General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20267 min read

Mike Gordon

Mike Gordon (Michael Eliot Gordon, born 1965 in Sudbury, Massachusetts) is an American bassist, singer, songwriter, and filmmaker best known as the bass player and co-founder of the improvisational rock band Phish, and separately as a solo recording artist, collaborator with guitarist Leo Kottke, and director of feature films and documentaries.

Key fact	Detail
Born	Michael Eliot Gordon, 1965, Sudbury, Massachusetts; nickname "Cactus"¹
Role in Phish	Bass and vocals; answered Trey Anastasio's 1983 University of Vermont flyer seeking "a bass player with a P.A."; band's lineup solidified in 1985²^•³
Education	University of Vermont, entering fall 1982; switched from electrical engineering to Film and Communications; bachelor of arts¹
Solo albums	Inside In (2003), The Green Sparrow (2008), Moss (2010), Overstep (2014), OGOGO (2017), and Flying Games (2023), his sixth solo LP⁴^•⁵^•⁶
Kottke collaborations	Duo albums with fingerpicking guitarist Leo Kottke, beginning with Clone (2002) and including 2020's Noon¹^•⁴
Filmmaking	Directed the feature Outside Out (2001), the documentary Rising Low (2002), and Phish's "Down with Disease" music video¹
Songwriting	Phish songs including "Mike's Song," "Contact," "Weigh," "Mound," "Destiny Unbound," and "Catapult"¹

Phish and the Vermont beginning

Phish was founded in 1983 when freshman Trey Anastasio posted flyers around the University of Vermont campus in Burlington looking for musicians; Gordon and drummer Jon Fishman answered, and the band began gigging regularly in the Burlington area. According to Parke Puterbaugh's Phish: The Biography, the flyer Gordon responded to read simply "Looking for a bass player with a P.A." The group, with guitarist Jeff Holdsworth, played its first concert in December 1983²^•³.

The lineup solidified in 1985, when keyboardist Page McConnell joined and Holdsworth left soon after; that quartet of Anastasio, Fishman, Gordon, and McConnell has remained unchanged since². Gordon has described a November 1985 gig at Goddard College, played in a circular school cafeteria to a shrinking audience of about ten people, as his "peak musical experience of all time," the night that cemented his commitment to the band³. At UVM he had begun in electrical engineering before switching to film, a dual interest that shaped his later work both inside and outside the band¹.

With Phish, Gordon has been the band's steady, no-frills bassist and a source of resolutely quirky songs such as "Contact," "Weigh," and "Mound"; he also wrote a column for the band's fan newsletter in the early years. In the late 1990s, as Phish explored its self-described "cow funk" style, he took on a more aggressive musical posture, and in recent improvisations he is often the musician pushing the sound into a freer place⁷. Late in 1991 the group struck a deal with Elektra Entertainment, and its fourteen studio albums have gone on to sell upwards of 8 million albums and DVDs stateside; in 2006 the group established JEMP Records, a label of its own². His bass influences run deep: he first saw Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh perform at the Boston Garden in 1982 and has called his playing "beautiful and powerful"⁸^•⁹.

Solo career and side projects

Under his own name, Gordon has recorded a series of eclectic solo albums. His first fully solo tour was billed as "Mike Gordon and ZYDN" in fall 2003, supporting Inside In¹. He formed his most permanent solo project during Phish's 2008 hiatus, after a full year devoted to writing and recording; his first call was to Max Creek guitarist Scott Murawski, a childhood hero and collaborator since 1997⁵. Albums with the band include Moss (2010), built largely from a series of grooves, and Overstep (2014), a true collaboration with Murawski written during weekend trips around New England; those sessions produced "Yarmouth Road" as well as the Phish tunes "555" and "Snow"⁵.

Recent albums. 2017's OGOGO, produced by Shawn Everett, was recorded partly at Somerville's Q Division, with Gordon telling the producer that every song should have one sound "twisted in some way"⁷. His sixth solo LP, Flying Games (2023), was produced by Gordon, recorded by longtime collaborator Jared Slomoff, and mixed by six-time Grammy-winning engineer Shawn Everett. Gordon made it largely in Megaplum, a makeshift studio he built from an old farmhouse on his property, experimenting with beats banged out on wrenches and farming equipment and with keyboard chords sampled from 1950s Hawaiian guitar records; his bandmates, including drummer John Kimock, keyboardist Robert Walter, percussionist Craig Myers, and guitarist Scott Murawski, sent in parts recorded remotely, sometimes twenty takes of guitar for a single song⁴.

Alongside the solo work, Gordon has recorded bluegrass- and folk-leaning duo albums with acoustic guitar virtuoso Leo Kottke, beginning with Clone (2002) and including 2020's Noon, and has played in projects such as Ramble Dove and the Rhythm Devils¹^•⁴.

Filmmaking and visual work

Gordon's filmmaking predates his career peak with Phish and stayed with him. He directed and produced Phish's only music video, for "Down with Disease"; the documentary Tracking, about the production of the album Hoist; the short Goodwood; Stewart, with McConnell in the title role; the feature film Outside Out (2001), on which he spent over 5,000 hours; and the documentary Rising Low (2002)¹^•¹⁰.

His interest in the visual extends to the stage. Earlier in 2016, Gordon and his solo band debuted the Reel, an interactive disc 3 1/2 feet across that crowd-surfs through the audience during shows; its illuminated panels let fans tap to trigger sounds, so the crowd can literally jam with the musicians, and the band plays off what it hears¹¹.

The flow-state research

In April 2023, at Bob Weir's TRI Studios in San Rafael, California, Gordon and Weir played music while wearing sensors on their heads, arms, and chests, with a half-dozen scientists and engineers monitoring laptops across the room. The project, reported by Rolling Stone on July 6, 2025, is Gordon's effort to understand and capture the "flow state," the feeling he first had at a 1985 Phish show that "the music is playing itself." By the 2010s, Gordon and sound engineer Jared Slomoff had begun turning the idea into real research; flow state and brainwave training had already been studied in sports, concussion treatment, and child behavioral development¹². In high school, Gordon had built a device that measured changes in brain activity¹³.

The two bands

Gordon treats his two musical situations as complements rather than duplicates. His solo band, in its later incarnation with Murawski, Walter, Kimock, and Myers, plays two sets a night, relies on improvisation, and draws songs from throughout his career, much like Phish; the difference is scale and freedom. Phish headlines arenas and festivals, while the solo band plays intimate theaters, and Gordon has said the newer relationship lets the group define itself without decades of built-in chemistry¹¹. He has described the influence as running both directions: leading his own band gives him confidence he brings to Phish, and what he learns week to week with Phish, particularly about surrendering and not trying too hard, feeds back into the solo group⁷.

Live activity. Gordon announced a March 2026 solo tour running from Charleston, South Carolina, through Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, Washington, DC, Brooklyn, Boston, and Portland, Maine, to Burlington, Vermont, with public onsales beginning January 9, 2026¹⁴.

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026