Interview – Glen Phillips from Toad the Wet Sprocket

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Interview – Glen Phillips from Toad the Wet Sprocket

July 23rd, 2009

Author: Skelly

Toad the Wet Sprocket Interview Glen Phillips from Toad the Wet Sprocket

(It’s been 12 years since the release of Toad the Wet Sprocket’s last album Coil, but in 2009 the band still tours the nation, playing to adoring fans whose lives their music touched in the 80’s and 90’s. Glen Phillips took a moment out of his day to speak with me about Toad’s relationship to the Upper Midwest, covering Kiss, and the possibility of a future Toad the Wet Sprocket album. I hope you enjoy reading our conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. Toad the Wet Sprocket will play The Cabooze this Saturday evening, July 25, and Bayfront Festival in Duluth on July 26.)

Skelly: This is Skelly from borangutan.com and it is my pleasure to be speaking today with Glen Phillips, lead singer and songwriter for the alt-folk rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today Glen.

Glen Phillips: Absolutely.

S: How has the road treated Toad on this outing and how (if at all) are things different now than they were 15 years ago?

GP: Well, we’re still essentially broken up, so, I suppose that’s the primary difference. We’re not really making new albums right now. So it’s a lot more about people who enjoyed what we did when we were active and we are able to go out and play a few shows a year. We’ve been doing maybe a dozen; we’re doing closer to thirty this year. But we’ll probably bring it back down a notch next year.

The main thing is, we just finally found a balance that worked. When we got together before, usually, whether it was management or booking or just outside forces, there would be a lot of pressure to ramp things up, and as soon as we started feeling that pressure we would go back to the way we acted when we broke up – where we weren’t really enjoying each other, we weren’t enjoying the shows. We really got a grip on it and took complete control ourselves. We have a booking agent, and everything is kind of balanced. Dean the bass player is handling the business, we’re able to play a few shows, (and) enjoy seeing each other. We get along really well, it’s great to play the old songs, and we just kind of leave it at that.

We all have our own projects. Dean and Todd are doing a lot of writing together. I have a band called WPA (Works Progress Administration), my solo work, and Remote Tree Children; so I have current projects I’m excited about. (But) it’s great to revisit it and have it be easy and have it be fun.

[audio=http://borangutan.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/02-Little-Heaven.mp3]

“Little Heaven” by: Toad the Wet Sprocket

S: I’ve noticed that this recent branch of your tour schedule is very Midwestern-centric. Is there a special place in the band’s heart for this part of the county?

GP: We like playing it. People seem to come out and see us. We’ve always had good shows in Minneapolis and always had good shows in Chicago. It’s always gone pretty well here. We joked about having second homes in Ohio at one point because it seemed like we were always playing in Ohio. So, we enjoy the Midwest.

S: When I listen to songs like “Little Heaven” off of In Light Syrup I can’t help but hear some influences drawn from these parts. What musical influences have impacted Toad’s songwriting, and am I just bias, or do Bob Dylan and The Jayhawks fit in there somewhere?

GP: Bob Dylan and The Jayhawks are in there. When we were first began playing I was a freshman in high school and Todd was a senior and we started writing together. We were listening to Elvis Costello and U2, but also REM and Dumptruck, and Dinosaur Jr. just started. And there were all the Minneapolis bands as well. Hüsker Dü was a huge influence, (and) The Replacements were a huge influence. So a lot of the music coming out there I guess might have been Midwestern; a lot of it wasn’t, but we were kind of listening to all of it.

S: I know you did some collaborative work with Dan Wilson from Semisonic on your album Winter Pays For Summer. How did that collaboration occur and can we expect more collaborative work from you and Dan in the future (because we really want it!).

GP: I would love to write more with him; he’s a great guy! My old manager Steve Smith hooked Dan and I up and (we) just hit it off and became friends, and I went over and visited him and we wrote a bunch of songs. We wrote something like five songs in two days. I’d love to write with him more. He’s a great guy.

S: Aside from your solo work, you’re also a member of Work Progress Administration, Remote Tree Children, and Plover. Is Toad approached as a sort of nice release from the grind of these other projects or is it just as much work?

GP: It’s a different kind of work. Remote Tree Children I really want to be able to take on the road. We haven’t had a proper release yet, and so there’s no touring just now for that. Plover was more of a studio project as well. You know, Toad is different. There’s a whole social aspect to being in a band and even being in a band from way back when. So there are a lot of people telling us about their memories and… you know, standing around and talking to people and being friendly. And it’s all fine, but it’s a different kind of energy.

We’re playing songs we know really, really well, and so it’s like riding a bike. WPA on the other hand is a project with a bunch of incredible players, and I feel like a live show there is like a round of boxing in a really good way. I get really beat up, I find the edge of my abilities, and I’m trying to listen to what everybody is doing and fit in. It’s a very active process. (With) Toad, we need to keep ourselves on our toes, but WPA is very musically intense and it’s really challenging to be in musically. So it’s a newer creative expression. It’s a more active process that way.

S: Recently Toad the Wet Sprocket recorded a cover of Kiss’ “Rock ‘n Roll All Night”, and the examiner.com cited this as one of the most unlikely cover songs to surface. What’s the story behind Toad covering Kiss?

GP: Columbia put out (I think it was Columbia), or some company put out Kiss My Ass, a Kiss tribute album. That was when, 1993, (but) it was mentioned in an article recently. But we did that a long time ago. It was fun. We just figured if we were going to do a Kiss song, since we weren’t the most rocking band in the world, we were going to not do the most rocking version. We decided we would do it like a camp fire song. We wanted to sound like something you’d hear at a Young Life camp. So, it was a little bit of self-parody, but it was a lot of fun to do.

S: Here’s the final million-dollar question, and I know you sort of already answered this a little bit, but will all of us Toad fans ever get the opportunity to walk into a record store again and purchase an album of all new Toad songs?

GP: Not at the moment. Todd and I weren’t writing as well together by the end of the band. I wrote about half the songs, we co-wrote about half the songs, and I never stopped writing. I feel like I have once again creative partners in all these other projects that are just active and challenging. So it has a lot of history. And if someday we can find our way through that (and there’s a possibility of it)… but we haven’t really found that right now. Being able to go and play these shows, and play the old songs, and enjoy each other, and come home smiling is a huge step for us.

It was really sick for a number of years even before we broke up. So if all we ever do is be able to play these shows, then I’m really happy with that. Because considering how difficult it was, the fact that we can do this is a huge step, and more than most people get in terms of finding peace with things that at one time weren’t fun or easy. So right now, no plans for a Toad album, but once again I never stopped writing. If people like my songs they have a whole lot of albums to choose from.