My musical
interest began when my mother brought home a trumpet when I
was around ten years old and I can honestly say that I became quite the
trumpeter until it conflicted with my high school social life. Sadly
the crowd of dope smoking hippy wannabe's that I regretfully
chose to hang out with didn't appreciate the funny hat and uniform that
my band director insisted I dawn every Friday night so that I wouldn't
stand out from everyone else when I marched around the football
field. Being a typical teenager, I foolishly fell for the
temptation of peer pressure. So I refocused my musical ambitions and
joined the chorus. Not that I thought I could sing, but mainly because
it was where all the majorettes, flagettes and every other football
season pole dancing chicks landed after football season was over.
After my high school
years i sang with a couple of hometown garage
bands but since I couldn't figure out what to do with my hands and
didn't play guitar at the time, I never really had my heart in it even
though I had by then figured out that I was an above average vocalist. But life comes along and
somewhere along the line I made a stab at
growing up and singing didn't quite fit that mold.
Although I had sworn off
organized music, at some point I treated
myself to a cheap Takamini acoustic guitar and even though I knew less
than a handful of chords, I stubbornly cherished it even
though i rarely played it at all.
Basically, my guitar was
more of an ornament than an instrument.
Regardless of where I lived, it sat in it's stand somewhere in the
living room and on occasion, after drinking a few too many beers, I'd
get the urge to bang out the four or five chords I knew and start
searching the house for a pick. Whether I found one or not by the time
I did, if I did, the inspiration had usually passed and it wasn't until
I turned forty that I finally had enough of looking for a pick and
decided to start finger picking that I ever really learned to play but
I'm getting way ahead of myself.
In 1989 after my only
marriage ended in divorce, I realized just how
screwed up my life really was with myself at the helm and miraculously
lost enough of my foolish pride to be able to submit my life to Jesus
Christ . Even though I was raised in the south and certainly in the
bible belt, had been in and around churches of some sort all my life,
and had accepted Christ at an early age, it wasn't until I was thirty
years old that I fell on my knees and started surrendering my life
which I've learned the hard way is a continual ongoing process. One
disclaimer, as far as being a good christian is concerned, I'll
shamefully admit, I'm probably the absolute worst one on the planet.
It was shortly after
that initial surrender that I joined the choir of
a local pentecostal church that I had been attending and although it
was biracial church, i proudly became the resident black vocalist. I
held that position for several years under the ministry of someone who
is now a somewhat famous author and TV preacher but I try not to hold
that against him.
I spent five years in
that church and although I thank God for the experience and the
teachings that to this day I lean on and will I hope forever be etched
in my understanding, there came a day when it was time for me to go. At
the time I thought it was also the end of my musical journey but later
realized it was just one of many stepping stones that I'm still
maneuvering across.
But if there was a
single point in my life that I consider the genesis of my musical
ambitions, it would have to be the winter of 1999. First off, after
twenty-five years of smoking more than two packs per day I finally was
able to put down the cigarettes. Then, As if the tribulations
of Y2K on every news broadcast wasn't enough to make the whole country
paranoid, along came the presidential election and the fiasco in
Florida and it really rattled my cage. I found myself glued to the
television for thirty something days while I waited to see who won.
That's when my old
acoustic guitar transformed back to an instrument from an ornament. On
that very first day of being glued to the television, I picked up my
guitar and knowing there wasn't a guitar pick within ten miles, for the
first time I decided to settle with the guitar picks I was born with.
After the election was finally settled I realized that in that short
time that I had been continually holding that guitar not only was i
able to play the few chords I knew without having to stare at the
fretboard, I also seemed to have a new habit to replace the cigarettes
I had recently given up.
After 911 the
construction boom in Atlanta came to a screeching halt and being a
journeyman wireman in the IBEW (I've Been Every Where), I spent most of
the next two years working in New York, New Jersey and Boston but
mostly in Boston on the infamous "Big Dig".
The good thing about the
work was that it paid extremely well. The bad part was that being a
traveler and working out of my local jurisdiction, I spent about as
much time waiting for work as I did actually working so in an effort to
make enough money to cover my hotel expenses, I would take my guitar
and go play for hours at a time at different stations on the 'T',
Boston's historic subway system.
Not only did I find that
Bostonians are the best tippers in the world but since I was playing to
a different crowd every 10 minutes, I could go over the same songs over
and over again which enabled my chops to rapidly improve in a short
period of time. Even though I was up there to do electrical work and
would go to the union hall every morning in search of real
work. As grateful as I was when my number came up, I was
always a little disappointed that I wouldn't be able to go busking.
By 2003 I was back home
in Georgia and up until then I had always tried to look at my musical
career as a part time venture but after an auto accident in 2003 that
permanently injured my lower back, I decided that rather than take a
job in a convenience store, I'd take a stab at using my God-given
talent and see where it led.
For a while I toyed with
the idea of either joining a local band or starting one in the Atlanta
area but I quickly figured out that if I was going to make any sort of
a living, I was better off working alone. This decision however
presented a whole new set of challenges. First of all, anyone who's
tried it can tell you how hard (and boring) it can be to perform with
one voice and one guitar for any length of time and since my regard for
the use of pre-recorded tracks is fractionally higher than kissing a
corps, my options were somewhat limited. Fortunately, living in the
computer age had yet another advantage and I discovered the digital
loop station.
These are foot operated
digital audio recorders that most performers who use them, layer tracks
on top of one another to create an accompaniment for mostly
instrumental type performances but after a lot of thought and practice
I started re-arranging the performances of certain songs in my
repituore. I quickly learned that if I wanted to fit in a guitar solo,
all I had to do was record my guitar while singing a verse, then play
it back at the appropriate time and solo over it. Inserting a second
loop station in my vocal channel gave me to ability to record myself
singing the first chorus of a song, then punching it back in on
subsequent choruses and harmonize with myself, sometimes with three and
four parts depending on the song.
Though the
challenges of live recording and playback most always present some sort
of a train wreck to overcome, the rewards make it well worth the
surprises that are sure to present themselves in most every
performance. But the rewards well out weigh the problems and I get to
do my thing by myself knowing that my product is 100% me and not some
sort of karaoke track accompanied by one of those phony digital vocal
harmonizers that are being used by even major label artist these days.
And in most cases there is at least one person in the room who not only
gets it, but lets me know that they get it and that's when it really
seems worth the effort.
In late 2006 I released
a solo CD "A Piece of My Soul" that I produced with my good friend Jay
Vern. Since then I've ventured up the US east coast a couple of times
with my solo acoustic show as well as making endless commutes from
Atlanta to Nashville to write and start work on my second CD that will
be released well...as soon as it's finished.
Also, being that I'm
pretty much all I've got, I decided to take up videography since that
is one of the many needs that I have that my budget prevents me from
hiring someone else to do. In doing so, I found another craft that I am
becoming very passionate about.
I recently converted the
main room of an old piece of family property in the mountains of North
Georgia into a small video studio and am in the process of offering my
services to small bands and acoustic acts in need of promotional video
for websites and booking purposes as well as creating my own label to
produce some of the amazing talent that I've been fortunate enough to
have met in the recent past.
Hey Phillip!!! Thanks for the friend request!!! Much appreciated. Man that is some powerful Blues music. I absolutely love it!!! I can't believe how much your early life sounds just like mine. What a trip. I mostly play music with my sons now. We have a band page (myspace.com/studiofamilybusiness). Check us out. Thanks a million, Steve
hi philip, what a strong voice you have!!! i send you my love and respect and you gotta listen to my myspace song with the great gypsy guitarist lollo meier!!! its marvellous :)), happy xmas, ulrike
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