Blog

Grace Potter's Grand Point North Festival welcomes Trey Anastasio Band joined with Mike Gordon and Page McConnell

September 18, 2017 - By Brando Rich

Trey Anastastio and his band played at the Grand Point North Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. This September marks the 7th year that Grace Potter has hosted the music festival. Yesterday was the first time Trey Anastasio Band has playing in Burlington since 2011. TAB is made up of Russ Lawton (drums), and Tony Markellis (bass), Ray Paczkowski (keys), Cyro Baptista (percussion), Jennifer Hartswick (trumpet, vocals), and Natalie Cressman (trombone, vocals). The latest tour James Casey (saxophones, vocals) has been added.

Photo by Patrick Jordan at Red Rocks Amphitheatre 2017

The band brought so much energy to their entire set. Trey seemed especially smiley and very happy being back playing in Burlington where all of the music started. He talked about his first trip to Burlington when he was visitng the university. He said that he skipped the visit and went to a club instead for a beer and to see music. There he said he saw Tony Markellis playing bass and he immediately knew he wanted to make music with him.

Trey surprised guests by bringing out Page McConnell to close the set with "First Tube", a staple song for both Phish and TAB. Trey and the band walked off of the stage leaving the entire audience thrilled for whatever was going to come next for an encore. Trey returns to the stage with an acoustic guitar and is then joined by Grace Potter and Mike Gordon, and sang a beautiful "Water in the Sky". After the three finished, the rest of the band returned to the stage this time including Dave Grippo for an extreamly high energy "Push On 'Till the Day". Dave used to play with TAB in their earlier days on and off, and was part of the Giant Country Horns back in 1991 when he toured with Phish. Grippo is well known in the Burlington area as the front man of The Grippo Funk Band.

The seventh annual Grand Point North Music Festival was truly one for the record books. Burlington's beautiful WaterFront Park is the perfect intimate venue to showcase local, homegrown talent and talent from all over the country. Saturday night, Grace announced that she is pregnant! Congratulations to Grace and thank you for another great year of music. Trey Anastasio's next performance will be September 27th with the Schermerhorn Symphony in Nashville, Tennessee.

A post shared by Calico (@sneakincali) on