By L. David Wheeler, staff writer
Webster, N.Y. —
You might not recognize Shawn Phillips’s name, but you’ve heard his impact.
He helped Joni Mitchell learn guitar and gave George Harrison sitar lessons. He sang on the Beatles’ “Lovely Rita (Meter Maid)” from their “Sgt. Pepper’s” album. He hung out with the Greenwich Village crowd in the heyday of Hardin, Havens, van Ronk and Dylan; and shared living space in London with Donovan and Paul Simon. He performed at Britain’s pivotal Isle of Wight concert. He was initially cast to play the lead in the original “Jesus Christ Superstar,” though he ended up not doing the role. And all that isn’t even counting his own music, some 20 albums’ worth of mesmerizing, haunting vocals and guitar work — plus other projects, like a ballet called “Events in the Life of a Prince.”
The late rock promoter Bill Graham called him “the best-kept secret in the music business.”
“I’d like to rectify that situation!” said Phillips, who will appear in concert Saturday, June 6, at Harmony House, 58 E. Main St., as part of the Heartland Concerts series.
“It’s a bit difficult, I don’t know how to put it — there’s some people who make music that kind of washes over you and just serves as background of your life. I try to make music that gets your attention,” Phillips said in a phone interview Tuesday. “What I do is, I try to take my experiences in life, and I try to articulate my experiences.”
The Texas-born troubadour, son of author Philip Atlee (James Atlee Phillips), also tries to use a full command of the English language, corresponding to his wide vocal range. There aren’t a lot of singer-songwriters who’ll use “lightning slaying shadows” and “spittle-smattered son of man” in a song (as in his “Whaz Zat”). He said he’s particularly fond of these lines from his 2005 song “Ascent”:
“By the grace of God we will be sheltered from the clutches of our demons
Dressed in all our finest, we are rising to the best of our achievement
In this hall of mirrors, don’t you know we should be living in enchantment
Reflections of our darkest fears; we battle them with love and tears
And cast off all aspersions to our names ...”
This sort of poetic sensibility is seldom heard in the top 40, and Phillips has more or less written off the “music business.”
“The music business is fueled by the hormones of adolescent teenagers,” he said. “They want the formulaic, the bottom-line. Thank God for the Internet; now we see some real artists being found.”
For that matter, Phillips essentially walked away from the life for a decade. “From 1993 to 2002, I pretty much quit music,” he said. “I became a certified firefighter and paramedic in the state of Texas.” What got him back? “It was only because of my manager Arlo (Hennings), he said flat out, ‘You got 19 million people who love the work, you can’t just quit now.’ It was between him and my wife; my wife pointed out before we moved to South Africa, you can stay with the fire department ... but in one year they’re gonna put you behind a desk, because OSHA says you can’t fight fires after 60.”
These days he and his family (wife Juliette and son Liam) are living in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where his wife has family and he can still do marine rescue work, and he’s back on the road. It can be wearying, the travel and the set-up — “I don’t have a roadie, I don’t have anybody ... the only thing that’s really fun for me is the actual concert itself,” he said. So what keeps him going? Making a living for Liam, for one. And his art: making music aimed at boosting the listeners’ awareness and consciousness.
“I don’t believe in any particular religious organizations or design or particular institution — I try to articulate the power of the energy that is the divinity within us,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to articulate. You aren’t gonna have peace until every individual has peace.”
If you go:
WHAT: Shawn Phillips in concert
WHEN: Saturday, June 6, at 8 p.m.
WHERE: Harmony House, 58 E. Main St., Webster
ADMISSION: $23 ($20 advance), tickets available at the door or through www.heartlandconcerts.org