In fall of 1992, Phish was busy recording and preparing for the January 1993 release of their fourth album, Rift.. On the night before Halloween 1992, the band played the WBCN New Music Concert, their first appearance at the Boston Garden. In November, they began their second U.S. concert tour of the year at the Ross Arena at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont (released in 2010 as “Haiti Relief”).

The November 19 concert at Saint Mike’s featured local banjo and pedal steel guitar player Gordon Stone, who joined the band on a number of songs including the debut of Fast Enough For You, a track on which he plays pedal steel on Rift.. Axilla I, which Trey announced from the stage was his favorite of the new tunes, was also played for the first time that night. At this show the band also debuted the new Fish original Lengthwise which was performed with a rare reggae reprise. The first appearance of the Big Ball Jam, in which the audience "played the band" by bouncing four large balls (each corresponding to a band member) occurred as well. They also broke out the Johnny Cash classic I Walk the Line for the first time, with Mike singing the Man in Black’s famous lead vocals.

Other shows on the late-November swing through the Northeast featured the premiere of a number of new originals, such as Buffalo Bill (first played at the SUNY Stonybrook Sports Complex on November 21, 1992 and played live only three times since) and the instrumental Faht (a/k/a "Windham Hell", which was first played by Fish on guitar at Cornell University’s Bailey Hall on November 22). Fish’s mother, Mimi, joined the band on November 23 at the Broome County Forum in Binghamton, New York for the vacum solo on Lengthwise. The month of November ended with a Thanksgiving celebration at Phish’s last Capitol Theater shows on November 27 and 28 in Port Chester, NY. In the second set of the November 28 show during Love You, Fish showed his ability to play the Electrolux and a large gong simultaneously, apologizing for the length of his vacum solo before ending the tune and titling it "Woody’s Gong". That set also contained Harpua, in which the audience was taken on a journey (their second of the 2 night stand) inside Fish’s head to visit Jimmy, Harpua, Poster Nutbag and their favorite hit by the Spin Doctors, Jimmy Olsen’s Blues. As Trey said of the band’s onstage antics of the era in a November 5, 1992 interview with Jon Hunt, "That jokey stuff just worms its way into the set…when you spend that much time with people, you start doing stuff to crack each other up. That stuff suddenly appears on stage for that very reason — to make the other band members laugh." By the Thanksgiving 1992 shows, the "Cap. Theater" had become a mainstay in the band’s fall itineraries. Recalling its fine acoustics and precariously bouncing balcony, this venue is still regarded by many fans as one of their all-time favorite places to see Phish.