Son of Utah, singer to the world

By Dan Nailen
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 05/25/2008 03:26:55 AM MDT

Editors Note: Original publication date: February 11, 2005

During the 22 years Bruce "U. Utah" Phillips lived in Utah, between the ages of 12 and 34, he learned the art of storytelling from a Mormon elder, learned American Indian songs from a Catholic priest, ran away from home to ride the rails with hobos and tramps, worked as a state historical archivist and ran for the U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom ticket.
Then Phillips' life got really interesting.
The man best known as Utah Phillips went on to become a legend in folk-music circles, a performer who combines long narratives about labor heroes and tramps with singalongs and odes to the country he's traveled from coast to coast by driving, hitchhiking or riding the rails. The entire time, his music career has been strongly linked to his life as a progressive activist, whether working with pro-peace groups or his beloved International Workers of the World. You know, the "Wobblies."
Phillips' son Duncan works with Utah Jobs with Justice, and Utah Phillips is coming home for a pair of concerts next week to help raise money for the organization and touch base with his roots. Phillips currently calls Nevada City, Calif., home, a place he calls "a blue town in a red county in a blue state in a red country in a blue world." The Salt Lake Tribune's interview with Phillips was delayed a couple of times due to his meeting with the Nevada City Peace Center, a group of about 2,000 in his hometown trying to address issues like helping war veterans in the area and bringing a peace-related film series to Nevada City. Phillips truly thinks globally and acts locally, and for him, "locally" means every town he's visited.

Tribune: So what do you do to get ready for visiting a town for a show?
Phillips: When I go play a town I haven't been to in a while, I want them to send me the newspaper so I can get caught up on the local issues. Then I go to the library and read up on the history and economic base and economic distribution so I know the right questions to ask. Then I get taken to see wonders and marvels of the place when I get there.
In Utah, I think I know where the wonderful marvels are, or were, in the case of Salt Lake. That town has been pretty well torn down and I can't say I care for it much. You should have seen it in 1947 when we moved there. It was a big cow town. My first memories of first moving to Salt Lake - and this is moving from the old Jewish neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, where everyone spoke Polish and Yiddish - moving from that neighborhood to Salt Lake on the anniversary of the pioneer trek, it was all Mormon pioneer stuff. It was like moving to another planet. We went over there to 21st South and 13th East and parked the car because 21st South was blocked all the way to the west side from Parleys Canyon. We had a picnic and sat on top of the car and watched rivers of sheep being driven down from Heber, flowing down 21st South by the Basque sheepherders with their red berets and dogs barking to get them down to the railhead on the west side. For a kid coming from Cleveland, that was incredible.
Tribune: What else do you remember?
Phillips: It was a pretty exciting town. West Temple with the Del Rio Club and the Havana Club, all these clubs I used to get thrown out of because I was underage. Then [I remember] all the secondhand stores where I could buy old 78s. My first run-in with folk music of any quantity was old-time country music. That's when Cousin Ray's Record Barn down on 3rd South, when the LP came into play, he threw all his old 78s out on tables on the sidewalks and sold them for a nickel apiece. I found old hillbilly records, songs that I still sing and love.
Tribune: It's been a few years since you played in Utah, right?
Phillips: I used to play there at least once a year, but it's been quite a while since I've been back. The last time I was there I played the Egyptian Theatre with Rosalie Sorrels, and of course it was Rosalie and I and a bunch of other folks who started the Utah Folk Music Society - the great folk music scare of the 1960s! There was a lot of singing going on around town, and we brought a lot of people in from out of town. Rosalie left in '65 and I left in late '69. I left in an old VW bus with $75 and no prospects. I didn't know I was a folk singer, for one thing. I left really as an unemployed organizer.
Tribune: What was your first stop?
Phillips: Well, we stopped all the way across the country because the damn bus blew out trans-axles one after another! In Atlantic, Iowa, we were stranded for quite a while. We had a burned-out Vietnam vet in that bus. And a real good poet named Larry. And a real good Utah poet named Hal. And the other fellow with us was a French Communist who ran the Utah Free Press, the socialist magazine. We were delivering him to the port of deportation in New York. It was a woolly crew. Nobody had any money except my 75 bucks. We were hitting up the Episcopalian churches across the country for their emergency funds.
Tribune: What did you do in New York?
Phillips: I made my way up to Saratoga Springs where Rosalie was, and there was a club called Café Lena. That was ground zero for folk music in the East. It was a tiny club upstairs that couldn't hold more than 50 or 60 people, but Bob Dylan did his first East Coast engagement there. Ramblin' Jack Elliott played there. Everybody played there because they loved Lena. She cared for us, and it was she who taught me that I was in a new trade. She taught me how to do booking, she gave me a place to play, gave me a place to sleep while I got my feet under me.
That's when I discovered there was this enormous folk music family all over the country, a subculture that happened below the level of media notice but is all-pervasive. Every community had a folk music society, a folk music club, a singer's circle. Everybody knew everybody because of the traveling folk music singers sleeping on couches, working for $25 a night in these small coffeehouses and working back and forth across the country in these old cars, or hitchhiking. I fell in with them. I had an old '57 Chevrolet, and back and forth across the country we went, learning songs and learning towns. Each town is its own teacher.
Tribune: Any plans on retiring now that you're almost 70 [Phillips' birthday is May 15]?
Phillips: There's no retirement in my trade; it's a trade you die at. Ten years ago I got diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and a good part of my heart doesn't work. . . . I did stop performing for a little while, but that was to get myself together medically, to get the medications right, to start the cardiac rehab exercises at the hospital and get a really clean, organic diet going. But I feel fine, and as long as I can control it, I can go out once or twice a month.
That's why I'm coming to Salt Lake and Logan. I love the Cache Valley. I've spent a lot of time there. I'm going to go get a good dinner at the Bluebird Café as soon as I get there. . . . And of course the Wobblies are prominent in Utah, mainly for the execution of Joe Hill. . . . I look forward to spending time with them and having a potluck.