8/3/91 @ Amy's Farm w/ Matt Leaf

Hi everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Attendance Bias. I am your host, Brian Weinstein. Before we get started with today’s episode, I just want to remind everyone that if you enjoy the podcast, you can show your support by leaving a rating and review of it wherever you get your podcasts. You can also visit www.buymeacoffee.com/attendancebias and donate anything you can to keep the podcast going. Now, onto today’s episode:

It’s always exciting when a guest reaches out to tell about their experience at a Phish festival. On Attendance Bias, we’ve heard about pretty much all of them, except Big Cypress and Coventry. But wait…today’s guest, Matt Leaf messaged me to tell about his ride to a forgotten festival. A “proto-festival” as we call it throughout today’s episode. Matt has quite a personal story to tell how he ended up at a free, 3-set show at Larrabee Farm in Auburn, Maine on August 3, 1991, most commonly known as “Amy’s Farm.”

There was no ferris wheel, no cheeky names for campgrounds, and no secret late-night sets…but it still set the tone and, as Matt calls it, the “rough draft” that would eventually blossom into the Clifford Ball just 5 years later, and Big Cypress by the end of the decade.

Things were just on a smaller scale then. Matt explains how he got into the scene through his older brothers’ love of the Grateful Dead in the mid-80s, and then some fortuitous connections at a Maine summer camp steered him into the direction of Phish, which in turn led him to this free show that has lived in the tape decks of thousands of fans for years. 

It was almost excruciatingly exciting to hear about being at Amy’s Farm from a first-person point of view. You can even hear my voice speed up at certain points because I wanted to know more and more about what it was like to be there. Matt showed up today, big time, giving all the details that stand out in his memory as well as giving his take on the big picture of “what it all meant,” both at the time the show was played, and in retrospect as we look back and listen back today. There’s a lot to digest as we join Matt to talk about the sound quality, sold out tshirts, and extension cords as we time travel back to Amy’s Farm on August 3, 1991 in Auburn, ME.