So Long It's Been Good to Know You

If Phil Lee was as good at knife throwing as he is at songwriting he would be on the David Letterman show three times a week. He may very well be that good at it - he practices enough - but listening to any one of his excellent CDs, including this new one, has great rewards and fewer risks - at least for the audience. Phil has never feared, personally or lyrically, to scamper out on a limb with a gleam in his eye and a hacksaw in his hand. Sometimes a club owner or promoter will quot;suggestquot; that certain of his songs might ruffle a local feather or two but danged if he won't have those very birds squarely in his corner before the night is done. Charm, guts and great material can get you a long way. Like Wile E. Coyote, he has a knack for recovering from the most explosive circumstances but unlike that hapless canine he usually ends up on top and grinning. This has been of immense help in his previous incarnations as a truck driver, roadie, huckster and bon vivant. Phil Lee likes to say that quot;at a hundred, my age, weight and IQ have all averaged out.quot; Maybe so but if that's true he's sure getting maximum output in all three areas. He writes constantly, eats a sensible diet and, peripatetic as hell, he won't hesitate to haul out of his Nashville habitations in his pickup for a gig in Wisconsin on a Friday, cannonball from there to Missouri on Saturday and hit Indiana on Sunday - after church of course. His traveling ways started back in his Durham, North Carolina high school days: quot;Every morning before school I'd drive from Durham to Raleigh to play drums on a thing called 'Homer Briarhopper and the Daybreak Show'...we'd open up for the farm news w/ timeless country classics, the usual cornball hokum and always one or two for the sick and shut in (Homer would always take his hat off for those). It was great except for all this happened at 6 a.m. and regular guest star, Clyde Moody (the Waltz King of the nation) was as mean as a stripedy snake. I got 65 bucks a week for the show and 15 per for weekend gigs (mobile home sales events and Homer's club Friday and Saturday nights). My career has been spiraling downwards ever since (at least I've got my memories). That was at the tail end of real country music - glad I got in on it.quot; The Briarhopper gig was booked by his grandmother (quot;She was Homer's biggest fan.quot;) who took her percentage in good will and sugar, as in; quot;Give Grandma some sugar honey.quot; Subsequent agents have not been quite as reasonable and their baked goods not nearly as tasty. For a few years - some more easily recollected than others - Phil rolled around America from stem to stern, New York to L.A. and in-between, hobnobbing with pop stars, vagrants, law enforcement personnel, strippers, mud wrestlers, topless dancers, bikers, cowpokes, dissipated philosophers, Euro trash, greens keepers, shadow dancers and various characters both savory and 'un'. Finally he settled in Nashville where he began work on his first album, The Mighty King Of Love and, believing it's never too early, released it right around his 50th birthday. A year or two later he came up with another gem he titled You Should Have Known Me Then despite the fact that, as the lyrics of the title cut suggest, it's probably just as well that you didn't. Phil Lee writes intelligent songs full of wit, humor and grace that blend sizzling Dylan-esque rock and roll, country and western, mid-sixties British Invasion and medicine show sounds that end up being utterly unique and