Glen Phillips

It's a harsh reality that in the music business, bands -- even successful ones -- break up, and their members go their separate ways. But what's often overlooked is how difficult it is for the respective members of a band that's collectively achieved mainstream and financial success to start anew as up-and-coming solo artists.

That's the situation that Glen Phillips, the singer-guitar player formerly of Toad the Wet Sprocket, found himself in following the dissolution of the band he played with for 12 years. After parting ways in 1998, some members of Toad went on to play in a band called Lapdog while Phillips opted for a solo career. After experiencing a variety of troubles including being dropped from a major label, seeing his new indie label fold, and recording several albums that never got released, Phillips found a home at L.A.'s legendary club Largo and rebuilt his spirit while honing his performing craft.

The year 2001 brought us Phillips' solo debut, Abulum. Produced by Ethan Johns, a fellow patron of Largo, the album is a stark, subtle, stripped-down collection of songs reflecting Phillips' realism and humor. To support the album, Phillips hit the road touring as a solo artist for a few years. Thanks to an independent distribution deal, Live at Largo, Phillips' second solo release, hit stores this past November. Featuring live versions of tracks from Abulum, some Toad favorites, a couple of choice covers and even a couple of previously unreleased tunes and portraying Phillips' strong vocals, guitar skills and songwriting ability, Live at Largo brings listeners a taste of what it's like to experience Phillips' live show: just a man, a guitar and a microphone.

Teaming up with producer John Fields for his latest recording endeavor, the eponymous album has fans on their toes with anticipation of its release. In Phillips' own words, found on www.glenphillips.com: "The album won't be released on the website as I'd originally thought, but will be coming out on a real honest to God label in the new year. I know some of you are anxious to get a hold of it, but trust me that I'm at least twice as ready as anybody. I've been looking to find a home in the industry where people understand and appreciate what I do, and think I've finally found it. If everything works as it should, my albums will actually be released and made widely available from this point forward. Hopefully the last five years of wandering in the desert will come to an end, and I'll be able to get back to what I love most (or actually second most - family first), just making music."

Prior to a recent show in New York City, Phillips sat down with StarPolish's Tracie Galinski to discuss starting his career over as a solo artist, making records, major labels, and today's era of music.

STARPOLISH: What has been the hardest part of starting over' since Toad the Wet Sprocket's disbandment? Has it been frustrating starting a solo career when everybody knows you as "the guy from Toad" or has the recognition helped?

GLEN PHILLIPS: The frustrating part has been starting it. For the last five years it's been making, essentially, four albums and having one of them be slightly available for a few months. It's just that it's always been in the starting stages, so more than anything that's the big frustration. I had Abulum and went with a record company that folded very soon after.

STARPOLISH: Was that Brick Red (Serum, Math & Science)?

PHILLIPS: Yeah, that was Brick Red. That whole record deal -- basically it cost $25,000 in legal bills to get on and off and I never saw a cent. Even the licensing fee never happened. So that was kind of a difficult one. Then there's the record I did with Nickel Creek [under the name] Mutual Admiration Society, which has been locked in some legal limbo for three years. I did a live album which will very soon be distributed. Not with a record company, but distribution along with the first album. And I just finished another record. The frustrating part is that it's been a constant and long period of trying to get things started and I think most bands go through that very early in their careers. Toad just played and the next thing... we never even sent out a demo. Somebody at ASCAP, Nick Turzo, dubbed off our first album and started sending it to people and we'd never even heard his name before. It was a big readjustment to have a whole career behind me already where I'd made the music I wanted to and we never even worried about singles. We just handed in records. It was that era. We'd hand in records and then we'd talk about what the single might be. All of a sudden [after going solo] it was back to knocking on doors and not having a single and all these things that I simply never encountered before. It's been a bizarre readjustment to go through all of a sudden having to gain access again. In the meantime, there are some times where it's frustrating to have everything be in my past, but also, the fact is that until these albums actually get to be released... Toad the Wet Sprocket is why people know about me in the first place and why they're interested enough to find out about me. I haven't had enough exposure to really have a name of my own yet, so at this point that's what pays the mortgage. The fact that I can go out by myself and play these shows, that's how my family lives, so I'm very grateful for the people who have managed to find out that I exist because the orifice of mass media is very narrow these days. You have to be looking for something to find it. You won't find it randomly, almost ever.

STARPOLISH: Is it frustrating to play a solo gig when some Toad fans in the audience, while enthusiastic and well-meaning, are constantly shouting out requests for you to play Toad songs?

PHILLIPS:  No, I understand it. How [else] would they get a hold of my records? I'm proud of what Toad did. Obviously it's a goal to, at some point, have my name be at least equal to Toad's in general. The fact is most of the audience, because it's so hard to find out about me these days, knows all the new songs. They know the songs that are going to be on the next album because they've been downloading shows off the internet and they're involved at that level. People requesting Toad songs is fine because they like them and that's okay. I mean, it's the same as with anything: If there's one drunken guy who goes, "Walk on the Water! Walk on the Water!" and you've actually already played "Walk on the Ocean," which is the song he really means but he was too drunk to notice he'd already heard it -- those get obnoxious. But that's just obnoxious. Once again, the fact that people are there and want to hear anything I've written is wonderful. Someday it will be more of a Glen thing than a Toad thing, but I haven't earned that yet.

Glen Phillips

STARPOLISH: Choosing management is one of the most important decisions an artist can make with their career. There is a lot of trust that takes place between artist and manager. Why did you choose ASquared Management (Liz Phair, Brendan Benson, Jackopierce) and how did your relationship with Steve Smith (Aware Records, ASquared Management) come about?

PHILLIPS:  I met Steve Smith when John Mayer was opening for me. Actually, I met him before that when he was out on the H.O.R.D.E. tour with the awarestore, but I really got to know him when John Mayer was opening for me and he was out there kind of serving as tour manager. He's an honest, straightforward, hard-working guy. It's as simple as that. And he was a fan and somebody for whom it was important that I did well. To a degree, managers end up being whipping boys. They don't always get the credit for things that go well and they usually get credit for the things that don't go well; it's kind of a thankless job. I trusted [Steve] and I trusted his motives -- that's the primary thing. There are a lot of sharks, there are a lot of people who are expletive or interested in the big pay-off and don't understand the larger picture. Steve is definitely not one of those people.

STARPOLISH: Tell me a little bit about the differences between working with an indie label (Brick Red Records) and working with a major label (Columbia Records)?

PHILLIPS:  I don't really know because every album I've recorded [since Toad] has been pretty much self-funded except for Mutual Admiration Society, which should have just been self-funded. It would have saved us a lot of trouble -- especially for the amount it cost, it was $9,000 including mastering -- but we figured it would be quicker if we did it through the label. I don't know. My A&R guy [at Brick Red] was a friend I liked, Randy Gerston, who was president of the label. I'd already recorded the record and it was supposed to be licensed. Two months after I decided to go for the label, they fired the president and the A&R guy. There were some other great people there, but they were sending out résumés because they knew the company was folding, and I wasn't the new president's pet project. It was... I have no idea. Really, I haven't had what I would consider a legitimate record-making experience since Toad. It's a sign of the times. I think it's a lot more about the story and the flash and who feels they discovered what at a corporate level. There's a real game to play these days and having pride in what you do is not necessarily as important -- at least for getting signed -- as it used to be [and not as important] as making people feel they discovered something and giving them a story that they can claim for their own.

It's a weird era. With the majors, they are no longer in a position where they can make a profit selling half a million records and they can possibly break even with a platinum record. With the built-in costs of placement in stores and what it costs to get end-capped, to get nice placement in Best Buy and Tower and get in the flyers and that, and what it costs for independent promotion -- payola is more expensive and more ingrained than it's ever been and it's ostensibly legal right now, but it's... I don't want to say that people in the industry are snakes -- I don't think most of them are. Some of them may turn out that way, but everyone who's in the industry got in because they love music more than anything else. Every single one of them; they're all music lovers. It can sometimes take some doing to reach down in it. I remember when there was a radio guy at Columbia who I thought was just the most slicked back guy in the world. [He] pulled me aside one day and was dissecting this lyric and was tearing. "What is this ice that gathers round my heart / To stop the flood of warmth before it even starts" -- it was this line from "Dam Would Break" and he was like, "Why did you write...?!" He just had to know. He was obviously just playing that song over and over and bawling his brains out to it and it was like, "Okay, you're there." You think these guys are all about the dollars, but they're all music fans and I think it kills them that they can no longer, for the most part, work music they love and sign music they love.

It has to be all about the two week window of your first single, which for somebody my age, my genre, is about the AAA start up to the AC hand-off and nothing else exists, nothing else works, nothing else is considered, nothing else matters. And if you don't achieve that incredibly narrow window of opportunity, which maybe five people a year really make a living off of, then you're sunk; you have absolutely nothing. And that's the business model these days; you only break even at a million records. On the one hand it can be something to get really pissed off about, and when I'm feeling entitled, when I'm feeling like, "Man, I've done this before..." my old band sold millions of records because we got to make the music we liked and other people liked it and when people have had a chance to hear my music they've responded at least as strongly, if not stronger, so I can get really angry if I let myself, but mostly I like to think that it should be a time of great hope. When people figure out how to make a living again off a gold record -- which used to be sky-high, which used to be the ultimate, if people can figure out how to make a living again off a hundred thousand records -- then everything's okay because somebody is going to be extremely happy with the new business model. Cause the truth of music is that more people listen to a greater variety than any time before.

It's exciting, people are searching out music everywhere, people are really hungry for real music and they know that they're not getting it through MTV or Rolling Stone or the radio and they are actually searching for it. It's a hard search, as anyone who does it knows. It's really difficult. But it's out there and people are just starved. Which is why, whether you like Norah Jones or Jack Johnson or John Mayer or not, they sound like themselves; they're authentic. They don't sound like any of the other crap you've been forced to get. They sound like an individual voice and people are so hungry for it that when they get it, they feast on it. It's an interesting era. Nobody's come up with the model' that is necessary, that is needed, that has to arrive sometime soon. Nobody's done that yet. I have business friends who always talk about disruptive innovation and people thought it would be the internet, but it wasn't the internet -- at least not in the way people thought it would be. But there is a disruptive innovation waiting to happen for mid-level artists -- artists who don't necessarily want to be on MTV or don't necessarily want to sell millions -- they want to do good, interesting music that's full of heart and find a real audience like you used to be able to. For those people, we're all tapping our knees waiting for it, but it is a hopeful time. I just don't know exactly how it will happen.

Even success stories far off -- you look at Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann, Badly Drawn Boy -- they all had a movie. There are people who make their entire living... Grant Lee Phillips probably makes more off of getting songs placed on television shows than he does through album sales. People do these tours: Kirsten Hirsch has been doing lots of three-artist bills because you can bring in a lot more people and you don't have to hire a band. As an indie artist, if you hire a band, you can't pay your rent. In the meantime you see people like Lisa Germano; she works at a bookstore in L.A. Lisa Germano should not have a day job. It's a very weird time we're in right now. So, who knows? But I also have complete faith in the musicians who are out there now and the beauty of the work they're doing and in the fact that there's an audience who's searching for them but just can't find them.

STARPOLISH: Why did you choose to work with producer Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams, Brendan Benson, Counting Crows) on your solo debut, Abulum? How did the two of you meet?

PHILLIPS:  We met at Largo, which is the club I play at all the time and saved me probably tens of thousands of dollars in therapy when I was post-Toad and feeling like I didn't know exactly what I was going to do and I'd been dropped by Sony and I was confused. It's this place where I'd go every week and see my favorite musicians play and they were happy to see me there. It kept my hopes high. Ethan had been there and saw me play and asked if he could produce me and I said, "Yes." It's pretty much as simple as that. Also, I should say that Ethan, as the kind of guy he is, instead of saying, "Yeah, let's see if we can get you a deal, let's do this, let's do that," he was very willing to just do it within the modest means available to us and make it work because he liked the music. I found more and more when I've had the guts to ask on that level that people are really willing to be very generous. I always assume that nobody will help and every time that I've managed to ask, people have been astoundingly generous. I have to keep reminding myself that that's actually the way things work... with musicians.

STARPOLISH: It was nearly three years between Toad parting ways and Abulum's release. Was it a big adjustment to create an album without the collaborative efforts of a whole band?

PHILLIPS:  There were a variety of things going on in that period. Right after Toad broke up, it had already been... people usually measure that from the time we put out our last album. So we'd done a whole year of touring, tried to start another album, and then were unable to do that. I thought I'd go right back into record making. It's one of those things I think just happens, but when it's your career you don't feel like just another blip on the... I don't know if everybody [in the industry] gets that when they drop an artist, it's one more bottom line-oriented decision, but it's that artist's entire life. After Toad broke up [the label] had 90 days in which to pick me up or not and they picked me up on the 89th day. We told all the other record companies that, "No, I'm fine. I'm with Sony." Then they dropped me two weeks later without having heard a single song, no pay or play, no anything. Sue us if you want. The state of mind I was in after that wasn't very healthy and wasn't very positive; it was very pissed off. When I started meeting with people again, I was enraged. I felt like these uncaring sons of bitches had just tried to ruin my family. I was furious and so I wasn't making friends in meeting. I wasn't being my usual friendly self. I was a big ball of anxiety and anger and nobody wants to work with you when you're like that. So, whether I had reason or not, it was a bad way in which to reenter. I spent a long time just thinking I would jump right back on. I'd always just made music I liked and it had worked and I'd written these songs that everybody loved and I could play and I could sing and not a lot of people could do those things so I thought it'd be really easy. Nobody wanted to work with me and I probably wouldn't have wanted to work with myself in the state I was in. it took a long time just to get over that. I played at Largo a lot, met Ethan. In the middle of all this, my father was dying right towards the end of Toad, so it was an intense period of life.

Glen Phillips

The thing a band adds is that you have people to answer to. You have to show up at rehearsal and it's good to show up with a new song or you won't have anything to do. Having a band was great for that; I'd always have someone I needed to show up for, I needed to have good work ready for. It was a little hard being self-motivated after that. I had a chip on my shoulder. Meeting Ethan through Largo, he just wanted to make an album. He thought the songs were great, so we just did it. We stopped waiting for record companies. And it's been like that over and over for me. I've been waiting for the business to come and appreciate me again, and it just doesn't and it probably won't. My assumption at this point is that if it does, great, and if it doesn't I'll just keep working. When I'd made albums from then on... every once in a while I'll forget it. I did this record (Abulum), put it out myself at first, it got picked up, then everything fell apart again. I had management after that. They thought I wrote great songs and that people would love them and said, "Let's do demos and get you a record deal." So I said, "Okay, you think that's the way to do it?" We spent about a year and a half or so trying to do that, to no avail. Had all the great meetings, had all the, "Let's not make a bidding war out of this, I really want to work with you. I'm there for you," followed by, "What would you think of being in a Crosby, Stills and Nash kind of band?" And everybody wants that. [That was] followed by another round of, "I'm going to do it myself." I did a record with Davíd Garza who is a great guy, but the record did not turn out the way I wanted; had to shelve that. I got back together with Toad, which was great from an audience perspective, but was very difficult internally. Then I did another album.

It's been a process where I keep thinking I've started it up, but it keeps being... I have no idea about my career. I realize in many ways I have something most musicians would kill for. I have an audience that wants to hear my songs. I can show up in a town and play for a couple hundred people and I make enough doing that that my family is supportive about me being out here. There's a reason for me to do it. I don't know what else I'd do if I couldn't do this; I don't know what I'd do for a day job. On the one hand I'm full of gratitude, on the other hand it's been very difficult always starting up and having, once again, to fund my own albums and to... not quite have to take a second mortgage, but pretty close. We're getting by and that's hard for a musician to do. I'm very lucky, but it's still pretty much constant hard work.

That was very roundabout. So starting up with a band -- difficult, but it would be nice to have people to answer to. If I want to play with other people, I have to pay them and I have to have people who are good enough that they're worth being paid more than I can afford to pay anybody.

STARPOLISH: I was reading something you once said about how touring solo -- since it's not as expensive as bringing a band along -- if you want to pick up and fly home to see your family, it doesn't cost all this money to stop the tour and...

PHILLIPS:  Yeah. I was away [from my kids] for three weeks once. I've been able to be home every week or two and that's really important. If there's a major label behind this and I have a band out with me, next year's going to be really hard for the family. I enjoy the mobility [of touring solo], but I'm kind of ready to have the other stuff in line again. Management is helping and the booking company is helping, but basically all I do is go out and tour. That's my whole life right now. It's not growing very much because there are no albums, no real press, nothing outside of what we directly take care of.

STARPOLISH:  Abulum takes listeners to many different emotional places through its lyrics and the many topics it addresses, yet it all flows together musically. Was that intentional?

PHILLIPS:  The musical flow of it -- a lot of that was just achieved by the way it was recorded. When I recorded with Ethan, everything was done with everybody in the same room. The vocal mic is the biggest drum mic. I was singing live on the other side of the room [from the drums], everything was bleeding, there was no separation, no headphones, so the album definitely has a sound that was created by the way it was recorded and by the attitude with which it was done. And that provides for continuity from song to song. [The songs] go from pretty spacey to almost country and the actual writing of them, if you were to deconstruct them, is pretty far ranging. I think the method gave it its core. We set out to make a very unadorned, very indie record. It's definitely something that requires the listener to step in as opposed to something that kind of beckons you and is beautiful from a distance; it's all about subtlety. No, it wasn't a conscious decision -- it was just a matter of method.

STARPOLISH: What is involved in your songwriting process?

PHILLIPS:  Periods of long silence. I don't know. Songwriting for me, when it's me writing my own stuff, is very slow. I do a lot of water shedding -- let things build and then write a bunch. It always changes; it's hard to say. I've been enjoying trying to write with other people more or write for other situations. I was working on a musical with a friend and I wrote a bunch of songs really quick because it wasn't about me and when I get to write for other uses, it's much easier. It's all about tricking myself to get out of my way.

STARPOLISH: Why did you decide to put out a live album, Live at Largo, as your second solo release?

PHILLIPS:  It's what I'd been doing. I spent the last few years just playing constantly. Beyond that I had a second studio record that didn't come out, a third studio record that I didn't want to put out and I had no place for it, and I needed to put something out because it helps. [I released a live album] mostly out of necessity. It was something I could do and control completely on my own without having to pull any favors. I brought in the equipment, I set it up, I took it home, I mixed it, I mastered it, I did the photography, I did the artwork with a friend because, once again, there's no band. If it needs to get done, I have to do it. It was the only way to get something done.

STARPOLISH: What are some of the biggest challenges of touring solo?

PHILLIPS:  There aren't many. Touring as a lifestyle is not something I'm really into. I would like to be able to teleport to shows and then back home. I wake up, usually at 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning. When I'm at home I wake up at 6:00 or 7:00; I'm the first one up in my family and I have three young kids. The baby wakes up to the sound of the coffee grinder -- that's the alarm clock for the rest of the house. Staying up til 2:00 and working and driving all day... that kind of life is necessary, but not constitutionally where I'm most comfortable. The most difficult part is just that; it's the touring itself. The shows themselves are great. I can take the show wherever I want. I've become a much better singer, a much better player. I love my job right now and that part of it has never been better.

STARPOLISH: Do you have any pre-show rituals?

PHILLIPS:  No. Somebody asked me that last night. I like to write out a list of as many songs as I can remember. I don't like setlists, but I like to have a cheat sheet, so that's probably the closest [thing to a pre-show ritual].

STARPOLISH: I've noticed that a lot of your fans tend to be very supportive and try to make it out to multiple dates of the same tour. How do you keep your performances fresh and exciting each night?

Glen Phillips

PHILLIPS: By doing the cheat sheet instead of doing a setlist. There are a lot of songs to choose from and every night is different. There's not a lot planned out, I don't prepare stories, I don't have shtick that's repeated, so hopefully that provides enough variety.

STARPOLISH: What kind of impact has the internet had on your solo career?

PHILLIPS:  For me it's been great. I haven't really utilized it as much as I should. A lot of people that know I exist can look up Glen Phillips' and find a site there; they can trade shows. I go to different towns and it's possible for me to have 3-4 records that haven't really been available and still have people who know all of the songs on them which means I'll have to keep a few of them more secret for the next record. [The internet is] a great thing. It means people can keep up on stuff. I can go to a town I've never been to before and they know all of the new songs which is absolutely wonderful.

STARPOLISH: Your forthcoming album was produced with John Fields (Semisonic, Dovetail Joint, Bleu); why did you choose him?

PHILLIPS:  I met John through Aware (John Mayer, The Thorns, Alice Peacock). Once again, it was because he wanted to do it and he liked the songs. He has no hang-ups about album making. He's completely un-dogmatic and very easy to work with. Once again, it was self-funded; I didn't have a lot of money. My budget was probably much less than what he would normally make on a record before the other expenses. But he wanted to do it, he believed in it. He's a great musician, easy to work with. We managed to do the whole record in 24 working days: from the starting of tracking to the end of mixing. We put together a brilliant band -- it was Pete Thomas from The Attractions on drums, Jon Brion (Aimee Mann, Rufus Wainwright, Elliott Smith) on a bunch of stuff, Michael Chaves who plays with John Mayer, Rufus Wainwright and is Pierre Marchand's go-to guitar guy and is just astounding. We did five days of band tracking and we tracked 18 songs, unrehearsed. Nobody had really known the songs before they came in. We would just rehearse it, chart it through, everybody would go on their first instinct and they were all good enough to really nail stuff. The recording process was just great. It was fun all the way through. People were just happy to be there. I was grateful to have them there, they were grateful to be there. It's amazing to get to work with Pete Thomas and you're just thinking, "Why is he here at all? Why would he be interested in this?" and then he stays hours after he's done while people are fixing other stuff and making suggestions and just into it, loving it. It was great. I loved making this record; it was a beautiful experience.

STARPOLISH: Do you have a name for the record yet?

PHILLIPS:  So far it's eponymous. I couldn't think of anything to call it and it seems, in many ways, like Abulum was more for the critics, if that makes sense. I was trying to prove that the songs held up on their own and that they didn't need tons of harmonies and big production -- that I was actually a legitimate artist without those things. The fact is that most of the music I like is not mainstream. Usually people who say, "Our band loves Toad..."  well, I like weirder stuff. I think Toad was a band that was somewhat complex with a very simple presentation. If you try to work out the songs or try to go into the lyrics, there's more there than you'd initially suspect. I had a chip on my shoulder in an indie credibility fashion, which of course didn't work at all for the Abulum record. This [new] record is much more like what I like to hear. It sounds to me like one of my favorite albums from the late 80s, but it aged really well. In that Tim Friese-Green, like later Talk Talk production or, without sounding like So... You know Peter Gabriel? That album So is almost 20 years old now. It's astounding how well it's aged. It's a completely modern record. It's not current. It's not loops and record scratches and all this crap that is old on the day you record it. Jon Brion talks a lot about the differences between current and modern. Modern records are innovative; you go into them experimenting. OK Computer was a truly modern record. Then there are about 300 bands since OK Computer where it was clear that they listened to OK Computer and they were trying to match it and do the same things Radiohead did. Those are current records. They're matching the trend; they're matching what's expected of you today. Those records tend to age badly. Modern records tend to age well. There are few bold, weird things on [my new] record, but I don't think there's anything that will make you be able to pin it down as being from this year. I'm very proud of it.

STARPOLISH: When do you hope to release it?

PHILLIPS:  That's the eternal joke. I hope to release it this winter on my website, but we're talking to a couple of [record] companies. Some of them may not want me to do that, understandably. There are a few different opportunities and one of them is more like a subsidiary of a major, which has disadvantages in this era because it's all about the single, but it's so expensive to get visibility today that it means they can pay for visibility which is hard to get unless you're really lucky. Maybe you're Damien Rice and you have the story of the century -- and thank goodness he does because he's great, he deserves it. Occasionally lightening strikes; Norah Jones deserves every ounce of success she has. Occasionally lightening strikes, but usually it doesn't. That's why Neil Finn is still obscure, which is a crime against nature. Neil Finn should be huge; he should be playing arenas now. Period. The fact that he's not proves that something is broken. Backtracking ever so slightly, the release of the album will either be that or there are a couple of indies that look very interesting. But that means we do a lot more work: We have to be a lot more savvy and everything has to continue coming from me because an indie puts it out there, they provide you with a lot of freedom, but they don't provide visibility unless you're really lucky. Any visibility we get [with an indie] would have to be something that we engineer or that hopefully someone who's not me gets to engineer because I don't want that job. It means that it becomes about things like placement in television shows and film -- all the outside things that aren't based in payola yet.

STARPOLISH: Given everything you have experienced in your seventeen years with the industry, do you have any advice for up-and-coming artists looking to find their own paths with music?

PHILLIPS:  Primarily, try to make something great. Don't expect that you'll get the big pay off for it. Try to make something great and right now look at... if you want to enter into the big game, into the majors, into that world, be prepared to play their game. Be prepared even to be preemptive. Don't give them your best song at first. If there's a song you think is a single, keep it off your demos and let them discover it. Even keep it off your album until the album is handed in so that when they send the album back to you, which they do these days because all of a sudden they have golden ears... I'm cynical about that because "All I Want" was the 3rd or 4th single off of Fear (1991), 9 months into the record after they thought it was over. They all took credit afterwards, but nobody heard it when we handed it in. And of course "Good Intentions" didn't even make it on the album because we didn't really like it; it was on a B-side. They don't have golden ears, but it costs so much they want to feel they have insurance; they want to feel they own it. It has nothing to do with what they actually know; it has to do with what they think they know, what they feel they know. So give them those tools. If you're going to enter into it, drop your pride at the door, play the game and beat them at it. Save your best song. When they return your album, don't go, "Ahhh, but..." They do that cause that's what they do now. Be prepared for it, hand them that hit. And if they don't give you your album back say, "God, I just wrote the most amazing song yesterday! I've gotta record it and add it!" and they'll say, "Wow! It's even better!" Play the game to the hilt and don't think twice about it.

If you don't want to play those games and don't want to enter into that, be prepared to work incredibly hard. Find a young friend, without a family, hopefully with a trust fund, who believes in you better than anything else, who can work 24 hours to do stuff for you cause you'll need them, tour, work on your live show, move to L.A., NY or Nashville and cozy up to every music supervisor and publisher you can in order to get your songs placed. As the companies get more and more scared, they charge more for everything. TV shows are constantly looking for independent artists for song placement; they don't want to pay $10,000 plus $5,000 to get a track from Sony or Warner Brothers. $5,000 to an indie artist split one way is a lot -- even split 50/50 for some shark who goes and shops the stuff for you, that's still $2,500. A friend of mine in town, Cory Sipper, when she finished her last album she tried a little bit of touring and was bringing it out, but the thing that actually got her the furthest was getting stuff on TV. Really work those alternative venues. There are certain things that will cost a major label artist a lot of money that don't cost an indie much because if people like you -- if you go to record stores and show up and want to play them a few songs or bring them a box of strawberries and just hang out -- you'll get a listening station or you'll get end-capping because you're indie and they like you. You can't do that when you're on a major. When you're on a major and you want the end-cap it's $20,000. There are no ifs, ands or buts. You pay for it. As an indie artist you have a lot of freedom to be liked and for people to root for you because you're the underdog.

You have to work very hard or know somebody who actually wants to do that job with you who's very hungry, who's bulldoggish, who's savvy. Making it in the narrow constraints of the major world these days is a big gamble. I've described the entire major music industry right now as being a guy at Vegas at a slot machine who's lost his wife, lost his house, lost his family and his job to a slot machine and goes out and borrows $20,000 more from a bookie down the street and will probably have his legs broken and throat slit soon. That's what the industry is doing right now. They're playing the same massive gamble over and over and 9 times out of 10 they lose. Right now they're being kept aloft by the occasional thing that's huge, but even those artists who peak at 5 or 10 million shoot right back down to 2 million. They don't last up there anymore. They're not creating careers; they're creating fads and fads don't last and they're very expensive to make. As they continue to lose and they notice that all the real artists [in their catalog] that they grew over the years are paying the bills. You get a band like Violent Femmes who probably sell 100,000 of their first record every year cause every kid who's going into college, or in cooler places every kid who's going into high school, has gotta go and get the first Violent Femmes record. It's required. They sell about 100,000 a year without spending a dime on that. You put all that together and most of the record companies' big income these days is from their back catalog and they're not making catalog artists now. They're making one single, throwaway, disposable artists.

Glen Phillips

Once again, it's a great opportunity, but if you don't want to play that game or you don't have them wanting to play that game for you... For me, I feel I'm going to adjust back to an indie career. If I have one last chance to have major label dollars behind me, as they're dying, as a comet is approaching the planet, I will put on a dinosaur costume and I will hang out with the dinosaurs because right now, [major labels] are the only way to gain visibility. If they get my name to a place where, when they die, I'm better off then than I am now, I can revert to where I know my home is -- which is an independent setting. In the meantime, I'm fine for them to gamble on me. And they may even win, and if they win everybody's happy. But even if they lose, I've gotten by those years and I can do what I'm doing now. I know I can survive and I'll survive with more visibility than I have. My dream, my hope right now is not to be John Mayer. It could be to be James Taylor; I could live with James Taylor. I look at people like Greg Brown, I look at people like Richard Thompson, even Neil Finn and they will always make a living making music. They will always have a small, loyal audience who wants to know what they're doing and will come to see them play. I will be eternally grateful if I can do that for the rest of my life. That's where I want to end up.

Once again, if you're looking at the major labels, just take it as a gamble. Don't take it as the ticket that will take you there. Look at [the major] magazines: they're recycling the same artists over and over. Nobody makes it anymore. The ones who make it are probably the hungriest, definitely the hardest working, the most willing to do whatever is required, and also -- more than anything -- the luckiest. Most of my favorite musicians are struggling and fighting right now. They're working incredibly, incredibly hard and they get crushed all the time, but they still know they have an audience and they still find ways of reaching them. Just choose your game. I guess it's that.

For news, mp3s, tour dates and more, visit www.glenphillips.com.