Phish to Headline Festival 8

Phish will perform their first festival since 2004 in a three-day blowout known as Festival 8 this Oct. 30, 31, and Nov. 1 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif. Phish will do eight sets over the three-day event, which marks their eighth festival.

Tickets, which go on sale this Monday at 10 a.m. Pacific time, are $199, not including miscellaneous fees. Daily parking is free; however, camping onsite will cost $15 for cars and $125 for RVs and must be purchased with an event ticket. For those not camping onsite, event organizers are working with Valley Music Travel to provide travel packages with hotel accommodations and transportation between hotels and the event site. Visit http://places.musictoday.com/festival8 to purchase tickets.

In addition to revisiting the festival format, Festival 8 will bring back the band's Halloween event, in which they cover another band's album. This "musical costume," as they refer to it, will be part of a special three-set show on Halloween and the first since 1998.

Phish will become the first band to play consecutive dates at the Empire Polo Club. Festival 8 will also mark a few firsts for the group that Rolling Stone called the most important band of the 90's, as they host their first three-day festival, and their first on the West Coast.

Phish's first festival in 1994 led to a seven-disc DVD set that hit shelves earlier this year. Five years later, they spent the last minutes of 1999 performing in front of 80,000 people in another festival at the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation in the Florida Everglades. This year's Festival 8 comes on the heels of a summer tour that introduced tracks from their fourteenth studio album set for release on September 8, according to the band's website.

Phish fans have been buzzing since mid-2008 about the band's reunion, which turned from rumor to reality one weekend in March this year. Their three-date March reunion escalated into a 13-date summer tour. The news of a new Phish album, their first in five years, and now, a festival are the icing on the cake.

Indio City Manager Glen Southard is optimistic about the positive effect the event will have on Indio's economy.

"We are pleased to support this event," Southard said. "It will bring thousands of visitors to the City of Indio and to the Coachella Valley… We look forward to a great event."