Glen Phillips of Toad The Wet Sprocket

Into The Art of Balance with Glen Phillips of Toad The Wet Sprocket

Interview by Ken Morton - Photos by Chris Orwig

Editor’s Note: Todd The Wet Sprocket was one of the very favorite bands of magazine co-founder Jonathan D. Wright. I am doing this interview with Toad lead vocalist Glen Phillips in Jonathan’s memory as we celebrate the 32nd Anniversary Issue of Highwire Daze magazine. It is an honor to include Glen and Toad in this very special edition. This interview is dedicated to Jonathan...

The interview: Glen Phillips is best known as the lead vocalist for the iconic Toad The Wet Sprocket, whose songs such as Walk on the Ocean, All I Want, and Something’s Always Wrong remain genre classics to this day. The pandemic has certainly changed the lives of us all, and with Glen Phillips, he would discover the art of balance in his every day life - much of which is documented within the songs on his just released solo album entitled There Is So Much Here. In this interview with Highwire Daze, Glen Phillips discusses the making of There Is So Much Here, the reformation of Toad The Wet Sprocket, notes on the current state of world affairs today, and a whole lot more! Read on...

Is there any overall story or concept behind the solo album title There Is So Much Here?

The title comes from the song The Sound Of Drinking, which was inspired by lockdown and having to spend a lot of time in one place for the first time in maybe 20 years. So, there were a lot of details to notice. And for me, the silver lining of that time was moving in with my fiancée and just kind of slowing down and getting to notice the small things and appreciate waking up in the same place every day. It’s a pretty simple thing. Less past and less future and more present seems to make for happier days.

Stone Throat is the new single from the album. What was the inspiration behind that song?

All the songs on this record came from a songwriting game I play with Matt The Electrician and about 20 other songwriters. Every week Matt sends out – and it’s done in the same way that Bob Schneider does it – he kind of originated the idea. Matt sends out a title to 20 of us, and we all use that phrase as the inspiration to write a song – it doesn’t have to be the chorus, but those words have to appear. So, there’s always an element of surprise – you don’t know exactly what the prompt will

be, and you don’t know where it will take you. This one took me into that, once again, idea of balance. How do you operate in a relationship? What do you want? What do you need? How do you balance that? How do you balance a spiritual life with a life in late Capitalism? (Laughs) How do you balance being somebody who’s often gone with being with somebody who’s often home? It kind of touches on all those ideas.

Overall, how was the new album inspired by the pandemic and all of the social unrest in the world today?

I mean, there’s moments of talking about the social unrest, but these songs are by and large a little more philosophical or introspective. The Bluest Eye is probably the most topical in terms of the idea of privilege. It’s been kind of a disheartening season to see people who value confidence over competence – and who are kind of willing to give up the idea that every voice should be heard for their own kind of sense of security. It’s disheartening to see people embracing authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. So yeah, that’s probably the most topical one. But it’s a little lighter than some of the faire I usually peddle. (Laughs) say that in the first week of Elon Musk taking over Twitter, right?

I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it get better…

Oh yeah, it will. It will. Authoritarianism – it’s made me happy to see Brazil vote out someone like that, but who knows what will happen in its wake. I don’t know what will happen here, but I have a sense things will get pretty bad. And they’re still live able – right? You go throughout the world and there’s all kinds of authoritarian regimes and failed states and oppressive theocracies – and most of the people survive them. But I think we take for granted what freedom is here. There are two elements here. I think countries who have had more war on their soil or face authoritarian rulers, tend to have that feeling of not just freedom to do want you want, but the freedom from types of oppression. The freedom from hunger, the freedom from want, the freedom from need, right? Half of the four freedoms that Roosevelt talked about were freedoms “from” as opposed to freedoms “to.” It’s interesting when a group of people think the existence of any other group is somehow an existential threat to their existence. And they stop thinking in terms of making room for all of us to be different and start thinking in terms of making their group as safe from the existence of all other groups as possible. The problem about that is then you start hacking your own group into little pieces eventually. (Laughs) And then everyone loses instead of just most people. So, yeah, I do worry that things are not going to get better in the near future, but they have a long way to go down – and I think people might go, “Man, we really had a lot of freedom back before we made bigotry so free and easy.” (Laughs) There’s a cost to that. We

Let’s talk about a few more songs on the new album. The first song on the album is called Big Changes.

Well Big Changes, there you go. We just talked about that. (Much laughter) I mean, I’m not sure the human organism is well equipped to deal with the rate of change we currently face. And even our understandings of the rate of change we currently face. That we are able to know about the environment that we could be afraid of it. If you live in a village next to a giant active volcano, you know that occasionally it will take you down. And if it’s been inactive for a long time, you kind of forget that it’s a volcano and you get Pompeii-d! But that idea that it’s coming, it’s coming at an indeterminate time in an indeterminate way. The stress of having these vague catastrophes hanging over our heads – it’s a difficult thing to handle. At the same time, most spiritual practices seem to be based around the idea of facing and finding peace with inevitable death, right? (Laughs) And that song hits on that a little bit – but in a more positive way. I particularly like the second verse on that one: “Won’t run out of love, won’t run out of wonder, sure won’t run out of tears, so I can feel the pull trying to drag me under, I won’t give into my fears.” That’s kind of the daily fight – to try and stay in some non-deluded state of awe and appreciation despite the onslaught of terrible news. I just went through a major depression and stopped my subscription to a lot of podcasts and took away my bookmarks for some news outlets because I was getting a little too overwhelmed. I still get enough news without that, so I think we’re all trying to figure out how to stay informed without becom-

ing a victim of doom scrolling and hopelessness.

There’s nothing like going to bed after the late news and having nightmares about it, that’s for sure….

There’s plenty of good stuff going on. This is the other thing – at least I realize that my personal experience is not like a scientific sample – but I think much like Anne Frank (gentle laughter), I believe that people are good at heart despite everything. I think people are beautiful and wonderful and kind - and I think people act poorly when they’re frightened – and there’s a lot of legitimate stuff to be frightened about. I think there’s also a lot of made-up stuff to be frightened about – and I have to remember for people who are having a different informational stream than I do, that if I took their informational stream at face value, I would be frightened too – and I would want to protect the people around me. Truth right now is so kind of skewed, it’s hard to figure out what to be concerned about and what not to be. So, I don’t blame people for getting it wrong. I blame people for selling them lies, but I find it harder to blame people for believing in them.

Now the good news is you’re about to go on tour in two days…

Yes, no lie (laughs)

And that is not fake news. (Much laughter) What are you looking forward to the most about this upcoming solo tour?

I’m just excited to do some solo shows again. It’s a different mode than playing with Toad. It’s a lot more off the cuff. I play a bunch of Toad songs. I get to play a lot of songs that I can’t play in the Toad shows. And I get to kind of make it up as I go along, which is a lot of fun. And I’m going to be out there with my friend Garrison Starr – she is one of my favorite singer/songwriters on the planet – so I’m excited to get to be with her.

There was a new Toad album that was released in 2021 called Starting Now – the first Toad album in 8 years. What was it like recording new Toad music after 8 years?

Well, it was weird, because we did it during lockdown. So, we had about three days all together in the studio – and then we spent the next six months sending Dropbox files back and forth from home. (Laughs) So I will say that it was almost nothing like recording a record with a band. But I think we still got a good record out of it. I’m proud of it, but I really want to be all together the next time we make a record as much as possible.

Last year also marked the 30th Anniversary of the Toad album Fear. Looking back on that and the realization that it’s been 30 years, what do you think of that album now in retrospect?

It was a mixed bag. I think we were having a lot of fun. It was our first time in a big studio – we were trying to do something ambitious. I was 21, so I don’t think I was quite mature as a human being or a lyricist yet, so there’s a lot of things given the chance that I would write differently now. But yeah, it was a good first try (laughs).

What’s up next for you as a solo artist and then with Toad The Wet Sprocket?

First things first, I’ve got this tour to do – the new record coming out. I’m planning on doing some acoustic recordings with Toad. And then Toad is going to be heading out on the road again, probably in late May of next year. So just working and working and working. And I’ll be on the road again in January – so yeah – keeping busy.

Beats sitting at home during a pandemic!

Yeah, I know – I’m working! I think the main thing for me is, once again, trying to find that balance now of coming back out into the world and still keeping the home fires burning. It’s a hard balance to do.

Do you have any messages for you fans who are reading this right now?

Thanks for you support. I hope to see you out on the road. I’m so happy to make music again and to play live again. It’s been a while…

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