Trey Anastasio Wonders If It’s a ‘Coincidence’ His Daughters Were at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Show Where Platform Malfunctioned

Though the cross-over in the Venn Diagram of Phish Phans and Swifties is normally pretty minimal, the unlikely streams crossed for a brief (okay, three-plus hour) moment this summer when Phish singer/guitarist Trey Anastasio‘s two grown daughters zoomed over to Europe to catch one of Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour shows.

The Phish Phigurehead dropped into SiriusXM’s Phish Radio on Thursday morning (August 1) to tell the story of how his two adult daughters, Isabella and Eliza, saved up their money to see Swift in Dublin and ended up having a flashback to one of their dad’s most iconic eras. As any Swiftie will know, seeing the Eras Tour in Europe is often cheaper than catching it stateside, which is why the two women hopped over the pond, according to their dad.

“That’s why they went. It was the only place you could get a ticket,” Anastasio said. “My 27-year-old daughter wanted to get a Taylor ticket for my 29-year-old daughter, so she went online and put in for the lottery for every show on Earth, as did another friend of hers. And they both only could only get tickets in Dublin — her and one of her best friends — independent of each other.” So, the sisters met each other in Dublin at the show where Swift famously got briefly stuck on a platform mid-show.

“I said, ‘is that a coincidence? That my daughters watched me on a platform, their dad, and Taylor?,” he wondered. Anastasio was referring, of course, to a show in Dublin on June 29 during which a stage malfunction during “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” in which the elevated section Swift was standing on failed to lower when it was supposed to, leaving her momentarily stranded in air. Swift, a consummate professional, shook it off and kept rolling.

Anastasio was also thinking about the New Year’s Eve show in 2019 when each member of Phish performed from a color-coded, elevated platform above the stage to make room for their color-coordinated dancers. As his bandmates were lowered back to the main stage, Anastasio’s platform got stuck, so he just kept jamming from the air before drummer Jon Fishman’s platform was raised back up so the crew could rescue the frontman.

In a video from November 2020, Anastasio recalled that one of the chains holding up the platform broke and instead of being harnessed into his rig, he just had a rope that restricted his movement, so he couldn’t get too near the end of the platform. “Then I thought, ‘oh my God, if this tilts I’m going to be hanging by my belt!’