Grantleephillips’s Blog
Just another WordPress.com weblogBeginning To See The Light
What – two postings in one week? I know, it’s a record for me but I feel like sharing. Perhaps it’s all this sweater weather we’re enjoying in LA. It’s brought out the conversationalist in me. Or shall I say the conservationist? Before my head hits the pillow tonight, allow to sing the praises of the GE energy smart bulb! Seriously, I love these bulbs. I confess that have a thing for light bulbs in general. I can’t throw ‘em out because I just love how they look and in fact I’ve taken to memorializing a few in plaster. I’m fond of the shape. I’m always blown away when they work. It’s kinda stupid. Nevertheless, I had been struggling with some of the new spiral energy saving bulbs. The glare was too irritating and the shape unnerved me. Then along comes the new soft white energy bulb. It looks very much like a traditional bulb. The spiral part is housed on the inside. It uses only 15 watts of power to generate the glow of a 60 watt bulb. Even greater, it’s built to last five years. There’s a second or two of fade up when you first switch on the lamp but within a moment the room is well lit with a very non-florescent glow. I’ve been going through the whole house switching all the old bulbs out. I get no kickback from GE, just the good feeling that I ‘m saving a little energy and passing on the word to you my fellow earthling.
Grant-Lee on Facebook & Twitter
Hey Friends:
I’ve got a few updates. I managed to grab my Facebook URL this weekend. You can now find me at facebook.com/grantleephillips. That will take you to my Grant-Lee Phillips Facebook page. You can also find me on Twitter under the name grantleephilips (I could only squeeze one L in Phillips). Like flossing, it’s hard to get to everyday but I’m getting into the rhythm of posting, updating and enjoying the social nature of it all. If you feel like a night on town, come out to Largo this Tuesday June 16. I’ll be performing a few songs with The Section Quartet. Violinist Eric Gorfain and The Section along with guests Jon Brion, Sam Phillips, Rob Dickinson and myself will celebrate one year at Largo’s new Coronet Theatre location. Stop by and visit the newly opened bar “The Roger Room” adjacent to the Coronet – it’s beautiful. I wish you all a great weekend. Keep in touch! Grant-Lee
Springtime is Blog Time!
Hello Friends, With a new CD set to roll out this fall, I can slowly emerge from my bunker. At last there is time to share that coffee we’ve talked about, time to spend untold hours searching for lost Epson drivers like Dr. Robert Langdon on a Google jag, yes and finally there is time – to blog. I’m still lying low of course. I’m hunkering down and ordering out. Last night’s hot and sour soup will soon be remembered, it’s molecules rearranged. The flu has settled deep in my chest for the weekend so I’m moving a little slow. I don’t believe it’s the Swine Flu of legend, just the old regular one I thought I got a shot for. My friend Robert just dropped off a copy of the new Grizzly Bear album. Those guys are a treasure. I’m three songs in and loving it. Having devoted all of my ear power to the final touches of my new album over the last few weeks, it’s nice to listen casually again. I also dug out my bootleg of David Bowie singing songs from the BBC production of Baal last night. I love that one. I’m going through a bunch of new photographs that Kenneth Scott shot of me last week in LA. Ken has such a great eye and he’s really fun to work with. To close out this post, allow me to announce I’ll be celebrating the one-year anniversary of Largo at its new location, The Coronet on June 16th. It’s a special show featuring The Section Quartet with special guests Sam Phillips, Jon Brion, Catherine Wheel’s Rob Dickinson and myself. If you’re into strings and things that sing, come on out! I must also mention that on this very day in musical history I signed up to Twitter. I just couldn’t stand on the sidelines another day longer. Cheers to all Dad N’ Grads. Grant-Lee
TV Series “The Unit” Features GLP track “Killing A Dead Man”
If you happened to catch “The Unit” on Jan 11th, you will have heard my own “Killing A Dead Man.” It was one of the most compelling uses of my material that I’ve ever seen. If you like your drama hardboiled with a side of grit (as I often do), the episode “Spear Of Destiny” is worth setting your DVR for. TV.COM offers this overview: “Mack gets badly wounded while on a mission with Jonas and they must seek refuge in a monk’s monastery. On the home front, Bob is assigned to a dangerous mission which gives Kim a glimpse into the darker side of his job.” Of course you can always just put on my CD and try to imagine all those crazy things happening to Mack and Jonas and Bob and Kim – but why? “The Unit” has done the work for you and they’ve done it very well with all sorts of cameras and sets and actors and so on. So sit back and be stunned.
‘09 Year of The Ox = Love & Kisses
Gotta’ blog about it. It’s a brand new year. ’08 is so last week. I still haven’t warmed up to the word “Blog”. I feel more at home with the word “Blab” I just wanna’ blab today, nothing more. Just wanna’ say hello, thanks for droppin’ in – are ya hungry? It’s been such a mind-blowin’, shoe throwing kinda’ year. I spent the final hours of 2008 watching David Carradine as Woody Guthrie in the film, “Bound For Glory”. It was shot around my hometown of Stockton Ca, an alluring destination back in Woody’s dust-bowl days. It got me singing all of those old songs again, “My pastures of plenty must always be free…” What incredible odds our forbearers had to endure. Good Gawd, we’re lucky. I then I find myself watching Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years Eve as I have two thousand times before. I have a hunch that Dick Clark actually owns New Years Eve as both a concept and a commodity. You can’t have it without him – he won’t let you. Finally at midnight PST, we on the West Coast are ringing in the new year along with our East coast counterparts, who, by now, will have left the glittering Times Square in a heap of confetti and colorful garbage courtesy of Sbarros and Bubba Gump Shrimp. 2009 is here. It’s time to make resolutions, try a new diet, empty out the fridge, take down those Halloween decorations, go buy that Fleet Foxes album and get on with it.
“Winterglow” New Single Download Dec. 23rd
My new holiday single “Winterglow” will be released online December 23rd.
The song will be available at itunes and several other outlets as a digital download.
I’ve been playing “Winterglow” with Aimee Mann and her band on her annual Christmas tour. Paul Bryan, who also performs regularly with Aimee, produced the track. Drummer Jay Bellerose, keyboardist Patrick Warren, along with Bryan on the bass joined me in the studio to record my first original holiday song. “Winterglow” is essentially about the remembrance of little moments spent with friends and family and finding warmth during the year’s coldest days. This was always a special time for me growing up, largely because our family would come together and I looked forward to that. My grandma, in particular, had a deep affection for the Christmas season and it’s songs. It was among the first music I was exposed to as a child and it taught me a great deal about how songs were actually put together, about melody, lyrics, all the basic nuts and bolts. “Winterglow” is my contribution to that weatherworn book of songs. I hope you enjoy it. Seasons Greeting, Grant-Lee Phillips
Largo 11/8/2008
Thanks to everyone who made it out to Largo last weekend. For everyone else, here’s a short re-cap. It was quite a special night beginning with the comedic balladeering of Dave “Gruber” Allen AKA Todd Carlin AKA the other troubadour on the Gilmore Girls. Dave warmed up the mic and got the house rolling as always. Fiddler Eric Gorfain joined me for much of the evening, which included a lot of new stuff that we had never played together. New and unreleased songs like “Buried Treasure”, “It Ain’t The Same Old Cold War Harry” and “Little Moon” have become mainstays in my set these days. Keyboardist Patrick Warren dropped in to lay some great piano on three new songs, one of which called “Winterglow” will be digitally released near the holiday. (More about that as the release date becomes finalized) Largo legend Jon Brion joined in on the piano for several songs, inspiring an impromptu cover of David Bowie’s “Quicksand” and a rollicking duet of our co-written barn-burner “Walking Through Walls”. A personal highlight for me, singer Sam Phillips stepped up to perform her beautifully haunting song, “Reflecting Light”. It was a night fueled on a grilled cheese and onions rings courtesy of Norms, just a block or two down from Largo. Note – this will be my last solo show of the year. December will be spent on the road with Aimee Mann’s 3rd Annual Christmas Show. (see tour dates www.aimeemann.com/tour)
Hope Springs Eternal
What a monumental time in our lives. In the victory of 44th President-elect Barack Obama, the cornerstone of tomorrow is being planted. This is a new America, forged in the idealism of our tradition – awake to the realities and possibilities of today. What a beautiful America it is and what an incredible time to be alive. Grant-Lee
‘Lotus Eaters’ choreographer sails back onto the scene
On board are costume designer Rami Kashou, a “Project Runway” finalist; composer Rob Cairns and singer-songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips (voted best male vocalist by Rolling Stone in 1995); and painter and set designer Alison Van Pelt, whose work has been collected by, among others, Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler.
Gorenstein Miller, 39, has a ready explanation for her decision to put Helios, the company she founded in 1995, on hiatus. “After ‘The Quickening,’ ” she says, “I started getting some really nice commissions. I also had two young sons I wanted to be with, and because I did not have the day-to-day operations of running a company, I put Helios aside for a while.”
But having created works for such troupes as Milwaukee Ballet and ABT II, the second company of American Ballet Theatre, the choreographer says she wanted to dip her toe into L.A’s dance waters again. “If I left for too long,” she points out, “it would be hard to get gigs and be presented.”
A bit of synchronicity also accounts for Helios’ reemergence. Several years ago, Gorenstein Miller says, she was looking at some gold jewelry in the shape of fruit charms and discovered they had been inspired by Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Lotus Eaters.”
After researching the poem, she recalls, “I felt really passionate about it and could envision the whole thing as dance. Then I got the offer for Cerritos and I pitched them the idea.”
The dreamlike result — decidedly not set in ancient Greece — currently lasts 45 minutes, but it’s also scheduled to be presented as an extended, evening-length work at Santa Monica’s Broad Stage in April. For now, eight scenes depict male sailors stranded on an island inhabited by female lotus eaters. The latter, dispensing their mind-numbing fruits to the seamen in order to quell their desires to return home or go to war, were conceived as strange, alien creatures.
“Are they women? Are they insects? Are they animals? I’m playing with the boundaries of what is beautiful and what is exotic,” says the choreographer. “I was enticed by that movement vocabulary and wanted to explore that.”
At a recent rehearsal at the Westside’s Dance Studio One, 10 dancers ages 20 to 31, nearly all new to the company, were stirring about in what seemed to be a self-contained universe: To the sounds of Cairn and Phillips’ taped score — the opening motif features thundering drums with a hint of jazz — the men were deployed in a group canon, lunging fiercely with military-like swinging arms.
Having leapt over one another in a quest for territory, they then worked up a sweat as they coupled with the women. Hoisting their precious cargo — now to Phillips’ song “Heavenly,” his voice ethereal and plaintive — they ended the scene with daring lifts and acrobatic releases.
Phillips, who knew Gorenstein Miller from their student days at California Institute of the Arts (where she earned a bachelor of fine arts in choreography), says they hadn’t been in contact in recent years, nor had he ever composed for dance. But having written music for TV and films, as well as recorded albums and performed at local venues such as Largo, he was up for the challenge.
“It calls for a very dynamic approach and for something that puts across a feeling of sensuality and longing,” he says. “These songs are longer than any pop song I’ve written, and yet I’m using traditional song forms. You can tell a story with movement, with words or with instruments, and this is an interesting marriage of all these things.”
Gorenstein Miller’s collaboration with clothier Kashou recalls such pairings as choreographer Twyla Tharp and designer Norma Kamali. But like Phillips, the Israeli-born Kashou, a specialist in draping fabric, was a virgin when it came to dance.
“Laura called and said that my aesthetic marries well with the theme of the work,” Kashou says. “The costumes sway along the body. They look like they’re for Grecian goddesses who are almost from another planet.”
Gorenstein Miller’s interest in creating singular worlds — featuring not only provocative costumes but also intriguing sets and original soundscapes — has been an abiding one, and “The Lotus Eaters” promises to continue the trajectory that has earned Helios praise in the past.
Of the 2003 work “About Anne: A Diary in Dance,” inspired by the story of Anne Frank, a Times reviewer wrote that it was “stylish and affecting,” adding: “At its expressionist heart are scenes of danced longing, familial angst and confined celebration.”
A seedbed of talent
ONE OF the dancers in that piece was Maria Gillespie, who performed with Helios from 1998 until 2006. Gillespie, who formed Oni Dance in 2005 and teaches at UCLA, credits Gorenstein Miller with being pivotal in her development as a performer and with nurturing her own choreography. In fact, Helios has proved a seedbed of local talent. Dancer-choreographer Paula Present is another former member who has gone on to success with her troupe, Ptero Dance Theatre.
“As artistic director of my own company, I work with people I admire as human beings, not as machines,” Gillespie says. “I got that from Laura, because we supported each other as family members.”
These days, Gorenstein Miller acknowledges the tremendous effect motherhood has had on her. “When I’m in the studio, I really cherish the time of being in there. I’m more focused because I know that I have limited hours in the day,” she says. “But this is a struggle for me — trying to be a good mother, trying to be a good artistic director and a good choreographer.”
Still, she says, work is both vital to her and a great escape. “Of course, it’s hard to get too lost in the production because I pick up my kids right after rehearsal — they give me perspective.”
Helios Dance Theater and Backhausdance, Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. 8 p.m. Saturday. $20.-$38.50. (800) 300-4345 or www.cerritoscenter.com.
Eban Schletter’s Witching Hour Oct. 29 & 30
From the man behind the musical madness of Mr. Show and Spongebob Squarepants comes a crypt full of creepy original songs and spells to raise the dead … and a devil doll.
Eban Schletter and his lovely cast of ghouls will haunt The Steve Allen Theatre this month when The Witching Hour returns on Oct. 29th & 30th. Join Eban, Grant-Lee Phillips, Jill Sobule, Dave “Gruber” Allen, Scott Aukerman and others for some Halloween hi-jinx.
The Steve Allen Theatre in Hollywood, Tickets 10.00
