This Friday, October 24th, Runaway Gin returns to the Charleston Pour House for a special three-set Halloween bash, including two sets of Phish and one mystery full-album cover set.
“Phish on Halloween traditionally will do a three-set show, and one of those sets being a mystery album,” explains guitarist Andy Greenberg. “Typically, it’s an album that is very influential to the band. And originally, they had fan votes for which album they would play.”
In the case of Runaway Gin, there were no votes. They just picked an album, and nobody except the band knows what it will be. Greenberg wouldn’t reveal too much, just that it is an album that Phish has never played before.
Tickets to the show are available here.
2025 in Runaway Gin
Runaway Gin celebrated their 10th anniversary in 2024, and in 2025 they have been on the road more than ever. They’ve also been leaning into more of the complicated Phish songs, learning tunes like “It’s Ice,” “Guyute,” and “Fluffhead.”
“We’re just continuing to learn the most complicated Phish songs and also lean into the jams,” Greenberg continues. “I think we’ve developed a much better chemistry jam-wise from playing so many shows together and from hanging out together so much over the last year or so.”
The current Runaway Gin lineup includes Greenberg alongside Jennifer Reiser on keys, David ‘DKAT’ Katilius on bass, and Curtis Wingfield on drums.
“We’re becoming more experimental than ever before,” Andy says. “We went through a phase where we crystallized a specific type of jamming, but now we’re making up new things that are outside of that. Everybody’s playing more by ear, and listening to each other more than ever before.”
Seeing Phish Together
Not only did all four members of Runaway Gin see Phish together when they came to Charleston this year, they also traveled to see them at Hampton Coliseum together in September.
“I think that made a really big impact,” Greenberg says. “Especially with Hampton, afterwards, I could notice a huge change in our playing.”
Greenberg says that all three Hampton shows were barn burners, at the legendary venue where Phish played their first show back in 2009 after breaking up in 2004, and opened with “Fluffhead.” During this year’s three-night run, they also opened with “Fluffhead.”
“Curtis, our drummer, he hadn’t been to a Phish show since like the 90s,” says Greenberg. “He followed Phish around in the 90s, so he has a lot of shows under his belt, but this was his first modern 3.0 show. We really went down the rabbit hole.”
Greenberg explains how being in that room together, listening to Phish together, has made a big change in their jamming.
“We could all tell right off the bat,” he continues. “It was like we were carrying, what we talked about, drinking from the source. The things that were happening on stage, that we were doing improvisationally, was kind of reminiscent of what we had experienced.”
On Phish (Halloween) Shows
When I saw Phish at Mondegreen, and several times before that, I walked out of there, and I couldn’t wait to see the band again. This experience is common for fans of the band, and it’s what has made Phish so popular over the years.
“The reason why we’re doing Runaway Gin is to carry that energy, that feeling that we get from Phish into whenever they’re not playing,” Andy says. “With them not playing this Halloween, it left an opportunity for us to do something.”
Runaway Gin has never covered an album before, despite having played on Halloween in the past.
“From a Phish historical perspective,” he continues, “I think a lot of people would agree that one of the most important things that ever happened to them in terms of changing them as a band was when they learned The White Album.”
Greenberg is referring to Phish’s Halloween 1994 show, when they donned the “musical costume” of The Beatles and performed their 1968 album, The White Album, from front-to-back.
“For us, learning another band’s material in this way is going to have a huge impact on us,” he closes. “I think it already is, but I think it really is going to once we actually do it.”
Runaway Gin hits at 9pm on Friday, 10/24 at Charleston Pour House for three full sets of music, including their very own musical costume. Tickets here.
