I’m listening to 6-24-16 right now and it holds up even though the first set is pretty first setty). Adding to the fun was a trio of terrific posters sold for the shows, including this absolute stunner by Welker.
Wrigley Lizards / David Welker
It’s a fantastic piece of work, from the wonderfully surreal concept to the lizard design to the intricate detail of, well, everything about this poster: the scales of the lizards, the lettering, the incorporation of the shape of Wrigley’s famous marquee and it’s equally famous brick wall. And I’m a big fan of both the bats and balls ringing the central picture and the claws in the corners, each gripping a baseball as if mid-throw of a two-seam fastball.
(And I like to think that the knight Lizard on the left is Rutherford the Brave from the song “The Lizards”; I know the song says he was from the land of Lizards and he claims to have once been one, too, but was he still a Lizard in the song? I don’t know.)
Phish. Wrigley. Lizards. Cubs.
Seemingly disparate things seamlessly melded into a gorgeous poster.
Me to this poster
Sadly, with only 1,000 editions to sell across two nights, these suckers went fast and I wasn’t able to get my hands on the poster.* Too bad, so sad, right? I settled for a t-shirt that had the same image on it which wasn’t quite the same. Bummer, too, for the folks I saw on Night 2 (6-25-16) holding a giant sign on the infield overhang requesting “The Lizards” as it did not get played either night.
(Another of the posters, by the talented pair of Jessica Seamans & Dan Black aka Landland, also went with a baseball theme, though old-timey with a nature-centric twist. I was able to snag this one but I’ll save a deeper look at it for another future post.)
This is not where our journey with the Lizards ends, though.
Fast forward to July 2019.
Phish was back on the road for their annual summer tour which featured two nights at Boston’s Fenway Park, the band’s second visit to the park, a hair over 10 years after their only other show (5-31-09) in the shadow of the Green Monster.
Once again, David Welker was part of the group of artists producing posters for these shows and, as he did with the Wrigley show poster, Welker created a dazzling Lizards-and-baseball combo.
The Lizards return / David Welker
As with the Wrigley Lizards, what draws me in about this poster is not just the design but the exquisite detail of it all: the hatching lines of the jersey, the seemingly infinite number of roots on the tree/bat (itself a terrific little touch) to the delightful throw-back lettering. And, again, the lizards themselves, nightmarish monsters whose delicately drawn scales and spikes morph into an acid-soak dream creature complete with a long tail curling around the moon in the upper right corner.
Fenway Lizards is, IMHO, an even greater artistic accomplishment than Wrigley Lizards because there’s so much more crammed in to this 14-inch-by-14-inch space (Wrigley measures 16x16). It’s as if Welker took a glance at Wrigley Lizards and decided to one-up himself.
But we’re still not done. The second night’s show, 7-6-19, was delayed due to storms. Because Boston’s noise curfew has a cut-off of 11 p.m., the band decided to forego their traditional two-set-with-a-break-in-between structure and just jam the show the hell out in one long, single set. As with most Phish shows, the results are all in the eye (ear?) of the beholder but it was still fun.
And one thing that most definitely resulted from that special show was a creative jolt for Welker who turned around and created a brand new piece of art inspired by the 7-6-19 rain delay titled “Conference on the Mound.”
And let me tell you, reader, I loved it.
In an email promoting the drop of the poster a few weeks after the show, Welker wrote:
“I also wanted to commemorate that intense Saturday rain delay show with an art print titled "Conference on the Mound". It was a wild day and after hours of buckets of rain and bolts of lightening that threatened to send the rain soaked devotees home the band took the stage and delivered an epic one set show like the troubadours that they are.”
It’s not just the idea of the band as lizards waiting out a rain delay that makes this such an outstanding additional work. It’s the inclusion of thematic elements from the earlier Fenway poster like the uniforms and the trees-as-bats element. It’s the inclusion of the well-known Jon Fishman donut dress. (I’m assuming the red-hatted lizard is the red-headed Anastasio, too.)
But I also love the way this art puts a Phishtacular twist on an iconic piece of Americana, Norman Rockwell’s “Tough Call.”
Welker’s true accomplishment here is the way in which he so perfectly blended nostalgic elements of baseball (the jerseys, the lettering, these iconic stadiums) with a notable, fantastical piece of Phish’s well-plumbed catalog. Baseball and Phish fandom are so much more alike than fans of either realize: a hopeful buzz focused on trying to predict the future while casting a sepia-toned eye to the past, which plays an out-sized role in assessing the present.
These posters aren’t just loving scraps of a past event, like a ticket stub (another piece of history fans of both subjects horde): they’re mementos that seamlessly blend the history of these subjects we hold close to our hearts. They’re associated with specific moments that remain permanently etched in our memories, akin to the scorecard you keep of the no-hitter you happened to be in the ballpark for. Our perception of what’s to come is shaped by what’s already happened and these single items distill our panoramic, full technicolor love for these subjects into a single object we can gaze upon, touch, and adore for the rest of our lives.
Your average Phish show and professional baseball game both last about three hours. Each offers its share of ups-and-downs, ebbs-and-flows, times of pensive concentration and moments of raucous celebrations. Likely, there’s a moment from each one you’ll forever associate with any object of the show you keep, be it a towering home run or a blissful 30-minute jam.
And either, to me, is a perfect way to spend a warm summer night under the stars, even if you occasionally have to wait out a few raindrops.
* Post-script: Eventually, happiness prevailed, though. Phish pal Brian Ries (of CNN and the terrific Jam Sandwich newsletter) pointed me to a few Phish poster groups on Facebook where fans buy/trade/sell posters and other Phish swag. And it was there I eventually landed my own Welker Wrigley Lizards print (Edition #259).