Ah, SPAC.

Apart from being a pretty upstate town with a vintage-style Main Street and a serious love affair with horse-racing, Saratoga Springs also is the purported home of a fountain of youth. People have been making pilgrimages to the isolated little town for well over a hundred years to soak in the healing groundwater that spouts from these parts.

Personally, I go to SPAC pretty much exclusively to see Phish concerts* which I’m guessing does as much to keep me young as soaking in any tub would, though I’ll admit I don’t usually come out of the run feeling very spry.

SPAC is where I woke up on June 20th, 2010, having already experienced an excellent night one of a two-night stint. M’lady and I spent the afternoon visiting several of our friends on the broad front porch of their old-school hotel along the main drag. SPAC invariably attracts a huge pile of our Phishy friends and it’s a great opportunity to spend a whole lot of quality time catching up with good people.

When showtime arrives it’s into the woods we go. The venue is in a beautiful state park and as long as you’re not on the lawn it’s a fantastic place to see a show. We weren’t on the lawn (a rule we’ve broken but once, ne’er again) and we had a great time. It was Father’s Day and the show started with all the band member’s children onstage in a bathtub while the band played Brother.

That felt nice and homey. Never miss a Sunday show.

The second set had a couple of songs I like but don’t hear very often, Mango Song (for it’s silly super fun-ness) and Makisupa Policeman (for it’s reggae feel; I really like it when Phish tries to play reggae). And they closed the set with probably my favourite song to hear them play, YEM.

For the encore Page brought out his keytar for a romp through Frankenstein, a song that scores very low on the awesome scale for me but always gets big points for fun.

And speaking of fun, there are few venues better than SPAC for the walk-out. Though it can be quite a trek to your hotel the bulk of the journey is through the woods with thousands of happy, like-minded souls along for the stroll. And when you do get back to your room there are always lots of fun people around to help celebrate your arrival.

Ahhh, what could be better…

*And eat potato chips. Saratoga Springs is the birthplace of my favourite snack and my goodness, do they know how to make potato chips.

toddmanout.com