Buffalo soldier

If you’ve ever seen The Gilmore Girls on TV and wondered why the lounge singer called Grant seems familiar, you need wonder no more. For Grant Lee Phillips is alive and well and living in Los Angeles.

The former vocalist with Grant Lee Buffalo hasn’t fallen off the edge of the world or retreated back into the tumbleweed from whence he came. Instead, the driving force behind one of the finest American bands of the ’90s has merely taken a step back from the public spotlight following the demise of the band.

“I ran into Gavin Friday here in LA and he reminded me that it’s been some time since I’ve been in Ireland,” Grant chuckles down the phone from LA. Considering the band are widely considered to have played two of the best gigs in Dublin during the ’90s (both at the Olympia), this is a crying shame. “Those shows are among the most vivid of all the performances the band ever gave,” remembers Grant. “They were really special ones.”

Grant Lee Buffalo released three amazing albums – Fuzzy, Mighty Joe Moon and Copporopolis – before bassist, producer and founding member, Paul Kimble left. “There had always been this tension between us but it had usually led to more creative product, but it was becoming harder for us even to speak,” Grant explains. The band (basically Grant with drummer Joey Peters and various members of REM and Eels) released their fourth album Jubilee, and promptly disappeared on this side of the world, despite having a minor US hit single with ‘Truly Truly’.

“Much of that was down to our situation,” Grant says. “Because we were tied to Polygram, we got caught up in much of the corporte entanglement. The company basically froze all monies and made it impossible for a number of bands to tour. In the case of Jubilee they weren’t able to put any real muscle behind the promotion of the album because they were more concerned with who was going to have their jobs next week.

“I think the climate was already beginning to change,” he continues. “The seedlings of what we’re dealing with now, incredibly processed, manufactured entertainment acts, were beginning to filter into the mindset of these folks who hired and fired. Even though Grant Lee Buffalo were considered a priority, when it came down to dollars and cents, it was quite obvious what was going to occur. We just got lost in the shuffle.”

After what he calls “the Jubilee affair”, Grant took stock and felt that the only way forward for him was as a solo artist.

“All of this was essential in order to get back to wanting to write,” he stresses. “You get so caught up in this whole business of running the giant circus that as a writer it becomes difficult to remain in contact with the muse, or whatever you want to call it.”

Late 1999 saw Grant recording his debut solo album, Ladies’ Love Oracle, “a very personal album that I couldn’t have made any earlier in my career”. A stripped back, intimate album, Ladies Love Oracle was recorded in just three days in his friend John Bryant’s studio.

“My attitude was to push this album out into the stream like a paper boat and whoever it is meant to find it will, and I think that has been the case” he says.

The singer is now ready to return to the wider world, though, with a new album in the bag, Mobilise, ready for release Stateside through a small Boston independent label. Hopefully, Mobilise will get a European release later in the year and we will finally see Grant back on an Irish stage.

“I’m certainly hoping for that,” he says. “There is still a certain amount of this still left up to fate and perhaps that’s always a proper thing.”

Ladies Love Oracle is available from www.grantleephillips.com