Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Grantly Phillips first made his name in the nineties as
Speaker 2: the frontman of Grant Lee Buffalo, a critically acclaimed band
Speaker 2: that released four albums and toured with Pearl Jam, The
Speaker 2: Smashing Pumpkins, and rim Rolling Stone named Grant Lee Best
Speaker 2: Male Vocalist in ninety four, and his band became known
Speaker 2: for their folk confused rock sound and their reflections on
Speaker 2: American history. After Grantly Buffalo disbanded in ninety nine, Phillips
Speaker 2: launched a solo career, eventually becoming familiar to a wider
Speaker 2: audience through his recurring role as the town troubadour on
Speaker 2: Gilmour Girls. Last September, he released his twelfth solo album,
Speaker 2: and The Hour of Dust. The album's title was inspired
Speaker 2: by an ancient Indian painting grantle Soada Museum in Pasadena
Speaker 2: that depicts the twilight moment when cows are led home
Speaker 2: and kick up dust as night false. On today's episode,
Speaker 2: Bruce Headlem talks to GRANTLYE. Phillips about making in The
Speaker 2: Hour of Dust. He tells the story of how he
Speaker 2: tripped to the Librea tar pits with his old friend
Speaker 2: Michael Stipe, inspired his song American Lions, and he discusses
Speaker 2: his songwriting process and how he approaches writing lyrics that
Speaker 2: balanced the personal with larger societal themes. This is broken record,
Speaker 2: real musicians, real conversations. Here's Bruce Headlam with Grant Welee Phillips.
Speaker 3: You have a new album called in the Hour of Dust,
Speaker 3: and I want to know the story behind the title.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 5: I'll try to make this as concise as I can.
Speaker 5: But I was out in LA where I lived for
Speaker 5: some thirty years something like that. I'm a native Californian,
Speaker 5: but I moved from Stockton, California, to LA in about
Speaker 5: eighty three, I guess. But some years ago I was
Speaker 5: at the Norton Simon Museum of Art. It's a great
Speaker 5: museum in Pasadena, and they had an exhibit paintings from
Speaker 5: India from about the fifteenth century, I think, and one
Speaker 5: of them was called The Hour of cow Dust. This
Speaker 5: is just a really lovely little painting and I love
Speaker 5: that title. And I wrote it down and just kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, set it aside and forgot about it for
Speaker 5: about fifteen years something like that. But it came back
Speaker 5: to me when I was struting to do a lot
Speaker 5: of painting myself, you know, I've always been interested in
Speaker 5: visual art and involved with that, you know, as well
Speaker 5: as songwriting. But I had a particular piece that I
Speaker 5: had painted, and I was asking myself what I want
Speaker 5: to call this, and some part of me was reminded
Speaker 5: of that particular title, the Hour of cow Dust. I
Speaker 5: always wanted to do something with that. I thought it
Speaker 5: might be a song. Who knew. And at the same time,
Speaker 5: I had taken an interest in a Mayormerican Tonalism, the
Speaker 5: art movement that it was dubbed American Tonalism a little
Speaker 5: bit later, but it was roughly the late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 5: posts Civil War, and this is a period where landscape
Speaker 5: painters are preoccupied with the idea of twilight, that transition
Speaker 5: from day to night. And I believe it was sort
Speaker 5: of a metaphor and a way of encompassing some of
Speaker 5: the grief and the confusion in the wake of the
Speaker 5: American Civil War, and.
Speaker 4: All of these things kind of collided.
Speaker 5: And that title kind of leapt forward, you know, in
Speaker 5: the hour of Dust, a moment of confusion, working your
Speaker 5: way through the blinding sands of unreality.
Speaker 3: So why was the Indian painting called cow Dust? What
Speaker 3: does that mean.
Speaker 4: Well, that's a great question that.
Speaker 5: Has to do with this, this moment in the day
Speaker 5: when the cows are led back home and in doing so,
Speaker 5: their hoofs kick up the dust, right, and we're blinded
Speaker 5: by that dust. And it's that moment when we have
Speaker 5: to light the lanterns, we have to prepare for night.
Speaker 4: Night is about to fall.
Speaker 5: So I thought, well, there it is. You know, it's
Speaker 5: that theme again.
Speaker 3: You, as well as being interested in art, you are
Speaker 3: a very impressionistic lyric writer. For the most part, this
Speaker 3: album's a little different. The songwriting is more direct here.
Speaker 4: I think, Yeah, that's possible. I think.
Speaker 5: I think I've always been trying to be as direct
Speaker 5: as I could and not realizing that I have somehow
Speaker 5: veered into the metaphor that happens as well. Maybe with age,
Speaker 5: with doing it over and over, some clarity comes with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a song like you Know she Knows Me? Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's got a beautiful image of you a kite flying
Speaker 3: out a window, but it's it's it's a love song. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Bullies is a song about bullies, little men, No mistaking
Speaker 3: is it's a great love song. Yeah, in a much
Speaker 3: more direct in a much more direct way. Was that
Speaker 3: was that deliberate or is this.
Speaker 1: Is this is just what you're feeling.
Speaker 5: It's deliberate, It's what I'm feeling. I don't believe that
Speaker 5: it's altogether new, though, I'm I if you look through
Speaker 5: a certain degree of my work, my solo albums especially,
Speaker 5: I guess you know, Post Grantly Buffalo, there are songs
Speaker 5: like Heavenly, Heavenly and Truly Truly, I guess all the
Speaker 5: double the double titled songs, you know, trying to hammer
Speaker 5: the point home there. I guess I'll sing it again.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't think of another word that's right.
Speaker 5: I think I've always kind of walked that line, I guess,
Speaker 5: And for me, kind of citing citing those things that
Speaker 5: are meaningful to me is a way of kind of
Speaker 5: of honoring all that I do care about, you know,
Speaker 5: all of the tenderness of life that seems to get
Speaker 5: pushed to the side sometimes in this state of constant
Speaker 5: panic that we find ourselves in. You know, So I
Speaker 5: choose to sing about those things that keep me up
Speaker 5: at night. But I also I'm aware of what I'd
Speaker 5: rather be focused on, you know, and that's the stuff
Speaker 5: of life.
Speaker 4: As well.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned the song she Knows Me?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it does have this wonderful image of you
Speaker 3: as a kite being swept out the window and the
Speaker 3: person in your life knows how to get you down
Speaker 3: from the telephone wires. Did you get stuck on? Yeah,
Speaker 3: a song like that? Did it start with a simple
Speaker 3: thought she knows Me? Or did that image begin? How
Speaker 3: did How did a song like that come together?
Speaker 5: My experience is that the best songs they leave me
Speaker 5: a little bit confused, and I can't remember writing them,
Speaker 5: you know, I can't remember how they were written. I
Speaker 5: can remember being It's like it's like recalling being abducted
Speaker 5: or something, isn't it. I was on I was on
Speaker 5: a country road and there was a light and I
Speaker 5: was backstage in Dublin and I was, you know, kind
Speaker 5: of plunking on the guitar and I landed on these
Speaker 5: chords and I began to kind of sing, and in
Speaker 5: that state of nerves that you get before you go on,
Speaker 5: I realized, Hey, there's a song here, there's something, something's
Speaker 5: happening here. I'll sing it into my phone and I did,
Speaker 5: and then I kind of just kept singing. It never
Speaker 5: really never you know, really putting too much thought into
Speaker 5: it at soundcheck, and gosh, maybe a month or so later,
Speaker 5: turned on the tape, the digital tape, and it all
Speaker 5: just kind of fell out, you know. But I kind
Speaker 5: of I have found that that is a good way
Speaker 5: for me to work, you know, because this is such
Speaker 5: as a verbal medium, and the songs exist as we're
Speaker 5: talking now, you know, I as opposed to like the
Speaker 5: songs having this separate life on a sheet of paper,
Speaker 5: I would much rather use the microphone as my my quill.
Speaker 5: And often I'll do that when I feel like, you know,
Speaker 5: this is just not singing right, let me just turn
Speaker 5: And you know, I've heard that Bowie would do that
Speaker 5: as well, you know, trying to work his way through
Speaker 5: phrase after phrase until it felt natural and it felt
Speaker 5: right and you can.
Speaker 4: Just trust that process.
Speaker 3: Is that process for you, a short one, a long one?
Speaker 4: Both? It can is.
Speaker 5: It's usually the case of one wonderful spasm of a song,
Speaker 5: but if it isn't completed in that moment, I might
Speaker 5: have to wait until the next occasion for you know,
Speaker 5: to pick it up where I left off. And that
Speaker 5: too can be kind of spasmodic or just you know,
Speaker 5: the case of getting in the car and singing along
Speaker 5: and then it hits me.
Speaker 4: You know, I really have.
Speaker 5: I have learned to try to get out of my
Speaker 5: own way and that case, you know, let the song
Speaker 5: kind of write itself, and it does it most always done.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: If I use my voice as kind of the skeleton
Speaker 5: key that that usually seems to work out the best.
Speaker 5: You know, like automatic writing, but using your voice, you know,
Speaker 5: it doesn't all have to exist with your wrist.
Speaker 3: And then do you you filled in the chords around
Speaker 3: that doesn't have to exist with your wrists.
Speaker 4: See it happened right here in the room.
Speaker 3: I thank god we're surrounded by microphone.
Speaker 5: I think they've never written such a genius line like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have very distinctive melodies. There's usually a few
Speaker 3: intervals that aren't usual. There's a lot of chromatic lines.
Speaker 3: And what you write. Is that something you work on
Speaker 3: with songs or is it something that's just where your
Speaker 3: voice goes.
Speaker 5: I think it's where my voice and where my my
Speaker 5: fingers go, where my ears go.
Speaker 4: I guess, you know.
Speaker 5: I like exploring with the guitar, like making discoveries, and
Speaker 5: you know, sometimes sometimes I do get under the hood
Speaker 5: of some some song that I've always been mesmerized by,
Speaker 5: you know, like, how do you play stardust? You know,
Speaker 5: everything that's you know, under the under the stars. You know,
Speaker 5: there's so much music you can explore and and sometimes
Speaker 5: when you get it wrong, you wind up discovering something
Speaker 5: else and that can be my song.
Speaker 3: Do you Is that something you'll do, like you'll you'll
Speaker 3: sing another song and you'll get a germ of an
Speaker 3: idea from that.
Speaker 4: I suppose that's. Yeah, that's possible.
Speaker 5: It's more indirect though, It's it's more like sort of
Speaker 5: like this, like like the album title, whatever time I
Speaker 5: spent a few years back trying to work out some
Speaker 5: strange chord and stardust, it might reappear and inspire me
Speaker 5: down the road, you know. Rodney Krause said something like that,
Speaker 5: like he played in bands where they had play helped
Speaker 5: me make it through the night, you know, And he said,
Speaker 5: if I hadn't done that, then I probably wouldn't have
Speaker 5: written Leaving the Louisiana and the Pale Moonlighter. You know,
Speaker 5: these kind of things they have a way of kind
Speaker 5: of creeping to the surface years later. You know, that's
Speaker 5: part of the magic of this whole thing is you know,
Speaker 5: kind of you know, kind of lighting the right incense
Speaker 5: and and just seeing seeing what happens, and and you know,
Speaker 5: I like that the spontaneity of it. And there's always
Speaker 5: a place to chip away. And there are great artists
Speaker 5: who who are who skillfully craft their work, you know,
Speaker 5: and and and continue to refine it. I'm not sure
Speaker 5: where I exist in that spectrum, you know. I mean
Speaker 5: I have a level of of you know, I have
Speaker 5: a critical ear as well, but uh, my ear becomes
Speaker 5: more critical when it feels as though it was forced
Speaker 5: or it wasn't natural, or you know, uh it wasn't
Speaker 5: accidental enough.
Speaker 3: Have you have you become more critical as you've gotten older?
Speaker 3: Less critical?
Speaker 5: I think, if anything, I've become a little more trusting
Speaker 5: in the process, less ruled by anxiety. I guess, you know,
Speaker 5: the idea that I don't know. Sometimes you can get
Speaker 5: yourself into kind of a loop where the idea of
Speaker 5: like that you won't finish the song creeps in or
Speaker 5: maybe this is the last record, that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: But even if that was the case, that's you know,
Speaker 5: that's probably acceptable. I would find something else to write about.
Speaker 5: You know what seems like my critical mind is often
Speaker 5: just anxiety.
Speaker 1: Anyhow, mm hm, anxiety over careers.
Speaker 4: Any number of things. Uh uh yeah, I think that's.
Speaker 5: That's that's the kind of the pleasure in music is
Speaker 5: setting setting those things aside. It's the thing that I've
Speaker 5: always you know, when everything was crazy kind of growing
Speaker 5: up in my house, I turned to the guitar and
Speaker 5: put on the headphones and kind of lose myself in music.
Speaker 4: It was that, you know, that sense of comfort.
Speaker 1: Did you grow up in a crazy house?
Speaker 5: A crazy house that was a you know, my parents
Speaker 5: are young, and it seems like there were you know,
Speaker 5: there were always voices being raised, but there were also
Speaker 5: you know, there were good songs playing in the house too.
Speaker 5: My dad loved country music. I have exposed to Merle
Speaker 5: Haggart and Charlie Pride and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: My mother was more of a like a carpenter's fan,
Speaker 5: you know. But it was a golden era in terms
Speaker 5: of great melodic, depressing songs.
Speaker 1: What made you discover the guitar?
Speaker 5: Well, I can remember sitting back with the family and
Speaker 5: we would watch guys like Roy Clark, you know, just
Speaker 5: kind of just shred and everyone was so mesmerized, and
Speaker 5: I was as well, and I wanted to do that,
Speaker 5: you know, I wanted to learn how to make sounds
Speaker 5: like that, play Ghostwriters in the Sky, you know, really
Speaker 5: simple ambitions, you know, I mean to play it like
Speaker 5: Roy Clark is a whole other level of ambition. And
Speaker 5: what I found was that as soon as I picked
Speaker 5: up the guitar and learned a chord or to, I
Speaker 5: began to I began to write songs soon after.
Speaker 4: So I'm in high.
Speaker 5: School, I'm fourteen, fifteen something like that, and I've just
Speaker 5: got a song after song that I'm writing. And it
Speaker 5: was a good time to have your ears open and
Speaker 5: discover all kinds.
Speaker 4: Of music, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean things were kind of blasting off overseas, you know,
Speaker 5: Elvis Costello and great songwriters like that, bands like The Clash.
Speaker 5: But also discovering Neil Young around that time. That was
Speaker 5: a big one for me. Yeah, seeing him by himself
Speaker 5: at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Yeah, that made
Speaker 5: a real impact.
Speaker 3: You were in LA when you formed Grantly Buffalo. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so tell me were you playing around town?
Speaker 5: What was the Yeah, we played everywhere around town.
Speaker 4: You know, I.
Speaker 5: Moved to LA three, and there was all this stuff
Speaker 5: going on, you know, a lot of underground stuff, and
Speaker 5: we kind of grew up out of that, you know,
Speaker 5: playing these these little clubs and some of them you
Speaker 5: would get a gig at midnight downtown, you know, Al's,
Speaker 5: bar Raji's, all of these these clubs that a lot
Speaker 5: of well known bands, you know, kind of legendary bands
Speaker 5: now also kind of cut their teeth in Largo then
Speaker 5: called Cafe Largo on Fairfax was a it was more
Speaker 5: of a cabaret actually, and that's kind of what where
Speaker 5: we came out of mostly, you know, and kind of
Speaker 5: playing maybe too loud at times for that room and
Speaker 5: pushing the edge, but that's kind of the that's.
Speaker 4: The secret really, you know.
Speaker 5: It's that kind of steam kettle kind of concept where
Speaker 5: there's a little more force than you know, and that
Speaker 5: blows the lid off and.
Speaker 4: It's very exciting, you know.
Speaker 3: I tend to think of LA at that time being
Speaker 3: like the punk scene, maybe like hair metal bands. I
Speaker 3: don't think of it being.
Speaker 5: Well, you're right, and that was a strange thing. They're
Speaker 5: really you didn't really know where to find your own
Speaker 5: tribe because there was all of that going down on
Speaker 5: one part of you know, in one part of town,
Speaker 5: but deeper in the bowels of the city you would
Speaker 5: find bands like Savage Republic six or so guys, one
Speaker 5: of them beaten on a flaming oil drum and seems
Speaker 5: like every guitar was tuned to E and they were
Speaker 5: just going for it, you know. And in that environment
Speaker 5: the band Shiva Burlesque, which was the first band that
Speaker 5: I was involved with with putting together in La we
Speaker 5: came out of that and then we sort of morphed
Speaker 5: into Grantly Buffalo as I took my writing into a
Speaker 5: different place and began to kind of just step up
Speaker 5: to the microphone. Literally, even though I had written songs
Speaker 5: and performed, I kind of took a back seat for
Speaker 5: a period there until I couldn't know more. And yeah,
Speaker 5: so Grantly Buffer all of that that stuff was somewhere
Speaker 5: between ninety and ninety three, wrote a zillion songs, and
Speaker 5: then we signed with Slash Records, and they, as you
Speaker 5: pointed out, and everything they had, they had also kind
Speaker 5: of spawned or signed some of the you know, some
Speaker 5: of the punk bands like the Germs and those those
Speaker 5: more musical punk like bands like X and dream Syndicate
Speaker 5: and that type of.
Speaker 1: Thing, and you it was Bob Mold involved.
Speaker 5: Bob Mold and Nick Hill had a label and it
Speaker 5: was called Sol Singles Only label and they would just
Speaker 5: put out vinyl singles. And they put out this single
Speaker 5: of Fuzzy and that became a song that was played
Speaker 5: a good amount and it kind of became our you know,
Speaker 5: our calling card for for a while, and ultimately I
Speaker 5: think it kind of led to the Bambien signed.
Speaker 3: And then that album came out. You looking back now,
Speaker 3: you got a lot of attention pretty pretty quickly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I feel like there was a greater wave of music.
Speaker 5: It was sort of like the people at the record
Speaker 5: companies they kind of just stepped out of the room
Speaker 5: for a moment and they let musicians be musicians.
Speaker 4: And you know, some of these.
Speaker 5: Bands had had experienced some sort of ground swell in
Speaker 5: a regional way, you know, everything that was going on
Speaker 5: in Seattle or wherever. And it was a healthy time
Speaker 5: to make music because we weren't so controlled and you know,
Speaker 5: we were producing ourselves and just leave us alone, you know, and.
Speaker 4: It produced good music.
Speaker 5: The band probably got a foothold in Europe much more so,
Speaker 5: especially in the UK, and we toured quite a bit
Speaker 5: in the UK and in other parts of Scandinavia, places
Speaker 5: where I still I still returned to and I'll be
Speaker 5: back in these parts in a few weeks from now,
Speaker 5: really really special places for me, and you know, a
Speaker 5: lot of history there.
Speaker 3: And then the band broke up, Yeah, for queens bad reasons.
Speaker 5: Well, I think, you know, I mean when you stop
Speaker 5: and consider that we have history that goes back before
Speaker 5: Grantly Buffalo and back into Shiva Blasque. So that mixed
Speaker 5: for a pretty long period where we just worked with
Speaker 5: one another, you know, and there's a frustration that sets
Speaker 5: in when in a situation where it doesn't change much,
Speaker 5: you know, and I'm speaking of touring, you know, by
Speaker 5: and large, I think that's a real hard one sometimes
Speaker 5: to deal with when you really, you know, when you
Speaker 5: get your joy from experimenting, from recording and I don't know,
Speaker 5: it's it's a hard.
Speaker 4: One for me.
Speaker 5: I can mix it up by myself, but it's a
Speaker 5: little harder to do that with the band.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: We all have to kind of agree on, you know,
Speaker 5: where it's going to go tonight, you know, and where
Speaker 5: it's going to go in general, and in terms of
Speaker 5: our life, you know, you're a six legged beast if
Speaker 5: you're a trio. And for me as a songwriter, I
Speaker 5: mean we basically I was twenty nine, I think when
Speaker 5: we signed our deal at that point, you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: I've been writing songs for a good chunk of my life,
Speaker 5: you know, since I was a teenager, and it's the
Speaker 5: songs that really kind of lead me. I have to
Speaker 5: follow that, and that's sometimes a very solitary kind of thing,
Speaker 5: you know. I don't really write with other folks, you know,
Speaker 5: unless you know, every now and then somebody will ask you,
Speaker 5: don't write a song with me. But it's a solitary thing,
Speaker 5: and it's a very personal kind of kind of path
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with more from Grantly Phillips after the break.
Speaker 3: Now, when you began your solo career, it was also
Speaker 3: a really interesting time in the calambitus time in the
Speaker 3: music business, just when Napster has come in, right, nobody
Speaker 3: knows what's going to happen to the business. You were
Speaker 3: in this transition at the same time and may have
Speaker 3: had certain expectations going forward, you know, what is the album?
Speaker 3: You know, and all that was being up ended. What
Speaker 3: was it like from your point of view to watch
Speaker 3: all that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I can remember that that moment, and there there
Speaker 5: was a sense that we were again approaching some big
Speaker 5: transitional point. You know, everyone was screaming about Y two K. Remember,
Speaker 5: you know, are we going to lose our computers? I
Speaker 5: woke up that morning. My garage door wasn't working.
Speaker 4: It's happening. I don't know why. It's starting with my
Speaker 4: garage door opener, but.
Speaker 5: And the machines are rebelling like that like that Beck
Speaker 5: video right where the refrigerator goes crazy. And I wasn't
Speaker 5: so certain where where it was all going. I felt
Speaker 5: like I wanted to embrace, you know, the future. And
Speaker 5: the first thing I did, one of the first things
Speaker 5: I put out was entirely self relis. It was an
Speaker 5: album called Ladies Love Oracle. And I went into my
Speaker 5: friend John Bryan in great musician composer, and he had
Speaker 5: a studio he'd built in his house, and he said,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm working on this soundtrack. The soundtrack was Magnolia,
Speaker 5: but here's you know, go ahead and go up to
Speaker 5: my studio and you know, have fun this week and
Speaker 5: whatever you want to do.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: And I was there for about three days or so
Speaker 5: and walked out with a record, you know, you know,
Speaker 5: a record that was really stripped down to my voice
Speaker 5: and guitar, and you know, I play played everything on
Speaker 5: It's some piano and organ, but yeah, I was like,
Speaker 5: this feels right, and I didn't know where it was
Speaker 5: going to go. It wasn't built to be something that
Speaker 5: was going to stand alongside the most the slickest, most
Speaker 5: produced record that was on the radio. Wasn't really built
Speaker 5: for radio or anything like that. I was just meant
Speaker 5: to be something truthful and that felt really good.
Speaker 3: And then you immediately turned around and did a very
Speaker 3: different album, yes, Mobilized. You know a lot of people
Speaker 3: know you from, Yeah, Grantly Buffalo, a lot of people
Speaker 3: know you from Mobilized.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think I felt as though if I was going
Speaker 5: to make a solo record, it was the first one
Speaker 5: for a rounder at that time, then it truly had
Speaker 5: to be a solo record. I mean, talk about extremes,
Speaker 5: you know, it's just like I'm going to play everything
Speaker 5: on it, with the exception of the percussion, which I
Speaker 5: had a hand in, but we programmed that, you know,
Speaker 5: and I'm listening to a lot of things that are
Speaker 5: so different. I'm listening to Jork and Moby and all
Speaker 5: this stuff, and I love this air. Feeling very kind
Speaker 5: of inspired by things that feel so different than you know,
Speaker 5: the music that I would typically listen to. You know,
Speaker 5: it pushed me down a road that was, you know,
Speaker 5: a little more uncharted.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I hit upon hybrid songs that I had written on
Speaker 5: the guitar and the piano, but also songs that had
Speaker 5: their genesis in me trying my hand at programming a
Speaker 5: rhythm track and just working with sounds specifically, you know,
Speaker 5: like maybe it doesn't have to be a traditional drum sound,
Speaker 5: maybe it's something else, you know.
Speaker 3: At the same time, we have to mention you have
Speaker 3: fans because of television. Yeah, you know, I actually watched
Speaker 3: the show Gilmore. Oh really yes, yeah, you're not supposed
Speaker 3: to say that as a guy, but.
Speaker 1: I didn't recognize you at first. I was like, who's
Speaker 1: that guy? I thought he was You're an actor?
Speaker 5: How did I even plays an actor who plays a musician?
Speaker 1: How did that come about?
Speaker 5: Amy Sherman Palladino, who created Gilmore Girls. She and her
Speaker 5: husband Daniel Palladino. They were big music fans, and they
Speaker 5: were fans of Grantly Buffalo. They had came out and
Speaker 5: seen me play and had were familiar with my solo records,
Speaker 5: certainly with the first one I was working on, Mobilized,
Speaker 5: when I got the call from them inviting me to
Speaker 5: come down and be on this new show. You know,
Speaker 5: for all I knew it was kind of flax, a
Speaker 5: one off, and lo and behold, you know, several seasons
Speaker 5: and quite a few episodes that I have this sort
Speaker 5: of bit part in a special guest appearance, as they say,
Speaker 5: and you know, in some in some situations, some really
Speaker 5: insane scenes, you know, where I'm battling it out with
Speaker 5: another local troubadour played by Dave gruber Allen from Freaks
Speaker 5: and Geeks, and another one where word has gotten around
Speaker 5: the stars Hollow, the setting of the show is a
Speaker 5: hotbed where troubadours could be discovered. You know, it's the
Speaker 5: new it's the Seattle, it's the new Seattle for for buskers,
Speaker 5: and so among the hopeful sonic youth show up in
Speaker 5: town and they set up with their you know, their
Speaker 5: pig nose amps and just surreal and bizarre, and it
Speaker 5: always felt like a real coup to to be a
Speaker 5: part of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then as you mention, your next album was Virginia Creeper,
Speaker 3: which is another big album people people think of. It's
Speaker 3: got starts with Mona Lisa, Yeah, Dirty Secret, a lot
Speaker 3: of great, great.
Speaker 1: Songs on that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Are you thinking when you when you you'd finished Mobilized,
Speaker 3: what was what was the thinking going into that record?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I create this record, Mobilize. It has,
Speaker 5: you know, an interesting palette of sounds, but I soon
Speaker 5: find myself on the road, just me and the twelve
Speaker 5: string guitar, and it was kind of like the songs
Speaker 5: were kind of they were being presented as though they
Speaker 5: you know, kind of where they started solo acoustically, and
Speaker 5: so again, the songs just they led me. And I
Speaker 5: never really went back to that because I suppose I
Speaker 5: kind of narrowed the gap between what I write and
Speaker 5: what I record. You know, even though I do bring
Speaker 5: a band in and I've had work with some great
Speaker 5: musicians over the years, and you know, there's a band
Speaker 5: on the on the the current album, Jay Bell Rose
Speaker 5: on druma Jeniver Condo's Patrick Warren keys, but it's all
Speaker 5: kind of built around the songs, and that's kind of
Speaker 5: how how I began to do it with Virginia Creeper
Speaker 5: and every album after that.
Speaker 4: I'm stuck a little.
Speaker 3: Bit about your your songwriting, your music writing harmonically, what
Speaker 3: you do. Did you have formal lessons? Did you learn theory?
Speaker 3: You didn't do any of that.
Speaker 4: I uh, no, I had.
Speaker 5: I had a couple of weeks of maybe a month
Speaker 5: or more.
Speaker 7: Uh uh.
Speaker 5: But you know, they how it is with music, with
Speaker 5: when learning the guitar, they want to, you know, they
Speaker 5: want you to learn some some old folk song to
Speaker 5: begin with, you know, and it's not the spooky great
Speaker 5: folks songs that are out there, you know. Uh So
Speaker 5: I I I just kind of went down the road
Speaker 5: of writing songs for myself. There have been times where
Speaker 5: I've been curious about theory, but no, I've I've always been,
Speaker 5: you know, more reliant on my ear.
Speaker 3: Even on the new album Closer Tonight, you do the
Speaker 3: switching between the major and minor chords, which is very.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's just like walking down the hall though I
Speaker 5: don't even think about it. I really yeah, I'll take
Speaker 5: your word for it.
Speaker 3: That's got such a distinctive sound to me.
Speaker 5: Well, I've done I've probably done that trick on you know,
Speaker 5: thirteen other songs in the last week, so I probably
Speaker 5: you know, I think of it as building upon what
Speaker 5: I've already written, but yeah, I mean it probably can
Speaker 5: be traced too.
Speaker 3: It's a great trick.
Speaker 5: I love impressionistic music of all sorts, you know, and
Speaker 5: some I find that in some of the like the
Speaker 5: swing era.
Speaker 4: I find it in Debusy. You know.
Speaker 5: I love dissonance. I love the way that a lyric
Speaker 5: can seem to be diametrically opposed to a melody, you know,
Speaker 5: and there's a tension in that.
Speaker 3: And then tell me a little bit about that before
Speaker 3: we get to this, I do want to talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about The Narrows, which was an album I
Speaker 3: really oh yeah, I love that had a very different
Speaker 3: feel different.
Speaker 4: Look.
Speaker 5: There's a few on that record where I'm kind of
Speaker 5: working through those feelings of of leaving my home going
Speaker 5: someplace else. And my father passed away right as we
Speaker 5: basically began to unpack in Nashville, and Smoke and Sparks
Speaker 5: was a song that was you know, written with him
Speaker 5: in mine and uh as a person who's always been
Speaker 5: fascinated with history. I mean you could I think maybe
Speaker 5: that that happens when your your parents named you Grant Lee.
Speaker 5: You know, at some point in time, you know someone's
Speaker 5: gonna gonna whisper to you. You know, there were there
Speaker 5: were some generals, uh right, So I grew up kind
Speaker 5: of interested in history and and.
Speaker 1: Was that actually the reason for your name?
Speaker 5: No, I'm named after my My grandfather and great grandfather
Speaker 5: both named Grant, and Lee was from my dad. His
Speaker 5: father was Robert Lee Phillips, so they kind of, you know,
Speaker 5: a little tribute to the grandfather's there, right, Grant Lee.
Speaker 3: I mean, when you first see the name, you think, well,
Speaker 3: I mean I thought, well, that must be a play
Speaker 3: on the.
Speaker 4: I still have being and everything. So is that like
Speaker 4: a Civil War thing?
Speaker 5: I was like, No, not really, but I am fascinated
Speaker 5: with history and moving to place like Tennessee, you know,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of Civil War history, for sure. I'm
Speaker 5: fascinated with all the you know, the ghost of country
Speaker 5: music that seemed to still flutter about Nashville.
Speaker 3: You know, let's talk about some of the songs in
Speaker 3: the new album. Sure did you make it through the Night?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is one of your longer titles.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love a good long every now and then,
Speaker 5: you know, I think there's room for a long title.
Speaker 5: Sometimes you wake up in Charleston is one of them.
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 5: I was taking a course in the language of the
Speaker 5: Muskogee Creek. Now I am Muscogee Creek. I'm what's called
Speaker 5: an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation.
Speaker 1: Now what does that mean?
Speaker 5: Native American tribe whose center is in Oklahoma. My mother
Speaker 5: is from Oklahoma and her side of the family, and
Speaker 5: it was something that as I was growing up, my grandmother,
Speaker 5: who was really important person in my life, you know,
Speaker 5: she would kind of instill in me this sense of
Speaker 5: wanting to know, wanting to appreciate and honor our heritage
Speaker 5: in that.
Speaker 4: Way, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: She always kind of said to me, you know, like
Speaker 5: you make sure to really study, you know, and learn
Speaker 5: where we come from. And I would go to her house,
Speaker 5: you know, she wasn't real mobile there in her last days,
Speaker 5: but I would play guitar and she would sing gospel
Speaker 5: like Malia Jackson, you know, and had a big influence
Speaker 5: on me. You know, we'd watch Roy Clark and Johnny
Speaker 5: Cash and they seem to always have the Ten Commandments
Speaker 5: on as well at their at their house. The movie,
Speaker 5: you know, gives you a sense of what it was
Speaker 5: like then. And when I became a father, when our
Speaker 5: daughter was born, I really kind of started investing more
Speaker 5: time in trying to understand the history of the Greek people.
Speaker 5: And later on, during during the pandemic, I took this
Speaker 5: course and that's where I learned this phrase. There's no
Speaker 5: word for good morning in the language of the Muscogee Creek,
Speaker 5: but there is this phrase a stungun jug hyadiga that
Speaker 5: means did you make it through the night?
Speaker 4: Okay? And I just love that, you know.
Speaker 5: It's like kind of it sort of sums up the
Speaker 5: feeling of like, man, that was a that was a
Speaker 5: rough one last night, you know, and it seems like
Speaker 5: an appropriate way to kind of to talk about this
Speaker 5: time in history as well, you know. But that's the
Speaker 5: idea there behind did you make it through the night?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 3: It's it sounds like it said with a little little
Speaker 3: bit of humor.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, that's the idea. It's sort of it's humor
Speaker 5: in the face you know, of of challenge, you know,
Speaker 5: But yeah, tell me about closer tonight Closer Tonight. That
Speaker 5: is a song where I'm basically kind of I guess
Speaker 5: I'm kind of wrestling with these uneasy feelings, like, well,
Speaker 5: on one hand, we seem we're being told at least
Speaker 5: that we're living in this age where we might conquer,
Speaker 5: you know, certain.
Speaker 4: Ailments, diseases.
Speaker 5: I mean, we we somehow defeated pandemic for at least
Speaker 5: for a moment, and yet here we are at this
Speaker 5: moment that's extremely retrograde, and one could argue that we
Speaker 5: are closer to the possibility of an all out war,
Speaker 5: of of a of a of a great financial calamity.
Speaker 5: So it feels as though we are at this cusp
Speaker 5: where it could go either way.
Speaker 4: You know, we're closer to.
Speaker 5: Self harm or potentially closer to getting beyond it perhaps,
Speaker 5: you know. And we're also being made aware just how
Speaker 5: closely we are related and reliant and intertwined.
Speaker 2: Well, let's break and we'll come back with Grant Lee Phillips.
Speaker 3: A song I loved was American Lions. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 3: I thought you're speaking metaphorically. There were American lions.
Speaker 4: Apparently there were American lions.
Speaker 3: Did that discovery kick off the.
Speaker 5: Song or yeah, I wrote that down in a notebook
Speaker 5: years and years ago when I was still in La
Speaker 5: Okay on name Drop. My friend Michael Stipe came to
Speaker 5: town and he said, do you guys want to go
Speaker 5: with some friends? We want to go to the Labrett Tarpits.
Speaker 5: And you know with Violet like that, you know, this
Speaker 5: is our daughter who's like she was like four at.
Speaker 4: The time something like that.
Speaker 5: So we all went down to the Libria Tarpits and
Speaker 5: I saw this exhibit called the American Lion. There was
Speaker 5: you know, like like the MGM Lion, and I started
Speaker 5: thinking about apparently, yeah, massive, the idea of this thing,
Speaker 5: just kind of wandering down the Miracle Mile, past the
Speaker 5: Labriat Harpits, past the Beverly Center, and thinking about time
Speaker 5: as being kind of compacted everything that I have experienced,
Speaker 5: all the change and all the unpredictable things that I've
Speaker 5: witnessed in my life, to the degree that you know,
Speaker 5: some places, don't you know, they feel so different now.
Speaker 5: You know, La is a different place, and New York's
Speaker 5: a different place, but it's a different place for the
Speaker 5: American Lion too, you know. So I guess it's kind
Speaker 5: of a meditation on change and the more subtle things
Speaker 5: that we encounter. And you know, you've asked a lot
Speaker 5: of questions in these songs, keep saying, you know, what
Speaker 5: does it mean.
Speaker 3: We're going this way, you're going that way? Last Corner
Speaker 3: of the Earth sort of feels like it's a bit
Speaker 3: of an answer at the end of this album. Tell
Speaker 3: me about that song.
Speaker 5: I guess I have arrived at a sense of finality there.
Speaker 5: You know, it had to be the last song on
Speaker 5: the album. It with a title like that, I guess
Speaker 5: I wanted to to talk about those feelings, no matter
Speaker 5: how bleak. I think, you know, some part of me,
Speaker 5: as a songwriter would have felt compelled to to soften
Speaker 5: the blow or resist that that impulse. But I think
Speaker 5: despite that sense of bleakness, there's also kind of a
Speaker 5: there's another note that I hit at the end, you
Speaker 5: know where I'm saying, hold on to that that coal
Speaker 5: of hope, that little bit of fire. Sometimes that and
Speaker 5: sometimes that's all you have, is that little bit, that
Speaker 5: little spark, you know, because you'll need it.
Speaker 4: So I think there's hope in that.
Speaker 5: I think there's there's it's a weighty song, but there's
Speaker 5: there's optimism as well, you know, I think that's it
Speaker 5: does feel to me that we're going to have to
Speaker 5: walk through some difficulty. You know, we already are. You know,
Speaker 5: we're into it. We're halfway out on the coals, but
Speaker 5: it'd be a while before we get, you know, to
Speaker 5: we get beyond it, you know. And yet there is
Speaker 5: I have more than hope.
Speaker 1: You know you want to play something?
Speaker 6: Yeah, quiet for now, you're a second.
Speaker 8: All of this could change, like the world.
Speaker 4: Let's go.
Speaker 7: And say.
Speaker 6: So much or.
Speaker 4: Another kind of lone lean names.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Where I am to turn? Where turns you tore on
Speaker 4: the backwards?
Speaker 9: You just dry with your eyes clicked to the curveer
Speaker 9: to lift your footy you right.
Speaker 7: At the last.
Speaker 6: The corner round here.
Speaker 4: I'm going now.
Speaker 9: And drag it to the summer heats and all the
Speaker 9: GOLs have warm.
Speaker 6: Out, and you walk between.
Speaker 4: The shoulders of the.
Speaker 6: Night and me.
Speaker 9: We don't glass or dare to speak, dare to speak?
Speaker 6: You don't look backwards. You just try.
Speaker 7: With your eyes glued to.
Speaker 10: The curve.
Speaker 4: To lift your foot till your.
Speaker 8: Ry at the last.
Speaker 7: The corner up here.
Speaker 10: M hmm, hold on time.
Speaker 7: Blowing on a cold of home. Keep that part of you.
Speaker 6: Light.
Speaker 7: Keep it lit, you would need it when it turns
Speaker 7: off cold, and the sun that's gone inside, and the
Speaker 7: moon is his.
Speaker 8: M You don't look backwards. You just try, with your
Speaker 8: eyes clean to the cur to lift your foottowe you are.
Speaker 9: Right at last.
Speaker 6: The corner of here.
Speaker 8: You won't sleep till.
Speaker 9: You are right at last.
Speaker 4: The corner of here.
Speaker 1: M beautiful. All right, Thank you so much for coming in.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, my pleasure all right.
Speaker 2: An episode description, you'll find a link to a playlist
Speaker 2: featuring our favorite songs from Grantley Phillips, as well as
Speaker 2: his new album and The Hour of Dust. Be sure
Speaker 2: to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast
Speaker 2: to see all of our video interviews, and be sure
Speaker 2: to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod.
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken
Speaker 2: Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing
Speaker 2: health from Eric Sandler and Jordana McMillan. Our engineer is
Speaker 2: Ben Tolliday. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries. If
Speaker 2: you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing
Speaker 2: to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that
Speaker 2: offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety
Speaker 2: nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions,
Speaker 2: and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate,
Speaker 2: and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's
Speaker 2: by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.