Songwriter E.G. Phillips to Release New Single "The L.A. Song"

SAN FRANCISCO - Sept. 18, 2018 - PRLog -- On Friday September 21st San Francisco based songwriter E.G. Phillips will be playing the Balanced BreakFEST, a 3 night showcase of Bay Area music talent spanning 7 venues that is the brainchild of Stefan Aronsen who has been one of the masterminds of Balanced Breakfast, a musician meet up group that originated in San Francisco and now has chapters breaking bread together across the country and beyond.

Phillips will be playing his slot at Revolution Cafe at 6 PM.  On that same day he will be releasing his latest single, simply entitled "The L.A. Song" along with a video he shot in Southern California earlier this year with Button Up Productions.

Phillips has been a part of the local San Francisco music scene for over five years now, starting  out at venues like Bazaar Cafe and the Hotel Utah.  He released his first album, "Fish from the Sky" in early 2017.  "The L.A. Song" is Phillips' first release of a new song since that album.

"I think with a lot of E.G.'s song there's always a bit of a red herring … I don't think [The Fish Song] is about a fish… I'm not sure this song is about L.A." — Robb Hagle (Swamp Child)

https://youtu.be/WQxgcKaBb04



The song itself actually began with a pair of trips E.G. took to L.A. in the spring of 2017 where he spent some time at Newport Beach and Crystal Cove with his nieces while his sister's family was on a pilgrimage to Disneyland from their home in East Central Illinois.  E.G. wrote out some stanzas in an attempt to preserve some of those interactions, in what he readily admits is a "lossy format."  When he returned a month later for the ASCAP conference held in Hollywood, that provided some fodder to complete the song which has become something of a meditation on the contrasts between the natural and built environments in Southern California as well as life in the city of angels.

Thinking it was a bit of an odd beast in terms of song structure and its mashup of jazz chords, Phillips was pleasantly surprised at the positive response his creation received when he started playing "The L.A. Song" out a few months later — especially at the Hotel Utah open mic where he asked host Brendan Getzell to sit in and accompany him on piano.

When Phillips was offered the feature set at the Neck of the Woods open mic later in December, given the dynamics of that venue, he decided to cobble together a band and "the L.A. Song" became a group favorite.  They even chose to premier it at the Utah during a theme night prior to their outing at NOTW.  For that band, E.G. asked Robb Hagle (Swamp Child) to play lead guitar and brought in Michelle Renee (We Reverberate) to sing backing vocals for a follow up performance in February.  Both are performers Phillips had met at the Utah's open mic.  Phillips then asked Getzell, Hagle, and Renee to all contribute their parts to the recording of the song he was working on with producer Ben Bernstein.

Since he is often told that his lyrics are "cinematic," Phillips felt that a music video for this song would be fitting and relatively straight forward to achieve compared to more exotic locations he's referenced in other songs (in one piece the pyramids, Istanbul and Iguazu Falls all come up… among others).  By the time the next ASCAP conference rolled around again in May, Phillips had the song in the can and had gotten in touch with producer Daniel Button.

They arranged to do a day of shooting while Phillips was touring in the Los Angeles area ahead of going to the conference.  The filming was done guerrilla style in Hollywood and Malibu (substituting for Newport Beach for logistical reasons).  Button also captured some of the traffic in between in time-lapse using a GoPro mounted to one of the actor's cars.  Phillips makes a brief appearance as a busker on Hollywood Boulevard in a bit of cinéma vérité that chronicles the day trip of a couple played by Rachel Clark-Spear and Joshua Lee Young.

With summer now winding down and the beach days depicted in the song and the video in shorter supply, Phillips is now releasing both in conjunction with his turn in the Balanced BreakFEST.    A distinctive collaboration between Bay Area artists, the song is a bit of slow burn — perhaps unfashionably taking its time to develop its layers.  And it doesn't try too hard to tell you anything directly, but instead provokes emotions and ideas through its imagery that could lead to reams of your own musings or hours of conversation — preferably on the beach, watching the sun set, bobbing beneath the surface of the ocean as if it might be gone… forever.

Visit E.G. Phillips' website duckswithpants.com for details or follow him as @duckswithpants on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

Balanced BreakFEST starts Thursday, September 20th and runs through the 22nd at 7 different venues.  https://breakfest2018.eventbrite.com