| Grant Lee-Phillips ↔ Walking in the Green Corn (2012) |
Grant Lee-Phillips — Walking in the Green Corn
Birth name: Bryan G. Phillips
Born: September 1, 1963, Stockton, California, United States
Location: Los Angeles, California
Instruments: vocals, Acoustic guitar, Electric guitar, Bass, Banjo, Mandolin, Harmonica, drums, Piano, Synthesizer
Album release: October 16, 2012
Record Label: Magnetic Field Rec
Duration: xxx
Tracks:
01.) Vanishing Song 4:24
02.) Great Horned Owl 4:12
03.) Buffalo Hearts 2:38
04.) The Straighten Outer 3:21
05.) Fools Gold 3:51
06.) Silent Arrow 3:56
07.) Bound To This World 5:08
08.) Thunderbird 3:39
09.) Black Horses in a Yellow Sky 2:55
10.) Walking in the Green Corn 3:28
Editorial Reviews
• History and legend have often found their way into my songs reflects Grant-Lee Phillips. But sometimes, I don t have to look quite so far to find inspiration. Walking in the Green Corn, is the newest album by Grant-Lee Phillips. It s ten songs are drawn from Phillips intensive investigations into his native lineage. Phillips, who is Muskogee (Creek), elliptically explores the intersection of past and present, personal and political. While the songs delve deeply into the subconscious mystery of his own back-story, they simultaneously reveal the resonance and insight of ancient myth in parallel to contemporary man s emotions, actions, and errors. Composed in a concentrated burst over the course of a few winter months, Walking in the Green Corn came about almost too quickly to censor the unfiltered sum of years of rumination and discovery. As the days became shorter, the nocturnal Phillips became more productive. I m pretty good in the morning, he says, a smile emerging, which for me is about 2pm. I find that in a half-awake state, I can make a little bit of headway. Then I become more conscious as the day goes on...I have to wait until the evening and the rest of the world has quieted down to resume. What initially began as off-the-cuff home recordings, designed to capture the songs at the moment of conception, soon took on a life of its own. Initially I figured that, somewhere down the road, I d get some musicians together in a cathedral-like space and re-record these songs, Phillips explains. But the disarmingly warm, bioluminescent quality of his simple home recordings had the certain weathered elegance that, in Phillips words, would have driven me mad if I attempted to recreate them in a professional studio environment. With the exception of violin and vocals by Sara Watkins (formerly of Nickel Creek) and an understated vibraphone part by Alexander Burke, everything on Walking in the Green Corn was performed, sung, and engineered by Phillips. I do my best work when nobody s paying attention including myself, he recalls. That s what happened: it really snuck up on me. By the end of the year, I had most of the album written and recorded. Little by little I d play the songs back for my wife, Denise (Siegel), on long drives up the San Joaquin Valley. She s an artist and writer with uncanny ears and instincts. She kept me aimed in the right direction, brought a lot of objectivity to the project. Denise was my co-producer here. The mix of euphoria, wonder, and caution brought about by fatherhood a heady emotional cocktail that fueled Phillips last album, the critically lauded Little Moon also played a hand in this projects, as his thoughts turned to his own mixed heritage. He has always found his ancestry, which encompasses both Native American peoples European settlers to be a fertile source. Connecting to my ancestry is like having this deep trunk that s embedded in the earth, with deep roots. It was always something that was important to my grandmother, who was Creek, and to my mother. So, after becoming a father, I wanted to be able to answer all those questions I know I ll be asked one day, when my daughter takes an interest in where we come from.
Website: http://grantleephillips.com
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/grantleephillips
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Grant-Lee-Phillips/58176757138
Discography:
• 2000 Ladies' Love Oracle
• 2001 Mobilize
• 2004 Virginia Creeper
• 2006 nineteeneighties
• 2007 Strangelet
• 2009 Little Moon
• 2012 Walking in the Green Corn
Biography by Andy Kellman
• After spending his formative years in Stockton, CA, Grant Lee Phillips headed to Los Angeles to study film. Finding himself beneath the spell cast by local bands like the Rain Parade and the Dream Syndicate, Phillips soon partnered with Stockton acquaintance Jeff Clark to form Shiva Burlesque. The band dissolved after two critically acclaimed records, and Phillips began writing and demoing under the Grant Lee Buffalo alias. Following several solo performances, he invited former bandmates Joey Peters and Paul Kimble to join him, and the trio signed to the Warner Bros subsidiary Slash Records in 1992.
• Phillips' golden, honey-soaked voice had largely gone to waste in Shiva Burlesque, but the new band enabled him to step out as a singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Grant Lee Buffalo went on to release four very different LPs, although a cult following, several successful tours, and across-the-board critical acclaim (Phillips was voted Rolling Stone's Male Vocalist of the Year following the second LP) didn't translate into strong sales. Frustrated with his label's dead-on-arrival promotion, Phillips asked for his band to be released from their contract, and he was obliged. (It was erroneously reported that GLP had been dropped.) Phillips dissolved his band, anxious to forge a new path.
• In October of 1999, he headed to Jon Brion's studio and recorded a handful of new songs, played exclusively by himself. Dubbed Ladies' Love Oracle, the album was self-released the following year online; Phillips also sold it during his numerous appearances at Largo in Hollywood. After landing a new contract with Zoe/Rounder -- and making the first of many appearances on the popular comedy-drama Gilmore Girls, as a roaming town troubadour -- he issued the excellent Mobilize in 2001. The next year, Rounder reissued Ladies' Love Oracle in time for Phillips' joint tour with Kristin Hersh and Joe Doe. Virginia Creeper followed in 2004, marking the first time that Phillips had consciously eschewed all electric guitars in favor of a stripped-down, folksy sound. A covers album, Nineteeneighties, appeared in 2006, and Strangelet arrived one year later. For his next effort, Phillips assembled a band that featured Jay Bellerose, Paul Bryan, and Jamie Edwards, all of whom spent five days recording 2009's Little Moon.
| Grant Lee-Phillips ↔ Walking in the Green Corn (2012) |
Grant Lee-Phillips — Walking in the Green Corn
Birth name: Bryan G. Phillips
Born: September 1, 1963, Stockton, California, United States
Location: Los Angeles, California
Instruments: vocals, Acoustic guitar, Electric guitar, Bass, Banjo, Mandolin, Harmonica, drums, Piano, Synthesizer
Album release: October 16, 2012
Record Label: Magnetic Field Rec
Duration: xxx
Tracks:
01.) Vanishing Song 4:24
02.) Great Horned Owl 4:12
03.) Buffalo Hearts 2:38
04.) The Straighten Outer 3:21
05.) Fools Gold 3:51
06.) Silent Arrow 3:56
07.) Bound To This World 5:08
08.) Thunderbird 3:39
09.) Black Horses in a Yellow Sky 2:55
10.) Walking in the Green Corn 3:28
Editorial Reviews
• History and legend have often found their way into my songs reflects Grant-Lee Phillips. But sometimes, I don t have to look quite so far to find inspiration. Walking in the Green Corn, is the newest album by Grant-Lee Phillips. It s ten songs are drawn from Phillips intensive investigations into his native lineage. Phillips, who is Muskogee (Creek), elliptically explores the intersection of past and present, personal and political. While the songs delve deeply into the subconscious mystery of his own back-story, they simultaneously reveal the resonance and insight of ancient myth in parallel to contemporary man s emotions, actions, and errors. Composed in a concentrated burst over the course of a few winter months, Walking in the Green Corn came about almost too quickly to censor the unfiltered sum of years of rumination and discovery. As the days became shorter, the nocturnal Phillips became more productive. I m pretty good in the morning, he says, a smile emerging, which for me is about 2pm. I find that in a half-awake state, I can make a little bit of headway. Then I become more conscious as the day goes on...I have to wait until the evening and the rest of the world has quieted down to resume. What initially began as off-the-cuff home recordings, designed to capture the songs at the moment of conception, soon took on a life of its own. Initially I figured that, somewhere down the road, I d get some musicians together in a cathedral-like space and re-record these songs, Phillips explains. But the disarmingly warm, bioluminescent quality of his simple home recordings had the certain weathered elegance that, in Phillips words, would have driven me mad if I attempted to recreate them in a professional studio environment. With the exception of violin and vocals by Sara Watkins (formerly of Nickel Creek) and an understated vibraphone part by Alexander Burke, everything on Walking in the Green Corn was performed, sung, and engineered by Phillips. I do my best work when nobody s paying attention including myself, he recalls. That s what happened: it really snuck up on me. By the end of the year, I had most of the album written and recorded. Little by little I d play the songs back for my wife, Denise (Siegel), on long drives up the San Joaquin Valley. She s an artist and writer with uncanny ears and instincts. She kept me aimed in the right direction, brought a lot of objectivity to the project. Denise was my co-producer here. The mix of euphoria, wonder, and caution brought about by fatherhood a heady emotional cocktail that fueled Phillips last album, the critically lauded Little Moon also played a hand in this projects, as his thoughts turned to his own mixed heritage. He has always found his ancestry, which encompasses both Native American peoples European settlers to be a fertile source. Connecting to my ancestry is like having this deep trunk that s embedded in the earth, with deep roots. It was always something that was important to my grandmother, who was Creek, and to my mother. So, after becoming a father, I wanted to be able to answer all those questions I know I ll be asked one day, when my daughter takes an interest in where we come from.
Website: http://grantleephillips.com
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/grantleephillips
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Grant-Lee-Phillips/58176757138
Discography:
• 2000 Ladies' Love Oracle
• 2001 Mobilize
• 2004 Virginia Creeper
• 2006 nineteeneighties
• 2007 Strangelet
• 2009 Little Moon
• 2012 Walking in the Green Corn
Biography by Andy Kellman
• After spending his formative years in Stockton, CA, Grant Lee Phillips headed to Los Angeles to study film. Finding himself beneath the spell cast by local bands like the Rain Parade and the Dream Syndicate, Phillips soon partnered with Stockton acquaintance Jeff Clark to form Shiva Burlesque. The band dissolved after two critically acclaimed records, and Phillips began writing and demoing under the Grant Lee Buffalo alias. Following several solo performances, he invited former bandmates Joey Peters and Paul Kimble to join him, and the trio signed to the Warner Bros subsidiary Slash Records in 1992.
• Phillips' golden, honey-soaked voice had largely gone to waste in Shiva Burlesque, but the new band enabled him to step out as a singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Grant Lee Buffalo went on to release four very different LPs, although a cult following, several successful tours, and across-the-board critical acclaim (Phillips was voted Rolling Stone's Male Vocalist of the Year following the second LP) didn't translate into strong sales. Frustrated with his label's dead-on-arrival promotion, Phillips asked for his band to be released from their contract, and he was obliged. (It was erroneously reported that GLP had been dropped.) Phillips dissolved his band, anxious to forge a new path.
• In October of 1999, he headed to Jon Brion's studio and recorded a handful of new songs, played exclusively by himself. Dubbed Ladies' Love Oracle, the album was self-released the following year online; Phillips also sold it during his numerous appearances at Largo in Hollywood. After landing a new contract with Zoe/Rounder -- and making the first of many appearances on the popular comedy-drama Gilmore Girls, as a roaming town troubadour -- he issued the excellent Mobilize in 2001. The next year, Rounder reissued Ladies' Love Oracle in time for Phillips' joint tour with Kristin Hersh and Joe Doe. Virginia Creeper followed in 2004, marking the first time that Phillips had consciously eschewed all electric guitars in favor of a stripped-down, folksy sound. A covers album, Nineteeneighties, appeared in 2006, and Strangelet arrived one year later. For his next effort, Phillips assembled a band that featured Jay Bellerose, Paul Bryan, and Jamie Edwards, all of whom spent five days recording 2009's Little Moon.