The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Liz Phair returns to `Guyville'
30 years after her hit debut, the singer reflects on sudden fame, art and change
A few weeks before singer-songwriter Liz Phair kicked off a 30thanniversary tour to celebrate her acclaimed 1993 debut album, “Exile in Guyville,” we reached her at home in Manhattan Beach and asked why she was taking the record out to celebrate its birthday.
“It so good how you describe it — as if I have left it at home and not let it wear a pretty dress for a while,” Phair says. “Like, ‘I’m gonna take you out. I’m gonna show you a good time.’
“I think I’ve just been amazed and humbled by how it keeps being held up by fans as one of their favorites,” she says of the album, which announced her as a bold new voice in indie music. “And the 30th anniversary does feel to me to be significant in a way that previous ones haven’t. I don’t know if
A I just got older and it sounds more “Canary” and probably significant, but it felt like the right “Shatter.” “Strange Loop.” I time.” think also maybe “Dance of the
The Guyville Tour kicks off in Seven Veils,” although I did play El Cajon on Tuesday before reaching that for a while on my solo tours. the Wiltern in Los Angeles on Nov. 10. In addition to playing all 18 tracks from the debut album, some of which Phair has rarely or never performed live, the show will include songs from the six studio albums she released since then, including 2021’s “Soberish.”
“I was coming back after the pandemic and I wanted to do something big,” Phair says. “I wanted to return with something that I could really sink my teeth into, and that would really make fans surprised as well as happy. So we planned big, and now we’ve got this amazing show.”
In a conversation edited for length and clarity, Phair talked about the new tour, her life in Chicago when she made “Exile in Guyville,” and the fact and fiction of her songwriting.
Q
Some of these songs you haven’t played for a long time. Did you have to relearn things?
A
Oh yes. “Shatter,” I had to sit down and think about because I’m fond of changing my tunings nowadays. I’m like,
“What was I playing?” I wasn’t
A
writing the music out back in It was such a special time of 1993 as a 24-year-old. I was just suspended reality, in a way. sitting in my apartment, probably I’d graduated from college; I was high, playing guitar, and there living on my own. I had a certain was nothing but little scribblings amount of savings so I could on pieces of paper with pencil, prove that I was going to be an which I’ve since lost. artist and not have to get a real
The good news is I wasn’t as job. good of a guitar player as I am now, It was just this amorphous time so once you can find it in the tuning where I could believe what I was and on the neck, I can figure doing as if it was the Blues Brothers out pretty quickly what I’m doing. on a mission from God, you know. There was no conflicting stimuli. It was pure, like Alice in Wonderland going into the rabbit hole. I believe what I was doing
Q
Which have you played the least over the years?
Q
Of course, some “Exile” songs you probably have to play every show. What do you do to keep those fresh and interesting for yourself?
A
I hear that a lot and I’ve never quite related to it. Because for me, in the moment, with the crowd, it’s always fresh. Like, I haven’t experienced that burnout that bands speak about or that ill-at-ease feeling with hits they have to play so many times.
I didn’t grow up picturing myself onstage, so I am electrified when I’m up there. I’m vibrating and like on another level. It feels like where if you had a whitewater rafting river behind your house — would that get old? It really is so different from my normal life that it’s electrifying.
Q
The story of this album is sort of a legend now — a song-by-song response to the Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main St.” that you wrote and recorded as a very young, inexperienced artist. What stands out in your memory 30 years later about those days?
was the most important thing to do, and I had the time and the space to give myself over to it.
Q
Was it difficult when the savings got low and you didn’t have a real job?
A Q
I remember when it came I was such a grifter. I was out, a lot of people assumed desperately poor and I would that these songs were semi-autobiographical. go pay social calls on people that In later interviews, might happen to be eating. I did you say, “No, these are stories I sell my art. You know how I supported created.” myself? I was a visual artist; that’s what I was trained to do and that’s what I had always planned to be when I grew up.
I had interned for famous artists like Leon Golub and Nancy Spero in New York. And Ed Paschke, an incredible painter in Chicago. And I managed to sell just enough art to make rent and like a tiny amount of food. It wasn’t so dangerous, because I could always admit failure and go back home. But it was pretty, pretty ugly there for a while.
Q
Isn’t that like a rite of passage for the starving artist? You’ve got to go through it.
A
I almost think society says, like, “Prove to us that you are serious. Like, prove to us how much this matters to you.” And it mattered to me a great deal.
Q
I’m curious what kind of memories came back to you as you’ve gone so intensely into these songs and that time and place.
A
I think I’m surprised by how much the courses I took in college show up in little ways. I always thought of my songwriting as both playful and off the cuff, but there was a lot of my education popping in here and there. Like the “Salome” “Dance of the Seven Veils.”
I’m struck by how much “Guyville” may have been also the tail end of Oberlin (College), in a
way. I don’t think you realize that because once you’re out of college you’re like, I’m done with that. But I can really feel that education that I received in the lyrics. It’s sort of woven through.
A
You’re touching on something that has been of interest to people for a long time, but there’s a nuance to it. They were semi-autobiographical but at the same time, I think people did not give me the credit for adding the fictional parts of you. I think they just thought I was a naive person who just confessed these terrible sins into a microphone.
I guess as a young adult that offended me, because I’m like, no, I’m a conceptual artist, and I have used my own life and I have used my own experiences, but I’ve also made them better for you. And I guess I might have been pretty mad about that in interviews early on because it just felt unfair to a woman at the time to just assume she couldn’t take her own life and make fiction out of it, too.
Q
The songs capture your life in your early 20s. How are they and you different 30 years later?
A
I don’t end up in bed with strangers anymore. When I get to “(Bleep) and Run,” I think about that a lot. You know, that early part of your life when you try to find love, or you end up at the end of the night going home with someone that maybe you knew from the bar but were never attracted to, but the guy you really liked left with someone else.
I love touching that young adult part of myself. Because those things that felt so confusing and almost dark and dangerous probably weren’t. We were all just a bunch of hapless college kids trying to figure out how to be artists in the big city, and there’s a spontaneity and risk-taking that I almost envy. Possibility looms large.
Q
Have you changed in terms of how you approach playing live since you first went out to play the “Guyville” songs 30 years ago?
A
Completely — 180 degrees, actually. Here’s an interesting fun fact. Because I’d grown up intending to be a visual artist, I put “Exile in Guyville” out, and I think I had stood onstage and performed twice, or maybe once, in my life. It instantly started making waves — like right away. It was a very quick ascent into controversy and praise and damnation, all at once. It was a real zero-to-60 moment.
You know, Ira Glass, “This American Life,” he came to one of those early performances, so I packed the Metro in Chicago, which is probably 2,000 people. And it was probably my fourth show ever-ever. He just said it was like watching an ice skater fall down. He’s like, “I can’t watch.”
It’s just one of those great gifts of taking risks, because the thing that I was most afraid of became one of my greatest strengths over time. I still get nervous before I go out. But once I’m there, it’s just muscle memory. And how many people get to feel that sensation? Very few. And I’m grateful for it.
Q
Thank you for your time today. I hope you do put a pretty dress on “Exile” when you take it out.
A
I’ll order a dessert. “You can have some sambuca, ‘Exile’ — go ahead.”