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.
Hey Gretchen, Thanks for the add and I hope my postings will entertain you. I forget the names of all the bands I was in back then but the main one you may remember was LiQuiD MicE, we even did a couple of shows in the back ballroom of Old Pecan Street Cafe and a couple of shows where I think we opened for Meat Joy. Seems so long ago. I have been going thru all of my videos and scrap books from back then and trying to piece together a documentory of those days. Talk about Dazed and Confused.... Well I hope you are happy and healthy and feeling productive. -brooks
