Reflection and hope

Nashville singer-songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips has a title for the album he hopes to release in the fall: “The Narrows.”

Taken from one of the songs that will be on the record, “The Narrows” is a reference to the treacherous part of a river, and serves as a pretty strong metaphor for life’s challenges, Phillips told GO! Magazine.

The 53-year-old singer-songwriter, playing a sold-out show with Steve Poltz Saturday at The Belfry (see “If you go”), said that while he doesn’t go after themes intentionally, he doesn’t ignore them when they begin calling for his attention.

“When they start to emerge, I try to go with it, you know. I look for those parallels and those patterns that start to emerge on their own,” Phillips said. “Sometimes I’m struck with the themes that are right there under my nose.”

Raised in Stockton, California, Phillips moved to Los Angeles in his late teens. There, he formed Shiva Burlesque in the late 1980s, followed by the acclaimed alternative-rock act Grant Lee Buffalo in the early 1990s. They signed with Warner Bros., but lack of promotional support precipitated their late-’90s breakup.

Except for regrouping to do some Buffalo shows a couple of years back, Phillips has been solo since, releasing a steady string of introspective albums and turning up on TV’s “Gilmore Girls” as a sort of roaming troubadour in street scenes.

Themes definitely emerged when he was working on his most recent album, 2012’s “Walking in the Green Corn.” It’s described on his official bio as “ten songs … drawn from Phillips’ intensive investigations into his native lineage. Phillips, who is Muskogee (Creek), elliptically explores the intersection of past and present, personal and political.”

He told GO! that “in the last couple of years, I moved from California, which was my home, and I moved to Nashville. That’s been a major part of the inspiration” for his recent songwriting. Like Los Angeles, Nashville is an entertainment industry town — only it’s one built on music and songwriting, not film and TV, Phillips said.

“I’m not a country artist, but I love a lot of the country music I grew up with in the ’60s and ’70s,” he said. “I think it feeds me in a way that I wasn’t being fed in Los Angeles, in terms of being in contact with nature and being in a setting that isn’t so constantly self-obsessed with fame, with all of the trappings that come with a place like L.A. It’s not all of L.A., but you really do notice how different the place is when you get outside of it,” he said.

The birth of his daughter, now age 7, influenced his 2009 record “Little Moon,” and partly inspired the move to Nashville, he said. “We said, ‘There must be some other place where we can raise our daughter, where you’re not so far off in the woods (and) you’ve got a sense of balance, where people are living their lives and doing their jobs,” he said.

Asked if the move east has changed his songwriting, Phillips suggested it had — but first noted that Los Angeles didn’t necessarily inform his writing to begin with. “I always kind of feel like I’m going inward and pulling from experience that could have occurred long ago, or I’m being inspired by history and projecting myself into another setting. There were songs like that with Grant Lee Buffalo,” he said.

Nashville, on the other hand, “experienced a lot of war, a lot of tragedy as well. I can’t help but be interested in, and affected by all of that. The Trail of Tears was just a few miles from where I live and the Civil War,” he said.

His father’s death a month after he moved to Nashville further “affected the things I was writing,” he said. “All of this made for a time of pretty heavy reflection, and hope, as well.”

If you’re headed to The Belfry, you can expect to hear some of the material that will be on “The Narrows,” some Grant Lee Buffalo tunes, and of course material from the last few solo outings in his hourlong set.

I’ve got so many records to juggle now,” he said. “I don’t make a set list; it’s all there in my head somewhere. If I get derailed or somebody shouts out a song, it could send the set in a different direction.

“I actually welcome that. It keeps it fresh. There’s a lot of routine in my day. When I put on the guitar and play, I let it take its course,” he said.

When Phillips spoke to GO! a week ago, he’d just met Poltz, with whom he shares Saturday’s bill, the evening prior.

“It seems like we should have known each other a long while ago. There’s definitely a kindred spirit, and he’s such a great songwriter and funny dude, so we’re basically taking this opportunity to work up songs together,” Phillips said. “So who knows. Give us a couple of more days, and we’ll be ready for who knows what.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com