THE BAND GRANT LEE BUFFALO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR ONE OF THE FINEST DEBUTS OF THE 1990s. IF FUZZY WAS ISSUED THESE DAYS IT’D BE LABELLED AMERICANA – THOUGH THERE WAS SOMETHING MUCH MORE DANGEROUS IN IT THAN THAT SUGGESTS. IN THE CONTEXT OF ITS TIME, THINK THE EMOTIVE AND INTELLIGENT SONGWRITING OF REM’s AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE – BRUTALISED BY A TRIO OF SPIT ‘N’ SAWDUST UPSTARTS. FUZZY WAS, THOUGH, EQUAL PARTS TERRIFYING AND TENDER; AT WORK HERE WAS A SONGWRITER GIFTED IN TRANCE-LIKE MELANCHOLY…
Since that landmark 1993 album – and following a string of four more critically-acclaimed works with the band – frontman Grant-Lee Phillips has performed solo, releasing seven diverse records which have explored a wide range of textures. His most recent, 2012’s WALKING IN THE GREEN CORN, is an evocative penetration into our troubled era. And yet there is the implication that the potential for change and betterment is within reach; perhaps the best solutions can be found by looking both backwards and forwards simultaneously. And so that is just what we do, in this new interview. Phillips is currently touring Europe with friend Howe Gelb (once of Giant Sands), and speaks to The Mouth Magazine about his former band, his songwriting and his solo records…

GRANT, YOU’RE ON A BRIEF RUN OF EUROPEAN DATES AND, IN FACT, YOU’RE IN THE UK AS WE SPEAK…
Yeah – I’m between Leeds and Cambridge and, if I speak quietly, it’s because I’m on a train…

… AND SO WE’LL TALK ABOUT THE TOUR IN A LITTLE WHILE BUT FIRST, IF I MAY, I’D LIKE TO TAKE A LOOK BACK AT FUZZY. THEY’D ALMOST CERTAINLY LABEL IT AMERICANA THESE DAYS, I THINK, BUT THERE WAS FAR MORE TO IT THAN THAT SUGGESTS. IT WOULDN’T BE WIDE OF THE MARK TO CALL IT VOODOO CARNIVAL PUNK BLUES…
Wow. Yeah!

THERE WAS DEFINITE THRALL THERE TO CLASSIC SONGWRITING OF THE LATE 1960s AND EARLY ’70s; NEIL YOUNG, TOM WAITS, LEONARD COHEN, THE BYRDS… IT WAS THAT STUFF THAT FIRST GOT UNDER YOUR SKIN?
Yeah. That’s the stuff that I grew up with – or among the stuff that I grew up with. I still think of that as my stuff, you know? You mentioned Neil Young, people like that with long careers. But along with that, a lot of the music that came as post-punk stuff. It all found a way to my ears and affected my sensibilities along the way.

I THINK I REMEMBER YOU SAYING IN AN INTERVIEW ONCE THAT THE CHANGESBOWIE COMPILATION HAD BEEN AN INFLUENCE, HAD BEEN ONE OF THE FIRST RECORDS YOU BOUGHT…
Yeah, most certainly. I had lots of time for Bowie in my teenage years.

I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT THE OPENING BARS OF GRANT LEE BUFFALO’S JUPITER AND TEARDROP WERE A KIND OF CONSCIOUS NOD TO MOONAGE DAYDREAM…
Ha ha. Yeah, for sure. That’s exactly what that is. Bowie’s one of those artists who’s always been way out in front of everyone else, you know? Assimilating things and in the process creating something entirely fresh, whether that’s in the HUNKY DORY period or SCARY MONSTERS or… any of that stuff. I could disappear for a long while into nothing but Bowie albums.

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE NEXT DAY?
Do you know what, I haven’t even heard that record yet. I’m kind of guilty of finding something and listening to it thousands of times before I can move on to the next thing, you know? I’m always curious how those people with massive record collections can find the time or the space to soak it all up. I mean, how many times do they get to actually listen to those records? So I haven’t made it to THE NEXT DAY yet, ha ha…

I REMEMBER SEEING GRANT LEE BUFFALO PERFORM FUZZY AND THE SHINING HOUR ON A TV SHOW, HERE – I THINK IT MUST HAVE BEEN LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND – AND BEING STUNNED. YOU MENTIONED POST-PUNK AND THERE SEEMED TO BE THE SPIRIT OF THAT IN THERE – SOMETHING RUDE AND BRUTAL ABOUT THE WAY THE BAND’S SOUND WAS PUT TOGETHER… WAS THAT SOMETHING WHICH NATURALLY HAPPENED WHEN THE THREE OF YOU GOT IN A ROOM TOGETHER TO PLAY?
I think so, yeah… I think you definitely have to attribute the energy of that recording – and others – to whatever occurs whenever myself, Joey and Paul get together. It just automatically goes in that direction, you know? But there are two sides to it. There’s actually a side which wants to create things which are melodic and soulful. Meditative is, I think, the word – quite trance-like. But it can really seem as if the two sides of it are apart somehow – because then there’s that frenetic, unhinged, side…

… THE SHINING HOUR FEELS ALMOST LIKE A FIGHT IN A BAR THAT, KIND OF, BARRELS ALONG AND IS IN DANGER OF GETTING OUT OF CONTROL AT ANY MOMENT.
THE SHINING HOUR was actually one of the first things I wrote.

REALLY?
Yeah – you could trace it back to a period a few years before Grant Lee Buffalo when the three of us were involved with another band called Shiva Burlesque and just beginning to realise that we could actually be together. It was one of the first things that I wrote as I was starting to step away from Shiva Burlesque. And yet, funnily enough, it was one of the final things – if not the final thing – that was recorded for FUZZY. We’d basically thought the record was done but I woke up early one morning and thought “Hmmm, maybe we’d better rethink this. Maybe there’s just one more song”… And so it turned out… I do think that’s part of the process – that it’s only done when you know it’s done. You have to continue to circle the wagons until you know it’s done. FUZZY was very much like that, and so was the following record, MIGHTY JOE MOON (1994). The song MOCKINGBIRDS was the last song to arrive for that. Again, we just about thought we were finished – but we actually weren’t until that song came along.

THE THIRD ALBUM – COPPEROPOLIS (1996) – HAD A MUCH MORE ‘LIVE’ SOUND. NO, NOT SOUND – FEEL. IT WAS INTENSE, LIKE EVERYTHING WAS HAPPENING AT ONCE. A REALLY INTERCONNECTED SET OF SONGS.
Yeah. That’s true. I think maybe some of that was because we were responding to what we’d done previously. Some of MIGHTY JOE MOON was recorded in San Francisco and then overdubbed and completed in LA. There was at least one song on there that was an earlier demo. That album felt like it was a kind of quilt made up of a few different periods – which can make for an interesting record, but when it came along to COPPEROPOLIS we wanted something more cohesive. We also wanted to reflect the fact that we’d spent a lot of our time touring. We wanted that energy. Maybe it has something of both. It does have a different feel, that record. It’s more internal. Harder to decipher.

I’VE ALWAYS RECEIVED IT AS A ‘CITY’ RECORD, WHERE THE FIRST TWO WERE MORE RURAL, MORE RUSTIC…
That’s interesting. I think it’s probably more acoustic. Well, my recollection is that it was. It was certainly a little bit more how the line-up would approach things live, with the amplified acoustic twelve-string and so on. But it does have a lot of layering on it. I think maybe that’s what you mean, or what sets it apart from the others, makes it a little more impressionistic?

YEAH, THERE’S A SORT OF DENSITY TO IT. THERE WAS THEN A FOURTH ALBUM (JUBILEE, IN 1998) AND, LATER, AFTER THE BAND HAD SPLIT, A COLLECTION OF CURIOS TITLED STORM HYMNAL. IN SOME WAYS I THOUGHT THIS WAS THE MOST SATISFYING RECORD SINCE FUZZY BECAUSE IT SEEMED TO CELEBRATE THE AESTHETIC OF THE BAND. IT HAD THIS ‘JUNK STORE’ FEEL TO IT – LIKE, AROUND THIS CORNER THERE’S THIS GLEAMING ANTIQUE… AND OVER HERE THERE’S THIS RUSTED OLD TOBACCO TIN… BUT EVERYTHING IS EQUALLY PRECIOUS… 
Yeah, definitely.

EACH HAD A STORY TO TELL. BUT HOW MUCH OF THE GRANT LEE BUFFALO MATERIAL WAS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL – BECAUSE CLEARLY SONGS LIKE DIXIE DRUG STORE AND JUPITER AND TEARDROP WERE, KIND OF, TOM WAITSIAN CHARACTER SONGS.
I think there was both, really. Autobiography and character songs. A song like DIXIE DRUG STORE… that’s a fable, a tall tale, ha ha… but it grew out of something I was fascinated with – New Orleans and all that folklore and people and the great music that has come out of there. But MOCKINGBIRDS – that’s a song that I wrote directly after experiencing major difficulties in LA. We lost our house and were kind of displaced and it was, umm, quite a crisis. HONEY DON’T CRY, songs like that… there’s a side of that material which is aiming to touch upon some soulful and political concerns, you know? AMERICA SNORING and STARS ‘N’ STRIPES… I think probably STARS ‘N’ STRIPES is my favourite of that batch because it mixes both things. It touches on this social environment which is often unfriendly to those of us who just want to have children and taste life, maybe see the world – yet our backs are up against the wall for whatever reason. There’s nothing more personal than politics – especially when it comes home to roost and really affects you and your family, not just affects your country. So I guess that the songs are both. I don’t really draw a distinction, I suppose.

WORKING ALONE AFTER GRANT LEE BUFFALO HAD SPLIT MUST HAVE BEEN AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE. WAS IT DIFFICULT TO ADJUST? DID YOU FIND YOURSELF TRYING TO FULFIL THE… I DON’T KNOW… BLUEPRINT? 
No, I think that in some ways my first outing (LADIES LOVE ORACLE in 2000) did away with that blueprint, you know? I had to find a different way to go about it, and that was my desire. Put a record out very much under the cover of darkness, an acoustic album, very very simple and stark. I recorded it entirely on my own, just guitar and pump organ…

… WAS YOUR NEED TO DO THAT A FACTOR IN THE END OF THE BAND?
No, no. It wasn’t that I had a burning desire to make that particular record – but I’d always had a desire to move forward. The truth is that it’s not too easy being in a band. We had a long run at it together – although it was very compressed.

THE NEW OPPORTUNITES OFFERED BY THE GRANT LEE BUFFALO BLUEPRINT BEING DONE AWAY WITH… THEY MUST HAVE EXCITED YOU? THE DIRECTION THAT, SAY, ELECTRONICS COULD TAKE YOU (AS THEY DID ON SECOND SOLO ALBUM MOBILIZE, IN 2001). HOW DID THOSE OPPORTUNITIES CHANGE YOUR WRITING?
I could broaden my palate and change my process, you know? All the possibilities that come with starting from scratch. It really excited me to not be limited to writing on acoustic instruments (although I do think acoustic instruments are virtually limitless – and the way you can treat those instruments provides a whole other slew of possibilities). I was really just ready to tackle my work from a very different angle – to re-engage myself.

WAS THAT BECAUSE THERE WERE DIFFERENT THINGS THAT YOU WANTED TO SAY – MUSICALLY, LYRICALLY – THAN PERHAPS YOU’D FELT ABLE OR ‘ALLOWED’ TO SAY BEFORE? OR WAS IT SIMPLY THE NEED TO EXPLORE?
I think it was the need to explore. That’s always a big one for me – to retain that freedom to investigate new areas, you know? And, actually, I was probably just becoming a little bit tired of my old ways of doing things. You get accustomed to things and some of the element of surprise goes out. I need to feel that surprise myself, first, and then I can go on from there. That is a big part of it. Discovery is a big component of this whole thing.

SO I GUESS THAT IDEA OF EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY MEANS YOU HAVE NO PARTICULAR SET PROCESS?
I think there probably is a process. I tend to, kind of, set up certain situations where I can make new discoveries – perhaps by going to an instrument that I’m not as familiar with as the guitar – and my ear then begins to develop an idea. At that point I can engage the part of me that has done this for a long time, and knows its way around the craft of songwriting. I don’t have to be entirely reliant on knowing how to design something according to convention. I always want to try new avenues that excite me. So it’s back and forth between the two. Some of that can probably be helped by collaborating with other people who are always throwing new ideas at you – although that does have its challenges as well, of course.

INTERESTINGLY, TALKING ABOUT THE CRAFT OF SONGWRITING, BACK IN 2006 – AND SOMEWHAT BEFORE IT WAS IN VOGUE TO DO THIS – YOU PUT OUT AN ALBUM OF OTHER PEOPLE’S SONGS, ALL FROM THE 1980s AND ALL LOOKING BEYOND THE MAINSTREAM. THERE WAS A BEAUTIFUL VERSION OF LAST NIGHT I DREAMT THAT SOMEBODY LOVED ME BY THE SMITHS… AND SONGS BY THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS, JOY DIVISION, THE CURE. EVEN ROBYN HITCHCOCK…
Yeah. English new wave stuff. That was the stuff that pointed the way to the fact I could do music outside of the mainstream. It was possible to be interesting, to be creative. That was the stuff I enjoyed listening to while I was growing up. I was definitely a child of The Beatles and – as we said earlier – David Bowie. So this stuff was an extension of that, of an interest in the good stuff that was coming out of England. Also there were bands that were around in the ’80s in the States – like the Pixies – who were really interesting. But that album, the majority of stuff on it is English.

I PARTICULARLY LOVE YOUR TAKE ON NEW ORDER’S AGE OF CONSENT, WHICH I THINK IS THEIR FINEST SONG. REALLY INTERESTING TO HEAR THAT STYLE OF MUSIC TACKLED IN THE WAY YOU TACKLED IT… IF TACKLED IS THE RIGHT WORD, HA HA…
Ha ha, yeah. Well that’s an incredible song. My version is probably kind of sacrilegious in a way. I’m still not even sure of how I feel about having done it, other than that I love the song. I didn’t really study how those songs were put together. I went more on what my recollections of them might be if I were out in the woods somewhere and I wasn’t able to look things up on the internet. You know… Study how to play them on YouTube, ha ha…

HA HA… WELL, YOU’RE OUT ON TOUR WITH HOWE GELB (ONCE OF GIANT SANDS), PLAYING A SERIES OF SHOWS ACROSS EUROPE – JUST THE THREE IN THE UK THIS TIME, THOUGH THERE WERE SEVERAL TOGETHER HERE LATE LAST YEAR… HOW DID YOU AND HOWE COME TO HOOK UP?
Howe and I… Well, some years ago back in the ’90s, Giant Sands and Grant Lee Buffalo did some touring together. We hit it off instantly and I’ve been a fan of his music ever since. I just enjoy his whole spirit, you know? He doesn’t lay things out too much in advance. He’s very much ‘of the moment’, and I really find that inspiring. So we’ve taken it upon ourselves to do this series of dates. We started doing these things together, umm, last May I think. I’m just loving every minute of it. I’m really going to miss it when it’s done – though we have quite a few more dates to go.

WHAT’S IT LIKE FOR YOU TO BE OUT ON THE ROAD ‘TROUBADOR STYLE’? DOES IT DIFFER VASTLY FROM BEING IN THE BAND AND TOURING?
You know, I’d say it’s actually mixed. On the whole it’s a pretty rich experience. You’re a little closer to the ground. It can be tough as well, when you find yourself so far away from home. It’s pretty incredible that I’m still finding new people who’ve been with me, with these songs, for so long, you know? People who’ve been turned on to Grant Lee Buffalo, or whatever, by other people.

WHAT ARE YOUR SHOWS LIKE? I GUESS, PLAYING SOLO, YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU LIKE?
Yeah! That’s really true. I don’t even write out set lists or anything like that. It’s pretty much of the moment. I can pull songs from everywhere – old songs, newer songs, songs that I’ve been writing. It’s a part of the process, it’s definitely aids the writing. It’s not always the easiest life though I do tend to come home with a bunch of new songs. I can probably envisage a day when I won’t tour as much as I do now. I mean, I know a lot of people tour a lot more than I do. I have a fine balance, for me… I can definitely enjoy being alone at home as well…

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU’RE HOME ALONE? IS IT THE CHANCE TO KICK OFF YOUR SHOES, CRACK A BEER AND STICK THE LATEST EPISODE OF HOMELAND ON?
Ha ha, no. Not so much, not so much. When I’m home I can work. I think for me my work kind of is like relaxation. It’s not like working working – I’ve done that, and I know what it is. I know the difference! But I can go into my studio and I can write and I can tinker along. I’ve actually recently relocated to Nashville – this is within the last year. So that’s been a new place where I can meet a lot of other musicians and find new ways to collaborate, find new ways of doing things. Even more so than in LA, actually. Music, writing, you can do it anywhere really. It’s kind of portable.

YOU PUT OUT A SEVENTH ALBUM – WALKING IN THE GREEN CORN – IN 2012. IS THERE ANOTHER IN THE OFFING?
Yeah, I have one recorded and ready to go and I’m hoping it’ll come out this year. Spring…

… SO 2015 LOOKS LIKE BEING AN EXCITING YEAR THEN…
Yeah, I suppose so. Pretty much. I’m already out on the go and doing it. If the album does come out in the Spring then I’ll have more to talk about and more songs to share… But it’s a good place to be, and right now feels like a good time.

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