An Evening with Glen Phillips and Shawn Mullins
City Winery NYC Presents Glenn Philips and Shawn Mullins on Feburary 23rd at 8pm
During his years as lead singer and main songwriter of Toad the Wet Sprocket, Glen Phillips helped to create the band’s elegant folk/pop sound with honest, introspective lyrics that forged a close bond with their fans. When Toad went on hiatus, he launched a solo career with Abulum, and stayed busy collaborating with other artists on various projects including Mutual Admiration Society, with members of Nickel Creek and Remote Tree Children, an experimental outing with John Morgan Askew.
“Until recently, I’ve seldom allowed myself to stay in one place for very long,” Phillips says, explaining the genesis of his new album, THERE IS SO MUCH HERE. “I was lucky during the COVID lockdown to move in with my girlfriend, now fiancée, and to stay home for the longest stretch I’ve had since the birth of my daughter, 20 years ago. I began noticing the little things. After a life of travel and seeking out peak experiences, I began to appreciate the subtle beauty of sitting still.
“I’ve been playing a songwriting game with Texas folksinger Matt The Electrician, for about ten years. Every Friday, he sends out a title. We have a week to write a song that includes
it. The process allows me to write songs I wouldn’t write on my own. When my friend John [Morgan Askew] asked me to come up to his studio and make music, I said, ‘Yes!’ I collected a bunch of the new songs and headed up to Bocce Studios, in Vancouver, WA. John invited drummer Ji Tanzer and bass player - / - multi-instrumentalist Dave Depper along. When we started playing, I wasn’t sure we were making an album, but as the process unfolded, the songs began to make sense to me.
Phillips’ previous solo record, SWALLOWED BY THE NEW, was about grief, a post-divorce outing while THERE IS SO MUCH HERE finds Phillips writing love songs again focusing on gratitude, beauty and staying present. “With this batch of songs, I was suddenly hopeful again, knowing you can never know what the outcome of any action, or inaction, is going to be. There’s no pure happy ending - the world is a mess, the future is uncertain - but I found truth in the poet Mary Oliver’s words: ‘Attention is the beginning of devotion.’ I was suddenly in a state of being that wasn’t about my loss. I woke up and things felt doable again.”
