Phish announces ticket details for Mondegreen festival in Dover

Andre Lamar, Delaware News Journal

Updated January 20, 2024 at 2:41 AM·5 min read

CORRECTION: The Phish festival Mondegreen will be Thursday, Aug. 15, through Sunday, Aug. 18. An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect name for the event.

Travel packages for jam band Phish's new Delaware festival named Mondegreen go on sale Thursday, Jan. 18, at 11 a.m. EST, the band announced on social media Tuesday.

Weekend and camping passes go on sale Friday, Jan. 19, at 11 a.m. EST.

General admission starts at $450 and covers access for all four days. If you're bringing a vehicle, you must also buy a camping or parking vehicle pass (one per car or RV). Parking passes (day or overnight) start at $40.

Phish frontman Trey Anastasio is over the moon about bringing Mondegreen to The Woodlands of Dover Motor Speedway this summer. The event will mark the band's 11th self-created festival from Thursday, Aug. 15, to Sunday, Aug. 18.

"Hosting festivals has been one of the greatest joys of our four decades together as a band. We are so grateful to the beautiful people of Delaware for welcoming us into their community," Anastasio said in an exclusive statement to Delaware Online/The News Journal.

The festival will feature Phish performing over four days and nights. There also will be interactive fan experiences, art installations, specially curated regional food and drink, plus more.

Mondegreen is defined as "a word or phrase that results from a mishearing, especially of something recited or sung," according to Merriam-Webster.

The Woodlands Dover reel in plenty of Phish

Fans live it up in The Woodlands Dover during a performance by Mod Sun on the Firefly main stage on Day 2 of the 2022 Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Friday, Sept. 23, 2022.

The Phish festival is reeling in lots of attention from the jam band's supporters around the country and locally as fans are extra thirsty for the event because it will be the band's first self-created festival after they hosted a festival called Magnaball in Watkins Glen, New York, in 2015.

Phish, a successful jam band that formed in Vermont in 1983, has a special sauce that makes its multiday festivals unique.

One ingredient is Phish is usually the only musical act on their festival lineups. And the band doesn't play the same set twice at their festivals.

Being the only artist on their lineup makes Phish festivals less stressful for fans because it's common for music lovers to have to make hard choices among their favorite acts during multi-band, multi-stage events.

That was often the case at Firefly Music Festival in Dover.

Phish paved way for Firefly Music Festival & Bonnaroo

Bonnaroo attendees cheer as Kendrick Lamar performs during the second day of Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee
on Friday, Jun. 16, 2023. — Bonnaroo attendees cheer as Kendrick Lamar performs during the second day of Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee on Friday, Jun. 16, 2023.

Mondegreen will take place at Woodlands, home to Firefly since 2012. (Firefly promised to return in 2024 after taking the year off to recalibrate in 2023. But Firefly has not yet announced a lineup or dates for this year's event.)

The first Phish festival was the three-day Clifford Ball event in Plattsburgh, New York, in 1996. That event helped to set the template for the band's future festivals. The new Delaware fest is slated to be the band's 11th self-produced festival.

Clifford Ball revolutionized the festival scene and is responsible for inspiring others like Bonnaroo, which launched in 2002 in Tennessee. The band played the festival in 2009, 2012 and 2019.

“There's no underplaying the significance that Phish had, as a band and as an organization, in the direct development of Bonnaroo,” said Bonnaroo festival co-founder Rick Farman in a 2019 report by The Tennessean, a sister publication to Delaware Online/The News Journal.

That means Phish also helped to influence Firefly, which debuted a decade after Bonnaroo.

Phish's Mike Gordon (from left), Page McConnell, Jon Fishman and Trey Anastasio will bring their new festival to The Woodlands Dover on Thursday, Aug. 15 to Sunday, Aug. 18.

There was once a time when music festivals were few in the United States. Major concert promoters chose to build amphitheaters instead.

But in the ‘90s, Phish broke the mold by holding epic, ambitious and fiercely independent gatherings in remote corners of the country, and brought up to 85,000 fans along with them.

“There were no festivals,” recalled Phish frontman Trey Anastasio in the 2019 report by The Tennessean. “And I mean none. It was not something that had a blueprint. The only festival that we could have conjured up in America would be Woodstock — the real one — which was logistically, an unmitigated disaster. So when we started planning our first festival, the first thing on our minds was to make it really comfortable for our friends, which were our fans.”

Phish Vegas Sphere and Mexico shows

Ahead of Mondegreen, Phish already has eight sold-out shows this year. Four are in Cancún, Mexico, in February and another four are at The Sphere in Las Vegas.

Fans meet 'The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday'

'Gamehendge' is based on Phish lead singer Trey Anastasio's college thesis.

Phish also made a splash on New Year's Eve at Madison Square Garden playing "Gamehendge" for the first time in nearly 30 years.

Before performing to a sold-out crowd at MSG last month, Phish has seldom played the near-mythical song cycle known as "Gamehendge" in its entirety since 1994.

"Gamehendge" is based on Anastasio’s college thesis, "The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday." The project follows the adventures of Colonel Forbin, a retired colonel from Long Island, New York, who enters the land of Gamehendge to save a special book called the "Helping Friendly Book" from Wilson the evil dictator.

This historic performance featured a custom-built rhombus stage set, a full cast of actors, dancers, huge puppets, and other theatrics.

Watch Phish's full Gamehendge concert in 4K

The band recently uploaded the entire performance in a 4K video to YouTube.

Phish's epic "Gamehendge" experience will undoubtedly be discussed by fans at their Delaware festival in August.

Fans can get complete details on passes, RV camping and parking options, on-site glamping details and more by visiting mondegreen.phish.com.

The Tennessean reporter Dave Paulson contributed to this article.

Are you coming to the Mondegreen festival and have a cool Phish story to tell? Please email lifestyle reporter Andre Lamar at [email protected]. Consider signing up for his weekly newsletter, DO Delaware, at delawareonline.com/newsletters.