Shawn Phillips
Veteran singer/songwriter Shawn Phillips has released a new album titled "Continuance." It is the 26th solo record to his credit and features a variety of styles that blend into the signature sound that Shawn strives to achieve. The CD, which features 12 well written and executed tracks, was recorded at Rose Lane Studio in Carpenteria California. As Shawn explains, "The album is a continuance of a philosophical outlook on our existence."
Shawn Phillips has an impressive array of musicians that he has worked with in the past. The list includes the likes of: George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Steve Gadd, Donavan and many more. The classic psychedelic 60's song "Season of the Witch" was co-written by Shawn and Donovan. He played a full set of music to a standing ovation at the famous "Isle of Wight" festival in 1970, that included greats such as Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Jethro Tull, The Who and many others. I recently asked Shawn a few questions about the new album and his career.
R.V.B. - Congratulations on your new album Continuance. Are the new collection of songs written recently, or have some of the ideas come from the past as well?
S.P. - The songs are all new and were written over a 2 year period. I don't factory create songs out because I have a criteria with which I write. They are......anger, wonder and technique. Anger is, you look at the world around you and if you're satisfied, you're probably certifiable. Wonder, is to be attentive to every drop of rain on every unfolding bud and blade of grass and technique, is keeping a balance between the anger and the wonder. I cogitate on a subject and I have to wait until it just channels through, there is no other explanation. The poem "Some Things Will Never Change" was written in 1968 and it came to be on the CD because Anthony (Bass) and Brockett (Keys) were improvising between takes and I started narrating it as I was looking through some other lyrics for something we'd recorded. "Furious Desperation was then included because Sebastian (Drummer) was sulking because he didn't get to play on "Some Things". So I narrated and all 3 guys improvised. Just in case you've seen the original Blade Runner, Rutger Hauer as the dying replicant said the words, something will pass, "Like tears in rain". I got accused of plagiarism by some friends until they learned the poem was written in 1968. Blade Runner came out in 1982!
R.V.B. - What were you trying to achieve conceptually with the album? Is it based on a theme right from the start or did it evolve while recording it?
S.P. - Any record / CD I've ever made, I try to make a movie for the mind. This CD is based on my perception of the human condition we presently exist in. It was based on the pieces flowing into each other.
R.V.B. - Why did you chose Rose Lane Studio for the project? How did you enjoy the collaboration process the with the musicians that helped on the album?
S.P. - You know, if you're churning songs out solely for the express purpose of tintinnabulation of the cash register, you'll probably get a record deal. No A&R guy in today's music industry is going to give a second thought to the type of music I create. It's uncategorizable. That's an instant death knell today. I met Sjoerd Koppert in the winter of 1972 when he was house mix for "Yes" in Holland. He had inadvertently put "Yes's" gear truck in the canal in front of our hotel because of black ice. Most upset was he to say the least. We went to a cafe, smoked a joint or 2 and I calmed him down over a 2 hour period with...dude, shit happens. He never forgot that. 44 years later he said it's time for us to do a project together. He was managing Roselane and gave me the studio for June through July.
I loved working with the guys on this CD. Throughout my career I have been fortunate enough to work with extraordinary musicians. I've found that if you let go of your ego and let the musicians working with you add their vision to your vision, you get the magical empathy that exists when it all gels together. If you have something explicit in mind for some things, you can go back to it later and make it happen. I implicitly trust their musical intuition. You simply do not tell Alphonso Johnson or Leland Sklar how to play the f....bass. Or any other musician who has mastered their instrument.
R.V.B. - How did you find that mixing a variety of music styles can actually work in the big picture of an album concept?
S.P. - I've always mixed different genres of music together. I grew up traveling with an author Father who always wrote on location and I was exposed to many different cultures of music before I was even 16. I can't sit and listen to a CD where all the tracks sound the same. Every young and up and coming musician must listen to every genre of music that exists. Absorb them all like a sponge and then integrate them into whatever music they are creating. It's all about predictability. If you know what's going to happen, how can it ever move you? When you're playing / recording music, you're creating an audio portrait of what's in your mind and heart.
R.V.B. - Do you feel that the new album is any different than some of your previous works or just a "continuance" of ideas? No pun intended.
S.P. - Well, you're right, in a way, it is a continuance of a philosophical outlook on our existence. What can I say, life itself is a continuance of your existence, you just articulate each step differently.
R.V.B. - Can you tell me about the importance of working with Paul Buckmaster in your career? How did he add to your music in the past as well as his unfortunate final work on this album?
S.P. - Oh Lord, not a day goes by still that I don't feel that emptiness in the center of my chest when I think, or do something that Paul and I would have discussed or paid heed to. I was Skyping with him the day before he passed. He was my closest friend in the world next to J. Peter Robinson. Next to these two musicians, I am an apprentice. They opened up an entire world of music for me by introducing me to the pioneers of composition...Gyorgi Ligetti, Krystov Penderecki, Karlheinz Stockhausen. Paul Buckmaster was a genius, that was the importance of working with him. He did what I espoused other young musicians should do....he took the knowledge of those extraordinary composers and integrated it into his own sphere of creativity, then in turn would add that creativity to my records. I am still furious that so little was made of his passing. There have been weeks of lament over some musicians who have passed, because they made a lot of money and were "popular". More than a few of them and their music were popular because of Paul. That's all there is to it. I have a hard time listening to the tracks Paul arranged on this CD. He had terrible arthritis and I can imagine how painful it was on anything he worked on. He lives within us now.
R.V.B. - You have lived in a lot of different areas of the world. Why did you move around so much and did the different cultural lifestyles seep into your music?
S.P. - As I said before, my Father was an author who insisted on writing his books in the place he was writing about, therefore the traveling around the world, San Miguel De Allende at 4 to 6 then 8 to 10. Spain and the Canary Islands, then after the death of my Mother, Tahiti. Those shifts in culture were accompanied by the music within them and I soaked it all up. Then I lived with my Grand parents when I couldn't be with my Dad and My Grandmother listened to Tchaikovsky and my Grandfather listened to Hank Williams, so with all that under my belt I became a sort of musical schizophrenic.
R.V.B. - In your years in the UK, you were in the middle of an area that created music which was groundbreaking, and changed the worlds view on popular music. With songs such as Season of the Witch - which you co-wrote with Donovan - did you realize at the time that you were involved in this fascinating artistic era that created this game changing approach to music?
S.P. - Oh hell no! We were all musicians doing what we loved to do. There was no concept of any kind that musical history was being made. There was a vague awareness that each of us was dabbling with the fusion of many different types of music. Folk music was prevalent and rapidly began evolving into progressive Folk Rock, Skiffle was still popular, Eric Clapton, the Stones and many others were heavily into the Blues, while others like myself were inserting classical, or Indian influences into what we were doing. Even Country was influential with some.
R.V.B. - Can you tell me how you enjoyed working with The Beatles, George Harrison and Ravi Shankar? What did you learn from these greats that carries over into your music?
S.P. - Apart from Ravi Shankar, I think it was more a question of what we learned from each other. I remember one evening in the studio, George and I sat off in a corner and we tried to outdo each other on an ascending scale riff. Much hilarity ensued the faster it became. Ravi was gracious enough to give me my first lessons the night I met him after his concert in Toronto. He spent 3 hours showing me how to sit with the instrument, the fingerings, the plectrum, (Mizrab), how to tune the sympathetic strings to the melody or scale you are about to play, basically everything I needed to get me started.
R.V.B. - How has your musical gear changed through the years? What was your first guitar and amp, and how did your equipment evolve through the years, to your guitar and amp choice of today?
S.P. - My first guitar was an old Stella. There were virtually no amps around at that time in 1949 where I was in Fort Worth Texas. There were, but they were hard to come by unless you were a full on professional musician and knew how to search them out. As time went by, many years were spent on just acoustic guitar, both 6 and 12 string, which evolved of course into electric guitars, which took me into amps and guitar effects. I pretty much stuck with Fender Twin Reverbs, or direct to house. At that point, the musical influences I was hearing in my head led me to creating systems that would let me manifest what I was hearing. With the help of an electronic tech named Bob Loney, (later on to become chief display technician for Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, U2, The Grateful Dead, Madonna, Journey, Bryan Adams and others) we built a system called "The Infinity Device". With only the clock in a Linn Drum machine, (the only instrument I was not playing in real time) I have a video shot in Prince's club "First Avenue" in Minneapolis of me playing the finale of the 1812 Overture complete with cannon and cathedral bells. This leap into technology was born of my love for orchestra. Today with the evolution of these technologies I have a much smaller system and I use a Looper in my concerts today. The reason for this is simply the fact that I have been doing this for more than a half century, and doing a 2 hour concert today with just one guitar bores the shit out of me. Playing music just becomes a job. Using this technology creates a challenge for me in front of the audience. I record in real time building an entire song with guitars and bass to a wave form of an actual session drummer and the challenge is that you better be on ONE when you kick it off, or start a new layer. If you ain't on top of it, you better be prepared to laugh it off.
R.V.B. - What were your early influences? Why did you start playing music in the first place? Was there an event or person that sparked this interest?
S.P. - I would think my Mother playing the piano would be the earliest. She played Malaguena beautifully. I remember being under the piano as she played. Then, as years passed, Mariachi, Flamenco, the rhythms of the South Pacific Islands, then Blues in Texas with country and classical from family and then being swamped and overwhelmed by influences from Paul and J. Peter Robinson.
I started playing because my Dad gave me that old Stella guitar. I drove him nuts with E and A min. for months.
R.V.B. - Are there any live performances in your career that really stand out in your memory?
S.P. - Yes, the Isle Of Wight in the 70's. I wasn't even supposed to play. I knew a couple people and had gotten backstage and was just hanging out with friends, so stoned I could hardly walk. Someone had cancelled and they asked me if I could do a 45 minute set. I said sure.......I did and got a double standing ovation from 657,000 people. Kinda hard to forget an experience like that.
R.V.B. - Do you have any plans to support the new album?
S.P. - Of course!!! you are part of that plan by virtue of my doing this interview. Thank you for your interest. I have a tour of 18 confirmed concerts in the province of Quebec starting June 29th, which will end up being maybe 30 concerts when finished booking. Then I will return home for a bit, then do concerts throughout the U.S. I am also submitting Continuance for consideration of CD of the year in 2018 to the Grammys. In closing, I wish all your readers Health, Love and Clarity
Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz
This interview may not be reproduced in any part or form without permission from this site.
For more information on Shawn Phillips visit his website www.shawnphillips.com
Special thanks to Billy James of Glass Onyon Promotions
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