toadthewetsprocket

We had the pleasure of interviewing Glen Phillips of Toad The We Sprocket from The Twisted Wool Lounge at the historic Woolworth Theatre in Nashville!

During his years as lead singer and main songwriter of Toad the Wet Sprocket, Glen Phillips helped to create the band’s elegant folk/pop sound with honest, introspective lyrics that forged a close bond with their fans. When Toad went on hiatus, he launched a solo career with Abulum, and stayed busy collaborating with other artists on various projects including Mutual Admiration Society, with members of Nickel Creek and Remote Tree Children, an experimental outing with John Morgan Askew.

Phillips’ previous solo record, Swallowed by the New, was a post-divorce outing about grief, while There Is So Much Here finds Phillips writing love songs again focusing on gratitude, beauty and staying present. “Looking at this batch of songs, I realized I’d turned a corner. I noticed that I was in a state of being that wasn’t all about loss. Things felt doable and hopeful again. There’s no pure happy ending - the world is a mess, the future is uncertain - but I started to internalize poet Mary Oliver’s words: ‘Attention is the beginning of devotion.’ I’m paying better attention. I’m getting more devoted.”

The 11 tracks on the album move between quiet love songs and outright rockers that consider the multi-faceted meanings hidden in our everyday lives. “Stone Throat” is a midtempo rocker that looks at a couple in a new relationship, trying to find the balance between desire and responsibility, or as Phillips sings, “trying to find the balance, between the sacred and the street.” There’s a hint of new wave ska in the rhythm of “I Was a Riot,” a song that casts a compassionate eye on the end of a relationship. “The arrangement nods to Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp,” Phillips says. “Graham Maby is one of the greatest bass players of all time, so we had him in mind when laying down the bass part.” 

The COVID lockdown-inspired “The Sound of Drinking,” is an appreciation of the familiar things in life, like drinking a glass of water on your back porch. Sean Watkins (Nickel Creek) plays soft acoustic guitar and Glen sighs a lyric of gratitude for simple pleasures.

“Call The Moondust” is the most metaphysical song in the set. There’s a dash of secular gospel in Depper’s piano, and ambient effects that suggest the vastness of the cosmos. Phillips delivers an emotional performance over a tense arrangement that hints at the wonders of the universe. “The beauty of life is in its mystery,” Phillips states. “If we think we have an answer, we’re deluding ourselves. My dad was a physicist and was reading about string theory on his death bed. He found God in all those extra folded dimensions, and left this world with a sense of wonder. I hope I can do the same.”

Ultimately, as Phillips reflects on the album, he shares: “This is an album about showing up for what is and letting it be enough.”

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Glen Phillips, frontman of acclaimed rock band TOAD THE WET SPROCKET sits in with Brett Newski to chat about overcoming depression, self-criticism, meditation styles, and finding optimism in the near future.

More on Glen: https://www.glenphillips.com/

More on Newski: https://brettnewski.com/

Support the pod for just $5/mo: https://www.patreon.com/BrettNewski1

The fellas tour the midwest and discuss getting into the Green Bay Packers locker room, playing a house concert for an angry divorced couple in Michigan, sitting in with Barenaked Ladies. 

Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/BrettNewski1

Site: https://brettnewski.com/

The land of shattered dreams! Los Angeles Brett meets Shaq and Kobe...plus San Francisco punk squat failure and Scientology mothership encounters.

Travel. Comedy. Music. 

 

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Tim Burton's 2003 fantasy drama, "Big Fish," took an interesting novel, shredded it into a bunch of disjointed pieces and removed all its compelling aspects. The story of a son working to overcome the deep-rooted distance between himself and his terminally ill father is drowned out completely by naked werewolves, guys dying while jerking off on the toilet and weird sex cult towns.

Ewan McGregor plays young Edward Bloom, an ambitious Alabamian anecdotalist who goes on one adventure after another. The audience is supposed to think young Edward is such a good dude as he alienates his son, delivers a simple-minded "friend" with gigantism to a flimflam circus man to be exploited as part of a "freak show," steals a guy's fiancé, and carries on an emotional affair.

Albert Finney plays old Edward Bloom, the most boisterous stage 4 cancer patient you've ever seen. He spends his declining years recounting braggadocious stories all about his wild and heroic exploits.

Billy Crudup turns in the worst performance of his career as Will Bloom, a petulant young man who can't let go of his resentment for his dying dad even though the movie gives him no reason to feel bitter in the first place.

Jessica Lange plays Sandra Bloom, a Manic Pixie Dream Wife whose purposes in life are to fawn over her husband, Edward, and to serve as his trophy.

Also, fair warning, Keating sings Toad the Wet Sprocket's "All I Want."

Tell us what you think by chatting with us (@filmsnuff) on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, or by shooting us an email over at mailbag@filmsnuff.com.

This episode is sponsored by Ignorance Stone.

Visit our website at https://www.filmsnuff.com.