I never wanted to be Eric Johnson on guitar or to sing like Josh Groban. I have no idea why I just brought him up. What was he like four when I started to learn to sing? I personally get more satisfaction out of hearing a great three or four chord song with a sly, ironic lyric and a cool melody.
Do you feel the music in your soul, Phil? Because it sounds like you do.
I do, actually. Music is the only thing I've ever done where, no matter how bad I was at it, or how discouraged I got, or how much I thought I sucked at times, I just kept doing it. And kept going back the next day, not sure why, and not really consciously. I just kept doing it because, for some reason I couldn't explain, I had to. It was programmed in me. Kind of like how animals often do things on instinct. I was watching some PBS show about penguins in Antarctica last night. (laughs)
Even when I do get discouraged — and let's face it music, both as a hobby and a business, can be unfairly discouraging — I'll see things, like someone playing a guitar on TV and then I get this feeling inside like "Yeah, yeah... this is what you do."
So tell me about your debut solo album.
Well, after my old band had broken up, I had some songs that I'd been working on and decided to make some acoustic demos. I was doing them with an excellent local engineer named Viktor Kray. As we were going along, I really wasn't sure what I was going to do with them.
I thought there was an album in there somewhere, but wasn't really sure what kind, where I would make it, or with who. Some had a country feel, some sounded good acoustic, some you could hear potential with a band but I really had no direction. I had applied for a job in New York City, but didn't have interest in it. I had booked a trip to Nashville to check out that town, but had to cancel. I had these demos and really wasn't sure what to do with them.
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1 - Connie Phillips
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