Philadelphia Phil, Indianapolis, IN
"Madness is a virtue, reality is a crutch.
Better bats up in the attic. They don't bother me much!"
Like so many of his songs, Bats in the Attic is a free and fluid hallucination meandering through space and time, floating on a stream of popular culture, folk songs and flashbacks. It's the result of years of unabashedly bold writing.
In his Texas Two-Step dream song, La Vida es Sueno, Phil drifts off to Seville, Spain to pass an afternoon drinking San Miguel beer with Pablo Picasso and Lope de Vega. One Christmas morning he dreamt a song, then took Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Kubla Khan and all his fans second-lining down Rampart Street in Me, Woody, Bob and You.
To Philadelphia Phil life is a magnificent montage of grief and wonder, fantasy and vivid experiences in the gritty realities of the times. There's a place for tales of heartbreak and loss, misspent youth and painfully acquiring the wisdom of age.
While sorrow and regret fill I Wonder Who's Loving Her Tonight, My Beautiful Way Back When and Last Call Confession, the joy of living fully springs from We'll Sing Again, Get on Down to New Orleans, It's a Little Bit Complicated and Naked People Are Fun.
Not to forget his roots, Phil pays respects to musical forebears, ancestors and traditions in Grandpa's Fiddle, Taps Played in the Rain, Will I Fly Away?, Just a Figment of My Own Imagination and That's What Makes the Jukebox Play. With one eye on the world outside, another turned inward to figments of his own imagination, including himself, Philadelphia Phil is always unpredictable, defying convention and character typing, even as he rests firmly in the great Folk music traditions from which he's come.
