Sharin’ in the groove

Mike Gordon w/ Danny Barnes of the Bad Livers, Sunday, March 7, 8 p.m., Sherman Theater (524 Main St., Stroudsburg). Tickets: $28, at box office, 570.420.2808 and shermantheater.com. Info: 570.420.2808, www.mike-gordon.com.

To Phish fans, Mike Gordon is a steady anchor. In concert, he plays his bass and bobs his head, and besides a song or two a night in which he sings lead, he keeps his mouth shut.

But there’s another side of Gordon that he wants you to see, and it’s one he says you can’t witness at a Phish show.

“People are surprised sometimes,” Gordon, in a recent phone interview from his Burlington, Vt., home, says of his solo shows. “First of all, I’m singing all the songs, but I’m also talking between songs, which I never do at a Phish concert, and I’m jumping up and down a lot. … Fans definitely (see) a whole different side of Mike.

“One thing I like about Phish is that it’s the opposite of that. There’s someone else that’s the bandleader, the singer, the songwriter, the soloist, and because of that I get to get into this Zen state and play the bass lines and just concentrate on the bass. I get to really get wrapped up in that, and in my solo career I’m really trying to flex those other parts of my personality.”

The idea of balance comes up frequently during this conversation. Balance between Gordon’s career with Phish and his career outside of Phish. Balance between his musical career and his film career. And balance between his professional life and his family life, which now includes 15-month-old daughter Tessa.

On the career side of the equation, Gordon’s solo endeavors — including work on a new studio album and a tour that will bring him to the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg Sunday, March 7 — are winning out right now. It’s an about-face from 2004, when Phish leader Trey Anastasio announced the band’s breakup; then, Gordon was vehemently against ending the band, which eventually reunited.

“In the first couple months, I was the one that didn’t want to break up,” Gordon, 44, recalls. “But after those first couple of months, I think I took it the easiest of everyone, where I was really excited that Phish was over.”

Gordon spent 2007 writing “The Green Sparrow,” his 2008 solo album that expanded on elements he previously touched on with Phish, a pair of albums with Leo Kottke and on soundtracks. He assembled a band — guitarist Scott Murawski, Craig Myers on percussion, Tom Cleary on keyboards and Todd Isler on drums — and toured. And it went so well that when Phish reconvened, it took him aback.

“I was so gung-ho about my solo career, and I didn’t want it to be interrupted,” says Gordon. “And I still see my solo career as the most important thing now, and probably indefinitely.”

Again, the idea of balance comes up, something that the four members of Phish often struggled with, considering the limited creative outlet afforded to Gordon, keyboardist Page McConnell and drummer Jon Fishman with alpha-male Anastasio penning the lion’s share of the band’s material.

“But Phish has got such great things about it, so many great possibilities still, that I just cannot deny how great it is for me,” Gordon explained. “And what I’ve decided — and what we’ve all decided — is that we really need both. We’re not going to be satisfied without Phish in our lives, but we’re not going to be satisfied with only Phish in our lives, and we’re just trying to find the balance. So that’s what it is, a balancing act of scheduling and mental energy and everything.”

Gordon — known for his innovative bass work as well as a quirky personality expressed via lyrics, essays on his Web site and his book “Mike’s Corner” — speaks fondly of all of his projects while his cat meows in the background. One of those projects fans won’t see, a video he recently made as a gift for his wife starring their daughter. While working with longtime collaborator Jared Slomoff on the upcoming album, the two decided the video gift needed a soundtrack, and they turned to an unlikely source: Tessa’s toys.

“And we took Tessa’s toy piano and came up with a soundtrack and added lots of other instruments, and it’s just incredible,” Gordon says.

With Phish seemingly in a good place, Gordon is happy to get his solo band — he’s still touring under “Mike Gordon” but is looking for a band name — back on the road, before he returns to working on the new record.

“Our last tour just started to have this ferociousness about it, when we were taking the songs and finding the life of the songs, but we were also kind of breaking against the structure of the song and finding the edge that cuts against the structure, and that made it really exciting for me,” he says. “And so I’m really glad that we’re about to do it again.”

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