Album Notes

Utah Phillips has crafted a fascinating show out of his life. In the course of seventy years he has labored as a dishwasher, archivist, printer, and warehouseman; soldiered in the Korean War; lived as a tramp (he is still a Grand Duke of Hoboes), and for the past 36 years made his way telling stories and singing songs. He has the wit, humor, bite, and intelligence of a Mark Twain or a Will Rogers, and behind his "Everyman" appearance is a consummate artist. Peppered with one-liners and offhand philosophical commentary, Utah's revealing stories, about such spirited American characters as Charley Goodnight, Mother Jones, and Idaho Blackie, tell our true history and connect us to American traditions that are genuinely ours. Utah Phillips is described as "a national treasure, a writer of haunting songs, a storyteller of hilarious presence and subtle depth, a union organizer, historian and scholar, a Celtic-Yiddish bard, a Pleistocene bon vivant, a post-modern ne'er-do-well, and a heck o