Music Reviews
Jun-Jul 2004
High Flyer
Tom Phillips, Tunzen Music
 The man who stirs the drink in the Calgary honky tonk scene recently returned to the studio with the express intent of making an album that would put his newest material in stripped down, all acoustic framework.
With the fiddles, accordion, drums and steel guitar all but left on the bus, save for a couple of occasions where the steel dots a chorus or two, this is a back to the basics set for Phillips who has written a few gems in his time, most notably Ribbons and Bows that was recently covered by American blues man Eric Bibb.
Most of the material is written in the first person and one would be hard pressed to believe that the singer-songwriter hadn’t been struggling with the dissolution of relationships, heartbreak, and self-doubt while he was writing this batch of tunes.
Labeled with titles like You’re Gone But You Ain’t Leavin’, I’m Cursed, We’ve Moved On, and Sinkin’ Fast, Phillips opted to dress the tunes as ballads and waltzes while setting scenes on highways, in saloons and heartbreak hotel.
There’s a lot to recommend here as the believability factor is high with Phillips singing every word as though he’s lived them not once, but over and over again in his mind. A few drawbacks in the phrasing department could have been avoided with a bit more judicious editing, as the tunesmith tried to shoehorn an excess of syllables into a couple of lines, but the evolution of those songs can always continue in a live context.
Kudos to six string master Oscar Lopez for his tasty embellishments on nylon string guitar and Kit Johnson who contributed his talents on a number of instruments and behind the mixing console.
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