Grant Lee Phillips & Howe Gelb

GRANT LEE PHILLIPS
www.grantleephillips.com

“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 errorsComposed 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. 

HOWE GELB
www.howegelb.com 

The Coincidentalist marks the New West Records debut of Howe Gelb, the freewheeling luminary whose three decades of voluminous recording with his category-busting band Giant Sand have forged a legend of Southwestern American roots-punk and international prominence. The album culminates 30 years of restless creative work by Gelb, a Pennsylvania flood evacuee who relocated to Tucson in 1972. After meeting up in 1976, Giant Sandworms began in 1980 with his close friend Rainer Ptacek, the renowned slide guitarist. That group morphed into beloved genre benders Giant Sand in 1983. Giant Sand’s incarnation in the ‘90s included Joey Burns and John Convertino, who went on to form the acclaimed Latinesque unit Calexico. Gelb says of the sources of his sunstruck music, “I always thought there was a similar attitude between Thelonious Monk, Neil Young, and Clint Eastwood, but I could never articulate why. I was drawn to those guys early — there was something about the way they did things.”