Mike Gordon

Michael Eliot Gordon (born June 3, 1965) is an American bass guitarist and vocalist most recognized as a founding member of the band Phish.

In addition to bass, Gordon is an accomplished banjo player, and is proficient at piano and guitar.

He is also a filmmaker (Rising Low, Outside Out) and author (Mike's Corner).

He has released six solo studio albums and three studio albums with acoustic guitar pioneer Leo Kottke.

Gordon was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts, the son of Marjorie Minkin, an abstract painter, and Robert Gordon, founder and former President and CEO of New England convenience store chain Store 24.

Gordon attended the Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston and Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School.

Gordon holds a bachelor's degree in Arts (he was originally an Electrical Engineering major) from the University of Vermont.

Gordon met Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, and Jeff Holdsworth while attending college at University of Vermont, where the rock band Phish formed in 1983.

He answered a posted flyer hanging in the dorms at UVM by Trey Anastasio, looking for a bass player for a new band.

Gordon played many roles in Phish.

Until the band became too big for self-management, he dealt with practically all public relations and fan communication, such as answering fan mail, managing funds and booking gigs.

Gordon wrote a column titled "Mike's Corner" for the band's newsletter in the 1990s.

Musically, Gordon's influence is the most obvious in Phish's many different renditions of various bluegrass, calypso, and even traditional Jewish songs (Gordon is Jewish).

He also contributed by singing, as well as writing lyrics.

Gordon wrote 19 original Phish songs and co-authored 27 additional Phish tracks, including "Mound", "Train Song", "Round Room", "Sugar Shack," "Yarmouth Road," "555," "Say Something," "Waking Up Dead," and the band's third most-performed song historically: "Mike's Song."

Gordon also practices transcendental meditation.

Like Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, Gordon used to play custom-made bass guitars built by Paul Languedoc.

Gordon played two Languedoc bass guitars, including a "dragon" bass.

These bass guitars employed custom wound pickups from Mørch guitars of Denmark.

Gordon began experimenting with a Modulus Quantum 5 bass guitar on stage with Phish as early as October 31, 1994.

He has played banjo since 1994, performing the instrument in concert with Phish and [Phil Lesh] (albeit an electric banjo) and in the studio on the 2007 Bernie Worrell album Improvisczario.

His current touring band (again billed as "Mike Gordon") is Scott Murawski on guitar, Robert Walter on B3 Organ & Synth, drummer John Morgan Kimock and percussionist Craig Myers.

He made the switch to this instrument as his main bass at Phish's March 1, 1997, show at Markthalle in Hamburg, Germany to a Quantum 5 with two EMG DC pickups.

He later acquired a TBX model which is the through-neck version of the same guitar.

Gordon plays with a pick (Jim Dunlop 1.5mm triangular graphite picks) and Ken Smith Slickround™ (half flat) strings

Gordon's signature sound is also attributable to an array of signal processing equipment including an ADA MB-1 pre-amp, an Ibanez flanger (used at the beginning of "Down with Disease"), a Lovetone Meatball envelope filter (also used at the beginning of "Down with Disease"), an Akai Deep Impact, an EHX Bass Micro-Synth, an EBS OctaBass and a Boss SYB-3, a Boss BF-2 flanger, an Eventide 4500 Harmonizer, an Eventide Eclipse and a Lexicon LXP-15.

Gordon has used a variety of amplifier and speaker combinations including the SWR SM-900 amp/Goliath 4x10" enclosure but lately has been playing through Eden WT-800 amps, a Meyer Sound CP-10 parametric EQ, and onward toward a Meyer Sound powered speaker system (two 750P 2x18 cabs and two UPA-1Ps with 12" low frequency drivers and 3" compression drivers).

As of December 2012, Gordon uses Source Audio Bass Envelope Filter Pro, Source Audio Bass Distortion Pro, Eventide Eclipse, Eventide Space, MXR graphic EQ, Boss graphic EQ and Electro Harmonix Super Ego, The Meatball envelope filter by Lovetone™, an Ibanez stomp box flanger, and an Eventide 4500 Harmonizer.

He currently uses Eden WT 800 amp into a Meyers CP-10 parametric EQ, and onward toward a Meyers powered speaker system: One 750P 2×18 and one 750 PL 2 x 18, two UPA-1P on top.

He goes straight to the Eden WT800 driving a single Eden 4×10 cab, sometimes enhancing with more Eden 18s and more power.

In 2014, Gordon commissioned custom moiré instruments for himself and guitarist Scott Murawski to work with stage props being used on his 2014 Spring Tour.

The guitar and bass (crafted specifically for this tour by Ben Lewry of Oakland, California's Visionary Instruments) are hollow, with LEDs inside that make them glow, and moiré screens stretched across the front.

The LEDs in the guitars are manipulated by the lighting director, swapping colors and flashing patterns in response to the music.

These band members have toured regularly with Gordon since 2015, with the exception of a tour in June 2023, which saw keyboardist Rachel Eckroth subbing for Robert Walter while he was on the road with Roger Waters.

Gordon decided to tour as a quintet to differentiate his project's instrumentation from Phish.

In April 2017, Gordon and his bandmates recorded OGOGO, Mike's fifth studio album, as a band at Q Division in Boston.

“All five of us decided not to do what we had done before, but to be fresher and try to find our own voices.

That started happening in a some jams... I want things to be interesting in a way that would serve the song.” The album was produced by GRAMMY Award-winning Shawn Everett and was released on September 15, 2017.

In February 2023, Gordon announced his sixth solo record 'Flying Games', which was written and recorded during 2020’s lockdown, in his makeshift Megaplum home studio.

The album was produced by Gordon, recorded by longtime collaborator Jared Slomoff, and mixed by six-time Grammy-winning engineer Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, The War on Drugs).