Musician sings a new tune without the bottle
Songwriter Tom Phillips bids official farewell to the ‘champagne mornings’
On Drinking Days, the final song on Tom Phillips’ new record, the veteran Calgary songwriter seems to offer a bittersweet farewell to his wild years.
With a hint of rueful nostalgia, our narrator reflects on a life of “champagne mornings” and “good wine all afternoon” before revealing his drinking days are over. The song then seems to end as another begins. But it’s actually the same song, now sung by a collection of voices that the liner notes slyly refer to as the Shirley Temple Singers.
Against guitarist Geoff Brock’s searing guitar solo, the choir sounds celebratory and loose; a sudden burst of swaying gang vocals that turn this sorrowful lament into something much more jubilant.
It turns out the song is a rather on-the-nose reflection of the songwriter’s experiences in the past few years.
“I quit drinking,” Phillips says, in an interview with Postmedia at the Blues Can in Inglewood earlier this week. “I quit three years ago but, for the five years before that, I had been going at it massively hard, like health-problem kind of stuff. Part of my quitting was to see if I could do it anymore, see if I could write songs. I had been at the point for probably a couple years before that where I’d get up every morning and think about writing a song and just drink instead. So I had bits and pieces. So just to help myself, I guess spiritually, I wanted to just write songs for no other reason than to just craft the song and see what I could do. That’s where the songs came from.”
Songwriters who believe they
operate with the help of alcohol often fear their inspiration might dry up after they dry out.
This weighed heavily on Phillips’ mind when he set out to write the nine songs that would eventually make up his superb new record, Plastic Machine. Some, such as the haunting Words to Whisky, address the fear directly. Others, such as gorgeous opener Distance or mournful Dry As a Desert Bone, ache with the regret of someone confronting his past. But if there is a theme to the record, it’s succinctly covered in the chorus of Distance, where Phillips sings “the only thing that’s left is moving on.”
But he admits moving on — spiritually, artistically or otherwise — seemed a daunting prospect after he put down the bottle.
“I remember sitting at my desk thinking ‘oh my God, how do you write without that?’” he says. “How do you play? All that stuff was a big issue for me. It was a big upheaval in my life. I make my living in bars. I’m always in them and it’s what I love so I didn’t want to quit doing that. But I really had that fear. I had that massive fear that I wouldn’t be able to do anything. Then I sat down and wrote Words to Whisky.”
It turns out, Phillips had nothing to worry about. The songs on Plastic Machine reveal one of the city’s best songwriters at the height of his considerable powers.
Stylistically varied, the nine songs roll out like a comprehensive revue of roots music. From the country-blues of Sad Girl, to the hints of guitar-pop found on Deeper Blue, to the sweet and fragile Swallowed A Bird and trumpet-sweetened Tex-Mex heard on Death of Love, the songs seem instantly timeless and the assured work of someone who has spent 30 years playing bars and honkytonks and sharpening his craft.
On the night of this interview, Phillips eventually takes the stage backed by his top-notch band, the cleverly named D(ifficult) T(ransitions)’s. With Brock, drummer Ian Grant, longtime bassist Tim Leacock and sisters Shaye and Sydney Zadravec on guitar and vocals, the DT’s are a pliable and relatively new combo for Phillips that came together to back his hosting duties at the Blues Can’s Tuesday night open jam.
Over the decades, Phillips has overseen a number of residencies or jam nights in Calgary watering holes, often fronting the formidable honky-tonk act The Men of Constant Sorrow. But despite a steady presence on the scene for decades, the singer-songwriter still somehow manages to seem like one of the city’s best-kept secrets. On stage, he manages to surprise on a nightly basis. Some of that can be credited to his far-flung taste in covers, which on any given night can include Warren Zevon’s junkie’s lament Carmelita, Bruce Springsteen’s under-appreciated I Wish I Were Blind, Damien Jurado’s spare and chilling Ohio and even an a cappella run through the old Irish ballad, The Auld Triangle.
But for every intriguing cover he throws in, Phillips manages to match it with three or four equally strong originals.
“I just feel massively lucky, because I still play 80 per cent of my own songs in my sets,” says Phillips, who will be holding a CD release party at the Ironwood Stage & Grill on Dec. 14. “Because I play so much, I’ve got to keep writing. I can’t keep playing the same songs week after week. I’ve got a lot of steady gigs at the same places. I need to have material. Those gigs help me to write. It gives me a reason to write. It’s great yet tiring for bands to do that. It does tighten them up massively. I have to write so they don’t get completely bored out of their minds playing exactly the same songs every week.”
The DT’s, along with guests such as Deep Dark Woods pianist Geoff Hilhorst and Men of Constant Sorrow pedal steel player Charlie Veilleux, joined Phillips in producer Lorrie Matheson’s Calgary studio for Plastic Machine. Matheson, who has also been at the helm for albums by Rae Spoon and Reuben and the Dark, first worked with Phillips on the 2015 curio Mr. Superlove. That album found the singer taking on a collection of unlikely covers that included the Ass Pony’s title track, New Order’s Love Vigilantes, Crooked Fingers’ New Drink for the Old Drunk and others handpicked by Matheson.
It was a positive enough experience that Phillips knew he wanted to return to Matheson’s studio with a batch of his own songs.
“His ideas are often a million miles away from something I would even think of,” Phillips says. “I’d think ‘ Well, what kind of idea is that?’ I’d try it and, yeah, it’s exactly right. He’s really got a skill and there’s an art to that. It’s always based on a song. It’s not just to do something, not to just throw something at it. He’s always concerned with lyrics and melody and the vibe of the song.”
But while Plastic Machine may usher in a new period of creativity for Phillips, he says his modus operandi as a songwriter hasn’t changed all that much. Unlike many country writers, he is not a collaborator when it comes to penning tunes. In the 30-plus years he has been composing, he reckons he has only ever co-written one song.
It was with Tim Leacock and was almost finished before Phillips became involved. For him, songwriting remains a personal, exacting and decidedly solitary exercise.
“I have to be in a room, by myself and no one else home,” he says with a laugh.
“I just want to be able to be free and do whatever. For every song I write that I like, I probably write four or five that, the next day, I don’t like at all. It’s like that. It’s about keeping at it, I guess.”
For every song I write that
I like, I probably write four or five that, the next day, I don’t like at all. It’s like that. It’s about keeping at it, I guess.