DeadPhish Orchestra at Snowbowl Steamboat

DeadPhish Orchestra is a well-established and well-loved quartet of Colorado musicians whose roots together go back more than two decades, and who have shared stages literally thousands of times. What started out as a lark, and got tagged with a tongue-in-cheek band name, turned out to have some serious staying power.

The original members of DPO met in the summer of 2001, and spent most of the rest of the decade touring as Phix, the first nationally-recognized Phish tribute band. Phix had stopped touring by the time Phish made their grand comeback in 2009, but the guys were still doing various gigs together around Colorado. The seed for DPO was planted a few months later, when they were casually playing some Grateful Dead covers at a Denver venue, and a jam on the Grateful Dead’s “Here Comes Sunshine” somehow organically morphed into a jam on Phish’s “Bathtub Gin.” The crowd went wild, and a new band was born.