GRANT PHILLIPS

OUT HERE ON MY OWN

GRANT LEE PHILLIPS CONTINUES TO SHINE SOLO

THERE’S SOMETHING TO BE SAID FOR WORKING WITHIN THE STRUCTURE AND THE CONSTRAINTS OF A RECORDING BUDGET AND THAT TIME CRUNCH AND

ALL, BUT YOU ALSO NEED SOLITUDE AS A WRITER AND YOU NEED TIME TO EXPLORE. ESPITE TURNING IN SOME OF THE MOST satisfying alternative rock albums of the mid-90’s, Grant Lee Buffalo never really made it beyond the college music scene. Through four powerful records of distorted guitars mixed with aggressive acoustic romps, the band never got the adoration lavished on peers like Soul Asylum and Cracker.

Nearly a decade after the band split up, frontman Grant Lee Phillips is continuing to release solo albums. Gone are the fulltime backing band and the fuzzy guitar, as Phillips, cradling an acoustic guitar, now focuses on more subtle, introspective songs. His knack for writing a remarkable hook and strong melodies, however are still there.

On Strangelet, his fifth solo record, Phillips is at his lyrical peak, offering a dozen songs mixed with pessimism and optimism. He took time recently to talk to InSite about the new record, his part-time gig as resident troubadour for the TV show Gilmore Girls and the prospect of getting back together with his old band. How different is it to go from being the frontman of a band to being a solo artist? Where do I begin? I suppose there’s a lot about it that is different. Is it more nerve-wracking knowing that it’s just you out there?

I never looked upon Grant Lee Buffalo as being me and a backup band. It was a different kind of situation. No matter how a band comes about its material it’s still collaborative among many levels, and Grant Lee Buffalo was certainly like that. I guess there’s a great deal of freedom and responsibility that you have to encounter and balance when you go at it alone. Some of that is stressful certainly, but having said that bands certainly carry their own set of stresses. It’s just different, I guess. I always wrote 100% of the material when I was in Grant Lee Buffalo, as I do today, so in that way my job hasn’t changed too much. I’ve certainly become a lot more involved with the recording process. I’ve become more self-reliant, at times of necessity, but also out of curiosity and my want to get my hands dirty and really get inside of that whole process. Was a lot of Strangelet recorded in your home studio? Yes it was. My home studio, however limited and humble, allows me to work through ideas and kind of bring things along from the very beginning, little touches as I go, which is nice. There’s something to be said for working within the structure and the constraints of a recording budget and that time crunch and all, but you also need solitude as a writer and you need time to explore. That’s the kind of thing where a home studio is really invaluable. You can try things out and throw them away if they don’t work out. In writing this new record, did you have a band for most of the recordings or did you play a lot of the instruments your self? A lot of it was done on my own. I actually fleshed the songs out quite a bit with drum loops and percussion I had played, and I replaced that later on with live drums. I added on a few overdubs in the tenth or eleventh hour. That’s when Peter Buck came in for an afternoon and played guitar and ukulele on another song, and a string quartet came in and played on two or three tracks. So those little touches that I was seeking to give it that album kind of thing, these are the kinds of things that are nearly impossible to do on the road unless you’re Yes. For me, I’ve always had to pare it down on the road, so that meant when I was recording I took that liberty to add vibraphone to everything, sometimes to some excess. It is such an exciting thing to play around in the studio for me. I could get lost in there forever. You recorded a covers album before this record. Where there any songs that you wanted to record, but for whatever reason never made the record?

I had a longer list of songs to begin with, and I typically do. There was a Siouxsie & The Banshees song “Spellbound” that I really wanted to record and I think I’ll probably play it live. You kind of go in with certain notions and you quickly realize well, that’s working or that works, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be on this album. “Ashes to Ashes,” the (David) Bowie song, was another one of those that I had played live on the road quite a bit and when it came to making the covers album I thought that’s an obvious one and yet it didn’t make as much sense in the context of the album. So I recorded it with a string quartet and made it an exclusive track that you can get via i Tunes. That’s the thing; records can only be pushed around so much. They’re going to be what they choose to be. So don’t try and force it?

No, that’s true. That happens with bands as well. Maybe more so because there are more components, more personalities and everybody’s kind of putting it out there, but in the end a record’s going to surprise you and hopefully it surprises you for the better and surpasses what you were looking for. On the new record, was there a central theme in your mind when you were putting it together?

I don’t know if there was a conscious theme, but it’s true that when I complete an album I stand back from it and begin to see threads that run through the songs lyrically. I had a few sort of mental Post Its. I was really inspired over the last couple of years, going back and listening to some of the more primitive rock and roll albums by Gene Vincent and Buddy Holly, all that kind of stuff. A couple of years ago I had been on the road with John Doe from the band X and he’s definitely steeped in the country’s best music, so those kind of things played an influence. I thought, I’d really like to find a way to tap into that immediacy and that vitality of the really early stuff and yet I’m also strongly attracted to music that’s more dissonant and harder to pin down lyrically. How to find that combination and that was sort of my goal, to fuse together my record collection in a way. If you can imagine Scotty Moore jamming along to an Eric Satie song with words by Baudelarie. I had a certain set of inspirations, but it’s always going to be filtered through my own sensibilities which are pretty varied and at some point in time it comes out sounding, looking and smelling like me. Have you had a chance to play any of these new songs live yet?

I played a lot of them live in a solo acoustic fashion before this tour and some of them I’ve played with a band in LA at a local club called Largo. This is kind of a new line up with Paul Brian on bass and Jay Melrose on drums. It’s really ferocious I have to say it’s been a work out. I feel like I go to the YMCA everyday to rehearse with these guys. This year in partic ular it seems there are a lot of bands reuniting, that were playing when Grant Lee Buffalo was still around; either for one off shows or full tours and albums. Have you ever thought about getting back together with the guys from your old band?

I’ve been asked about it and it’s crossed my mind from time to time, but we haven’t remained in close contact, to tell you truth. I don’t know. Personalities being as they are, I think we’re all stubborn enough that it’s very doubtful. Let’s talk about your cameos on Gilmore Girls. How did that D BY JOHN B. MOORE

first come about? Well, the creator of that show, Amy Sherman Palladino, is a big music fan and she basically sought me out and invited me to come on the show. I’m not sure how extensive my involvement was determined to be at that point, but I came out and lo and behold I guess they’re just wrapping up their seventh season and I’ve been on the show quite a few times. It’s so much fun.

Was it a surreal experience, your first couple of times?

It definitely was. I think the most surreal was the final episode of the last season which involved several other musicians turning up, posing as buskers and town troubadours and that included the band Sparks, Sonic Youth, I mean it was a real eclectic bunch that had gathered under the lamppost and the trees.

It was a great excuse for me to introduce my niece to your music.

I’m happy to hear that. I think that’s kind of a common phenomenon, that there are a few generations that are enjoying that show. I think that’s the great thing about Amy’s writing. They’ve had Yo La Tango on the show; they had The Shins a few years back. She defiantly was a real supporter of independent music from the very beginning. That’s all to her credit and it’s been a blast working on the show.