GRETCHEN PHILLIPS (guitarist, rudimentary keyboards, singer, songwriter) has been in the bands Meat Joy, Two Nice Girls, Girls in the Nose, Make a Joyful Noise, Disco Babes, The Gretchen Phillips Xperience, Lord Douglas Phillips, The Gretchen Phillips Ministries, Phillips&Driver, Thor and Frenz, A Joy Division Cover Band and The Cotton Candy-Breathing Knives.
Influences
The Slits, Mary Timony, Leslie and the Lys, Susanne Lewis, Spirit, Dory Previn, Bobbie Gentry, Heart, Metric, The Runaways, Sonic Youth, Throwing Muses, Toshi Reagon, Yoko Ono, Bollywood, Klezmer, Dolly Parton, Bloodrock, Dick Hyman, Moist Fist, Al Caiola, Donna Summer, Badfinger, Bad Company, Bad Music, The Shaggs, Shooby Taylor, Anne Murray, Asha Bhosle, Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66, Blondie, The Organ, Gang of Four, The Buzzcocks, BOBBY CONN, Leslie Feist, The Breeders, Nirvana, Buffy Saint-Marie, The Carpenters, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Victorian Novels, Connie Francis, Siouxsie, Au Pairs, Kleenex, Honey Bane, Poison Girls, The Avengers, Danielle Dax, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, The Louvin Brothers, Enoch Light, Country Gospel of all stripes, George Jones, Goldfrapp, Grieg (especially Peer Gynt), Beethoven (especially the violin concerto), Saint-Saens (especially Samson&Delilah), Poulenc (especially Gloria), Stravinsky (especially Symphony of Psalms), Charles Ives, Helium, Mancini, disco, Jenifer Jackson, The Pocket FishRmen, anything Gary Floyd does, anything Biscuit did, Joan As Police Woman, Jo Carol Pierce, Joy Division, Sylvia Juncosa, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Kiki&Herb, prog rock both good and bad, the original songs about The Waffle House on the jukebox at The Waffle House, Lavender Country, Lene Lovich, Leon Russell, Los Amigos Invisibles, Mathilde Santing, Neneh Cherry, Nina Hagen, Ofra Haza, Opal, Pere Ubu, Patti Smith, Phoebe Snow, Alive!, God-dess and Tina G, Bitch and Animal, Jill Sobule, Sylvester, The Poppy Family, Ray Conniff Singers, Robots in Disguise, Joe Pernice, Sexpod, Shelby Lynne, Sixteen Deluxe, Wet, Wad, The Meat Purveyors, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Bubble Puppy, Thalia Zadek, The Three Suns, The Harmonicats, Tom Jones, Waylon and Willie and the boys, Weekend, Young Marble Giants, Yoko Ono, , CSN, CSNY, ELO, BTO, ABC, OMD, DRI, all my friends.
Sounds Like
A mixture of everything you've ever heard. Extremely derivative, yet perhaps even more gay.
Gretchen Phillips has been busy making music since she was twelve. At that age she got her first paying gig, being a traveling minstrel at the Texas Renaisance Festival. After the Childe ballads, she began to focus on songs about outsiders, queers, sex and hope. In highschool she was in a band called The Folk Group which included Sara Hickman that did originals as well as Heart and Led Zep covers. Upon moving to Austin in 1981, she became much more influenced by its flourishing punk scene. Those were amazing days of music and politics and they made a big impression on the young dyke. Gary Floyd of the Dicks, Biscuit of the Big Boys, the women of Whoom Elements as well as many other unfortunately somewhat forgotten bands helped give her the courage to be out in her music..............So began the rather performance arty band Meat Joy. Great band, no kidding. Then came Two Nice Girls and Girls in the Nose. Then came making records for Rough Trade and touring the country many times over singing songs that extolled the virtues of lesbianism and togetherness..................After the demise of those bands, Gretchen stayed a lot closer to home and has entertained Austin consistently with various other projects. And then there's the mostly New York outifit of Phillips&Driver starring her and a great gay guy singer named Driver.......The new solo album entitiled, "I Was Just Comforting Her" is done and about to be self-released. The reissue of the first Two Nice Girls album is also completed. Check out CDBaby or my website for that sweet thing. Hopefully Girls in the Nose and Meat Joy and the other two Two Nice Girls releases are next down the pike......................IF YOU ARE INTRIGUED BY ANYTHING YOU'VE READ HERE, THERE'S A WEBSITE WITH AN EXCELLENT AND EXHAUSTIVE OVERVIEW OF GRETCHEN'S CAREER TO DATE. SIMPLY VISIT: www.queermusicheritage.com/aug2005.html
AND YOU'LL GET MORE MUSIC AND INFO THAN YOU CAN PROBABLY HANDLE.
Also, my website:
Gretchen-Phillips.com
is pretty good. Very obscure songs are up there.
how do I love thee? all day long I've been singing either "I wanna funk, I wanna, I wanna" as well as your version of "hit me baby one more time". what do you think that means? I have a good idea... I miss you!
Okay. So I'm on vacation for weeks on end and I come home to find the most excellent surprise waiting for me. Could you be more of a doll? Thanks so much! You're just so damn special! If there is anything that I can ever do for you please feel free to ask.
I welcome the moment that I will see and hear you in person and not cyber! Gettin' a Fasterpussycat reunion party together . . . brilliant if you could play! I may see ya at South x Southwest . . . not sure. I'm definitely at Mich Fest this year, are you??
xo, downtown donna
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Okay, time for a little fawning. You have one of the sweetest voices and one of the sharpest minds in music. Truly, you are an amazing talent and your music has encouraged and inspired me for years.
I'm trying desperately to own everything you've ever recorded. It's the Meat Joy and Lord Douglas Phillips stuff that I'm having the most difficulty finding, but I won't give up. It's great that you're re-releasing the Two Nice Girls albums, though kind of a bummer that I paid big bucks for them quite sometime ago. Not that they aren't worth the money. I've listened to at least one of them every couple of weeks or so for the past twelve years. I don't think that I could say that about anything else that I own. They are all just so lovely. I see on your website that you've got a couple of your solo albums for sale again. That's beyond great. I'll definitely be buying those. I am lucky enough to have Songs to Save Your Soul and it's a frickin' treasure. It's even autographed, albeit it to someone else. Togetherness is sublime, not a bad cut on the entire album, though very hard for me to listen to at this point because it reminds me of my ex. I absolutely cannot wait to hear your new album. I'm trembling with the excitement of it all. (Geez, what a geek.)
Well, was that nauseating enough for you? If I ever leave you another comment, I promise never to gush like that again. I just had to get it all out of my system. I've adored you and your music for so many years now. Please never stop creating. The world needs you, whether they know it or not.
