In case anybody was wondering, Grant-Lee Phillips watches ABC's Nashville.
"I want to meet the ever-stubbly Luke Wheeler and ask him how he always keeps his beard the same length," the alt-rock-turned-Americana singer-songwriter tells the Scene, "never any shorter, never any longer."
And with that, the conversation has turned into some sort of Music City Inception, from the fictional character played by the real Nashvillian Grant-Lee Phillips on Gilmore Girls to his very real fascination with the fictional characters of Nashville. It is exactly the sort of thing you would expect from the Town Troubadour of Stars Hollow — the only city in reality or fiction that name-drops more bands per minute than Nashville.
"I don't know how he does that," Phillips goes on. "If I can crack that code, I'll make a mint. I'm going to apply it to gardening and my lawn."
Admittedly, it is overly reductionist to describe Phillips as just the Town Troubadour. His band Grant Lee Buffalo created one of the most enduring catalogs of the alternative era. His solo work has been massively creative on both the sonic and business sides of the equation. But landing a gig as the songwriter in one of the most creatively written television shows of all time? Well, that's something special.
Amy Sherman-Palladino and husband Daniel Palladino created Gilmore Girls with music fandom at its very center — and not the fandom-as-flailing-masculinity we know from Nick Hornby's High Fidelity and Dan Brooks' recent New York Times Magazine essay, "Streaming Music Has Left Me Adrift." No, the fandom on Gilmore Girls is one of genuine enthusiasm, presented without spite or avarice in all its awkward and awesome glory. For Phillips, playing the Town Troubadour on the show — the guy who hangs around busking until its time to make an inspiring speech; the dude who's always got the right song for the right moment — was kind of a big deal for what started as a bit part.
"They had me lean against a lamppost and play a song and maybe next episode they had me lean up against a tree," Phillips explains. "We exhausted all of the things I could lean up against. ... And then they gave me a few lines, and then another line or two, and before you know it I was going to work every morning as an actor."
Phillips' role on the onetime CW staple was, at least for Gen Xers, a heart-warming reminder that while the '90s are over, the decade's penchant for randomly landing left-field players in the mainstream could persist post-Y2k.
"It always felt like some great coup was being pulled: How on earth could this wholesome family drama find its way to welcome the likes of me? Sonic Youth? Sebastian Bach? You know, it's just a crazy thing," says Phillips, making a comparison to the Andy Griffith episodes where Andy would get to play guitar. "There was some justice in the universe, for six seasons at least."
But it was also a side hustle. Phillips is a songwriter by trade, a traveling musician and true-life troubadour. He recently returned from a European tour with Giant Sand frontman Howe Gelb, whose eight-disc retrospective on the legendary Fire Records is one of the year's most satisfying — albeit intimidating — releases. (Gelb also appears with Phillips Wednesday night at City Winery.) Also on the Nashville tip, Phillips recently recorded a new album (due in 2015) at Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye studios with engineer Colin Dupuis, who has recently manned the board for folks like Lana Del Rey, Nikki Lane and Bombino.
"It's been a while since I've gone into the studio and recorded live on the floor with a band," Phillips says. "[It's] just a real quick down-and-dirty record. ... I've made a few [albums] entirely on my own over the last couple of years, so this was a great sort of surge for me."
Now, back to the Music City Inception theme. A version of "Don't Look Down" — a Phillips-penned number about Hank Williams' alter ego Luke the Drifter — appears on Robyn Hitchcock's latest album, The Man Upstairs. Hitchcock — former leader of the legendary Soft Boys, the high priest of psychedelic pop and Phillips' longtime friend — happens to be playing City Winery (see Critic's Pick) just three nights before Phillips. Not to mention the pair have played a handful of shows together over the past year or so. But even more importantly, Hitchcock was on the bill the night Sherman-Palladino came to see Phillips perform, while considering him for the Gilmore Girls role.
Bam! Ouroboros, all up in this shits!
But that's exactly who Phillips is — he's a writers' writer. In the 20 years since "Fuzzy" broke out of the Buzz Bin, Phillips has crafted songs that stand up not because they are reflective of the times in which they are made, not because they are kitschy or niche-y, but because they resonate on a fundamentally human level. At the end of the day, it ends up that Phillips is the dude in your neighborhood that is busking the right song at the moment.
"As this industry keeps morphing from day to day, folks like myself have to react and think ahead," the singer muses. "But most importantly, keep putting music out and not letting that other stuff, which I have no control over, trip me up."
Email Music@nashvillescene.com.
