Shawn Phillips

Shawn Phillips came through and performed at my college many years ago. He is a gifted songwriter and guitar player, and his voice has a four octave range; I think sometimes only whales (at the low end) or dogs (high end) can hear him. Anyhow, I've been a fan since that college performance. He was playing in a small venue near Cleveland last night, so a friend from work and I drove in to take in the show after an excellent meal (we both opted for the stuffed salmon) at an Irish restaurant/pub near the concert called Sullivan's (recommended).

Shawn is an interesting guy. He billed this as his "65th birthday tour", which makes sense since I last saw him perform in 1971. He lives in South Africa with his wife and their two year old son. When he isn't singing or writing songs (he has written over 1,200 of them), he is a licensed paramedic, and he has also become some sort of certified rescuer who goes out in rafts and other vessels to rescue and extricate people from boats and ships when things go awry. Not bad for 65 years old.

Anyhow, his music is reasonably complex, full of multisyllabic words, and, to me, pretty touching stuff. My friend, Don, wondered how he had missed this guy, who put out something like 18 albums since around 1968. He played for about two hours, using all six of the guitars he had brought along, at one point laying down a chord progression on an acoustic rhythm guitar, looping it electronically, then singing and playing electric lead over it. The old guy was in touch with modern electronics. He also occasionally employed some foot pedals that gave the guitar an orchestral strings background. He finished up with his double-neck, doing a medley of three of his songs, interjecting a dead on Jimi Hendrix "Hey Joe" in the middle.

The repertoire was a great run through his work. For two songs he reached back to his first album that I had ever heard, and read the lyrics off a sheet as he sang. He said at 65, in bringing back these old songs he hasn't played for over 35 years, he suffers from "CRS", which we'll say means "can't remember stuff" in this family blog.

Shawn hung around after the concert, signing CDs and the like, and it was sort of nice to be able to come up to him and tell him I've really enjoyed his stuff, and that his voice and range sure haven't changed since '71. He seemed genuinely appreciative of the fans' gratitude.

Chances are whoever is reading this has never heard of Shawn Phillips or his music, and that is a shame. Just like most everything in life, whatever is popular is not necessarily what's best. Very true of the music biz, where the "industry" tends to take people, decide to make them a product, package them up, then maybe give the a prefabricated song or two to sing. I'll stick with the genuine article.