After a forced two year hiatus from Phish and a couple of small jobs, i managed to hit the entire summer tour in 1999, and half of the 2000 summer tour. In each case, I was setting out on a month-long trip a couple thousand miles away from home, lugging my entire "house" in a rather bulky backpack. 

Summer 1999 being my first tour, i had everything planned to the day. This past summer, my motto was “let’s wing it” and I set out on tour without plans and preparations, relying solely on karma and a bunch of real dank friends I had made the previous summer.

So there I was, July 1st, at the Meadows. A phat, phat show with a killer second set. I had been enjoying it all, minute by minute, chord by chord on the lawn with quite a big group of friends. We had scored some boomers in the lots, and I had been taking a ride on the kaleidoscope roller coaster since set break. Everything was just peachy. 

The show ended and our group started to make its way out amidst the crowd. We were all crashing at a friend's place, all 20 of us, or however many we were, outside Hartford. The carpool arrangements that day had been very sketchily made, since everyone found a ride to the show and since everyone was staying at the same place. There was no need to worry, everyone would make it back. 

Walking through the lots, the group slowly broke up as some regained their cars while others sought local attractions and activities. After a long day of partying, I preferred to make my way back to the house slowly so I grabbed one of my friends and asked him if he had a spot for me in his car, "Yeah man, there's only 3 of us, no problem". 

So I warned the kid with whom I came to the show, and I was off with my new ride. We're walking through the lots taking it all in. I was still flying pretty high mind you. My cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling for 5 hours straight. The usual after Phish show feeling.

As we exited shakedown and entered the parking lot, I saw this guy selling these really neat Hood T-shirts I had seen the previous summer. Nice, simple and sober. They just read "It's All Hood" on the front, nothing more. After walking a couple feet, I figured I might not stumble across them again in the future so I decided to go back and buy one. I grabbed my friend's wife by the sleeve and told her, “I’m actually going to go get that shirt I saw; Can you guys wait for me for 2 minutes? I’ll be right back.”  

I went back to the T-shirt vendor, paid the customary $15, when this other kid selling T-shirts stops me and goes, "What did you buy from that kid? How much did you pay for it?"   I innocently told him and he started mocking me and stuffing his T-shirt in my face going "look at these, man, they're so much better than those cheap Hood shirts. I've seen those everywhere, what are you a custie? Man that is so weak, I can't believe you paid $15 for that".  

I'm not one to get in anyone's face, and certainly not about something as trivial as a shirt. That guy had a pretty lousy and ugly shirt, at least in my taste, and I was perfectly content with my hood shirt. It was his problem for not railing in my $15. Additionally, I was still tripping balls, so I didn't really feel like dealing with that kind of issue right then. No one was going to rain on my parade... no sir. So I shrugged and laughed it off and walked away.

I came back to the meeting point, looked around, and.... nothing. No one in sight. I looked all around me, walked forward a little more, looked around, walked back, looked around, walked in a circle, checked all the vendors in the vicinity. No one. Couldn’t find my friends. Say it ain't so.

At this point I’m thinking, “Not now. Not tonight, not when I'm in this state of mind”. I looked again, I called out their names. Nothing. I saw vendors, I saw phans, I saw cops, I saw way too many people, but I could not find my friends. And then my mind decided to take over and I started thinking.  And usually when I’m tripping and I start thinking too much, I get caught in a rut and it never takes me anywhere nice. And there and then I started contemplating the situation.

“I'm in Hartford, lost at a Phish show. I'm staying at a friend's house in the Hartford suburbs, only I don't the address, the phone number or her last name. I know none in the area. I have no idea where the car is parked. I have nothing on me but my ticket stub, my smokes, three dollars and a recently bought T-shirt. I don’t even have enough cash to call home for assistance either, not that it would do any good, to call my flatmate in France at 5am.”

Possibly my worst nightmare while tripping was turning into reality: froget getting lost on the lawn at a show and not finding your gang, this was serious. When all I craved for was a comfortable and safe place to chill, with a beer and a bowl, I was lost, alone, in the middle of nowhere. 

I sat down on the curb and looked at the crowd, in the faint hope that I might spot someone I knew, to no avail. I was still clutching that damn shirt. After all, if I hadn't gone back I would have been nice and comfortable in a car, heading for that very safe place I craved. “But no, I had to go back for the shirt, and a lousy one at that, like that kid said”. I open up the shirt and then right there in front of me, it said:

"It's all Hood"

Sounds cheesy doesn't it ? And yet it got me on the right track again. It got me out of the rut and on the rails again. I didn’t know towards where, but at least I was thinking straight. Well, it’s all relative anyway. I figured, the friends that I came with originally were probably still in the lots somewhere. Knowing them, they were probably on a balloon-hunt or sipping some beers and eating grilled cheese sitting on a bumper somewhere. I might be able to get to their car before they left. 

If only I could make my way back to that car... Try getting your bearings in a parking lot full of phans, one that looks like any other parking lot, at night, just minutes after almost completely loosing it... After a moment's hesitation, I bolted in a random direction. If you saw a kid running wildly for his life through the lots that night, that might have been me. 

I must have gone through most of the lots at the Meadows, weaving between cars, phans and vendors, down that long road leading to the highway, past lines and lines of tired cars stuck in traffic, all the way back to the city where I thought the car was, all the while thinking and mumbling, “It’s all Hood man, it’s all going to be hood”… 

I don’t know how much I ran. It felt like 5 or 6 miles. It probably wasn’t, but then I smoke a pack a day, so it certainly felt that way. And when I got there, oh sweet lord, the car was still here… I waited a good hour before my friends came back, but I knew I was safe. Tired, thirsty and still scared shitless but safe. Curiously, when the driver announced he had lost his car key and it fully dawned on everyone that we were stranded in the parking lot, I was the only one not freaking out or pacing around loudly. But that’s another loooong story.

 - Matt "The Phrench Dude" Cheysson

Matt's site: http://www.homestead.com/phrenchdude