The Landlady

Written by Trey Anastasio
As performed by Phish on the album Picture of Nectar
Transcribed by Paul Murin

I've had a few requests for this tune, which seems to have more or less disappeared from the Phish repertoire in favor of the song "Punch You in the Eye," which uses the melody and chord changes from "The Landlady" toward the end.

"The Landlady" is comprised of ideas that are more or less standard fare in Latin jazz. It starts with a vamp on F#m-C#7, a progression that will be the basis for the guitar solo toward the end of the tune. Section B is a piano riff that I wrote out for guitar, a slightly-cliched Latin montuno line. At this point, Trey just rips it up Santana-style in F#m, but the piano riff is worth learning anyway because it's bread-and-butter stuff. In music school we called this a CASH phrase--Chromatic Alteration of Static Harmony. Sounds fancy, but all it means is that one note changes in half steps while the others stay the same. Try it on a piano some time too, if you get a chance.

Section C is where the actual melody kicks in, and it continues into section D. I only wrote out the notes, barlines, and chords--you'll have to figure out the exact phrasing on your own. The break is at the beginning, and is super-cool. It starts with a bar of 3 counts followed by 7 more counts, and then the groove picks up back in 4/4. The form is as follows (letters refer to sections marked on the transcription): Section C 2x, Section D 1x, Section C 1x. This is called an "AABA form"--again, very typical stuff in jazz-land.

The solo is short and Santana-ish, in the key of F#m. The chord progression returns to a F#m-C#7 vamp, just like the intro at section A. You can get away with ripping it up in F#m with a pentatonic or aeolian scale, but try messing around with the harmonic minor scale (notated next to section B on the transcription). The key to using this scale effectively is to relate it to the chords--the harmonic minor scale contains an F natural, in contrast to the E that is contained in the pentatonic scale. This note sounds perfect, but only if you nail it on the C#7 portion of the chord progression. Try it--it makes it sound like you really know what you're doing even if you don't (I live by this theory).