Grant-Lee Phillips

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0:10Grant Lee Phillips first made his name in the 90s as the frontman of Grant Lee Buffalo, a critically acclaimed band that released four albums and toured with Pearl Jam, The Smashing Pumpkins, and R.E.M. Rolling Stone named Grant Lee Best Male Vocalist in 94, and his band became known for their folk-infused rock sound and their reflections on American history. After Grant Lee Buffalo disbanded in 99, Phillips launched a solo career, eventually becoming familiar to a wider audience through his recurring role as the town troubadour on Gilmore Girls. Last September, he released his 12th solo album, In the Hour of Dust.

0:45The album's title was inspired by an ancient Indian painting Grant Lee saw at a museum in Pasadena that depicts the twilight moment when cows are led home and kick up dust as night falls. On today's episode, Bruce Hedlum talks to Grant Lee Phillips about making In the Hour of Dust. He tells a story of how he tripped to the La Brea Tar Pits with his old friend Michael Stipe, inspired his song American Lions. And he discusses his songwriting process and how he approaches writing lyrics that balance the personal with larger societal themes. This is Broken Record. Real musicians, real conversations.

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1:59Here's Bruce Hedlum with Grant Lee Phillips. You have a new album called In the Hour of Dust. And I want to know the story behind the title. Man, I'll try to make this as concise as I can. I was out in L.A. where I lived for some 30 years, something like that. I'm a native Californian, but I moved from Stockton, California to L.A. in about 83, I guess. But some years ago, I was at the Norton Simon Museum of Art. It's a great museum in Pasadena. And they had an exhibit paintings from India from about the 15th century, I think. And one of them was called The Hour of Cow Dust. This is just a really lovely little painting.

2:47And I love that title. And I wrote it down and just kind of set it aside and forgot about it for about 15 years, something like that. But it came back to me when I was starting to do a lot of painting myself. I've always been interested in visual art and involved with that as well as songwriting. but I had a particular piece that I had painted and I was asking myself, what do I want to call this? And some part of me was reminded of that particular title, The Hour of Cow Dust. I always wanted to do something with that. I thought it might be a song. Who knew? And at the same time, I had taken an interest in American tonalism, The art movement that was dubbed American Tunnelism a little bit later, but it was roughly the late 1800s, post-Civil War.

3:46And this is a period where landscape painters are preoccupied with the idea of twilight, that transition from day to night. And I believe it was sort of a metaphor and a way of encompassing some of the grief and the confusion in the wake of the American Civil War. And all of these things kind of collided. And that title kind of leapt forward, you know, in the hour of dust, a moment of confusion, working your way through the blinding sands of unreality. So why was the Indian painting called Cow Dust? What does that mean? Well, that's a great question. That has to do with this moment in the day when the cows are led back home.

4:38And in doing so, their hooves kick up the dust, right? And we're blinded by that dust. And it's that moment when we have to light the lanterns. We have to prepare for night. Night is about to fall. So I thought, well, there it is, you know. It's that theme again. You, as well as being interested in art, you are a very impressionistic lyric writer for the most part. This album's a little different. The songwriting is more direct here, I think. Yeah, that's possible. I think I've always been trying to be as direct as I could and not realizing that I have somehow veered into the metaphor. That happens as well.

5:22So maybe with age, with doing it over and over, some clarity comes with that. Yeah. A song like, you know, She Knows Me. Yeah. It's got a beautiful image of you, a kite flying out a window. But it's a love song. Bullies is a song about bullies. Little men, no mistaking, it's a great love song. Yeah, that's true. In a much more direct way. more direct way. Was that deliberate or this is just what you're feeling? It's deliberate. It's what I'm feeling. I don't believe that it's altogether new, though. If you look through a certain degree of my work, my solo albums especially, I guess, you know, post-Grantley Buffalo, there are songs like Heavenly, Heavenly and Truly, Truly.

6:14I guess all the double titled songs. You know, trying to hammer the point home there, I guess. I'll sing it again, you know. Can't think of another word. That's right. I think I've always kind of walked that line, I guess. And for me, kind of citing those things that are meaningful to me is a way of kind of honoring all that I do care about, you know. all of the tenderness of life that seems to get pushed to the side sometimes in this state of constant panic that we find ourselves in, you know. So I choose to sing about those things that keep me up at night, but I also, I'm aware of what I'd rather be focused on, you know, and that's the stuff of life as well.

7:06So I mentioned the song, She Knows Me. Yeah. And it does have this wonderful image of you as a kite being swept out the window and the person in your life knows how to get you down from the telephone wires that you get stuck on. A song like that, did it start with a simple thought, she knows me? Or did that image begin? How did that, how would a song like that come together? there. My experience is that the best songs, they leave me a little bit confused and I can't remember writing them. You know, I can't remember how they were written. I can remember being, it's like, it's like recalling being abducted or something, isn't it?

7:49I was on a country road and there was a light and I was backstage in Dublin and I was, you know, kind of plunking on the guitar and I landed on these chords and I began to kind of sing and in that that state of nerves that you get before you go on I realized hey there's a song here there's something something's happening here I'll sing it into my phone and I did and then I kind of just kept singing it never really never you know really putting too much thought into it at soundcheck and gosh maybe a month or so later turned on the uh the tape uh the digital tape and um it all just kind of fell out you know but i i kind of i have found that that is a good way for me to work you know because this is such a it's a verbal medium and the songs exist as we're talking now you know i as opposed to like the songs having this separate life on a sheet of paper i would much rather use the microphone as my my quill and um often i'll do that when i feel like you know this is just not singing right let me just turn and i and i you know i've heard that bowie would do that as well you know kind of work his way through phrase after phrase until it felt natural and it felt right and you can just trust that process is that process for you a short one a long one both it can is it's usually uh the case of one wonderful spasm of a song, but if it isn't completed in that moment, I might have to wait until the next occasion to pick it up where I left off.

9:31And that too can be kind of spasmodic. Or just the case of getting in the car and singing along, and then it hits me. I really have learned to try to get out of my own way in that case. Let the song kind of write itself. and it does it most always does really yeah yeah if i use my voice as kind of the skeleton key that that usually seems to work out the best you know like automatic writing but using your voice you know it doesn't all have to exist with your your wrist and then do you you fill in the cords around that doesn't have to exist with your wrist see it happened right here in the room thank god we're surrounded by microphones i could have never written such a genius line like that Yeah.

10:19You have very distinctive melodies. There's usually a few intervals that aren't usual. There's a lot of chromatic lines in what you write. Is that something you work on with songs or is it something that's just where your voice goes? I think it's where my voice and where my fingers go, where my ears go, I guess. I like exploring with the guitar. I like making discoveries. And sometimes I do get under the hood of some song that I've always been mesmerized by. Like, how do you play Stardust? Everything that's under the stars, there's so much music you can explore. And sometimes when you get it wrong, you wind up discovering something else.

11:01And that can be my song. Is that something you'll do? Like you'll sing another song and you'll get a germ of an idea from that? I suppose that's, yeah, that's possible. It's more indirect though. It's more like, sort of like the album title. Whatever time I spent a few years back trying to work out some strange chord in Stardust, it might reappear and inspire me down the road, you know. Rodney Krauss said something like that. Like he played in bands where they had to play Help Me Make It Through the Night, you know. And he said, if I hadn't done that, then I probably wouldn't have written Leaving Louisiana in the Pale Moonlight or, you know.

11:45Right. These kind of things. They have a way of kind of creeping to the surface years later, you know. And that's part of the magic of this whole thing is, you know, kind of, you know, kind of lighting the right incense and just seeing what happens. And, you know, I like that, the spontaneity of it. And there's always a place to chip away. And there are great artists who skillfully craft their work, you know, and continue to refine it. I'm not sure where I exist in that spectrum, you know. I mean, I have a level of, you know, I have a critical ear as well, but my ear becomes more critical when it feels as though it was forced or it wasn't natural or, you know, it wasn't accidental enough.

12:36Have you become more critical as you've gotten older, less critical? I think if anything, I've become a little more trusting in the process, less ruled by anxiety, I guess. You know, the idea that, I don't know, sometimes you can get yourself into kind of a loop where the idea of like that you won't finish the song creeps in. Or maybe this is the last record, that kind of thing. But even if that was the case, that's probably acceptable. I would find something else to write about. What seems like my critical mind is often just anxiety anyhow. Anxiety over career stuff. Any number of things. Yeah, I think that's kind of the pleasure in music is setting those things aside.

13:28It's the thing that I've always, you know, when everything was crazy, kind of growing up in my house, I could turn to the guitar and put on the headphones and kind of lose myself. in music. It was that sense of comfort. Did you grow up in a crazy house? A crazy house? My parents were young, and it seems like there were always voices being raised. But there were also good songs playing in the house, too. My dad loved country music. I was exposed to Merle Haggard and Charlie Pryde and all that kind of stuff. My mother was more of a Carpenters fan. you know, but it was a golden era in terms of great, melodic, depressing songs.

14:14What made you discover the guitar? Well, I can remember sitting back with the family, and we would watch guys like Roy Clark, you know, just kind of just shred. And everyone was so mesmerized, and I was as well. And I wanted to do that, you know, I wanted to learn how to make sounds like that, play Ghost Riders in the sky, you know? Really simple ambitions, you know? I mean, to play it like Roy Clark is a whole other level of ambition. And what I found was that as soon as I picked up the guitar and learned a quarter to, I began to write songs soon after. So I'm in high school, I'm 14, 15, something like that.

14:53And I've just got song after song that I'm writing. And it was a good time to have your ears open and discover all kinds of music, you know? I mean, things were kind of blasting off overseas, you know, Elvis Costello and great songwriters like that, bands like The Clash, but also discovering Neil Young around that time. That was a big one for me. Yeah. Seeing him by himself at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Yeah, that made a real impact. You were in LA when you formed Grantley Buffalo. Yeah. So tell me, were you playing around town? What was the... Yeah, We played everywhere around town. I moved to L.A.

15:34in 83, and there was all this stuff going on, a lot of underground stuff. And we kind of grew up out of that, playing these little clubs. And some of them you would get a gig at midnight downtown. Owls Bar, Raji's, all of these clubs that a lot of well-known bands, kind of legendary bands now also kind of cut their teeth in. And Largo, then called Cafe Largo on Fairfax, was a, it was more of a cabaret, actually. And that's kind of where we came out of, mostly, you know. And kind of playing maybe too loud at times for that room and pushing the edge. But that's kind of the, that's the secret, really, you know.

16:16It's a kind of steam kettle kind of concept where there's a little more force than, you know, and that blows the lid off. Oh, I see. And it's very exciting, you know. I tend to think of L.A. at that time being like the punk scene, maybe like hair metal bands. I don't think of it being. Well, you're right. And that was a strange thing. They're really, you didn't really know where to find your own tribe because there was all of that going down on one part of town. But deeper in the bowels of the city, you would find bands like Savage Republic, six or so guys, one of them beaten on a flaming oil drum.

16:56And it seems like every guitar was tuned to E and they were just going for it. And in that environment, the band Shiva Burlesque, which was the first band that I was involved with putting together in L.A., we came out of that. And then we sort of morphed into Grantley Buffalo as I took my writing into a different place and began to kind of just step up to the microphone, literally. Even though I had written songs and performed, I kind of took a backseat for a period there until I couldn't know more. And yeah, so Grantley Buffalo, all of that stuff was somewhere between 90 and 93, wrote a zillion songs.

17:42And then we signed with Slash Records. And they, as you pointed out and everything, they had also kind of spawned or signed some of the punk bands like the Germs. And those more musical punk-like bands like X and Dream Syndicate and that type of thing. And was Bob Mould involved? Bob Mould and Nick Hill had a label, and it was called SOL, Singles Only Label, and they would just put out vinyl singles. And they put out this single of Fuzzy, and that became a song that was played a good amount, and it kind of became our calling card for a while. And ultimately, I think it kind of led to the band being signed.

18:29And then that album came out. Looking back now, you got a lot of attention pretty quickly. Yeah. I feel like there was a greater wave of music. It was sort of like the people at the record companies, they kind of just stepped out of the room for a moment and they let musicians be musicians. And some of these bands had experienced some sort of groundswell in a regional way. You know, everything that was going on in Seattle or wherever. And it was a healthy time to make music because we weren't so controlled. And, you know, we were producing ourselves and just leave us alone, you know. And it produced good music.

19:11The band probably got a foothold in Europe much more so, especially in the UK. And we toured quite a bit in the UK and in other parts of Scandinavia. Scandinavia, places where I still return to, and I'll be back in these parts in a few weeks from now. Really, really special places for me, and, you know, a lot of history there. And then the band broke up. Yeah. For good reasons, bad reasons? Well, I think, you know, I mean, when you stop and consider that we have history that goes back before Grantley Buffalo and back into Shiva Burlesque. so that makes for a pretty long period where we just worked with one another you know and there's a frustration that that sets in when in a situation where it doesn't change much you know and I'm speaking of touring you know by and large I think that's a real hard one sometimes to deal with when you really you know when you you get your joy from experimenting from recording and I don't know it's a hard one for me.

20:20I can mix it up by myself, but it's a little harder to do that with a band. You know, we all have to kind of agree on, you know, where it's going to go tonight, you know, and where it's going to go in general and in terms of our life. You know, you're a six-legged beast if you're a trio. And for me as a songwriter, I mean, we basically, I was 29, I think, when we signed our deal. At that point, you know, I mean, I've been writing songs for a good chunk of my life, you know, since I was a teenager. And it's the songs that really kind of lead me. I have to follow that. And that's sometimes a very solitary kind of thing, you know.

21:00I don't really write with other folks, you know, unless, you know, every now and then somebody will ask, you don't want to write a song with me. But it's a solitary thing. And it's a very personal kind of path as well. We'll be back with more from Grant Lee Phillips after the break. How did Sears go from a one-man watch company to the biggest retailer in the world to bankruptcy? I'm Robert Smith. And I'm Jacob Goldstein. On our new show, Business History, we tell the stories behind the inventions and entrepreneurs that shaped our economy. And we try and understand the lessons behind their success and failure.

21:35Our new episode is about the rise and fall of Sears, an incredible story that is really the story of America in the 20th century. Sears, rise, fall, America. Done. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. And for full video episodes, search Business History Podcast on YouTube.

21:54Now, when you began your solo career, it was also a really interesting time in the, a calamitous time in the music business. Just when Napster has come in. Right. Nobody knows what's going to happen to the business. You were in this transition at the same time. Right. and may have had certain expectations going forward. You know, what is the album? You know, and all that was being upended. What was it like from your point of view to watch all that? Yeah, I can remember that moment. And there was a sense that we were, again, approaching some big transitional point, you know. Everyone was screaming about Y2K.

22:35I remember. Sure. You know, are we going to lose our computers? I woke up that morning, my garage door wasn't working. it's happening i don't know why it's starting with my garage door opener but the machines are rebelling like that like that beck video right where the refrigerator goes crazy and uh i wasn't so certain where uh where it was all going i i felt like i wanted to embrace you know the future and the first thing i did one of the first thing i put out was entirely self-released it was an album called ladies love oracle and i went into my friend john bryan great musician composer and he had a studio he'd built in his house and he said you know i'm i'm working on this soundtrack the soundtrack was magnolia and but here's you know go ahead and go up to my studio and you know have fun this week and whatever you want to do you know and i I was there for about three days or so and walked out with a record, you know, you know, a record that was really stripped down to my voice and guitar.

23:43And, you know, I played everything on it, some piano and organ. But, yeah, I was like, this feels right. And I didn't know where it was going to go. It wasn't built to be something that was going to stand alongside the slickest, most produced record that was on the radio. It wasn't really built for radio or anything like that. It was just meant to be something truthful. And that felt really good. And then you immediately turned around and did a very different album. Yes. Mobilize. You know, a lot of people know you from Grant Lee Buffalo. A lot of people know you from Mobilize. Yeah, I think I felt as though if I was going to make a solo record, it was the first one for Rounder at that time, then it truly had to be a solo record.

24:33I mean, talk about extremes, you know, I'm going to play everything on it with the exception of the percussion, which I had a hand in, but we programmed that, you know. And I'm listening to a lot of things that are so different. and I'm listening to Bjork and Moby and all this stuff, and I'm thinking, I love this air, feeling very kind of inspired by things that feel so different than the music that I would typically listen to. It pushed me down a road that was a little more uncharted. I hit upon a hybrid, songs that I had written on the guitar and the piano, but also songs that had their genesis in me trying my hand at programming a rhythm track and just working with sounds specifically, you know?

25:18Like maybe it doesn't have to be a traditional drum sound. Maybe it's something else, you know? At the same time, we have to mention, you have fans because of television. Yeah. You know, I actually watched the show Gilmore Girls. Oh, really? Yes. Yeah. You're not supposed to say that as a guy. Oh, you're not. But I didn't recognize you at first. I was like, who's that guy? I thought you're an actor. I'm a musician who plays an actor who plays a musician How did that come about? Amy Sherman Palladino who created the Gilmore Girls she and her husband Daniel Palladino, they were big music fans and they were fans of Grantley Buffalo they had came out and seen me play and were familiar with my solo records certainly for the first one I was working on Mobilize when I got the call from them inviting me to come down and be on this new show So, you know, for all I knew, it was kind of like a one-off.

26:15And lo and behold, you know, several seasons and quite a few episodes that I have this sort of bit part in a special guest appearance, as they say. And, you know, in some situations, some really insane scenes, you know, where I'm battling it out with another local troubadour played by Dave Gruber Allen from Freaks and Geeks. and another one where word has gotten around that Stars Hollow, the setting of the show, is a hotbed where troubadours could be discovered. It's the Seattle, it's the new Seattle for buskers. And so among the hopefuls, Sonic Youth show up in town and they set up with their pig-nose amps and just surreal and bizarre and it always felt like a real coup to be a part of it.

27:07Yeah. And then, as you mentioned, your next album was Virginia Creeper, which is another big album people think of. It starts with Mona Lisa, Dirty Secret, a lot of great songs on that. Yeah, thank you. What were you thinking when you'd finished Mobilize? What was the thinking going into that record? Well, you know, I create this record, Mobilize. It has an interesting palette of sounds. But I soon find myself on the road, just me and the 12-string guitar. And it was kind of like the songs were kind of, they were being presented as though they, you know, kind of where they started solo acoustically.

27:48And so, again, the songs, they led me. and I never really went back to that because I suppose I kind of narrowed the gap between what I write and what I record, you know. Even though I do bring a band in and I've had to, you know, work with some great musicians over the years. And I, you know, and there's a band on the current album, Jay Belrose on drums, Jennifer Condos, Patrick Warren, Keys. But it's all kind of built around the songs and that's kind of how I began to do it with Virginia Creeper. and every album after that. Let's talk a little bit about your songwriting, your music writing, harmonically what you do.

28:33Did you have formal lessons? Did you learn theory? You didn't do any of that? No, I had a couple of weeks of maybe a month or more. But how it is with music, when learning the guitar, They want you to learn some old folk song to begin with. And it's not the spooky great folk songs that are out there. So I just kind of went down the road of writing songs myself. There have been times where I've been curious about theory. But no, I've always been more reliant on my ear. Even on the new album, Closer Tonight, you do the switching between the major and minor chords, which is very... Yeah, that's just like walking down the hall, though.

29:21I don't even think about it. Really? Yeah. I'll take your word for it. It's got such a distinctive sound to me. Well, I've probably done that trick on 13 other songs in the last week. So I probably, you know, I think of it as building upon what I've already written. But yeah, I mean, it probably can be traced to... It's a great trick. I love impressionistic music of all sorts, you know. I find that in some of the swing era. I find it in Debussy. I love dissonance. I love the way that a lyric can seem to be diametrically opposed to a melody. And there's a tension in that. And then tell me a little bit about, before we get to this album, I do want to talk a little bit about The Narrows, which was an album I really loved when it came out.

30:14It had a very different feel, different look. There's a few on that record where I'm kind of working through those feelings of leaving my home, going someplace else. And my father passed away right as we basically began to unpack in Nashville. And Smoke and Sparks was a song that was written with him in mind. And as a person who's always been fascinated with history, I mean, you could, I think maybe that happens when your parents name you Grant Lee. You know, at some point in time, you know, someone's going to kind of whisper to you, you know, there were some generals. Right. So I grew up kind of interested in history.