bootleg genesis

It all started with a compact disc a random, disjointed collection of songs bootlegged from second- and third-generation cassettes, 45s and LPs, recorded in makeshift and quasi-respectable studios from the late 1970s through the 1980s.

A relatively unknown songwriter named Jimmy Phillips wrote most of the songs, with a few collaborations and a couple of covers.

From 1985 to 1989, Jimmy was a staff songwriter at the Combine Music Group in Nashville, an idiosyncratic publishing company with a stable of writers that included Chris Gantry, Kris Kristofferson, Tony Joe White, Dennis Linde, Lee Clayton, Billy Swan, Donnie Fritts, Alan Rush, Tim Krekel, Bob DiPiero, John Scott Sherrill and Mark Germino.

Combines publisher, Bob Beckham, had a simple philosophy: The most important thing for a song is the lyric. I look for a lyric that is fresh, expressive, precise, simple and original. It became apparent to me that one of the best ways to elevate my copyrights and catalog was to employ a self-contained unit, which was the writer-artist. Artists like Dylan were already popular as writer-artists, but in Nashville it was still a new idea, and I did it out of desperation.

Jimmys lyrics resonated for Beckham (he literally got into Combine through the back door), and the incorrigible publisher gave him a shot.

In 1988, Jimmy released a solo album, They Dont Make the Blues Like They Used To (Dangling Carrot).

Author Peter Guralnick Lost Highway: Journeys & Arrivals of American Musicians (1979), Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm & Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom (1986), Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (1994), Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke (2005) wrote the liner notes:

Ive never heard anyone quite like Jimmy Phillips before. Oh, certainly there are comparisons to be made, but theyre all going to fall short because Jimmy Phillips is an original. His originality comes through in his songs; it is present in the warm confidentiality of his voice; it leaps out at you in the precise turns of phrase and sometimes startling imagery that animates his lyrics, in his vivid sense of time and place.

Most of all, though, I think Jimmy Phillipss unique gift comes through in his flair for portraiture, his ability to portray people with warmth and wit, in all their glory, and all their folly, too.

This is art, and songwriting, of considerable breadth and complexity and yet it is immediately, directly accessible on any number of levels.

the fall of saigon

At the close of the 1980s, Monument Record Company founder Fred Foster sold Combine, his publishing division, to a New York group named SBK. Jimmy Phillips soon found himself homeless, and without a commercial track record and a mentor, his creative stock fell precipitously.

Jimmy left Nashville in the fall of 1989 and moved to Oxford, Mississippi, his habitual refuge. For the next three years, he worked on a masters degree in Southern Studies and played music, pure and simple, detached from the music business. He toyed with short fiction. He stopped writing songs.

the missing years                                                                           

In 1993, to pay off his student loan and other debts, Jimmy did the unthinkable he got a real job. Five years later, with reserves in the bank, he drifted west.

His journey ended in Telluride, Colorado, in 1999. He thought he had found the cul-de-sac of his soul. He lived in a house 10,000 feet above sea level. He ruminated, communed with the elk, caught and released cutthroat trout. He became a mountain man, a ski bum, a recluse, a reincarnated songwriter. But after nine years, two mysterious forces intervened: the Great Recession and the bootleg.

Jimmy Phillips discovered that his music had a secret life. Someone had exhumed the songs he buried twenty years ago. Twenty- and thirtysomethings a generation he underestimated had redeemed him, exonerated him, validated him.

Someone sent him the bootleg. It was sonic blasphemy, but it resonated in the post-Dead era.

The bootleg became the soundtrack for aluminum afternoons. His distorted, disembodied voice appeared at an Aspen womans Manhattan wedding, explaining why a good woman is hard to find. His lyrics graced The New York Times Magazine food section, exalting the virtues of fried chicken.

strange loop

The universe dealt him a new hand. Jimmy returned to Oxford and got back in the game.

Two veterans of the local music scene, bassist Ben Johnson (a bootleg victim) and guitarist Patrick McClary, form the core of his band, Jimmy Phillips & the Ruminators.

Leland, Mississippi native Ben Johnson was the bass player for Mayhem String Band, the irrepressible outlaw bluegrass quintet. Formed in Oxford in 2005, the band toured extensively, injecting Cajun two-steps, Irish jigs and Mississippi blues into a bluegrass template. Mayhem (May All Your Hangovers End Miraculously) released two well-received CDs, Rapscallions and Neerdowells (2007) and Land Pirates (2009). The boys parted ways in 2010, but the mayhem still reverberates.

Singer-songwriter Patrick McClary was the lead guitarist for the Oxford-based southern rock band Daybreakdown. Formed in 2003, Daybreakdown became one of the top touring acts from Mississippi; the band released two impressive CDs, Make Me Wiser (2004) and Shine Like Rust (2007). Patrick also fronts his own band, the Minor Adjustments. The group released The January Sessions in 2010, a soulful collection of well-written, understated songs, and is working on its sophomore album.

ruminate on it

On August 16, Jimmy Phillips & the Ruminators will begin recording an album at Tweed Recording in Oxford, Mississippi.

The bands intent is to translate the mercurial ruminator sound into digital language, without compromising the integrity of the songs.

Please help the Ruminators fund this project. We must stamp out sonic blasphemy in our lifetime.

    Hampton Moon, August 6, 2011