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Anyway, let me know if this makes sense or not.[/quote]
Yeah, that all makes sense. I think you're right that doing this presentation in terms of modes would probably confuse people more. But, I think there is also something deceptively simple about Phish mode changes these days.
If you think of Gmajor Ionian as a family of chords - I (G major) ii (Amin) iii (Bmin) IV (C major) V (Dmajor), vi (Emin) vii (F# dim?) I (Gmajor). Then an Amin Dorian jam is often going to jump around within this family of chords (well, usually Phish doesn't touch the iii to be honest). The jam itself is on the "ii" in this conception. They are in effect jamming on the "ii" of a given key/family of chords.
I totally get the dissonance of thinking of the I as the V (because the V wants to resolve etc etc.) But insofar as the Grateful Dead inaugurated jams music with Dark Star (A Mixo), I like to think of that as jamming on the V chord in D major scale. (This all has to do probably with how I learned my scales on guitar and then tried to transpose them to modes). So much jam music is this jamming on the V chord imo.