Venue #7: Hunt’s

Address: 101 Main Street Burlington, VT

Shows at this venue: 3/2/85, 3/4/85, 4/19/85, 10/30/85, 2/3/86, 3/2/86, 4/1/86, 5/24/86, 9/3/86, 10/15/86, 1/19/87, 1/21/87, 9/2/87, 9/3/87, 10/14/87, 10/21/87, 11/18/87, 11/19/87

Notable song debuts: Harry Hood, Dog Log, You Enjoy Myself, Icculus, AC/DC Bag, Lushington, Sanity, Clod, I Didn’t Know, Dinner and a Movie

Status: Still standing. Original venue became Sha Na Na’s in the late 1980s. Fire gutted building in 2003. Renovated in 2014.

Can you visit it? Yeah. Upper part of building is lobby and pool for Hilton Garden Inn. Lower part is Vermont Comedy Club.

While everyone knows about Nectar’s, nobody knows about Hunt’s. Maybe it’s because it didn’t survive the 80s like Nectar’s but it is just as, if not more, important in Phish’s history. Take a look at that song list and you’ll see how important it was a space for Phish to grow. Hunt’s was also a marquee music venue for the city of Burlington during its 10 year run from 1977-87. Among those to grace its stage include B.B. King, Roy Orbison, Gregg Allman, Pat Metheny, Taj Mahal, and Jerry Lee Lewis. That Phish was able to take that same stage just years after forming speaks loudly to how much they had taken Burlington’s music scene and were quickly moving up.