“Strange Design,” in the live Phish rotation since its debut on May 16, 1995, is credited to the songwriting team of Tom Marshall and Trey Anastasio, but was primarily written by Anastasio. At a solo performance on February 16, 2010, he explained the song’s origin:

I wrote this song, um, and um, about, I think about three weeks before my wife and I were about to have our first child, which was incredibly 14 years ago. And, um, um, I wrote this, um, sitting, kind of leaning on my back against the wall and kind of, um, thinking about making that strange step from being a non-parent to a parent and that, all the weird feeling and whatnot.

The song was originally recorded for Phish’s 1996 album Billy Breathes, but didn’t make the final song list. Tom Marshall explains:

It was scrapped at the last second. The band was touring in Europe at the time and made the painful decision there – in Italy or France I think. The album was complete and about to be mastered. Design was the last song on the album – after Caspian. It was a bizarre version that no one ever really got used to….

Cutting it was one of those great decisions – after working so long and hard on the song, sacrificing it for the good of the album took a very wide focus – as much thought went into cutting it as went into recording it.