Miscellaneous

A Tribute to Phil Walden

by Bill Mallonee, April 26, 2006

i am saddened with the news of Phil Walden's passing.

When Vigilantes of Love showed up in Austin, Tx in spring of 1992, at Phil's request, the "Struggleville band" had just learned the material off Killing Floor and was playing pretty incendiary shows just in and around Athens and Atlanta, Ga. Word had trickled up to Phil somehow. He was in Nashville at the time. I remember chatting with him on the phone before SXSW in Austin. He was very excited about the newly reformed Capricorn Records...Cake, Widespread Panic, 311, and the Freddie Jones band (from Chicago) were already there and experiencing good success. Phil told me he was looking for a song writer type. Thought i was the one. He was a gracious southern gentleman in the best sense of the word. i knew of his involvement with Otis Redding, popularizing Redding's muscular soul music in the late '60's to white audiences. And i knew of his discovery of the Allman Brother's Band, one of THE quintessential great southern rock bands of all time. At the time Athens, Ga., with all of it's pretentious art school hipsters, would have looked warily at such a relationship for a young band. It's a town obcessed with it's own coolness. Even folks there will say such. We jumped in the van, drove to Austin and played a really great set (i think) at a little place called the Jelly Club (no longer there). It was packed to capacity and then some.

A journalist with Rolling Stone later describe Vigilantes of Love as, "scrappy literate, folk-rock." (thank you, sir!) We played a ripping 45 minute set on something like a Fischer-Price PA, got burned on the skin by a light bank about 4 feet from the stage...and won Mr. Walden's approval.

I can still see him, all 6'4" of him, standing at the back door, beaming that generous smile and saying in that southern drawl: "We'd like to talk to you boys."

His arm was outstretched towards a limo...we got in...went to the hotel...talked about our signing. Phil was always so encouraging and optimistic. One month later we were in a studio with producer Jim Scott, who was taking time out from Tom Petty's "Wildflowers" album with Rick Rubin, to record VOL. Jim later went on to mix Lucinda Williams "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," and lot of other cool stuff. Yeah, it was pretty surreal.

It's a great, scary, strange place to be when you sign to a label...For me it was like watching my life pass in front of my eyes...i don't know if anyone really thinks they are ever up to the task. Capricorn was well-respected, up and flourishing and feeling it's game. Vigilantes, at the time, was a rag-tag college outfit with a singer-song writer who was terrified of the next step, which basically meant getting in a crappy van for 180 plus shows a year for the next 4 years, recording 4 records, leaving wife and sons to tour with people you normally wouldn't pick as friends. Nor would they have picked me either, if the truth be told. But rock we did. We showed up all over a newly emerging format called Adult Alternative Album (AAA). With songs like "Welcome to Struggleville" and "Real Down Town," We had a real foot in the door in every major U.S. city. The Triple A format, though, soon showed itself to be great for radio listeners, but no place to move large units of records. We soon felt the backlash of this dynamic. Various incarnations of the band splintered, reformed and splintered again. I've heard the same story countless times from bands in the mid '90's just getting going. A lot of singer-song writer types have simply learned to swim, or tread water when necessary. You try and learn to stay away from the sharks.

But even those grim moments turned out to be the proving ground for REAL experiences and stuff that can't be manufactured or purchased. It all goes back into the tunes...into something substantial and real...and even bigger than your shitty little self...

All those stupid gigs and pointless ventures into God-knows-what makes one...well, different inside. You become both wise and vulnerable, cynical and child-like...you take grace as it comes...in little seemingly insignificant things...you drink it all in...

It's all risk on most days...crazy dark risk and full of lies...and hope you live to tell about it... But all that experience? It all went back into my tunes...you become them and they become you...and it becomes as easy as breathing air...

you make mistakes...and you hope you learn from those too...you hope folks forgive.

And it was those intangible things like faith and, hope and love that grew up in me over those next 15 years and 20 some records...

so, yeah, i wrote songs before i met Phil Walden...But Phil gave me the chance to BECOME a song writer...

And i value that...with all my heart.

Thank you, Phil.

rest in blessed peace.

bill mallonee

 

 

 

 

 

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