Sam Phillips is a songwriter, musician and singer from Los Angeles, California. When she began making albums for the Virgin America label in 1988, Phillips started going by her nickname Sam in honor of the Great Producer who discovered and recorded Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. T Bone Burnett produced seven of Phillips’ albums for Virgin and Nonesuch Records. She produced her last three albums “Don’t Do Anything,” “Push Any Button” and now “World On Sticks.” In 2000, Amy Sherman-Palladino asked Phillips to compose and perform the music for her TV show “Gilmore Girls,” which she did for seven seasons, and she has reprised that role for the new “Gilmore Girls (A Year In The Life): revival for Netflix. In 2017, Sherman-Palladino asked her to contribute some music to Sherman-Palladinos’ new show, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,: for Amazon. The band on “World on Sticks” is Jay Bellerose (drums), Jennifer Condos (bass), and Eric Gorfain (multi-instrumentalist/arranger), joined by special guests Jon Brion (bass/guitar), Chris Bruce (guitar) and The Section Quartet (strings); the recordings swing from broken modern sounds to dreamy, cinematic music. As Phillips wrote these songs, she wanted to look at our lost connections…with nature, with mystery, with other humans and parts of ourselves. Watching a tree suffer through the California drought last summer made Phillips feel for him. She wondered if it was painful or difficult for him to sprout leaves in the spring after such a dry year. She spent a few minutes with him every day. As Phillips was standing in front of him, the words ‘Walking Tree’ popped into her head. She imagined this was his name for her…a name that reached out with empathy for Phillips’ conflicting desires to be both rooted and free. Maybe he felt for Phillips because of her short life and fast-spinning mind…not taking enough time to realize that she’s here to be a loving part of all this.
