Long before books, television and the Internet became popular modes of communication, people sat and listened to their elders tell stories.
The oral tradition has become a forgotten art in the high-tech '90s. But one of the best contemporary practicioners is Utah Phillips, whose folk songs, political barbs and telling of tales have made him a favorite on the folk music circuit.
"I'm a storyteller, and sometimes the stories have tunes,'' he said in a telephone interview from his Nevada City home. "Above all, I'm in love with language. Language and live performances are an endangered species in these waning days of Babylon.''
The bearded, silver-haired Phillips mesmerizes audiences with his earthy tales (both true and tall), cracks them up with his one-liners and warms them with his folk songs (both old and original) like "I Remember Loving You,'' "Touch Me'' and "Railroading Across the Great Divide.''
Phillips, whose tongue-in-cheek nickname is "the Golden Voice of the Great Southwest,'' will appear Saturday at the Sebastopol Veterans Memorial Building in a benefit for the Sonoma County Peace and Justice Center.
"I love sitting on a stage with live people in front of me,'' he said. "My reality, the one I am most comfortable with, is an is oral reality ... a pre-literate reality. Most of what I've learned I've gotten from sitting in front of elders. It is a "lips to ears'' rather than "eyes to page'' form of communication, he said.
"My elders have lived extraordinary lives -- in logging camps and in factories. They know more about the condition of labor ... about how to get through the world on your wits.
"Those are some of the things I've learned from them and try to pass on through songs and humor,'' Phillips said. "I draw from the elders, process it my own quaint way and pass it on. It's a valid role for me and I'm comfortable with it.
"When we were pre-literate, we got essential information from our elders -- we learned about craft and culture and kinship. When we became literate and when literacy became the property of the state, we began to go to books for essential information, but the books were owned by institutions.''
Born in 1935 in Cleveland, Bruce Phillips ended up in Utah where he picked up his name. The son of labor organizers, he was active in leftist politics during the 1960s and ran for the U.S. Senate in 1968 on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket.
Afterward, friends like folksinger Rosalie Sorrells urged him to try and make a living writing songs and telling stories. Growing up in Utah, it had never occurred to him to try and make a living telling stories.
"Everyone in Utah tells stories, and to try and make a living at it would have been considered either illegal or absurd -- or both,'' Phillips said. "But I had been doing it informally for years and didn't even know it.''
He landed his first formal show in 1969 as the opening act for Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee at the Gaslight in Greenwich Village.
Phillips has been telling his stories and singing his songs ever since, and has found an ever-growing audience for them at nightclubs, concerts and folk festivals. Along the way, he's worked at a variety of jobs. He has also spent his share of time riding freight trains and hanging out in hobo camps. All of those activities have resulted in stories and songs.
At 60, Phillips still plays about 120 dates a year around the country. "Every town is its own classroom,'' he said. "But they're spread out. The tours are shorter.'' Heart problems have made him curtail his schedule and change his diet. "But the work is there and I enjoy it and I feel productive. I do take the summer off so I can put in the garden and recharge my batteries.''
It also gives him a chance to work on his latest project, a book titled "Starlight on the Rails.'' "It's a collection of songs and stories I've made up over the past 40 years,'' he said. He credits the Rex Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Grateful Dead, with giving him a grant to start the book.
He attributes the renaissance of storytelling and folk music in recent years to people's need to get to know each other. "People are starving for some human contact,'' he said. "TV and the movies don't provide it.'' Stories are the vehicles for living and sharing a sense of community, he said.
Published Feb. 3, 1995
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